Version 7.70 (July 8th, 2021)

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You can download IFs Version 7.70 at 7.70.

• New Education Model, off in the base case (edmodelsw = 1, is on):

The model revisions, makes an important decision of not adjusting historical schooling flow rates, which the old/current model would do for reasons described next. The new model is initialized with historical data on grade-specific flows, thus eliminating the requirement to initialize grade-specific rates from the broader schooling-level-specific flows with a steady flow assumption . Also, the grade-specific enrollment and dropout rates for primary and lower secondary are included in the common block in the new model. They were implicit in the old model. By the way, the core structure of the model, i.e., stocks and flows accounting across grades (first, second etc) and ahead to the next level (primary, secondary etc) stay the same.

The benefits of moving away from adjusting flow rates are several, for example, a. there are countries with positive and negative shock and/or catchup, where the steady state assumption is wrong, b. model users/clients complained about changing the historical data, c. some of the flows need to be consistent with the initial values of other forecasts for comparison purpose like IIASA’s attainment forecasts initialized for the younger population cohorts with school graduation rates. These changes are still turned off in the regular base and need to be activated with a switch.