One example where successful ways have been found to address such challenges is the central government's ‘Territories of Citizenship” initiative, launched in 2008 to support development in poor rural areas. Many projects included in the initiative have successfully enhanced capacity at municipal level, increased citizen participation and accountability and enhanced the coordination of sectoral policies at the federal level. Following the advances in terms of access to education described in the preceding section, one of the principal challenges going forward will be to improve the quality of education. Competencies of school-aged children have increased over the years as enrolment rates improved, but compared to international benchmarks, Brazilian students still learn significantly less. The OECD PISA programme assesses 15-year-olds1 competencies across 70 countries, and allows direct comparisons (OECD, 2012a).