A poverty focus for aid to basic education in the South Pacific

Abstract

The aim of this thesis is to develop approaches that aid agencies could use in the appraisal and/or development of basic education programs in South Pacific countries which address aspects of poverty. It is set in the context of wider international concern that aid programs need to have a more direct impact on the conditions of the poor than they have had in the recent past.
Concepts of poverty, basic education and literacy appropriate to South Pacific countries are developed and relationships among them are examined as preliminary steps to data collection and analysis. The data for the thesis comes from programs of aid to basic education that were running in or have commenced since 1985 and consists of formal evaluations and reviews, the opinion of expert panels and anecdotal evidence from individuals. Analysis of the data is conducted in two stages; first, criteria by which to judge the success of programs are developed and applied to the data, and second, the common components of successful programs are identified.
The 'components of success' are then used to develop approaches that aid agencies could employ in analysing program proposals and/or in developing programs in basic education that have a poverty focus. Examples of how these approaches could be applied to particular programs are given.

Date of Award	1991
Original language	English
Supervisor	Noel Vanzetti (Supervisor) & Colin Ducker (Supervisor)