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This report presents findings from the Social Sector Performance Qualitative Study (SSPQS). The SSPQS was designed as a follow-up to the Social Sector Performance Surveys (SSPS), which were public expenditure tracking surveys undertaken in the primary and secondary education and government health and family planning systems between 2004 and 2006. In many respects, the SSPS findings were positive, documenting that systems of health and education service provision were functioning. While there were problems, including of corruption or leakage and poor quality services, the provision of health and education services was found to be reasonably effective within their given goals and resource constraints. The SSPQS was designed to use qualitative methods to triangulate, explore and illustrate selected findings from the SSPS. The research on schools drew on the Heneveld-Craig framework for analysing school effectiveness. Applied here, this entailed a focus on understanding how the quality of supporting inputs (parental and community participation, supervision and material inputs) and enabling conditions (the effectiveness of school management and the incentives of teachers), relate to the quality or performance of the facility. To explore the governance of schools and health facilities, the research also drew on the analytical framework developed in the World Development Report 2004 to unearth accountability mechanisms linking users, providers and policy makers. The main findings of the report are presented in Sections 3 to 5.