Learning-Adjusted Years of Schooling: Macro and micro applications of a new standardized metric of quality education

• In Event: Publicizing public goods in education: New evidence and tools to improve the sector

Proposal

Both quantity and quality of education are important for a society, but the standard summary metric of education-based human capital used in macro analyses—average years of schooling—hides the very large differences in learning outcomes across countries. The Learning-Adjusted Years of Schooling (LAYS) measure, introduced in the World Development Report 2018, overcomes this problem by combining quantity and quality of schooling into a single easy-to-understand metric of progress. LAYS is now being used to track progress and guide policy reforms. At the macro level, it serves as the education component of both the World Bank’s Human Capital Index and USAID’s Country Capacity Metrics; and at the micro level, the new Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel (with the support of the Building Evidence in Education donor working group) is using it to improve comparisons of cost-effectiveness of education different interventions and guide policy choice. This presentation will explore how and why LAYS is calculated and used.

Author

• Halsey Rogers, World Bank