Incentives and the quality of teachers and schools

A growing body of research in social sciences substantiates the pronounced positive association between education and incomes in developing countries. ¹ The perception that high quality education yields greater economic and social benefits for its recipients has promoted development policies focusing on the improvement of human capital and substantially increased parental demands for access to quality education for their children. In developing countries where quality education is in great shortage, one of the primary challenges for education policy-makers is to develop systems that could enhance and expand high quality education resources to meet such demands. The challenge deepens when programs aimed at increasing access to education such as universal primary education and expansions of college education spread existing resources across a rapidly enlarging student population. This chapter describes and assesses the current policies in an urban county in Jiangsu Province designed to provide a high quality education through developing proper incentives for teachers and ensuring equal access to high quality teachers and schools.