viii Test scores available for schools in Pernambuco showed significant relationships between achievement and various time indicators. Socioeconomic data, available in Pernambuco and Morocco, also suggested relationships with instructional time measures. Particularly in Morocco, poverty rate and rural school locations were positively correlated with school closures, interactive and passive instruction, time spent in management, and off task behaviors. In general, interactive learning time was negatively correlated with urban poverty. Though these findings are preliminary and do not establish causality, they are in accordance with earlier research suggesting that the schools of the poor offer less instructional time to their students.

This study was implemented in only three countries and one state. It did not have a large sample of very low-income countries where textbook scarcity forces children to spend most of their time copying from the blackboard. Nevertheless, it has shown that under some circumstances the time and opportunity to learn are very limited. This phenomenon may account to some extent for the disappointing learning outcomes that the poor children show worldwide. Making better use of instructional time is key to achieving Education for All.

Thus, time is a mediator variable that has escaped scrutiny and measurement thus far. It is not enough to provide the ingredients of instruction and assume that they will be used in class. Students must get sufficient time to master the instructional objectives intended in specific subjects. Furthermore, inputs like teaching aids must be employed within the timeframe available to students, or they may not promote student learning. Other sources of systemic inefficiency exist, such as dropout, repetition, and high staffing costs. But these may be causes or effects of time wastage. If so, the time devoted to learning the material prescribed by the curriculum may be at the crux of educational “quality”. The quantity-quality tradeoff that is often mentioned in relationship to rapid expansion of education in low-income countries may be mitigated if measures are taken to give students the instructional time they need, even as class sizes increase.

Equally important, instructional time loss has _budgetary implications_ . A class hour in a particular school corresponds to a slice of a country’s recurrent expenditure budget. In some countries only a small fraction of government and donor resources may be converted into learning activities. To ensure that government and donor investments have the expected impact, policy dialogue must focus on the processes needed to supervise and improve time use at all levels. Research on instructional time in low-income countries is very limited, but the scope is large. Issues with policy implications include:

- Monetarizing the losses and consequences of time loss, and adjusting economic indicators on this basis;

- Collecting data on the policies and practices that result in school closures, such as late teacher assignments, payment policies, class cancellations for impromptu training, cultural events, and lengthy exam preparation; developing effective action plans to minimize them in each country.

- Making principals explicitly accountable for keeping schools open and monitoring teachers’ presence and classroom instructional time; establishing accountability with district staff who interface with them to monitor time use at the local and central levels;

- Ensuring that all students in all grades have textbooks that they can take home and use for homework and that are available during class to facilitate time use; informing