Education - Education Sector Strategy

Give people a handout or a tool, and they will live a little better. Give them an education,and they will changethe world.

Immense progress has been achieved in education in the last 50 years. Immense challenges still remain. The main success has been in access, but too many people - especially girls and women - are still excluded, at all levels of education. Too many more are enrolled but learning little. The result is that far too many people in developing countries do not have the foundation skills required to survive - let alone the advanced skills needed to thrive - in our complex, competitive world. The challenges are to improve the quality of teaching and the relevance of learning, and to offer everyone - including the hardest to reach - a good education. The long-term measure of success for developing countries will be the degree to which a system and culture of lifelong learning have been established.

"All agree that the single most important key to development and to poverty alleviation is education. This must start with universal primary education for girls and boys equally, as well as an open and competitive system of secondary and tertiary education. Construction of schools, modern curricula geared to the new technological age, and the real needs of the emerging local market, and effective teacher training and supervision all contribute to successful educational programs. Adult education, literacy and lifelong learning must be combined with the fundamental recognition that education of women and girls is central to the process of development. A government must also be careful to learn lessons of practice and history from indigenous peoples and communities, so that education is not imposed from afar but benefits from relevant local, communal experience. Finally, preschool education must be given its full weight in programs. This can be a key to the development of a child, the level of education reached, and thus the eventual achievement."

From A Proposal for a Comprehensive Development Framework,
James D. Wolfensohn,
World Bank President,
January 1999

Education is a cornerstone of the World Bank Group's overall mission of helping countries fight poverty with passion and professionalism to achieve lasting results. The mission we have set ourselves in education - to assist clients to identify and implement their next strategic steps in order to provide access for all to quality education - requires us to combine a number of different approaches and to resolve the tensions that may arise in doing so. First, we have to listen closely to our clients: what goals have they set for themselves? How have they analyzed their own situation? What variations exist across different constituencies? Second, we have to bring our global knowledge to bear on the particular issues each of our clients face: what kinds of interventions have worked well, and in what settings? How best to use and adapt this experience to fit local needs and circumstances? Third, we must consider our comparative advantage and select areas to support where we are likely to help make the greatest impact: which partners can best provide what assistance? What education and development outcomes can be expected from our actions? And fourth, in light of both our clients' aspirations and our own knowledge, we must undertake our own analyses - pedagogical, organizational, financial, economic, cultural and political - and determine what role the Bank can best play to achieve shared goals. Client priorities may be at odds with judgments by Bank staff as to what actions are likely to contribute best to education outcomes and poverty reduction. Such tensions between a "bottom-up" client focus and the "top-down" application of global knowledge - provide the basis for the policy dialogue, and are as relevant to education as to any sector. Effectively addressing these tensions requires openness, intelligence, and integrating qualities that we will continue to value in all our staff. It also requires a recognition that the successful resolution of these tensions lies not in "either-or" solutions but in "both-and" ones. Both the Bank and the client must buy into the operations that we work on together.

Donald Winkler
Lead Specialist, Education
Latin America and the Caribbean Region

David de Ferranti
Human Development Council Chair
Vice-President and Head of Human Development Network

This Sector Strategy document was prepared by a team of technical specialists from the Education Sector of the Human Development Network of the World Bank, under the guidance of the Education Sector Board. The process also involved other managers and staff in the World Bank Group.

The work was led by Jeffrey Waite (Project Manager), Maris O'Rourke (Director, Education), and David de Ferranti (Human Development Network Head and Vice-President). Other major contributors were Joy de Beyer, Frances Kemmerer, Quentin Thompson, Jacques van der Gaag and Douglas Windham. The report benefitted from consultation with the External Advisory Panel, chaired by Jozef Ritzen and Paulo Renato Souza, with many members of the Education Network, and with a number of external agencies. Anja Robakowski-Van Stralen - with assistance from Vivian Jackson, Dena Ringold, Nandita Tannan and Lianqin Wang - prepared the statistical annexes and took care of document processing.

The report drew on the strategies that had been or were being prepared by each of the Bank's six regional education teams and by the IFC's education team. Principally responsible for these strategies were Jacob van Lutsenburg Maas (IFC), Adriaan Verspoor (AFR), Christopher Thomas (EAP), Sue Ellen Berryman (ECA), Donald Winkler (LCR), Marlaine Lockheed (MNA), and Regina Bendokat (SAR).

This report takes stock of key changes in the world today and their implications for education (Chapter 1), reiterates the vision for education in the new millennium (Chapter 2), takes stock of progress so far and the gaps that remain (Chapter 3), describes the rich group of partners in the educational endeavor (Chapter 4) and how the Bank's role has evolved (Chapter 5). This all sets the context for the strategy that is now guiding activities and setting priorities in the education sector. Chapter 6 describes the Bank's global priorities and programs to help countries progress toward the international education goals and improve the quality of teaching and learning. Chapter 7 describes the processes and operating principles that will help Bank staff contribute more effectively to better educational outcomes in each client country and to monitor success in implementing this strategy.

Education affects how well individuals, communities and nations fare. It helps improve living standards and enhance the quality of life, and can provide essential opportunities for all. Many of the world's states, through international conventions and commitments, have recognized education as a human right. In a rapidly changing world, education has become more important than ever before. Faced with increasing globalization, the rapid spread of democracy, technological innovation, the emergence of new market economies, and changing public/private roles, countries need more highly educated and skilled populations, and individuals need more skills and information to compete and thrive.

The stakes are high. The choices countries make now will have long-term ramifications. Those who respond astutely will make progress, those who do not risk falling far behind. Disparities in education are already huge - many countries are still struggling to provide basic books, blackboards and buildings, while a few are rapidly adopting new information and education technologies. Without vigorous efforts, global and national gaps in education, opportunities and outcomes could widen much more.

For the World Bank - whose mandate is to work with partners to fight poverty and improve the quality of life - education is central to the development agenda. Education is a crucial part of a Comprehensive Development Framework that recognizes that sustainable development requires many social and structural elements in addition to strong economic performance.

The long-term goal in education is nothing less than to ensure everyone completes a basic education of adequate quality, acquires foundation skills - literacy, numeracy, reasoning and social skills such as teamwork - and has further opportunities to learn advanced skills throughout life, in a range of post-basic education settings.¹ Specific international targets have been agreed for universal primary education, adult literacy and gender parity in basic education within the Education For All (EFA) initiative and the OECD's Development Assistance Committee (DAC) goals. The Bank is com- mitted to working towards these targets and has developed a set of special programs in response. The targets will not all be attained in all countries even a decade from now. But to aim for less would be to aim too low. Progress towards what have become known as the "DAC indicators" will be monitored each year in the World Development Indicators report.

Much progress has been made in enrollment in developing countries. The proportion of people participating, from early childhood to tertiary, has risen significantly. Three quarters of all children in developing countries now attend school, compared to just half 30 years ago. The percentage of illiterate adults has improved from 39 percent in 1985 to 30 percent in 1995. But much more progress is needed.

Serious challenges remain. Access has faltered or declined in some countries, notably in Sub-Saharan Africa, where enrollment increases have not kept pace with population growth. Inequities persist and certain groups - especially females, minorities and the poor - are disproportionately excluded. Drop-out rates are high in many regions, with only two thirds of children who start school staying to the fifth grade. Many children in school receive teaching of low quality, based on an outmoded and inappropriate curriculum. The result is poor achievement scores and unemployed graduates with the wrong skills. Education institutions are often ill-equipped to deal with the many problems they face and to meet the challenges that lie ahead.

There are enormous disparities in education across and within countries. So there is no simple prescription for what countries can do to progress towards the long-term goals of universal access to a good quality basic education and the opportunity to acquire advanced skills. But whatever the education situation and needs in a country, access to quality teaching and learning must be a pre-eminent concern. There is little point in expanding access unless there is reasonable quality. If people are not gaining the knowledge, skills and values they need, resources invested in teaching and learning are wasted. There must be, in policy and actions, an unrelenting concentration on learning. Quality is the key to achieving the imperative for the new millennium - an educated, skilled population who can operate in democratic societies and meet changing labor market needs. Good quality education requires efficient systems that provide supportive learning environments, motivated staff with mastery of their subject matter, adequate access to resources, and students who are healthy and ready to learn. Attention to quality and effective institutions is not new, but making quality the preeminent concern of the education strategy is.

Renewed progress in education clearly requires strong, productive partnerships. The job is too large for any one institution or agency alone, and too important for a single perspective to hold sway. Governments, NGOs and local stakeholders, with the support of bilateral and multilateral development agencies, will have to work closely together in a prolonged effort to ensure each country's objectives for education are met, and to build public and educator understanding of the need for educational change. Many others have important roles to play too, including students, parents, families, communities, teachers groups, foundations and private firms. Local partners, in particular, have the knowledge and the understanding of values, culture and traditions that are an essential feature of sustainable development.

The Bank wishes to use its comparative advantage where the pay-off is greatest, taking into consideration government actions and other partners' activities, the relative strengths of all involved, and the particular challenges to be met. The Bank's comparative advantage lies in its ability to bring together a wide range of stakeholders, offer access to finance, provide objective advice, employ a multi-sectoral approach, sustain a long-term commitment, and share knowledge drawn from around the world.

The Bank can also draw upon 35 years of experience in education, resulting in almost 600 projects in 115 countries totaling US$26 billion. The active portfolio stands at US$14 billion spread across 187 projects in 87 countries, and new lending runs between US$1 and US$3 billion a year. In early projects, the emphasis was on building school infrastructure. As more experience was gained, the focus shifted to getting students into the buildings. But the problems of inadequate and inequitable access, poor quality teaching, poor learning achievement and inadequate institutional capacity remained - and became more apparent and better understood. This led to an analysis of the factors that influence effectiveness, and a new emphasis on teaching quality and learning achievement. A coinciding period of tightened fiscal constraints heightened concern for using resources more effectively and equitably, and for building the institutional capacity required to implement and sustain change for the better. In short, the focus is now not on just buildings and not on just getting students into the buildings, but on improving their learning outcomes wherever they are.

These changes in emphasis and the Bank's commitment to the international education goals are reflected in the increased size, scope and diversity of the portfolio. The most dramatic shift has been from "hardware" (civil works and equipment fell from almost 100% in the 1960s to 45% in the late 1990s) to "software" (training, technical assistance, books and system reforms). There has also been a shift from a narrow project approach to a broad sectoral one, a change in region- al distribution, more lending for primary, and an increase in self-evaluation - all salutary. The recent decrease in research and analytic sector work is worrying. Ways are being sought to counter "crowding out" of research and analysis, through building partnerships and drawing upon other funding sources, building research and evaluation into projects, and focusing on operational relevance for new research topics.

The World Bank will treat education comprehensively and work selectively across all areas of education depending on each country's priorities. There can be no simple single prescription about what needs to be done in all countries, given the huge differences in education and development needs. However, four global strategic priorities emerge from the Bank's commitment to the international education goals and from the consensus that there must be an unrelenting focus on the quality of teaching and learning. The plan at the end of this summary lists specific activities in these priority areas and performance indicators against which to measure progress. The final column shows the outcome indicators that the programs and activities are designed to help achieve, but which are determined by many actors and factors beyond the control of the Bank. (This plan appears in the main text as Tables 3 and 4. Table 3 and Chapter 6 cover the four global priorities. Table 4 and Chapter 7 summarize the operating principles and corresponding performance targets that will guide staff as they work with clients in each country.)

Special global programs in basic education aim to move faster toward the international education targets as means to more productive economies, more cohesive societies, more effective participation in collective affairs, and ultimately, healthier and happier populations. Basic education for girls: In 15 of the Bank's client countries with exceptionally large gaps between girls' and boys' primary enrollment rates, activities and analyses will try to narrow the gender gap by improving girls' enrollment, attainment and achievement. The activities include: providing incentives for girls' attendance (e.g. scholarships, school meals, basic health care, provision of textbooks), increasing access to close and safe schools with adequate facilities, improving the quality and relevance of education, accommodating socio-cultural values and educating parents and communities about the benefits of girls' education, establishing supportive national policies that target girls, and pursuing sound economic policies that do not create disincentives to women's employment. Basic education for the poorest: Sixteen of the sub-Saharan African countries in which education attainment is well below the level required historically to achieve sustainable economic growth and poverty reduction have been targeted. Bolder policies and more innovative activi- ties will be pursued to accelerate primary enrollments in these countries.

The strategy singles out three other areas as global priorities, where experience and research show that interventions are likely to have a big impact on the quality of teaching and learning.

Early child development (ECD): Evidence is accumulating that mental and physical development in children's earliest years affect learning readiness, academic achievement, dropout rates, and labor force productivity. The goal is to increase the number of OECD programs from 8 to 14 and to make sure that the poor benefit from these initiatives. School health: Together with numerous partners, the Bank has an International School Health Initiative to promote and help design and implement simple, cost-effective school-based health services such as deworming, micronutrient (e.g. iron) supplements, and promoting healthy lifestyles. The impact is highly progressive, bene- fiting especially girls, the poor and the malnourished. The goal is to help launch activities in 19 countries in Africa and 8 countries in Latin America, so as to improve children's health, school attendance and ability to learn and thus school achievement - with the potential for longer-term benefits in adult health status and productivity.

Innovative delivery: distance education, open learning and the use of new technologies.

Existing and new technological possibilities (distance education using print and radio, TV, and the Internet) can reduce costs, increase access, expand the range and quality of education and training options, open up new worlds in classrooms and communities, and make real the promises of lifelong learning. The goals are to: develop a strategy for the use of educational technology in African coun- tries; develop African expertise in educational technology and distance education through fellowships; use a survey and case studies to distill the lessons of experience in educational technology and distance education from Asia; and establish Internet (1, 2, 3)sites through which to share knowledge among countries that use technology to train teachers.

Standards, curriculum and achievement assessment: Reliable statistics (including indicators of student learning achievement) are essential for measuring improvements in the quality of teaching and learning. It is important for the Bank to continue to provide technical and financial support to UNESCO's new Institute of Statistics, as well as to encourage developing countries to

Governance and decentralization: Virtually all of the Bank's client countries are tackling education reforms that often involve decentralizing management and accountability for results. The Bank plans (with many partners and leading academic institutions) to develop a training course for policymakers and international agency staff on what works and what doesn't and how to implement education reforms in politically sustainable ways. To further support clients' education system reforms, the Bank will make available former education ministers and other high-level officials with experience in implementing education reforms, detailed case studies of successful country experience, a website featuring global research on education reform, tools for assessing political readiness and institutional capacity for reform in education and assistance to task teams in identifying reform implementation challenges and strategies for overcoming them. Providers and financiers outside of government: It is part of many governments' strategy to expand education supply - especially of secondary and tertiary places and technical and vocational training - by encouraging investment by not-for-profit groups and entrepreneurs. To facilitate this, the Bank (including the IFC) is developing a partnership that will create an Internet information exchange highlighting investment opportunities in education in client countries.

These global priority areas are not all the highest priorities for all regions and all countries. Given the great diversity in education accomplishments, challenges and constraints across and within client countries, this strategy does not issue prescriptive dictates to staff about what to do in all countries (such as "invest in primary education"). Instead, the strategy commits staff to work with clients in each country to help them to identify and take their next strategic steps to provide access for all to quality education, making wise and fair use of resources, and building the institutional capacity that is critical to sustainable development.

The strategy includes guidelines and principles to help education staff to implement it well (Chapter 7) country by country. The agreed operating principles are:

A range of tools, techniques and instruments are available to help staff apply these principles. For example, to analyze comprehensively and act selectively, it helps to consider the potential impact of proposed actions in a particular country. Actions in countries with very large populations can potentially benefit very large numbers of people, and may have lower unit costs per dollar lent than small loans to less populous countries. But the poor and excluded do not all live in the largest countries and small countries may provide unique opportunities for implementing holistic reforms that can have useful demonstration effects for others. Furthermore, when the education portfolio is heavily concentrated in a few large countries, a decision by any one of the major borrowers not to borrow would require the Bank to be prepared to reallocate the freed-up resources in accordance with its broad priorities. For non-borrowing clients, the question of whether to charge for technical assistance will need to be resolved at high levels of Bank management, but the answer affects the decisions the Education sector makes about staff recruitment and deployment.

The potential impact of actions in countries will also be determined by how much room there is to improve, and how much room there is to maneuver, i.e. whether the political and other conditions are likely to promote or impede the pro- posed activity, both in the government and in communities at large. Where there is both room to improve and room to maneuver, staff should move boldly ahead. But staff risk wasting scarce time and resources if they pursue efforts when there is little room to improve and poor prospects of success, especially if government does not fully support the initiative. Earlier it was noted that the global priorities identified in this strategy will not all apply in all countries. A set of questions (Box 11) help staff as they discuss priorities with governments and other stakeholders and partners in each country to consider whether the global areas of special emphasis ought to be high on that particular country's education agenda. The success of this strategic approach will be judged by whether country education action plans are selective, focus clearly on results, show evidence of sound analysis and make appropriate choices among the expanding range of lending instruments and increasingly flexible ways of assisting in the education sector - including through the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative and the pilots efforts to operationalize the Comprehensive Development Framework.

Critical to successful outcomes in education will be the people in the Bank, the processes they use and the way they use them. People with solid professional expertise and who can interact in ways that convey openness, support and service are essential. Key staffing challenges for the years ahead will be to strengthen the skills mix, enhance staff training and improve staff deployment (especially in the field). Staff training is targeting the acquisition of the skills, values, attitudes and behaviors that underlie effective interaction between Bank staff, clients and partners.

Another important strategic goal is to continue to build the Education Knowledge Management System, helping strengthen the Bank's role as a knowledge institution, able to generate, synthesize, disseminate and share global knowledge to get local results and provide high quality advice to clients. Three new external websites will be launched each year and the quality and usefulness of the advisory service and education database will be monitored and ensured.

The overall Bank strategy comprises the global priorities and processes described in this report, the 120 country action plans that operationalize the strategy and the six regional sector strategies which are the bridge between the global strategic considerations and the country specific action plans. Each of the regional strategies promotes and reflects extensive and on-going dialogue, both inside and outside the Bank.

There is significant overlap between the global priorities and the priorities set in the six regional strategies, although, as might be expected, there are clear differences among the regional strategies. In Latin America and the Caribbean (LCR), for example, the Bank has identified the following priorities: improving the teaching and learning process; including the excluded; meeting the needs of youth; reforming organization management; using technology to improve education; and reforming higher education. In the Middle East and North Africa (MNA) region, the priority development objectives are: to emphasize "learning to learn" and reach internationally competitive performance standards; to improve system effectiveness in building human capital and social cohesion; to ensure universal completion of compulsory education of good quality; to increase country-level information on education and the effects of reform; and to maintain a sustainable financial foundation for education.

Scrutiny of the country action plans will show activities in the four global priority areas in many of the Bank's client countries (Annex 6). However, the 120 country plans include many other activities, so the global priority program activities are only a fraction of the full agenda of the education sector in the Bank.

In developing this strategy, careful thought has been given to lessons learned: why have some efforts in education fallen short of their objectives, and others succeeded? Key errors of the past are noted: failing to place enough emphasis on the quality of teaching and on learning outcomes; designing overly complex projects that make unrealistic demands on clients' institution- al capacity; focusing too narrowly - on a single sub-sector in isolation from the rest of the education system, or on expanding physical infrastructure without adequate concern for the activities and policies that determine learning outcomes.

This strategy learns from shortfalls and builds on successes. It reinforces many trends already under way: making the quality of teaching and learning the preeminent concern rather than being satisfied with increased enrollments; analyzing the education system as a complex whole, and then being selective about where to focus efforts; and monitoring progress based on results rather than inputs. This, together with the strengthened insistence that the particular circumstances of each country demand carefully tailored solutions, and the realization that progress towards the education goals requires purposeful partnerships - will help the Bank avoid past pitfalls, improve performance and outcomes in education, and better serve clients.

The ultimate success of this strategy will need to be judged country by country: Is there a clear and coherent education plan? Is implementation of the plan on track, and are specified performance targets being met? Are the planned activities resulting in gains in access and learning outcomes? The work of the Bank can affect the answers to these questions significantly. But the most important actors and decision makers are the key education stakeholders and government staff in client countries. Progress in education is in their hands and depends in large part on local traditions and culture. The role of the Bank is to support and help strengthen their hands, where values and priorities converge.

The Bank's education staff are fully committed to implementing this sector strategy, with the wider endorsement of other managers and of the shareholders. There is no time to lose.

IMPLEMENTATION PLAN
Policy Directions	Specific Actions	Performance Indicators	Partners	Outcome Indicators
PRIORITY AREAS
Basic Education for the poorest	Focus efforts in priority countries in AFR through UNSIA program	Activities under way in 16 target countries	UNESCO, Norwegian Trust Fund	EFA/DAC goals for basic education met in target countries
for girls	Focus efforts in 31 target countries having largest gender disparities in basic education enrollment	Activities under way in the 31 target countries	UNICEF, DFID, Rockefeller	Movements towards EFA/DAC goals for girls in 31 target countries
Early Interventions early child development	Develop ECD programs in priority countries	Number of free-standing programs increased from 8 to 14	HNP, IDB, UNESCO, UNICEF, PAHO, bilaterals, NGOs	Intake improved into primary education in target countries
school health programs	Focus efforts in priority countries in AFR and LCR through the International School Health Program	Activities engaged in 19 countries in AFR, and 8 countries in LCR	HNP, WHO, UNESCO, PAHO, UNICEF, UNAIDS, bilaterals, NGOs	Learning improved in target countries
Innovative Delivery: distance education, open learning & the use of new technologies	Develop an education technology strategy for AFR and undertake a survey in EAP	Strategy and survey completed	AFR, EAP	Worldwide knowledge of distance education enhanced
	Improve information sharing with educators in client countries	Four (4) scholarships offered to African education	AFR
	Enable exchange of knowledge about distance learning amongst client countries	Six (6) external Global Distance Education Net sites operational	Open universities in Canada, HK/China, Costa Rica, Indonesia, South Africa, Spain, and UK
Systemic Reform standards, curriculum & assessment	Support efforts to increase internationally comparative information on education access and achivement	On-going Bank membership of UNESCO Institute of Statistics body and Bank dialogue with clients about participation in international studies	UNESCO, IEA, OECD, UNICEF, UNDP, UNFPA, (TIMSS-R, WEI, EFA 2000 Assessment)	Education systems operating more efficiently and more equitably
	Increase knowledge of evaluation and examinations	Public exams database in FY00 (CD-ROM in FY01) Education performance indicators (FY00)
	Establish worldwide network of science and technology educators	Launch website in FY00	U of Twente, U of Witwatersrand, UNESCO, US National Science Foundation
governance and decentralization	Increase sharing of knowledge about tertiary education reform	Internet site in FY00 Contributors' network developed	OECD
	Increase institutional capacity for education reform	Education reform training course developed for clients and staff	WBI, IIEP/UNESCO, OECD, CPRE
providers and financiers outside of government	Link private investors to education institutions	Electronic exchange operational in FY00 & use evaluated in FY01	IFC, private companies
OPERATING PRINCIPLES
Focus on the client	Promote staff participation in training in listening and negotiation skills	Annual staff training achieved	WBI	Client rating of Bank services improved
Analyze comprehensively, act selectively	Develop Country Action Plans	80% of Country Action Plans updated within last six (6) months to be selective and results-focussed	Country Teams	Bank resources more efficiently used to impact education access and achievement country by country
	Develop Regional Education Strategies	Six (6) strategies by FY00	Regional Management
	Undertake Economic Sector Work and Social Sector Expenditure Review	5 ESWs completed annually CASs informed by SSER not more than 3 years old	DEC, Country Teams
	Disseminate lessons from OED/OAG	First phase of pilot OED relational database operational for education in FY00	OED, OAG
	Review use and effectiveness of new lending instruments	Experience of APLs and LILs distilled and disseminated	OED
	Promote staff participation in training in the use of new lending instruments	Annual staff training achieved	WBI
	Ensure strategic directions are included in CASs of priority countries	Annual review of CASs finds 80% satisfactory treatment of education	Country Teams
Concentrate on development impact	Establish a set of robust development impact indicators for Bank	Development indicator set development in FY00 80% of new projects use indicators withing 2 years	DEC, OAG, OED	Bank interventions beter targeted
Use knowledge well	Open access to clients and partners	External websites for 3 new themes each year (FY00, 01, 02)	Task teams, DECDG, OED, WBI, ISG	Knowledge about education used more effectively to improve access to and quality of education for all
	Conduct EKMS user survey	Survey completed annually	Task teams
Work with others in productive partnerships	In Country Action Plans, include section outlining how the Bank will work with other players	100% of updated CAPs include section on partners and respective comparative advantage		Bank's comparative advantage maximized

As the new millennium approaches, education has become more important than ever before in influencing how well individuals, communities and nations fare. The world is undergoing changes that make it much more difficult to thrive without the skills and tools that a high quality education provides. Education will determine who has the keys to the treasures the world can furnish. This is particularly important for the poor, who have to rely on their human capital as the main, if not the only, means of escaping poverty. In this way, new challenges and opportunities arise for education. The stakes are high. The choices that countries make today about education could lead to sharply divergent outcomes in the decades ahead. Countries that respond astutely should experience extraordinary progress in education, with major social and economic benefits, including "catch-up" gains for the poor and marginalized. Countries that fail to recognize and respond risk stagnating or even slipping backwards, widening social and economic gaps and sowing the seeds of unrest.

Among the major drivers of change are five key trends. First, democratization has spread rapidly in the last decade. Over a hundred countries now have democratically elected governments, almost twice as many as a decade ago. This change has often been accompanied by decentralization of decision-making. In Latin America, for example, with the exception of a few small countries, virtually all legislative and executive authorities are now elected in 13,000 units of local government.² Citizens are gaining an increasing voice through civil society organizations and community groups, local chambers of commerce, religious organizations, parents' associations, etc. If all this democratization is to survive and flourish, education will have a key contribution to make in helping citizenries develop the capabilities required to be well informed, understand difficult issues, make wise choices, and hold elected officials accountable for delivering on their promises. Second, market economies³ now prevail in countries accounting for over 80 percent of the world's population, up from under 30 percent a decade ago. Where other (mainly centrally planned) systems used to provide fewer opportunities but more certainty, market systems now reward enterprise, risk-taking, skill, and agility, but offer less security and a constantly changing environment.

Education is vital: those who can compete best (with literacy, numeracy, and more advanced skills) have an enormous advantage in this faster paced world economy over their less well prepared counterparts. Third, globalization of markets and the factors that drive them - especially knowledge - is reinforcing these impacts. Global capital, moveable overnight from one part of the globe to another, is constantly seeking more favorable opportunities, including well-trained, productive, and attractively priced labor forces in market-friendly and politically stable business environments. Employers, seeing local markets more exposed to global competition, are requiring production processes that are much faster, ensure higher quality outputs more reliably, accommodate greater variety and continuous innovation, and cut costs relentlessly, as wafer-thin profit margins drive win-or-die outcomes. These pressures, in turn, are transforming the sorts of workers needed. Tomorrow's workers will need to be able to engage in lifelong education, learn new things quickly, perform more non-routine tasks and more complex problem solving, take more decisions, understand more about what they are working on, require less supervision, assume more responsibility, and - as vital tools to those ends - have better reading, quantitative, reasoning, and expository skills. Again, education will be center stage: failure to recognize the importance of investing in human capital and equipping workers for the challenges ahead will handicap them severely. Fourth, technological innovation will likely have the most far-reaching implications of all. The new technological advances of the years ahead will facilitate some of the other developments - e.g., by providing people with virtually unlimited access to information. They are already resulting in a shift in the structure of economic activity that increases the importance of knowledge: in the hyper-competitive global market economy, knowledge is rapidly replacing raw materials and labor as the input most critical for survival and success. The revolution in information technology will provide unprecedented opportunities to change education itself (Box 1). New ways to expand access and improve quality - and fundamentally rethink what should be learned and how - will become widely available at affordable costs.

Box 1: African Virtual University

The African Virtual University (AVU) is a first-of-its-kind interactive-instructional telecommunications network established to serve the countries of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA). The objective of the AVU is to train world-class scientists, technicians, engineers, business managers, health care providers and other professionals needed to support economic and social development in Africa.

The AVU seeks to achieve its objectives by harnessing the power of interactive satellite and computer-based technologies, to share some of the highest quality academic faculty, library resources, and laboratory experiences available in the world. Using technologies that provide the flexibility and cost-effectiveness of a virtual academic infrastructure, the AVU will be in a position to produce large numbers of scientifically and technologically literate professionals and support them with lifelong learning opportunities. The AVU can thereby contribute to overcoming the existing barriers of declining budgets, too few faculty, outdated equipment, and limited space and facilities that prevent increased access to higher education for a significant majority of students in SSA. The increase in the number of scientifically and technologically literate professionals will, as a consequence, better position countries in SSA to be part of the global information age and the new knowledge economy.

The AVU is currently in its pilot phase, during which the virtual university concept is being implemented and tested in fourteen English-speaking universities across SSA. From an initial summer course at Kenyatta University in July 1997, the AVU has offered nine courses by satellite, in science and engineering, from seven universities in the US, Canada and Ireland to twelve universities in Africa. In addition to credit courses, the AVU is currently transmitting executive management, teacher training and other professional development seminars to the public and private sector at the AVU university sites. A digital library service was recently launched and made available to all currently participating universities. The AVU in anglophone countries is transitioning to the operational phase, offering full-fledged degrees in computer science, computer engineering and electrical engineering. L'Universite virtuelle africaine (the AVU network for francophone countries) was launched in July 1998, when the first in a series of seminars was transmitted to four sites in Benin, Niger, Mauritania and Senegal. Ten more sites in francophone Africa joined early in 1999. Transmissions to lusophone Africa began in mid-1999.

Fifth, public/private roles are also changing. Governments are becoming less the direct producers and providers of goods and services and more the facilitators and regulators of economic activity. Old stereotypes - of purely public agencies on the one hand and purely private for-profit firms on the other - are giving way to better understanding of the reality that there actually are a wide spectrum of players involved, including quasi-public institutions, non-governmental, not-for-profit groups, community-level organizations, and corporations with public commitments. In education, government still plays a leading role - and most likely always will - especially in the financing of primary and secondary education. But other entities also are involved and likely will become increasingly so in the decades ahead. For example, the private sector, through its training of workers, already provides a large part of the effective learning that many people retain, and this contribution may grow further as skill requirements increase and if firms find public schools inadequate. The supply of good quality textbooks and other learning materials on a sustained basis is more likely to be assured where a flourishing private sector publishing industry and distribution system exist. Television and other media, community initiatives, and non-governmental schools are among the many other possible growth areas. The vital question now is not whether other-than-government roles in education will expand - they will - but rather how these developments should be incorporated into countries' overall strategies. Partnerships will be crucial. These five drivers of change - and possible other developments, some of which cannot be predicted yet - will have powerful ramifications. Some impacts will be strongly positive. For instance, the spread of knowledge and opportunities could lead to greater economic and social participation that benefits the poor and least advantaged as well as the better off - enriching standards of living for all. Other impacts could be damaging for some groups. In particular, unless timely measures are taken to ensure wide access to the improved possibilities, the gap between rich and poor could widen.

These changes add to the complications already faced by the many different "worlds" that live alongside one another. One world is still struggling with fundamental education issues. This world is a daily reality for the two thirds of the global population that live on less than three dollars a day. No books, the wrong books, teachers who desperately need more and better training to be able to deliver a modern curriculum, rote learning of irrelevant material, classes with over a hundred students, language barriers, dirt floors, no buildings - these are but a few of the problems. Child labor practices mean that poor parents face high opportunity costs in sending their daughters and sons to school. Some 145 million children in poor communities worldwide never get to go to school. Some 60 percent of them are girls.⁴ Hundreds of millions of others get only a few years and retain little or nothing. Even many who complete basic education are illiterate. This world includes countries emerging from conflict. These countries are amongst the poorest, their education systems the weakest, and their education spending some of the lowest around the world. In terms of access to education they have some of the greatest problems due to the lack of trained teachers, materials, destroyed buildings and fragmented or shifting communities. The aftermath of conflict is a social vacuum, which affords a brief window of opportunity in which to lay the foundations for constructive change. This is a window with high risks attached, for conflicts may be rekindled, investments lost, and wrong decisions taken. However the human and economic costs of not maximizing donor inputs to creatively construct new and forward looking societies may be even greater. In this light, plowing gains made from debt relief - through the Highly Indebted Poor Countries initiative, for example - back into education and health care becomes crucial. Another world wants to maintain the status quo. Parents, teachers, administrators, textbook publishers, students - all can have reasons to prefer things to remain as they are, or to change only very gradually. Representative groups - from school boards to teachers' unions to local councils - tend to be more cautious than their members individually. Issues such as teachers' salaries and conditions can grind change to a halt. So can debates over curriculum content, especially when religious, ethnic or cultural questions are involved. Yet another world that includes only a fortunate few in some well-off communities mainly in rich countries, is rapidly reinventing education. New, much more effective approaches to learning are being developed. Computers for every student, easy Internet access, highly competent teachers, self-guided curricula consistent with the latest research - each new advance is followed quickly by another. Futurists predict still another world. This world will have much more education occurring outside of schools and will draw on vastly more powerful technology (e.g., two-way voice-activated computer-assisted self-paced learning). It will harness much better understanding of how people learn and what they need to learn. Learners will be able to go beyond the classroom and obtain information in a variety of forms (text, data, sound, video) from all over in the world, at any time of day or night, at rapidly diminishing cost. There have been many past prophecies of massive improvements in education. Yet the result has often been little progress, or even regression. Many schools today use the same methods - a teacher using a standard text, with rows of students memorizing words and figures - that some planners confidently predicted three decades ago would be long gone by now, supplanted by more advanced instruments. Will the next twenty-five years be different? No one can know for sure. So, many countries will need to hedge their bets. Concerted efforts to take advantage of new opportunities should be on everyone's agenda, but so also should prudent steps to use already existing options more effectively, whether or not the new possibilities are successful.

Paramount among the many reasons why education is important is that it contributes to improving peoples' lives and reducing poverty. It does so through multiple pathways, including:

In addition, many of the world's states, through international conventions and commitments, have recognized education as a human right. Education thus contributes, within the context of a sound macro-economic and political environment, to the entire society's growth and development, which in turn raises incomes for all (Figure l). A good education system is a necessary but insufficient condition for development, and its benefits are strongest when crucial other areas of public policy are equally well managed. In particular, macroeconomic policies, political processes, regulatory practices, the enabling environment for business development, public participatory processes, and labor market processes need to be sound. To be effective, education planning and implementation in turn need to take into account the social, cultural, religious, economic and political context in which they take place.

It has long been self-evident to many educators and parents that education, in addition to its immediate benefits, is also a form of investment, building people's capacity to be more productive, earn more, and enjoy a higher quality of life. The rise of human capital theory since the 1960s, and its widespread acceptance now after thorough debate, has provided conceptual underpinnings and statistical evidence. Estimates by Nobel-laureate economists have shown that education is one of the best investments, outstripping the returns from many investments in physical capital. Related analysis has demonstrated that the total stock of human capital worldwide has a higher value by far, in terms of its contribution to production, than the stock of physical capital. While human capital ideas focus on links among education, productivity, and economic growth, other disciplines have emphasized additional reasons why education is important (pathways 2, 3 and 4 in Figure 1). These further reasons stress education's contribution to building social cohesion. They note that education transmits values, beliefs, and traditions. It shapes attitudes and aspirations, and the skills it develops include crucial inter- and intra-personal capabilities. It empowers people. It frees them to learn and think for themselves. It has benefits for health and the environment. The more rapidly the world changes and the more complex it becomes, the more important are the skills that a good quality education can provide. The implications for education of the trends driving change today were noted in Chapter 1. All countries need educated and skilled citizens who can operate in a democratic society, workers who can meet changing labor market needs and compete in global markets, learners capable of benefiting from the technology revolution, and policies capable of harnessing the evolving public/private interface. The abrupt reversals in East Asia's strong economic growth and economic and social turmoil elsewhere in the world increased the recognition that sustainable development requires many things in addition to strong economic performance. Education is a key component of the Bank's "Social Agenda" or "Comprehensive Development Framework", which encompass all these other elements. They include strong participatory democracy and competent and clean governance, an effective judicial and legal system, good financial systems, social services and safety nets, social and economic infrastructure and protection of the environment and national culture, many of which depend in part on the educational system.

The long-term goal for education should be nothing less than to ensure that all people everywhere have the opportunity to

At a minimum, this includes ensuring that every girl and boy has the chance to learn to read, write, and do basic arithmetic, and that every adult has access to lifelong learning opportunities. Inequality in educational access and quality must be reduced, since it condemns at least half of the world's population, and most of the poor and vulnerable, to much worse lifetime prospects than the more fortunate have. Specific targets have been set for universal primary education and adult literacy in the Education for All initiative (EFA, Box 2).

Box 2: Education for All - a Joint Endeavor

In 1990, UNESCO, UNICEF, UNDP, the World Bank and (later) UNFPA launched the World Conference on Education For All (EFA) in Jomtien, Thailand. Under the auspices of these partners and other development agencies, 155 nations and 150 NGOs came together and committed to:

expansion of early child care and developmental activities;
universal access to, and completion of, primary education by the year 2000;
improvements in learning achievement;
reduction in adult illiteracy to one-half its 1990 level by the year 2000;
expansion of provisions of basic education and training in other essential skills required by youth and adults;
increased acquisition by individuals and families of the knowledge, skills and values required for better living and sound sustainable development.

Following the Jomtien Conference, an International Consultative Forum on Education for All was set up as a mechanism to monitor and promote progress towards EFA goals throughout the 1990s. By 1996, primary enrollments had significantly increased, with 50 million more children enrolled in 1996 than in 1990. But progress in education access and achievement has been modest. Many countries will not be able to meet EFA commitments.

In order to help countries continue to work towards these critical international education targets, the EFA partners continue to address these issues. Their collaboration includes the UN Special Initiative for Africa (focusing on providing primary and lower secondary education for all African children) and the E-9 Initiative (focusing on EFA in nine high population developing countries - Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria and Pakistan). These activities paved the way for EFA 2000, a follow-up initiative to plan for the third millennium.

Many players have endorsed OECD's Development Assistance Committee call for universal primary education and gender parity in primary and lower secondary education (OECD, Shaping the 21st Century, 1996). The World Bank is committed to working towards these internationally agreed targets, and has developed a set of special programs to do this. The broad goals will not be achieved easily or soon. Parts of them are attainable in less than a decade, but most will take longer. But to aim for anything less would be to aim too low, and would fail to set the right direction with the right sense of urgency and expectations.

The international goals for education include targets for increasing access to educational opportunities, as well as for raising learning achievements. So far, the main emphasis has been on improving access and participation. In the challenging environment people face today, access is only the beginning. The education that people have access to must be of good quality in order to provide the skills needed to operate successfully in complex, democratic societies with changing labor market needs. Countries' education strategies must include ways to improve the quality of education, as well as the child's physical and mental readiness to learn. Improving quality means achieving detectable gains in the knowledge, skills and values acquired by students, through upgrading the environment in which those students learn. The learning environment includes the students' immediate surroundings, as well as the system in which students, teachers, administrators, managers and other service providers operate⁵. The quality of learning outcomes influences and is influenced by factors outside the education system, such as the home environment and perceptions of the future labor market.

Children's health affects their ability to learn. Children who are ill, hungry and malnourished attend school irregularly, and when they do attend, are often unable to concentrate. Although more of the poorest children have access to schools, they often suffer most from ill-health. Fortunately, schools themselves provide a cost-effective means of providing simple, well-tried health services, such as de-worming and micronutrient (e.g. iron) supplements to solve the most prevalent immediate problems, as well as promoting healthy lifestyles with life-long benefits. Health programs offer most benefits to the most disadvantaged - girls, the poor and the malnourished - and should be part of efforts to achieve universal education. Improving quality will require countries to deal with a number of crucial issues. First, especial attention will have to be paid to the processes of teaching and learning. Given the impact that classroom teachers can have on students' attainment and the share of most education budgets that go to pay teachers' salaries, an education policy that highlights the importance of quality teaching - where teachers have the opportunity for regularly upgrading their skills in order to maintain mastery of their subject area - is likely to bear fruit. Since active learning is generally superior to learning by rote, countries that move strongly toward more participatory and individualized modes of learning will be at an advantage relative to those where teachers talk and write and students listen and read. And countries that provide opportunities for people to learn at all ages - as their work or lives change, and as new knowledge replaces old - will have an edge over those who do not. Greater use of new technologies inside and outside the classroom will give more learners greater access to information. Secondly, emphasis on acquisition of foundation skills - literacy, numeracy, reasoning, and social skills such as ability to solve problems together - is of utmost importance, especially in countries with low levels of attainment currently (Box 3). These fundamentals are a prerequisite for acquiring advanced skills and for making use of new technologies. All countries thus need to ensure that

Box 3: Essential Skills in the Arab Republic of Egypt

Egypt's goal for the 21st century is "a quality education system that provides all students with a learning experience relevant to their current and future needs, in order to stimulate continued Egyptian economic and social development". So Egypt is embarking on a series of far-reaching education reforms that will include a radical revision of

the outmoded curriculum and examination system of general secondary education and
the excessively fragmented approach to vocational and technical education.

The new curriculum will cover nine "essential learning areas" and stress the acquisition of a core set of "essential skills" - communication, numeracy, information handling, problem solving, physical skills, self-management and competition, cooperation and leadership, and work and study skills. It will also focus on certain "values and attitudes" - family, democracy, justice, equality and social integration, patriotism, and cooperation and sharing.

Countries that have not yet fully achieved these essentials need to give high priority to doing so as soon as possible. Countries that are well advanced need to continue moving forward. Thirdly, opportunities to learn more advanced skills need to be strengthened as well. Improvements in upper secondary and tertiary (i.e. vocational, technical and higher education) must move forward along with progress on basic education. Deferring the acquisition of advanced skills by part of the population until the foundation skills are universally acquired does not make sense if countries are to succeed amidst the global changes now taking place, and given the long lead times for generating a strong outflow of competent graduates. Nevertheless, basic education should remain a policy priority even when greater attention is paid to tertiary education. Adopting curricula compatible with equipping students broadly and flexibly for the world of work is vital, as many of the best systems have found. Finally, the trends in public/private roles have the potential to offer new options for stimulating more and better education at more affordable cost. Achieving universal primary education and broadening access to higher levels of the system while maintaining fiscal discipline requires countries to find more efficient ways of delivering quality education and of involving private financing in ways that ensure equity. The choices that countries face will include such issues as

This chapter has laid out the vision for education and the ambitious international goals to which the Bank subscribes. The Bank's mission in education is to help countries identify and implement their next strategic steps to improve access to relevant and good quality learning. The factors that help produce education of good quality are known. Good ideas and analyses abound; the need is to use the best of them to achieve better and faster results. It is useful to take stock of how far the world has progressed towards the vision and goals (Chapter 3) before laying out the specifics of the Bank's education strategy - what the Bank is doing to work towards these goals and vision (Chapter 6).

Developing countries have experienced extraordinary progress in education and the social sectors generally in the last thirty years - more so than in any prior period in human history. However, the unfinished agenda remains large - and in fact growing - due in part to the pressure of high population growth.

The greatest successes have been in access to schooling. A larger proportion of young people go to school than ever before. In 1960, slightly less than half of all children of primary school age were enrolled in school. By the early 1990s, more than three-fourths were enrolled.⁶ The proportion of 12- to 17-year-olds enrolled has more than doubled (from 21 to 47 percent), and has almost quadrupled (4 to 14 percent) for those aged between 18 and 23 years.⁷ In the decade from 1980 to 1990, the expected years of schooling that an average six-year-old would receive rose by almost a year (from 7.6 to 8.5).

Despite these successes, much remains to be done (Table 1). In some countries, progress in enrollment has slowed or been reversed during the eighties and nineties. In many countries, there is inequitable access across population groups, and in most countries, the quality and relevance of education leave much to be desired. Also, institutional capacity in many countries, at all levels of government, is too weak to sustain the kind of educational development that is needed to respond to the challenges ahead.

Some countries have had little improvement in access since 1980. Despite the increase in the absolute numbers of children enrolled, sub-Saharan Africa has had falling enrollment rates. The proportion of 6-11 year-olds in school in sub-Saharan Africa declined from 59 percent in 1980 to 51 percent in 1992.⁸^,⁹

And in sub-Saharan Africa, Southern Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean, only two thirds of the children who start the first year of primary school are still there five years later. Progress to date suggests that many countries will have difficulty reaching the Education for All goals in the timeframe originally envisaged (Box 2). Reversing the downward trend in Sub-Saharan Africa will be complicated by continued population growth. The out-of-school population there aged between 6 and 11 is projected to rise from 39 to 56 million (an increase of 44 percent) through the 1990s. The corresponding figure for the rest of the developing world is expected to remain fairly constant.

Girls and women, rural populations, indigenous peoples, the handicapped, the urban poor and other disadvantaged groups get less access than others to learning opportunities. The gender gap is of particular concern, given the positive impact that girls' education has on fertility rates, infant and child mortality rates, maternal mortality rates, as well as intergenerational education and the environment. As in the case of enrollment in general, gender differences in enrollment vary from region to region. In the case of students of secondary school age, the largest differences are in Arab states, Southern Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Many factors contribute to the persistence of the gender gap: traditional values and beliefs about the roles of females and males in the society; fear for the safety of girls going to and from school; lack of separation of the sexes; lack of female teachers; monetary costs (e.g. out-of-pocket expenditure on books); opportunity costs; and perceptions about the value of schooling for daughters unlikely to enter the marketplace and about the quality of schooling itself. The emergence in many countries of a class of marginalized youth - involved neither in training nor in paid work - is another reflection of inequitable access to education. Extending access to quality basic education should have the effect of stemming the flow of young people into this group. In the short term however, providing training opportunities for already marginalized youth is essential to offering real labor market opportunities in rural areas and in towns, thereby contributing to a reduction in urban drift and urban violence.

Attendance in a formal education setting does not automatically lead to learning. A range of inputs are required, all within a sound financial and regulatory framework. Even in high-income countries with well-established universal basic education, achievement levels vary widely and can be surprisingly low. Ten countries (mainly OECD countries) have secondary net enrollment rates above 80 percent, the functional literacy rates for 16 to 25 year-olds 5 vary between 35 percent and 80 percent. Comparable data are not yet available for developing countries, but the relationship between enrollment rates and achievement rates is likely to show at least as much variation, and point just as starkly to the need for improvements in the quality of learning.

The implications of moving to a situation where students not only have access to schools but are also learning are enormous. First, there will be better use made of all the resources invested in education: buildings, teachers' salaries, and the direct and opportunity costs borne by learners and their families. Second, having convinced parents, often with considerable effort, to send their sons and daughters to schools, governments will avoid having disenchanted parents withdraw their children from school. And third, enhanced quality in schools will enable countries to build up the educated population they need to achieve higher levels of development. The trade-off between increasing access to an education system and improving its quality is partly apparent, partly real. Apparent because quality improvements lead to greater efficiencies - fewer repeaters in the short term and a more productive labor force in the longer term - which in turn free up resources to create more places for new students. Real because there are limits to the efficiency gains to be made from improving quality. The nature of those limits depends of course on particular country circumstances.

Education institutions are often ill-equipped to deal with the many problems they currently face and to meet the greater challenges that lie ahead for them. New developments such as the trend towards more decentralization in education systems have highlighted weaknesses not only in central governments, but also in sub-national layers of government and in schools themselves. Decentralization raises questions about the distribution of functions between central and local administrations, the implications for quality and equity, and how to strengthen administrative and planning capacity at all levels of the system.

Efforts to strengthen institutional capacity typically focus on: the training of teachers, faculty, and administrators; the provision of evaluation/accreditation services by ministry officials and external consultants; and the distribution of textbooks, guides and other materials. But the long-term solution to management capacity lies in:

The accomplishments in education are remarkable, but there remains much to be done to wrestle with the factors that are blocking progress: population growth that outstrips expansions in access in some areas; widespread inequality (for females, the poor, minorities and rural populations); low quality manifested in poor or irrelevant learning; and weak institutional capacity.

Regions and countries vary greatly in how far they have progressed and what the most pressing needs are to keep them on course towards realizing the vision for education. Classifying countries by their stage of development can help point towards the likely priorities for education in each country (Box 4). For example, most countries in the "mature" category are beyond the stage where raising primary enrollments needs to be the principal focus, and should be concentrating on higher-order problems, including quality enhancement at all levels. Most countries in the "reform" category also can focus on higher-order problems, but of a different nature: their education systems, once well functioning, are now ailing for many reasons, not the least of which is the mismatch between what students are taught and what is required in the new world of work they aspire to enter.

"Emergent" countries tend to have vexing equity, financing, and public-private issues to resolve as they struggle to make the transition from old elitist systems to modern systems that prepare their entire populations - through opportunities for lifelong learning - to compete in globalizing economies. Finally, most of the "least developed" category still have major progress to achieve even in access, and must ensure that other needs do not unduly fragment limited resources. Obviously, variety exists within these four broad categories and even within a single country.

Box 4: Country Classification by Type

Mature systems (such as the OECD nations and specific others in the Middle East and East Asia) with well-developed educational infrastructures, generally high achievement, but with residual problems of inefficiency and inequity (with gaps between the rich and the poor, and between males and females being sometimes severe).

Reform systems (such as Russia and much of Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States), which face serious quality and growth demands but where the education system may appear to be of reasonable quality (but where maintenance of the system is under strong threat and, in some contexts, subject to future collapse).

Emergent systems (especially in Latin America, North Africa, and Asia) where education participation rates are high but inequality in access and especially in quality is acute, and where rapidly expanding private involvement is common.

Least developed systems (especially in Sub-Saharan Africa and parts of South Asia but in isolated instances in most regions) where universal basic education provision remains the exception rather than the rule, and where long-term interventions will be required to create modern education systems.

Progress on the above issues requires strong, productive partnerships. The job of strengthening education is too big for any single institution, and too important to be left to one perspective only. Governments, NGOs and local stakeholders, with the support of bilateral and multilateral development agencies, will have to work closely together in a prolonged effort to ensure each country's objectives for education are met, and to build public and educator understanding of the need for educational change. Partnerships amongst central government, local government and communities, within a more decentralized form of management, can improve service delivery; and poor communities and rural non-government providers can be effective partners in upgrading the quality of education. Local partners, in particular, have the local knowledge and the understanding of local values, culture and traditions that are an essential feature of sustainable development.

Many others have important roles to play alongside the various levels of government. These other players include students, parents, families, communities, local and non-governmental organizations and foundations, teacher groups, various forms of private and public-private ventures, and numerous international organizations. The more this rich array of partners can work together effectively, the better the results will be - and the faster education will improve. Many partnerships are exemplary now, but some are not and most could be strengthened further.

Governments have become dominant in education only in the last century or two, after eons when humanity educated its young without formal schooling. Public education's achievements in this relatively short time have been impressive, despite oft-cited criticisms. The advances in literacy and other learning, made possible through universal primary education, may well have done more to improve the human condition than any other public policy.

Governments remain the largest funders and providers of education in most countries. Public sources account for well over half of education spending in developing countries as a group and most governments generally spend between 10 and 20 percent of their budgets on education (or between 3 and 7 percent of GNP).

The role of government in creating and sustaining the kind of macro-economic environment that provides incentives for education and helps education systems fulfill their potential is critical. Governments generally regulate the education sector (e.g. by defining curricula, setting standards, monitoring performance, accrediting institutions), and in addition to being direct providers of education themselves, often subsidize education provided by private institutions. Public spending on education can be a strong instrument for equity - expanding opportunity and raising living standards for all, but especially for the poorest. Overall spending on education in developing countries has been found to be progressive - in that the benefits received by the poorest groups are greater relative to their incomes than those received by richer groups. Despite this, subsidies to education are not always well targeted. The richest households gain by far the largest share of the subsidies. While primary education spending is targeted to the poorest groups, spending on secondary and tertiary is not.¹⁰ Making public spending in education pro-poor will be an on-going challenge, as countries move to the lifelong learning approach that is becoming a key factor in economic growth.

Arguments about the equity of local participation and the effectiveness of local decision-making are often advanced to push for greater decentralization of the management of education systems. Central governments around the world have decentralized education management to varying degrees - and with different ends in mind. Some have delegated responsibilities to their own local representatives, while others have transferred authority to locally elected governments and, in some cases, to parent-elected school boards.

Although they have a major role to play in education, governments cannot do everything. Fiscal considerations, including competing claims on the public purse, make it difficult for most governments - even those whose philosophies might push them in this direction - to be the sole provider of "free" education to all who seek it at every level. There are many areas of education service provision (such as text books and vocational training) where actors other than the government tend to be more effective and efficient.

Students, their families, and communities have some of the most crucial and too often under-appreciated and under-supported roles, extending far beyond just being consumers of schooling. Parents and other family members can make a particularly important contribution to children's cognitive, social and cultural development. Active local participation in the governance and activities of schools, with a sense of shared ownership of their policies and affairs, has been found to be vital to school success.

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and philanthropic foundations also have a large role. For example, the primary education system in Haiti is delivered largely through religious organizations and other NGOs. A multi-country community-based primary education initiative, Fe y Algeria, provides schooling for children in the most disadvantaged urban and rural areas in Latin America and the Caribbean. Using a combination of public and private sources, this initiative supports over 500 schools serving more than 500,000 students in 12 countries. In the area of early child development, NGOs are major providers in all regions (Box 5). Many foundations also participate actively in the education sector, providing resources for a range of activities, such as studies, seminars and project work. For example, the Rockefeller Foundation has invested heavily in girls' education and is part of a recently-established multi-agency partnership established together with British DFID, UNICEF and the Bank to examine more closely what factors are important in ensuring effective implementation of girls' education programs in developing countries.

Box 5: NGO Partners in Early Child Development (ECD)

NGOs have long been pioneers in the area of ECD. Save the Children, for instance, is an international NGO that has worked with at-risk children and families since 1932 and is now active in forty countries worldwide. The Aga Khan Foundation is working in parts of Pakistan and with Muslim communities on the coast of Kenya. Local pilot programs initiated by the Bernard van Leer Foundation in Colombia have been scaled-up into a nation-wide ECD program which aims at universal coverage. The Soros Foundation focuses a large share of its resources on pre-school education in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, while the Christian Children's Fund is very active in East Asia.

Increasingly, the Bank works in close cooperation with these and other partners, for the design and implementation of individual projects, as well as in regional and global networks of knowledge sharing (e.g. the Consultative Group for ECD).

Private involvement pre-dates government provision of education, and is once again substantial and growing. Employers, singly or in groups, provide on-job training for their workers, or can purchase such training from specialized firms. Employer groups and professional associations are involved in setting standards for the assessment of job-related skills and knowledge, as well as in establishing the desired learning outcomes in the education sector more generally. Private sector publishers provide increasingly larger shares of books and learning materials to schools in Latin America and Eastern Europe. Not-for-profit associations and for-profit entrepreneurs provide training and education to students, often subsidized in part or in full by the government. And private sector organizations mentor, help implement technology initiatives, provide equipment and otherwise collaborate with institutions.

Privately-owned schools account for over 30 percent of primary enrollment in countries as diverse as Spain, hile, and Belgium, and over 70 percent in Lebanon. The private share generally increases at higher levels of education. Currently, more than half of all tertiary-level enrollments in Brazil and Columbia are in private institutions. Early child education is almost completely a private affair.

While in some cases the costs of public as well as private education are covered by governments, in many cases the contributions by parents and communities amount to over 20 percent. In some countries they exceed 50 percent.¹¹ Beneficiaries who pay a share might monitor more carefully the quality of the services they receive. And in principle, fees and other contributions paid by non-poor beneficiaries could free up public resources for targeting to the poor.

The growing understanding of the actual and potential roles of private sector involvement in education points up an opportunity for the International Finance Corporation (IFC), one of the constituent organizations of the World Bank Group. IFC support for private investment in education can complement the Bank's aim of having public monies targeted more on helping the poor gain access to quality basic education (Box 6 and IFC Education Strategy).

Box 6: The IFC and Education

The IFC has stepped up its activities in the education sector, with seven investments in fiscal year 1998. Eight of the IFC's ten approved education investments to date are in low-income countries. A recent IFC study on 12 countries found good opportunities in six of them and reasonable prospects in the remaining six. Loan financing can be developed for diverse activities such as support for "South-South" investment, student loan companies, expansion of the use of new technology, and the construction of new campuses.

To ensure targeting towards lower income groups, the study recommends that the IFC play a role in the further development and nurturing of that private segment of the education market that expands education opportunities for low income students. IFC financing of secondary and higher education can help facilitate the redirecting of government subsidies to the poor, where they belong. The more that better-off families pay for education (as they do when they choose private education), the more the government can use its resources for the poor.

In addition to government schools and private providers, joint public-private ventures are becoming more common. New forms of corporate involvement in education are attracting growing interest. In the former Soviet Union, where the transition to a market economy has diminished the importance of traditional public provision of vocational and technical training, new information technologies are bringing about a marked convergence between the world of production and the world of just-in-time learning and training.

Teachers are the crucial determinant of what is being learned in their classrooms, and teachers' commitment to improvement is essential if change is to have a real impact on learning. Teachers, and the local, national and international organizations that represent them, must therefore have the opportunity to participate not only in implementing reform, but also in developing new programs. As in all cases of consultation with the civil society, however, the information provided, the viewpoints expressed and the interests represented by the various participants must be weighed in the balance - with the ultimate decision being a political one. The interests of teachers, as workers, have to be considered in relation to the preeminent interests of students and their parents, as consumers.

United Nations organizations - including UNESCO, UNICEF, UNFPA, and UNDP - have made major contributions to global education efforts for many decades, in their own fields of expertise and in global cooperation (Box 2). UNESCO, the UN agency responsible for education, has the mandate to play a coordinating role among international organizations, and in its own words, aims to "contribute to peace and security in the world by promoting collaboration among nations through education, science, culture and communication". Regional development banks (such as the Inter-American Development Bank, the African Development Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and the Asian Development Bank) and bilateral aid agencies commit large shares of their technical and financial resources to the education sector.

And finally, a range of professional bodies, such as the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement, the International Association for Educational Assessment, and the International Reading Association, also have a role in sharing information and promoting good practice around the world. The Bank seeks to work closely with these and other partners, by making its decision-making and lending procedures more flexible, open and responsive to the views of other players in the education field.

The Comprehensive Development Framework acknowledges explicitly that countries need to be very much in the "driver's seat" when planning their development and working with the various agencies in deciding how each one can best contribute. The benefits from partnerships derive, in no small part, from the potential synergies of pooling together different capabilities, and creatively sharing the comparative advantages of diverse entities (Box 7).

Box 7: Comprehensive Development Framework (CDF)

The CDF takes a holistic approach to development. It seeks a better balance in policymaking by highlighting the interdependence of all elements of development - social, structural, human, governance, environmental, economic, and financial. The CDF seeks to move beyond discrete indicators of economic performance and human capacity to address, in concert, the "fundamental, long-term issues of the structure, scope, and substance of societal development." This is an ambitious transition that must be led by a country itself, with vigorous participation of civil society and the private sector - and with the support of multilateral and bilateral organizations.

Fundamentally, the CDF is a means of achieving greater effectiveness in reducing poverty. It is based on the following principles:

Ownership by the country, which determines the goals and the phasing, timing, and sequencing of the country's development programs.
Partnership with government, civil society, assistance agencies, and the private sector in defining development needs and implementing programs.
A long-term vision of needs and solutions, built on national consultations, which can engender sustained national support.
Structural and social concerns treated equally and contemporaneously with macroeconomic and financial concerns.

The CDF is meant to be a compass - not a blueprint. How the principles are put into practice will vary from country to country depending on economic and social needs and the priorities of the stakeholders involved.

The entities involved in education have a wide range of different comparative advantages and strengths, such as strong presence on the ground, good local knowledge and cultural understanding, ready access to global knowledge, special expertise or a unique mandate, the natural authority of being the families and communities most affected, the ability to convene stakeholders, the political power to bring about change, and the capacity to mobilize resources including finance. The future lies with those who combine needed contributions from multiple sources.

The implications for the Bank are twofold. First, the Bank's education work will need to devote even more attention and weight to partnerships in the years ahead than it does currently, recognizing that government-led and government-coordinated efforts are the most likely to deliver sustainable reform. Collaboration at the country and global level, through projects and other vehicles, is already a major part of what Education staff do in the Bank. But there will always be more that can be done. The importance of such work will grow rather than diminish in the coming decade, as countries become more interlinked under the pressures of the changing world noted in Chapter 1 and adaptation to the local context becomes more complex. More time, effort, and cost will be required for partnering, but the alternative would be increasing irrelevance.

Second, the Bank will need to understand, nurture, and apply its own areas of comparative advantage carefully. The Bank's advantages in education, as in its other work, include: the global and cross-country knowledge that it can mobilize and bring to bear; the people and expertise it can dedicate to vital and often difficult policy and implementation tasks; and the finance it can assemble from its own and others' resources - the Bank can use its position as the largest external source of funds in most developing countries to encourage other partners to contribute to priority activities.

In addition, the Bank's involvement in the full gamut of sectors germane to development, and its access to economic and finance ministries, enable it to take multi-sectoral approaches and reach key decision-makers (Figure 2). This multi-sectoral coverage offers a particular advantage in education, given the interaction between education and other sectors (Chapter 2).

Education outcomes are heavily influenced by learners' poverty status, health status, and perceptions of labor market opportunities. Relatively unknown but potentially severe, for example, is the impact of HIV/AIDS on the education system: HIV/AIDS affects the supply of teachers and influences parents' ability and/or willingness to pay for schooling. In addition, education status has an impact on the individual's future income, fertility and health, and at the societal level, on institutions, on the economy as a whole and, in the long run, on values, traditions and culture. The Bank's comparative advantage in this area is played out, for instance, in its work on school deworming and micronutrient programs, reproductive health education and information on STDs and HIV prevention. Further links can be made between early child education and health services, parent education, and shelter and nutrition for the poorest families; between teacher service reform and broader civil service reform; between universal basic education and child labor; between vocational training and labor market regulation; and between language of instruction and decentralization.

The challenge for the Bank for the years ahead is to respond effectively to the implications of partnership and, in doing so, to achieve the best impact possible on the people that development aims to serve. This will necessarily involve good communication between the Bank and its partners, at the country level, the regional level and at headquarters - along with a sense of openness to new possibilities and different points of view, an acknowledgment of one's own strengths and weaknesses, a willingness to compromise, and above all else, an enthusiasm for the many tasks ahead.

The Bank's work to help countries improve their education systems has changed fundamentally across 35 years of lending, analytical, and advisory support. Understanding these trends, along with the lessons of experience, helps define what needs to be done in the years ahead to be as effective as possible.

Total external financing 1 for education, including bilateral aid, averaged around US$6 billion from 1989 to 1996, with the World Bank accounting for almost 30 percent of that total.

Since its first education loan in 1963 - to Tunisia for vocational training - the Bank has been expanding its financing of education projects as part of its mission to reduce poverty (Table 2).

This expansion has paralleled the growing recognition that education is the cornerstone of a growing economy and of an open and cohesive society, and that investment in education is essential for a country's development (Chapter 2). The total amount of new commitments each year varies considerably around the rising trend. Disbursements have risen more steadily.

The proportion of Bank education lending committed as IDA credits varies from year to year, but has been around 40 percent during the last decade. Primary education is an important and substantial part of IDA-funded investment in basic social services, which also include clean water and sanitation, preventive and reproductive health, nutrition and basic community services.¹²

A relatively small number of countries account for a large share of the Bank's work in education, mostly because they are large countries with long established programs with the Bank. For example, 17 countries, with 70 percent of the world's population among them, account for three-quarters of the Bank's education lending, actual and planned, in fiscal years 1995 to 2001. Another 35 countries, with 13 percent of global population, account for 21 percent of lending. The remaining lending goes to some of the other 91 eligible countries, most of them small (Table 5, Chapter 7).

Lending for education has increased in each region, but at different rates. Sub-Saharan Africa (AFR) was chosen for special emphasis when lending operations in education began the 1960s, because education was high on the agenda of many new post-colonial governments, and needs were great. Subsequent support to Africa has grown but other regions have expanded their programs even more.

Lending for primary education has grown, in dollar terms and as a proportion of all education lending. The share of lending going to primary education has been above 20 percent since 1975, and above 30 percent since 1990. This reflects the Bank's commitment to the objectives of the 1990 Education for All Conference. The Bank was one of the sponsors of the Conference, and continues to be closely involved in follow-up activities.

The lending share for general secondary education dropped through the 1970s and 1980s, but rose again through the 1990s, and now stands at 20 percent. Lending for vocational training rose quickly through the 1960s and 1970s, but fell back slightly from a peak in the early 1980s - due no doubt in part to the new emphasis on basic education and a questioning of approaches traditionally taken in vocational training. Both teacher training and tertiary education saw steady increases, with a small drop off in recent years. Early child development is a relatively new - but increasingly important - area of lending.

Staff now look more at education as an integrated system, one part of which cannot function well if another is ailing. The emphasis on basic education, for instance, does not mean that nothing should be done in tertiary education: the role of tertiary institutions as centers of excellence, research hubs and training grounds for tomorrow's teachers and leaders is critical. The holistic approach is most clearly seen in projects that support sector-wide reform (e.g. the Bolivia Education Quality and Equity Strengthening Project that inter alia aims to provide integrated infrastructure and educational process improvements) and in cross-cutting prog

Region	Gross enrollment rate: primary, % of relevant age group*		Gross enrollment rate: secondary, % of relevant age group*		Gross enrollment rate: tertiary, % of relevant age group*		Pupils in primary: % female*		Pupils in secondary general: % female*		Estimated % of population aged 15-24 illiterate
	1980	1996	1980	1996	1980	1996	1980	1996	1980	1993	1980	1996
East Asia & Pacific	111	118	43	69	3	8	45	47	40	44	10	3
Europe & Central Asia	99	100	87	83	30	32	49	48	53	52	3	2
Latin America & Caribbean	105	113	42	52	14	19	49	-	-	-	11	6
Middle East & North Africa	87	96	42	64	11	16	42	45	37	45	39	21
South Asia	76	100	27	48	5	6	38	43	31	38	50	37
Sub-Saharan Africa	78	77	15	27	1	3	44	45	34	41	45	25

Year	New Commitmens (Annual Average) Constant 1996 US$ millions	New Education Commitments as % of Total Bank New Commitments
1963-1969	153	2.9
1970-1979	660	4.6
1980-1989	1,029	4.5
1990-1998	1,982	8.5

New Commitmens (Annual Average) Constant 1996 US$ millions

New Commitmens
(Annual Average)
Constant 1996 US$ millions