In Ghana, senior secondary education system is funded minimally by the government and depends heavily on households' cost-sharing. In this study, the authors compare the private cost of education among different types of school (urban high-performing schools, schools in small town, and Community Schools). Since the 1987 educational reform, 140 community senior secondary schools were established, with the aim to make education more accessible and less expensive to rural students. Having no boarding facility, Community School students are all considered to be commuting from home and pay less than students of urban prestigious schools whose students are from distance and stay at boarding houses.

The study reveals that the financial burden of Community School students is much heavier than generally believed. First, the fees charged by schools are six to ten times more than the amount officially approved by the government. Therefore, the school fee only takes up bigger part of per-student educational cost than government subsidy. In addition to that, there are large amount of household expenses which are not immediately visible. Many students come from communities which are not within commutable distance, and they rent houses near the school. The cost which is not immediately visible but necessary to continue education is large. While the living expense is a major part of extra private cost, students also spend considerable amount for items which are directly related to education: textbooks, pamphlets, and extra classes. All in all, these extra household expenses, which do not appear on the school bills, constitute 70-80% of the total per-student educational cost.

While the difference of private cost is much smaller than it has been said, there is a wide disparity of households' average financial capacity among different categories of schools. Having limited financial capacities, parents/guardians of Community School students are suffering to cover the cost of education, which is not much different from the amount paid by parents/guardians with better economic standing.

Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has been implementing various projects in educational assistance for developing countries, especially in the areas of mathematics and science. Teachers' training is one of the main projects. How much has teachers' training been contributing to the improvement of children's learning achievements? This paper used the example of a teachers' training project in Ghana (JICA 2000-2005) and measured the impact of teachers' training on children's learning achievements in the areas of mathematics and science. The impact was measured at three levels: (1) how much the training content was useful; (2) how much the trained teachers improved their professional skills and their motivation towards teaching; and (3) how much children's learning achievement improved.

This research found that teachers evaluated the training useful. In addition, both professional skills and motivations of trained teachers improved. Children's learning achievements also improved among primary school pupils, but not among junior secondary students. Even among the primary school pupils, the relation to their learning achievements was not as strong as other factors like “School”. Furthermore, it revealed teachers' strong interests in taking study leave for their further academic qualifications, and the tendency was higher among teachers in junior secondary schools and among those with higher teaching qualifications. Twenty four percent of trained teachers in primary schools left their jobs and 36% did in secondary schools between February 2001 and October 2002. Could it imply that teachers' leave may explain the difference in children's learning achievements between primary and secondary schools? This research concluded that despite the contribution of the teachers' training to the children's learning achievements, it was not efficient enough due to the loss of trained teachers in the system. In the project, school based training was added as project activities to share and pool the gains from the training.

This article analyzes the emerging new pattern of collaboration between government sector and NGOs for the purpose of poverty reduction in China. Based on the literatures, data, authors' survey and case studies in Guizhou Province, which is one of the poorest provinces in China, the rural poverty situation is examined and comparison between government poverty reduction policy and NGO's activities for the alleviation of poverty is made.

Even though NGO's activities have been shown effective poverty reduction in Guizhou, there are still some serious problems surrounding organizations and institutional obstacles in China. Some of the significant issues are discussed in this article.

Four major case studies shown in this article are (1) Rocky Mountain Farmland Creating Project, (2) Happiness Project: Microfinance for the Poor Mothers, (3) Integrated Poverty Alleviation Model Project, and (4) Agricultural Association of Full-time Farmers. This article concludes that there exists the recognized new pattern of collaboration of the government with poverty alleviation NGOs in China as well as Guizhou.

Many scholars, aid agencies and governments now focus on community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) for rural development in developing countries. During the last 20 years, theories in this regard have developed in many fields of research, particularly in economics and anthropology.

Many disagreements exist between these theories, however, especially on how community members come to form groups and take collective action to manage resources. This paper attempts to examine how these academic explanations are related when we see the real world, and how these approaches can be complemented each other.

First, two types of explanation are reviewed. One is the Rational Economic Man (REM) approach, which seeks the conditions that community members can successfully coordinate their actions for their common property resource management. The other is the Social Acting Perspective (SAP) approach, which places human actions on a broader social context and emphasizes the role of cultural aspects and identity. Finally, a review of Thai studies on this topic exemplifies these approaches.

The theoretical examinations on the dynamics of collective actions show that these two approaches are not contradictive, but complementary under some conditions. On one hand, the induced institutional innovation theory, which is a representative of the REM approach, lacks explanations on what “resource scarcity” really means and how it can lead to institutional change to form the collective action. On the other, by using the game theory, the REM framework can explain well at least some parts of the logic of the SAP approach. A more dynamic and interdisciplinary approach is thus necessary for a comprehensive understanding of collective action among the commons, especially in rapidly changing societies.

While some governments in sub-Saharan Africa have abolished tuition to achieve universal primary education (UPE), few studies have examined the impacts of the UPE policy beyond school enrollment. This study examines the current situation of dropout and repetition and estimates the determinant factors on the overall internal efficiency under UPE by using panel data including 940 and 894 rural households collected in 2003 and 2005 respectively. We find that girls are less favored to stay in school than boys when there are insufficient financial resources to send all the siblings to schools. We also find that public schools have a much higher incidence of repetition than private schools, indicating concerns regarding the educational quality in pubic schools. In addition, longer distance to school increases the chances of repetition among primary pupils, when controlling other factors. Thus, further interventions are necessary to support socio-economically disadvantaged households, especially to cover the opportunity cost of girls and to further improve the education system.

The paper attempts to explain why there were so many complaints about aid allocation in the tsunami hit regions of Thailand despite the fact that more than enough quantities of money and goods were donated. In contrast to the typical explanation using the Elite Capture model, the author pays attention to the nature of goods and the mechanisms used to distribute them. One of the key findings was that intra-community distribution had stronger influence on people's perception about “equity” in comparison to inter-community distribution which is often the primary concern for aid donors. The paper also argues that in order to explain the biases in the distribution of goods, one should pay attention to the distribution of resources which lies in the foundation. Resources include land title, network with outsiders and information, nationality and ethnic status which play catalyst role in attracting aid of various kinds. Some policy implications are discussed at the end.