learning for all: investing in people’s knowledge and...

World Bank Education Strategy 2020 – draft for comment 1

Learning for all: Investing in people’s knowledge and skills to promote

development

World Bank Education Strategy 2020

PART 1. RATIONALE

Education’s Role in Development

1. People are the real wealth of nations—and education enables them to live healthier,

happier and more productive lives. There is broad agreement, backed by research findings, that

education enhances people‘s ability to make

informed decisions, sustain a livelihood,

adopt new technologies, be better parents,

cope with shocks, and be responsible citizens

and effective stewards of the natural

environment. Indeed, with global economic

growth remaining sluggish despite signs of

recovery from the recent economic crisis, the

shortage of skills in the workforce has taken

on a new urgency across the world. Global

unemployment, estimated at 211.5 million or

6.6 percent in 2009 (International Labor

Organization, 2010) is at an all-time high.—

and young people, particularly vulnerable to

layoffs, have the hardest time finding new

jobs; their unemployment rates are nearly

three times higher than those of adults. These

links between education, jobs and the quality

of people‘s lives are why the Universal

Declaration of Human Rights (1948) and the

United Nations Convention on the Rights of

the Child (1989) recognize everyone‘s right

to education. These links translate also into

benefits beyond the individual and the family,

to economic prosperity, and less poverty and

deprivation. Countries with low levels of

education remain in a trap of technological

stagnation, low growth and low demand for

education (de Ferranti et al., 2003).

2. The statement by the Commission on

Box 1: The Growth Commission Speaks on

Education

The Commission brought together the views of 19

leaders, mostly from developing countries, and of

academic luminaries, to review the evidence on the

factors for growth: ―No country has sustained rapid

growth without also keeping up impressive rates of

public investment—in infrastructure, education, and

health. Far from crowding out private investment, this

spending crowds it in. It paves the way for new

industries to emerge and raises the return to any private

venture that benefits from healthy, educated workers,

passable roads, and reliable electricity. […] Perhaps the

best protections a government can provide are

education, which makes it easier to pick up new skills,

and a strong rate of job creation, which makes it easy to

find new employment.‖ (pp. 5-6)

―Education makes a legitimate claim on public money

for at least two reasons. First, the Commission believes

the social return probably exceeds the private return.

[…] In other words, educated people contribute more to

society than they get back in higher pay, although the

social return is notoriously difficult to measure. […]

Second, some families are credit-constrained and cannot

borrow as much as they would like to spend on

schooling, even if the higher wages a diploma or degree

would fetch could more than repay the loan. Thus public

spending on education is justified on the grounds of

efficiency and equality of opportunity. It corrects the

failure of the market to allocate enough resources to

education, and it also widens access to education beyond

those who can pay for it upfront.‖ (pp. 37-38)

Source: World Bank 2010a


Growth and Development1 (2008) on education‘s role in long-term growth and poverty reduction

(Box 1) is supported by a wealth of research in rich and poor countries. One estimate suggests

that a one standard deviation increase in student scores on international assessments of literacy

and mathematics competencies is associated with a 2-percent increase in annual growth rates of

GDP per capita (Hanushek and Woessmann, 2007). Perhaps because of a greater concern by

some countries that their learning outcomes are falling behind those of other countries, more

countries are participating in international tests. For example, the number of countries in PISA

grew from 43 in 2000 to 66 in 2007.

3. Research findings at the country level

demonstrate the role of education in economic

prosperity. Moreover, it is in environments of

rapid technological and economic changes that

education yields the highest benefits because it

enhances the abilities to continue acquiring

knowledge and adopting to new technology. In

China, education increases wages from market

work even though it does not enhance the labor

productivity of routine farm tasks. In Ghana and

Pakistan returns to schooling have been estimated

to be higher in nonfarm than in farm activities. In

India, farmers who have higher skills are better

able to process codified and complex information,

and thus to benefit from a program to the use of

mobile phones for communicating and receiving

on-demand, up-to-date market, production,

transport and meteorological data. This is

consistent with longer-term evidence from India‘s

green revolution during which farmers with more

schooling in states with higher technical change

earned profits that were 40 percent higher than

those earned by farmers with less schooling.

(Yang 1997 for China; Jolliffe, 1998 for Ghana;

Fafchamps and Quisumbing, 1999 for Pakistan;

Jensen, 2007, and Rosenzweig 2010 for India).

4. The benefits from education extend well

beyond work productivity and growth—in terms

of better health; reduced fertility; enhanced ability

to adopt new technologies or to cope with economic shocks; more civic participation; and even

more environmentally friendly behavior. To cite just a few: (a) Health status. Other things

equal, more educated individuals, on average, tend to have healthier practices, perhaps because

they have more information about how to be healthy. For example, the evidence on the effect of

parents‘ education on children‘s health, after controlling for household income, is large. Gakidou

et al. (2010), using 915 censuses and nationally representative surveys, estimate that 51 percent

Box 2: Competitiveness in Brazil

The Brazil Competitiveness Report 2009 (World

Economic Forum 2009) provides an account of

the main impediments and opportunities related

to Brazil‘s economic competitiveness. Using the

―Global Competitiveness Index” (CGI), the

report ranks the country against selected

relevant national and regional comparators. The

GCI classifies countries into three stages of

development: factor-driven, efficiency-driven,

and innovation-driven. Brazil is currently placed

in the efficiency-driven stage, together with

regional neighbors Argentina, Colombia, and

Peru, and with other countries such as South

Africa and Thailand. At this stage, economies

derive their competitiveness from more

advanced production processes that require well-

qualified and trained workers.

Overall, Brazil is ranked 64th among 134

countries in the most recent GCI computation.

Traditionally Brazil has favored investments in

higher education, reflected in a handful of

centers of excellence. But inequalities in access

to high-quality tertiary education, explained

partly by poor quality at lower levels of

education, will limit the country‘s ability to

improve its competitiveness. In order to reach

the innovation-driven stage of development,

Brazil has to invest in the quality of both basic

and higher education. Recently the government

launched an ambitious program to upgrade the

education system.

Source: World Economic Forum 2009


Figure 1. Progress towards MDG Targets

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Primary completion rates by income group

of 8.2 million fewer deaths in children younger than 5 years between 1970 and 2009 could be

attributed to more education among women of reproductive age. One reason for this finding is

that education means more knowledge about the benefits of vaccination and about the strategies

to avoid the transmission of infectious diseases. In Uganda, for example, education has been

shown to be positively related to the adoption of protective measures against HIV (de Walque,

2007). Even in countries with much higher education levels, such as the U.S., more educated

mothers have healthier children than less educated mothers, partly because of better health

behaviors during pregnancy (Currie and Moretti 2003), and better nutritional practices

(Grossman, 2006). (b) Environment. After comparing countries with similar income and weather

conditions, Blankespoor et al. (2010) show that countries with better educated female population

are able to cope with extreme weather events better than countries with low female education. (c)

Coping with economic and other shocks. Households with more education can cope better with

economic shocks than less educated households since they tend to have more resources, more

knowledge about how to cope with income fluctuations, and are more able to exploit new

economic opportunities. In Indonesia and Argentina, for example, more educated households

fared better than less educated households during their respective macroeconomic crises

(Frankenberg et al., 2003; Corbacho et al., 2007).

More schooling, but little learning

5. Compared with two decades ago, more young people are entering school, completing the

primary level, and transitioning to secondary education than ever before. Thanks to a

combination of effective policies and sustained national investments in education, far fewer

children in developing countries are out of school. Governments, non-governmental

organization, communities and private enterprises have built more schools and classrooms and

recruited more teachers at unprecedented levels. Even in the poorest countries, average

enrollment rates at the primary education level surged to upwards of 80 percent and primary

completion rates rose above 60 percent. However, low-income countries as a group are still far

from reaching the basic goal set out as Millennium Development Goals—universal primary


education as measured by enrollment rates and by primary completion rates, and gender equality

in primary and secondary education (figure 1). These countries are concentrated in the regions of

Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Moreover, in these countries as well as in middle-income

countries, progress has not been equal across income, gender and other population groups.

Nonetheless, as primary enrollment rates have climbed, pressure is mounting to expand the

capacity of secondary schools and tertiary education institutions, including in low-income

countries. In addition, despite the fact that countries spend a substantial portion of their national

income on education, the results from these investments have been disappointing, especially

when examining learning outcomes rather than enrollment. For these reasons, the education

system in many countries is facing simultaneous challenges of securing basic education for hard-

to-reach or disadvantaged groups, expanding post-basic education to meet greater demand for

employable skills, and ensuring that the education provided is relevant and of good quality. It is

important to say more about these challenges below.

6. Within countries, income poverty is a pervasive barrier to school attendance and learning.

Schooling levels by income groups indicate that children from the poorest families who enter

school drop out early, although at varying rates across countries (figure 2).2 In some countries

such as Pakistan, income poverty manifests its effect on education levels right from the start of

primary school, while in Tanzania and Indonesia, income poverty does not seem to make a

different on the rate at which school-age children enter primary school but do affect the rate at

which they drop out. Research has shown that the responsiveness of school enrollment to the

price of schooling (that is, its price elasticity) is higher for low-income households, so a

eliminating fees or giving a cash subsidy to the household conditioned on children‘s school

enrollment will produce a larger proportional increase in the schooling of children in poorer

Figure 2: Proportion of youth ages 10-19 who have completed a given grade

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families (Orazem and King, 2009).3

7. Educational progress lags even more for people who face multiple disadvantages due to

poverty, gender, place of residence, disability and ethno-linguistic affiliation. Hall and Patrinos

(2010), Lewis and Lockheed (2008) and the Global Monitoring Report (UNESCO 2010) provide

clear evidence that being female combined with rural residence and minority ethno-linguistic

affiliation means far greater disadvantage than just being female or just being a rural resident.

Demand factors embedded in culture and enshrined in markets and supply constraints, such as a

deficit of learning materials or trained teachers who can teach in a minority language, leave these

children and youth at the fringes of their education system. For them, the solutions are more

complex. Research suggests the following interventions: Schooling demand in rural areas

responds more to changes in income and to the proximity of available schools. In places where

girls receive less schooling than boys (e.g., South Asia and the Middle East, rural areas of many

countries), girls‘ schooling seems for responsive to shifts in income and prices than boys‘

schooling. Demand-side interventions, such as the abolition of school fees and scholarships, cash

transfers to compensate for the opportunity cost of school attendance, and vouchers that enable

poor students to use also privately provided services, have all helped to raise enrollment rates.

Together, these measures account for notable increases in enrollment rates at the primary and

secondary education levels.

8. For too many students, more schooling has not resulted in greater learning. Various

learning assessments document disappointing learning outcomes in many countries. Youth are

leaving school and entering the work force without the knowledge or competencies that will

make them productive and able to adapt continually to a competitive and increasingly globalized

economy. They will need remedial, second-chance, and job training programs in order to acquire

employable skills. At the country level, because of low skills the economy is unlikely to possess

sufficient ―innovative‖ power to respond to business opportunities, create jobs and make the

country competitive in the global economy.

9. Several studies illustrate the seriousness of the learning challenge across a broad range of

country contexts. Early grade reading tests in Mali determined that, at the end of Grade 2, in a

nationally representative sample of public schools, 94 percent of children could not read any

word in the initial line of a grade-appropriate reading passage in French. Children perform

almost as badly when assessed in their mother tongue, in the same grade, and in an equally

appropriate passage (CNE, PHARE and RTI 2009).4 In Pakistan, tests of grade 3 children found

that only 50 percent could answer very basic multiplication questions and 69 percent could not

successfully add a word to complete a sentence (Das, Pande and Zajonc 2006). A study in Peru

found that as few as 25-30 percent of the children in grade 1 and only about 50 percent of the

children in grade 2 could read at all (Crouch 2006). Such low reaching levels mean that it would

take several years of schooling for most students to acquire the skills needed to read a simple

sentence.


10. The results from country-based studies correspond with the results from international

tests like TIMMS and PISA, which show low learning levels both in countries likely to achieve

the Millennium Development Goals as well as in those unlikely to do so. Figure 3 illustrates the

wide gulf, between countries and within countries, in international math test scores. The

deficiencies in learning that are revealed by national and international assessments stem from

both lack of access to learning opportunities and deficiencies in the available learning

environments. Unfortunately, to a certain extent national and international tests are just the tip of

the iceberg, as they do not measure deficiencies in learning for those who had dropped out of

school prematurely.

Why a New Education Strategy

11. External and internal changes call for a rethinking of the World Bank‘s education

strategy. Economic and technological changes are redefining the development challenge for all

countries. They punctuate the need for learning opportunities to be relevant to new jobs and

employment, and thus for education systems to adapt to those changes. All things equal,

countries with a more highly skilled and more agile workforce have a clear advantage to adapt to

global change. Within the context of global shifts and internal changes, the new strategy will lay

Figure 3 Wide disparities in math test scores between and within countries

Source: Filmer, based on analysis of TIMSS 2007 database

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Figure 4 Demographic trends shape demand for

education Population Projections in Low Income Countries 2020

Population Projections in Middle Income Countries 2020

Source: World Bank, Health Nutrition and Population

Stats

100000 50000 0 50000 100000

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out new strategic directions, priorities for investments, technical support, and policy assistance

for the World Bank‘s work in education in the next decade.

12. A country‘s demographic landscape shapes the potential demand for education and

continues to shift with changing fertility

rates. Low-income countries have very

young populations; on average, more than

40 percent of their population is under 15

years old (figure 4). There are an estimated

3.1 billion youth worldwide between the

ages of 0 and 24, of whom nearly 90

percent live in the developing world. These

countries must face the challenges of

securing an adequate supply of basic

education while also upgrading the quality

of that education. And success in getting

more children through basic education in

turn creates demand for more spaces also at

higher education levels. In contrast, in

middle-income countries sharp declines in

fertility rates have reduced the pressure on

increasing spaces in primary education,

leaving more resources that should be spent

on quality improvements. The proportion

of 15-24 year olds in their populations is

higher than ever before, and even higher

than in high-income countries. As long as

these youth are equipped with appropriate

skills and know-how when they enter the

workforce and the dependency ratio drops,

the ―youth bulge‖ could translate into

remarkable economic dividends for these

countries. But while middle-income

countries may be better able to afford an

expansion of tertiary education, there are

good reasons to choose fiscally prudent

policies and investments even now. As

many middle-income countries have

already discovered, it is hard to end costly entitlements even when such action could mean more

resources for quality improvements.

13. The emergence of new economic stars among middle-income countries has intensified

the desire of many more countries in the developing world to be more competitive and thus to

have a more highly skilled and more agile workforce. Although the world as a whole is emerging

from the global financial crisis at a modest rate, the economies of China and India are projected


to grow at close to 10 percent in the next year, and Brazil at the rate of … Even Sub-Saharan

Africa‘s economy is projected to grow by 5.5 percent in 2011. Indeed, according to the

International Monetary Fund (October 2010), output growth in emerging and developing

economies is expected to be at 6 percent for 2010 and at 6.3 percent by 2011, more than twice

the projected output growth in rich economies.5 Reflecting much higher productivity and population

growth, the economies of the developing world are expected to grow by about 6 percent in all three years

These countries are Anticipating the need to accelerate productivity increases by growing the

skills in their workforce, these countries are …6 While these projections are great news for

developing countries, limited fiscal space means that if official development assistance were to

decline due to the sluggish recovery in rich countries, low-income countries could be forced to

reduce investments, including in education. Developing countries, particularly low-income

countries that rely on official development assistance (ODA) for budgetary support, could come

under severe pressure if the crisis results in reduced aid flows. So far, the crisis has caused

government deficits in low-income countries to increase by an average of 1.3 percent of GDP,

suggesting that many were able to take advantage of relatively good fiscal positions, and ample

reserves going into the crisis to buffer its effects on spending. However, the initial cushions have

been exhausted, and the ability of low-income countries to maintain spending in the face of a

slow recovery is unclear –

especially if, as is likely, ODA

declines in coming years.

14. New information

technologies have transformed –

and continue to transform – how

people live and communicate, how

enterprises do business, what jobs

are available, and what skills are in

greater or lower demand.7 The

growth in number of mobile phone

subscribers has outpaced global

population growth (figure 5).

Mobile telephony has been

adopted even in rural areas of poor

countries. The number of Internet

users grew by an estimated quarter

of a billion people between 2000

and 2005, most of them young

people (OECD, 2010). How can education systems best use these technologies to equip students

with knowledge and skills relevant to a rapidly modernizing context? More systematic

information is needed about whether and how school-based ICT can enhance learning and raise

school completion rates.

15. The international aid architecture has become more crowded and more diverse, making it

even more important for donors to harmonize and align their programs at the country level. The

Paris Declaration and the Accra Plan of Action provide guidelines for how donors should work

Figure 5 Growth in Mobile & Internet subscribers has

outstripped population growth

Sources: http://ddp.worldbank.org, http://databank.worldbank.org

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OECD mobile subscribers EAP mobile subscriptions

SSA mobile subscriptions World Fixed Internet Subscribers


together in the service of country priorities. Given the changes in the international aid

community, the Bank needs strategic partnerships based on a shared vision for education. In

2002, the Bank played a pivotal role in the formation of the Education for All–Fast Track

Initiative (FTI), a global compact that aims to help low-income countries achieve the education

MDGs. Since 2004, it has provided support to selected countries through the Catalytic Fund. A

recent external evaluation of FTI concludes that FTI has helped promote aid effectiveness in line

with the Paris and Accra declarations, but recommends major reforms to achieve its goals. The

Bank is taking concrete steps to help address those recommendations. The new education

strategy would provide an opportunity to review the Bank‘s role in the global partnership, and

vice versa.

16. Inside the World Bank, the operating environment has gone through notable changes in

the past decade. Partly, these changes are designed to respond to provide the Bank with a better

structure to respond to the changes in the global environment and aid architecture. First, the

Bank has continued moving its staff to the country offices, both through relocation of

international staff and through the recruitment of more local staff. At the end of FY10, about 40

percent of education staff were located in field offices, with this proportion being higher for staff

working in East and South Asian countries. Second, operational instruments have been changing,

in part to accommodate the shifting nature of the policy dialogue with client countries. For

example, there is increasing demand and interest in lending instruments that incorporate

performance-based approaches, sector-wide financing in the form of direct budget support,

parallel financing, pooled funding, programmatic lending to support medium-term development

goals, and approaches that provide greater flexibility at reduced transaction costs. A number of

middle-income countries are using reimbursable technical assistance in order to tap the Bank‘s

technical expertise in highly specific areas.

PART 2. THE WORLD BANK’S EDUCATION STRATEGY

Framing a new education strategy around Learning for All

17. The World Bank commits to supporting Learning for All as a key contribution to

countries‘ long-term growth and poverty reduction. People acquire new knowledge and

competencies throughout life, but the period between birth and the mid-20s is critical because the

ability to learn that is developed at this time is a foundation for future learning (Box 3). Whether

children and youth actually learn during this time period depends on the learning opportunities

available to them and the quality of those opportunities. The Bank‘s strategy to meet the mission

of learning for all is based on the following premises: (a) Although learning outcomes are

usually measured by reading and numeracy skills, the knowledge and competencies that help

people live healthy, productive, and satisfying lives are much broader. Social, communication,

teamwork, and problem-solving skills are invaluable for people to function well at home, in their

communities and at work. In addition, specific technical or vocational skills related to an

occupation are important in the labor market.8 (b) Learning is not only about schooling.

Investments in the nutritional and health status of very young children as well as cognitive


development determine the readiness of children to learn when they reach school age. Likewise,

programs that address hunger, malnutrition and disease among school children can significantly

improve their academic performance. Indeed, learning is the business not only of education

agencies. (c) Youth who drop out of school early are vulnerable to unemployment, poverty, teen

marriage and pregnancy, and delinquency. In addition to dropout prevention programs in

schools, these youth need alternative or second-chance learning opportunities that take into

account the reasons why they are not in school. As discussed above, the main obstacles are often

income poverty and/or other sources of disadvantage that work through demand or supply

factors. The challenges are to consolidate basic knowledge and competencies learned while in

school, and to equip these youth with additional technical or vocational skills. Unfortunately,

relatively few programs have been rigorously tested, so the knowledge base for these programs is

relatively thin. (d) Since learning opportunities do not have to be limited to schools or higher

education institutions, they do not have to be provided by government.


Box 3 Learning is a lifelong process

Box Figure 3a illustrates the fact that learning happens throughout life. A person‘s brain starts

growing from conception and continues to do so into adulthood. At each stage of the brain‘s

development, there are opportunities for learning, but learning occurs is affected by the learning

opportunities available to a child or a youth. The ability to learn that is developed at this time

empowers more learning throughout life (Cunha et al., 2006). During infancy, ages 0 to one year, a

child gradually develops sight, hearing, receptive language and speech production. Proper nutrition

and cognitive and psychological stimulation in the home or through caregivers are essential to this

development (Fernald et al. 2009). Mother‘s nutrition and health during pregnancy affect fetal health,

birth weight and, thus, the newborn‘s initial health (Bhutta et al. 2008). The availability of an

integrated system of parenting education, nutrition and health care can have substantial benefits (Engle

et al. 2007). The period between ages 1 and 5 years is one of very fast brain development, during

which children develop executive functions, such as working memory and ability to inhibit responses;

higher cognitive functions like solving puzzles, matching colors and shapes, or understanding

concepts such as more and less; fine motor skills like picking up objects or drawing and writing; and

gross motor skills like walking or running. Children need a stimulating and responsive environment to

develop these abilities; deprivation has profound and long-term consequences for the child. (Fernald et

al. 2009, Walker et al. 2007, Grantham-McGregor et al. 2007, ECD Community of Practice 2010)

Between the ages of 6 and 8, children develop their basic reading and mathematics skills. The extent

to which children are able to do so determines their ability to continue learning beyond this stage.

Nurturing and trained teachers who spend sufficient instructional time using adequate pedagogy are

critical for this development (Abadzi 2010). Beyond the initial primary grades, between the ages of 9

and 12, children continue to acquire reading comprehension and mathematical skills, as well as basic

science skills, and the capacity for language grows considerably, so this is a critical time for learning

grammar, second or third languages and vocabulary expansion. Children from minority ethno-

linguistic groups benefit from the use of mother-tongue instruction, combined with instruction of the

dominant language, until at least the age of 12. (Perez-Brito and Goldstein 2010)

Early adolescence is marked by both emotional immaturity and high cognitive potential among youth

(OECD, 2007). Because neuro-developmental maturation occurs at different ages for them, youth at

this stage may benefit more from a strong general education, with specialized vocational and technical

education deferred until upper secondary. (Jakubowski et al. 2010) For youth in many countries, the

period between ages 16 and 18 is often a time for transition from school to working life. For those

who have dropped out, remedial programs or second-chance options through vocational-technical

education schools can have high returns for later employment. Many more youth, however, are


18. The debate on what is an effective learning environment and how to achieve it is still

open, but it is clear that a focus only on inputs will have limited success. One side of the debate

focuses on eliminating the shortages in the academic infrastructure, trained teachers and

instructors, and learning materials as a means to improving learning outcomes. For lack of better

data, for example, teacher-pupil ratio has been used widely as a measure of the quality of

schools. Except perhaps in settings with extreme shortages, however, the evidence for the

learning dividends of supply-side investments has been mixed (Hanushek, 1986, 1996; Kremer

and Holla, 2008). Another argument in the debate places less emphasis on the level of resources

per se allocated to education and more emphasis on the education system‘s ability to transform

those resources efficiently and effectively into learning outcomes. This argument is about the

capacity of the education system for policy formulation, standard setting and quality assurance,

planning, financial management, student assessment, human resource management, and

intergovernmental and external partnerships. It states that, given the same input levels, schools

(or universities or training programs) that are more competently managed and better governed

will realize higher learning results. A third side of the debate highlights something else: the

power of greater autonomy at the provider level and of competition for resources (such as

through the use of performance incentives or vouchers) to generate a strong motivation among

providers for better service delivery (Orazem, Glewwe and Patrinos 2007). The central idea

behind this is that students prefer to attend good schools and universities; consequently, low-

quality, schools and universities would lose enrollment and eventually disappear from the

market. A corollary to this argument is that students (and other stakeholders) also have a political

voice to advocate for more accessible and better learning opportunities.

Directions of the new education strategy

19. In the next decade the World Bank‘s focus in education will be to support reforms at the

country level that strengthen the education system‘s capacity to achieve learning goals, and, as a

global development partner, to help build a high-quality knowledge base in education to

underpin policy, innovations and investments. This education strategy affirms its commitment to

learning for all by increasing the effectiveness of government resources and aid financing for

education, through operational, financial and technical assistance.

Box 3 … continued

Early adolescence is marked by both emotional immaturity and high cognitive potential among

youth (OECD, 2007). Because neuro-developmental maturation occurs at different ages for

them, youth at this stage may benefit more from a strong general education, with specialized

vocational and technical education deferred until upper secondary. (Jakubowski et al. 2010) For

youth in many countries, the period between ages 16 and 18 is often a time for transition from

school to working life. For those who have dropped out, remedial programs or second-chance

options through vocational-technical education schools can have high returns for later

employment. Many more youth, however, are enrolling in upper secondary education and

tertiary education as a means to acquire skills that are valued in the labor market.


Strengthening education systems

20. The term ―education system‖ typically refers to the institutions that provide education

services, that is, schools, universities and training institutes. But an ―education system‖ really

pertains to more than these formal institutions or structures. First, it includes, or should include,

the full range of learning opportunities that are available to children, youth and adults, whether

they are provided and/or financed by the state, or by non-state entities such as private

individuals, private enterprises, community organizations, or faith-based organizations. It

includes those that are considered formal programs, as well as non-formal programs. In almost

any country then, an education system encompasses thousands of primary and secondary

schools, tertiary institutions, training institutes, and other learning programs, including their

employees (teachers, trainers, professors), non-academic personnel, and administrators. Most

institutions are state provided and/or financed, but the education system in many countries also

includes privately provided and/or financed

institutions or programs. (More below) In

large countries such as Brazil, Indonesia, or

Nigeria, the education system spans a

dizzyingly large number of structures and

participants, linked together by contractual

and non-contractual relationships around

the delivery of education services.

Secondly, an education system consists also

of its beneficiaries and stakeholders:

students and trainees, their families and

communities, and employers whose

collective choices and ―voice‖ drive the

way the system works. In India, Pakistan

and many other countries, village education

committees or similar community groups

are part of the basic education system,

tasked with a variety of functions such as

monitoring and operational responsibilities

for area schools. In the case of skills

training programs, an interested party might be the employer who is financing the attendance of a

trainee. Thirdly, an education system includes the rules, regulations, and policies—and how they

are enforced and implemented, and who are held accountable—and resources and financing

mechanisms which make the system function. These rules and policies are implemented or

enforced by agencies that have a direct managerial and budgetary link to the government

agencies in charge of education, such as staff of the national testing service and the cadre of

school inspectors. Figure 6 is a very simplified representation of an education system, but it

portrays rightly that an education system is a complex network of participants (government

agencies, public and private providers, individuals, communities, and organizations) concerned

with the provision, financing and regulation of learning services—and the functional and power

relationships and accountability mechanisms that connect them.

Figure 6 A simple diagram of an education system


21. To strengthen an education system implies reforming the governance, management,

financing rules and incentive mechanisms in the system so that functions, authority and

relationships of accountability are clear, aligned, measured and monitored, and appropriately

resourced. The challenge is how to make the education system work effectively and efficiently—

that is, how to make it achieve the education goals—within the available levels of financial

resources, administrative and technical capacities, leadership skills, and political capital.

Educational investments that focus on building classrooms and school laboratories, purchasing

learning materials, or financing teacher training programs expand the educational ―architecture,‖

enabling it to have the physical capacity to deliver services to more people, but do not

necessarily help the education system function more effectively or efficiently. The 2004 World

Development Report on service delivery and the Bank‘s Governance and Anti-Corruption

strategy, adopted in 2007, shine a spotlight on the importance of addressing governance issues to

promote effective service delivery. The guidance is clear, if not easy to adhere to: Without well-

defined responsibilities and goals, there is no way to generate the relevant performance

information for managing or assessing an education system. The extent to which policies and

regulations about quality assurance, learning standards, compensatory programs, and budgetary

processes are implemented and enforced, whether implementation is financed, whether

compliance is monitored, and whether non-compliance has consequences—all these together

determine the effectiveness of the system to accomplish its goals (COREHEG 2010). Without

Box 4 A systems perspective in education

Availability of Information

There is no magic bullet to improve learning outcomes, but focusing on results—both on enrollments and on

learning—by making information more available has been shown to lead to progress. In India the school report

cards developed by the District Information System for Education summarize school information in an easy to

read format, allowing parents and stakeholders access to information not previously available to hold schools and

authorities to account. The data from the report cards are available on the Web, promoting local accountability.1

Likewise, in the context of a school management reform in the Punjab province of Pakistan, student and school

report cards were produced and disseminated. By increasing knowledge about quality and empowering parents

with information, the intervention increased learning achievement by between 0.10 and 0.15 standard deviations

in government schools and in lower-quality private schools, and reduced the fees charged at higher-quality

private schools by 21 percent.

School-based Management

School-based management (SBM) aims to empower stakeholders at the local level with greater decision-making

authority and more flexible financing as a way to involve them as partners in heightening the quality and

relevance of education. Past reforms have also increased the participation of parents and the community in

schools since they have incentives to demand an efficient use of resources that will lead to better outcomes. The

relationship between a vision for improved performance and measurable outcomes depends on a careful balance

between three policy instruments at policymakers‘ disposal to influence the behavior of local managers: i) greater

autonomy at the local level; (ii) enforcing relationships of accountability; and (iii) effective assessment systems.

Research on SBM around the world have found that these policies changed the dynamics within the school

because parents got more involved or because teacher behaviors changed. There is evidence that these reforms

reduced repetition, failure, and drop-out rates, but the evidence on learning scores is mixed, with positive results

for El Salvador, Nicaragua, Mexico and Kenya, and no effect found in Brazil and Honduras.

Sources: White 2004, Andrabi et al. 2010, World Bank 2011, World Bank 2010a, Barrera-Osorio et al. 2009.


timely information on implementation and performance that is communicated to all stakeholders

in the system, it becomes impossible to create enforceability and discourages responsiveness

(Box 4).9

22. The new strategy explicitly recognizes that learning opportunities go beyond those

offered by the public sector and also beyond traditional formal programs. The past education

strategies have been very much about the Bank‘s role in supporting formal schools that are

funded and/or operated by the government. However, critical learning activities happen outside

formal schooling years, such as before the ―official‖ age of entry into school and also after a

youth has left school. When young people drop out of school too early, many are unlikely to ever

return, and other learning opportunities, such as work skills training, are needed to help them

find employment. Even while children and youth are still in school, they may also be engaged in

supplementary learning activities that are usually outside the purview of government. Such

supplementary tutorial services, often privately provided, are prevalent in many countries,

including in South Korea, Turkey, Bangladesh, and the United States (Dang and Rogers 2008,

Bray 2009). These education services outside the traditional formal programs exist for various

reasons and are also parts of the education system.

23. A systems perspective should include for-profit and not-for-profit learning opportunities

(the ―non-state‖ sector) that function as providers, funders, and innovators in education. In many

countries the non-state sector acts as a provider of learning opportunities, from pre-schools to

primary and secondary

schools, colleges and

universities, and training

programs. Non-state

provision of education

services has increased

dramatically over the last

two decades across the

world, serving all types of

communities (Figure 7).

The share of the private

sector is highest in South

Asia and Latin American

and the Caribbean, and

higher in secondary

education and vocational

and technical programs

than in primary

education. Grouping

countries by per-capita

GDP levels, low-income

countries have a larger share of non-state education. The share of the private sector in other

learning programs outside formal schooling is rarely monitored, so data are generally not

available. In some cases, the cost of providing this education falls on families. Patrinos et al.

Figure 7 Share of enrollment in private schools

Note: UIS (Latest available data)


(2009) estimate that private households account for about one-quarter of all education spending

in developing countries. In other cases, governments subsidize or contract the non-state sector to

provide education.

24. Although many assume that the non-state sector serves mainly those learners who can

afford to pay, in practice it is an important provider of education even in the poorest

communities, especially in areas that the national, or even the local, government does not reach.

In a number of countries, the private sector successfully collaborates with the government to

improve the relevance of training. For example, in Grenada private sector businesses are working

with the government to set up a national training system that includes a private sector board vets

standards for a range of technical and vocational occupations, which are used to evaluate

graduates from training schemes financed by the government, but provided by private sector

trainers (TVET Thematic group 2010). The World Bank Group‘s International Finance

Corporation (IFC) has been facilitative private sector investments in emerging economies since

2001. For example, in Brazil, the Anhanguera Educacional Participações project is expanding

education access for low- and middle-income working adults who could not otherwise attend

Brazil‘s public universities, and have reached over 800,000 adults. But in order to ensure

efficiency and coherence in privately-provided education services, it is essential that government

agencies provide appropriate regulation and oversight.

25. In sum, to strengthen an education system means to align governance, management and

financing rules and incentive mechanisms in order to produce learning for all. To reform the

relationships of accountability among actors or participants so they are clear, coordinated,

consistent with functions, measured and monitored. To establish a clear feedback cycle between

aid financing and results. To ensure that resources are allocated effectively, efficiently and

transparently. Operationally, financial and technical aid from the Bank will be increasingly based

on reforms that will help improve learning outcomes and overcome barriers to education for

disadvantaged groups. Investing in stronger education systems means to build national capacity

to govern and manage according to standards of quality and equity, to develop and apply

measures of system performance that are consistent with national education goals, and to ensure

that national and aid resources are used effectively and efficiently. Investing in education data

and knowledge that can support evidence-based policymaking and innovations in partner

countries helps ensure that investments in education are effective and efficient and support

global efforts to monitor progress and measure results and impact.

Building a high-quality knowledge base for education reforms

26. At the global level, the World Bank‘s priority will support the development of a

knowledge base that will support the systems approach: (i) reliable and comparable statistics to

measure learning outcomes and monitor aspects of the performance of education systems, and

(ii) analytical and practical evidence and know-how about programs and policies that can

improve the workings of education systems.

27. Education data have improved tremendously in the past two decades. This is an important

achievement given that reliable, comparable and regular education statistics are essential for


planning and for monitoring progress toward education targets. Data on the 283 education

indicators tracked annually across countries were available only at 45 and 46 percent in 1990 and

1995, respectively; by comparison, availability averaged 64 percent during the period 2000–06.

(Porta Pallais and Klein 2010) Despite efforts made by the World Bank, UNESCO‘s Institute of

Statistics, the donor community, and national governments to improve the availability and

quality of education data, however, significant information gaps persist even on important

indicators. During the years 2000-07, the average data availability for the four education MDG

indicators remained at between 49 and 60 percent, crippling efforts to project the likelihood that

some countries will reach the target MDGs by 2015.

28. Three important advances—and remaining challenges--explain the state of education

data. First, more countries have established or improved their Education Monitoring and

Information System (EMIS) which collects and records enrollment data and other information

from schools each academic year. Between 1998 and 2009, 44 percent of World Bank education

projects financed EMIS activities and 11 percent supported school mapping activities (Porta

Pallais and Klein 2010). However, these efforts have been largely isolated, with no clear strategy

for implementing ―best practice‖ approaches or plans for training local technicians in the best use

of the EMIS. Moreover, EMIS databases in developing countries frequently neglect the tertiary

level, non-state providers and non-formal providers of education. The expansion of EMIS to be

more inclusive of all the parts of the education system is clearly an area for reform. Second, an

increase in the number of sample-based household and school surveys fielded in developing

countries, some of them conducted on a fairly regular basis, allows empirical analyses of the

factors that affect education indicators. For example, most of the analyses of disadvantaged

populations‘ access to education are based on individual-level data collected through these

surveys. It is when individual and household information can be linked to the supply of

education services that the obstacles to educational progress have been examined in greater

depth. However, the scope of these surveys is quite narrow, providing only glimpses of the

education services available and of the barriers to learning. Third, more countries are measuring

reading and math competencies of their students through national assessment systems—and

more countries are also participating in regional tests and international tests such as PIRLS,

PISA, and TIMSS, and are benchmarking themselves against other countries. The number of

countries in PISA grew from 43 in 2000 to 66 in 2007, for instance. In this regard, if the

relevance of the education system to the world of work is to be assessed, measures of learning

should go beyond basic competencies. In particular, widely accepted comparable measures of

important skills such as problem-solving, teamwork, and communication skills are still notably

absent.10

29. In the next ten years, the World Bank will advocate for and continue supporting EMIS

systems, support efforts to measure learning outcomes and the performance of education systems

on a regular and systematic manner, and support countries to use these measures to inform

education policies and investments. The Bank will invest in the development of measures for

system functions and learning outcomes (including skills that are commonly measured), data

corresponding to those measures, and analytical work. Far too few countries have the kinds of

policies, structures, practices, and tools that would constitute useful EMIS and assessment

systems. As mentioned above, data on learning outcomes are still rare, sporadic and very much


limited in scope. In addition, governments and international agencies are demanding the

development of new indicators of the quality and performance of education systems. One

obvious gap is the availability of periodic and system-wide data on education finance—on both

costs and public and private expenditures. While budgetary data are generally available from

planning and budget documents, the actual flow of resources through the education system and

actual expenditures are often mysteries to the actors within the system. Inability to track resource

flows and spending feeds wasteful misallocation and use of resources as well as corrupt

practices; this is one of the principal messages from the consultations on the strategy. Collecting

and managing data require both technical expertise and financing; many developing countries

need both types of assistance. But just as important will be to promote the effective

dissemination and use of this knowledge base among the stakeholders in the education system.

The Bank will support the broad exchange of policy-relevant knowledge and encourage

international debate on critical issues of educational development. Decision makers at the

country level need capacity and resources to use data and evidence for decision-making

processes.

30. Finally, analytical and practical evidence and know-how about programs and policies are

critical to improving the performance of education systems. Technical and empirical analyses of

development topics are a regular part of the work of Bank staff, but in the past ten years, Bank

staff have engaged in a sizeable number of rigorous impact evaluations, many of them in the

education sector. These evaluations present an opportunity to generate global knowledge and

continually improve its operations and technical advice.11

There are many more impact

evaluations of education interventions than a decade ago, but more needs to be learned about

how to make these efforts be more useful for policy. (See Box 5) In addition, while there is

Box 5 Building the Knowledge Base on Education Systems through Impact Evaluation

To improve the knowledge base in education, the World Bank has worked energetically over the past five years

to expand the portfolio of impact evaluations and systematically harvest their lessons. The approach has been to

integrate rigorous impact evaluations into new or ongoing operations, with technical support from across the

institution. Ideally, the integration takes place at the project design stage; early integration not only allows better

tracking of impacts, but can also improve project design by tracing out expected impact channels. In some cases,

the evaluation design has included a randomized controlled trial, which allows the most straightforward linkage

between intervention and impact, but other rigorous approaches are also used.

Once an evaluation generates findings, those findings can be fed back into operational practice. They provide

real-time feedback that allows improvement of the project being evaluated, and also help to set priorities and

allocate resources in that country over the longer term. Once enough evaluations of related interventions have

been carried out, the findings are also synthesized at a global level and used to guide reforms and inspire

innovations in other countries.

Adoption of the new approach to evaluation knowledge generation has led to substantial changes in the way

operations are designed and implemented, and in the way that lessons are drawn from them. From a baseline of

virtually no rigorous impact evaluations at the World Bank, a recent survey found that currently there are 55

active evaluations in education (20% of all active evaluations), together with 42 already completed (25% of the

total), that evaluated measures to increase the demand for schooling or improve the delivery of education

services. Some of the studies have been carried out by Bank staff, others in collaboration with outside

researchers supported by the Bank. With so many areas to cover, the Bank has started by focusing its evaluation

efforts where they could be most influential—which meant concentrating on clusters of projects that were about

to get underway, and on topics for which there is the most demand from country governments and Bank task

team leaders. One major area of evaluation research has been on interventions to improve accountability for

results in education.

Impact evaluations of accountability-oriented reforms in education have been clustered in four areas: school-

based management, information for accountability, teacher incentives, and leveraging the private sector.

Source: World Bank Results Briefs: "Discovering What Works in Education: Informed Policy Making through

Impact Evaluation."


evidence on how direct interventions at the school or classroom level affect learning, there is

much less evidence on what will lead to an effective reform of the education system. Partly, this

has to do with the fact that many school or classroom-based interventions can be evaluated

through impact evaluation techniques, which rely on the existence of a ―comparison group‖ that

is not affected by the intervention to be evaluated. Evaluating system reforms, on the other hand,

is more complex because such reforms tend to involve multiple institutional changes.

Consulting on the new education strategy

31. The development of the new strategy was supported by extensive technical and

consultative work. Internally, three staff working groups discussed the issues and challenges

pertaining to countries with fragile situations, low-income countries and middle-income

countries. Each group contributed three key inputs: (i) the main challenges in education, (ii) the

main actions that the Bank should take, and (iii) the main outcomes for which the Bank should

be accountable. Unsurprisingly, a number of those challenges, actions and outcomes were

Box 6 External Consultations to Develop the Strategy

The Bank consulted a wide array of external stakeholders and actors from the beginning of the strategy

development. The first consultation phase consisted of 17 multi-stakeholder meetings across the world and 17

targeted meetings. Held between February and June 2010, those meetings took place in 24 countries and

included representatives from a total of 69 countries. The multi-stakeholder meetings included representatives

from academia, teacher unions, school management committees, community members (parent-teacher

associations), local and international NGOs, civil society organizations, students, parliamentarians and education

officials, and private and public donor agencies. Designated rapporteurs at each consultation submitted detailed

minutes and a list of the attendees. In addition to the meetings, interested individuals and groups provided

comments on a dedicated web page for the strategy and through and the Bank‘s YouThink website.

An analysis of the feedback indicates that, overall, learning and quality, education management (accountability),

teachers, relevance to the labor market, and education finance (and partnerships) are the priority themes for the

consulted parties and the issues that they think the Bank should be addressing. They recognize education‘s role

in (sustainable) human and economic development, and also that secondary and tertiary education are now a

main concern in addition to primary education. ―Quality‖ encompasses not only the ―visible‖ inputs to the

education process, such as infrastructure and supplies, but also the competence of teachers in imparting

knowledge and skills to their students. Additionally, education systems around the world need to address the

needs of poor and disadvantaged populations, as well as corruption, poor management, and wastage of resources

in order to be successful at fulfilling their mission.

Table 1 : External consultation meetings Phase I: Breakdown by region

Region Number of Countries

Represented

Number of countries that hosted a

consultation meeting

Africa 16 4

South Asia 3 2

East Asia and the Pacific 8 4

Latin America and the Caribbean 11 4

Middle East and North Africa 4 2

East and Central Asia 13 2

Donors 13 6

TOTAL 69 24

Source: World Bank 2010b


common across the three types of countries, while others were specific to a country group.

Together with the results from external consultations (Box 6) and from additional technical

inputs from authors of background papers, these inputs formed the basis of the outlined

priorities.

PART 3. IMPLEMENTATION ISSUES

32. If the intense debate in rich countries (e.g., France, U. S., and U. K.) about their own

learning deficits is any indication, achieving learning for all in developing countries is a long,

challenging, and uncertain mission. But within the next decade some success in improving the

enabling environment for more learning in each country can be secured, and the Bank is ready to

help. This section provides first a quick review of the Bank‘s past work in education in order to

distill some lessons; it then discusses the key implementation issues for the strategy.

Results from Past Strategies

33. The new strategy for 2020 is informed by previous World Bank education strategies, the

strategy launched in FY2000 and the update of 2005 (table 1). The 2000 strategy stated the

Bank‘s mission in education to be ―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.‖ The strategy update five years later affirmed the Bank‘s

commitment to education for all; indeed, the patterns in the Bank‘s lending over the past decade,

as discussed in the previous section, show the Bank‘s support for universal basic education,

especially in low-income countries. But the 2005 update deviated from the 2000 strategy in

recognizing explicitly the desired outcome of educational progress—a knowledge-driven

economy and a cohesive society—and by replacing the emphasis on basic education with a focus

on developing holistic education systems: ―Our strategic thrust is to help countries integrate

education into national economic strategies and develop holistic education systems responsive to

national socio-economic needs.‖ The apparent change in focus between 2000 and 2005 is

significant. For example, while the objective in 2005 was still education for all, the 2005 update

stated that this was to be done with the development of the whole sector in mind. This focus on a

holistic approach may be why an increasingly larger share of education lending fell under the

category ―general education.‖ Lastly, the intended results orientation has yielded greater

enthusiasm for impact evaluation activities, as discussed in Box 5 above, but the emphasis on

results has not produced a more systematic inclusion of education outcome indicators in all

education projects (as well as in Country Assistance Strategies).

Table 1. The focus of the World Bank’s education strategies

FY2000 2005 For 2020

Objective Quality education for all Education for all and

education for the knowledge

Learning for all


economy

Priorities

or themes Basic education (poorest,

girls)

Early interventions (early

child development,

school health)

Innovative delivery

Systemic reform

Integrate education into a

countrywide perspective

Adopt a sector wide or

holistic approach

Become more results

oriented

At the country level, to

strengthen education

systems to achieve results

At the global level, to

develop a high-quality

knowledge base in

education

34. The new education strategy differs from the past strategies in its focus on learning which

may be attained partly by more investments in inputs such as more trained teachers or university

professors, a better curriculum, and more learning materials, but which needs also institutional

changes in the education system. The new strategy emphasizes the importance of getting

governance arrangements, financing, incentives and accountability mechanisms, and

management tools aligned with education goals. It also explicitly recognizes that these

institutions should apply to learning opportunities outside the government sector and outside the

formal services if those education goals are to be achieved.

35. A previous assessment of primary education projects by the World Bank‘s Independent

Evaluation Group (IEG, formerly the Operations Evaluation Department) suggests that past

projects have not been effective in building institutional capacity, at least at the central level,

while system strengthening seems to have been more successful in support of school-level

management activities. The evaluations demonstrate that even though education projects have

long included interventions meant to strengthen the governance and management of the system,

monitoring and performance indicators have focused more on inputs and outputs rather than

outcomes. In addition, projects have generally neglected learning assessment activities and

indicators of governance performance. With respect to the broad priority of helping countries

invest in basic education, the World Bank has been a steadfast supporter.

A historical look at the Bank’s lending for education


36. The World Bank has been supporting

educational development for 47 years. The Bank

approved its first education project in September

1962, a project to build secondary schools in

Tunisia. Eugene Black, the Bank‘s president at that

time, justified the support with the following words:

"Nothing is more vital to the economic progress of

underdeveloped countries than the development of

human resources through widespread education."

Since then, the Bank has supported 1,539 education

projects (or projects with education components) for

a total of $68.9 billion (in 2005 constant prices). Its

support for education has increased over time, both

in terms of numbers of projects, total amount of

lending, and as a share of total Bank lending (figure

8). Commitments from both IDA and IBRD

resources trace the rising trend in education lending,

with IBRD lending showing greater volatility over

the years. About 64 percent of the projects were

IDA credits. In 2009 and 2010, in part due to the

global economic downturn which in turn decreased

fiscal resources in many donor and recipient

countries, total education lending reached an all-

time high of $3.4 and $5.0 billion dollars (in current

prices), respectively.

37. In view of the MDGs for 2015 and the fact

that many countries remain far from reaching those

targets, during the 2010 MDG Summit at the United

Nations, the Bank pledged additional aid in IDA

credits to the countries farthest from reaching the

MDGs by 2015. Low- and lower middle-income

countries (as measured by their per-

capita GDP levels) receive the largest

share of the Bank‘s lending (figure 9).

38. Primary education has been

the single largest priority for the

World Bank over the years, and the

1990 Education for All declaration

and the 2000 Millennium

Development Goals declaration

marked higher levels of commitment

to primary education (figure 10).

Figure 9: Distribution of Bank lending for education,

by country income group

0

20

40

60

80

100

19

63

-65

19

66

-70

19

71

-75

19

76

-80

19

81

-85

19

86

-90

19

91

-95

19

96

-20

00

20

01

-05

20

06

-10

HICs

UMCs

LMCs

LICs

Figure 8. Trends in the World Bank’s lending for education, 1963-2010

EF

A

MD

G

02

04

06

08

01

00

Pro

ject

s

1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010Year

Total number of projects with education component

EF

A

MD

G

0

10

00

20

00

30

00

40

00

50

00

Mill

ion

US

$

1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010Year

IDA IBRD

Commitments to education from IDA, IBRD and total(constant 2005 million US$)

EF

A

MD

G

05

10

15

%

1960 1965 1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005 2010Year

Education as % of total World Bank lending


Since 2000, the share of education funding for tertiary education and vocational education

declined while the share of ―general education‖ which benefits several education levels

increased. On average, about half of ―general education‖ goes to basic education. Using this

estimate, lending to preprimary and primary education increased from 47 percent during the

decade 1991-2000 to 49 percent the following decade. Moreover, assuming that about half of the

lending for secondary education benefits lower secondary education, the share of basic education

(i.e., pre-primary, primary, and lower secondary education) rose from 53 percent to 58 percent

between the two decades. Compared to the previous decade, lending for tertiary education was

halved during the 2001-2010 decade.

39. Patterns and

trends in the Bank‘s

financial aid become

clearer when taking into

account the

characteristics of

recipient countries. The

Bank‘s lending in a given

year depends not only on

financing available per

country but also on the

specific demand by

countries, their economic

need and fiscal

conditions, and

institutional capacity. An

econometric analysis of

Bank lending for

education from 1963 that

simultaneously takes into

account various factors such as population size, GDP per capita, and world region (using

multiple regression results from ordinary least squares with fixed effects and Tobit estimation)

shows several patterns (King and Nguyen 2010). It confirms that the Bank‘s education lending

indeed rose significantly after 1990 when governments and international organizations, including

the World Bank, made Education For All a commitment, and even more so after 2000 when the

Millennium Development Goals became a global mandate. Bank lending has also been

statistically significantly higher for countries with larger youth populations (ages 0-14) and for

poorer countries as measured by per-capita GDP levels. In addition, given both population size

and per-capita GDP levels, the Bank provided more aid to countries in South Asia and Africa

relative to Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Using also information that a country would later be

eligible for funding from the Fast Track Initiative Catalytic Fund (which began in 2004), the

results indicate that these countries have tended to receive substantially more resources from the

Bank over time (and not only after FTI was created) than non-eligible countries.

Figure 10: Share of Bank lending by Sub-Sector (%)

5.22.1

42.8

9.5

13.4

26.2

0.8

12.4

1.8

38.2

13.4

3.9

29.0

1.3

28.2

3.3

34.8

13.7

4.0

14.8

1.1

24.4

3.3

31.9

19.9

5.3

14.3

0.7

020

40

60

80

10

0%

1991-95 1996-2000 2001-05 2006-10

Adult literacy

Tertiary

Vocational training

Secondary

Primary

Pre-primary

General


40. In terms of the IFC‘s involvement in education, investments grew from about $7 million

in 2003 to $170 million in 2010, and these are projected to grow further in the next five years.

Not surprisingly, the distribution of these investments is notably different than the Bank‘s. Close

to two-thirds of investments are in higher education, 22 percent are in vocational and technical

education, and 14 percent are in primary or secondary schools. Nearly one-half of these

investments were made in the Latin American region, one-quarter in Sub-Saharan Africa, and

one-fifth in the Middle East and North Africa. Education is one of five strategic pillars for IFC

and will continue to command available resources.

Contributions to the education knowledge base

41. The Bank‘s investment in education has not only been financial. External aid has been

accompanied by a range of analytical work that has contributed to understanding the education

challenges and policy options that countries face. Between FY01 and FY10, the Bank invested

USD 49 million12

in Economic and Sector Work in education, producing 277 pieces of analytical

work that examine critical issues facing education; these include status reports about countries‘

education indicators and whole-sector or sub-sector analysis of fiscal and structural issues. In

addition, the Bank‘s staff working in other sectors produced 895 pieces of analytical work that

include a discussion of education topics. Indeed, many country reports, such as public

expenditure reviews and poverty assessments, include a chapter on the education sector. Bank-

wide reports such as the yearly World Development Report series too have examined education

issues and challenges as they relate to socioeconomic development, including those on workers

and labor markets (1995), knowledge, information and technology (1998/9), service delivery

(2004), and youth (2007). Bank staff have also been important contributors to the global

knowledge base and policy debates about education through external publications (Box 7). These

knowledge products underpin the Bank‘s lending and policy dialogue in education. They have

also allowed the Bank to provide other types of assistance. Over the past decade, the Bank has

seen a major shift in its analytical work. While the amount of Economic and Sector Work has not

increased, Technical Assistance (TA) has become increasingly prevalent. The Africa region and

the Eastern Europe and Central Asia regions experienced the highest increase in Technical

Assistance, while this type of knowledge product remains rare in the South Asia region.


Differentiated Priorities According to Need and Capacity

42. The World Bank‘s global coverage means that it can broker exchanges across regional

borders so that countries that share similar levels of economic and educational development are

able to benefit from each other‘s experiences and policy lessons. While such exchanges already

happen, they do so largely in an ad hoc manner. The new strategy will promote more systematic

cross-regional and cross-country exchanges, based on a grouping of countries by their levels of

economic and educational development. For countries with similar educational development in

very different parts of the world, the components of the education system, and their relations, are

likely to be at the same level of maturity. For example, assessment systems in low income

countries are typically latent, though a few countries do implement large-scale national

examinations; in contrast, middle income countries typically have established assessment

systems that include national examinations as well as participation in international tests.

Therefore, the challenges faced by these two groups of countries in developing their assessment

systems are different. Any of these groupings of countries is not a recommendation for a

reorganization of the World Bank to replace the regional divisions, but a way to organize

knowledge production and exchange among staff, as well as staff assignment and training.

Box 7. World Bank staff have contributed to the global knowledge base in education

Most policymakers have probably heard of the World Development Report. Many have probably read

one. The WDR is, however, just a small part of the World Bank‘s publications, which cover all the

development areas on which Bank staff work, including education, and include books, book chapters,

working papers, and articles in peer-reviewed scholarly journals. Overall and in the education field,

professional journals are the most common vehicle for Bank publications. Around 500 journal articles

on education have been authored by Bank staff, accounting for half of the Bank‘s publications on

education. The rest is split about equally between books, book chapters, and working papers (many of

which end up as book chapters or journal articles). Focusing on just one thematic area, the economics of

education, comparing the Bank with 14 top universities reveals that with respect to the number of

journal articles, the Bank is the world leader—only Harvard University comes close.

What has been achieved as a result of the Bank‘s 1,000 publications on education? One way of

answering this question is to ask how far these publications have influenced development thinking in the

field. This is a reasonable question since the Bank likes to think of itself as the ―knowledge bank‖, and

has aspirations to be a generator of new knowledge, not just a synthesizer of existing knowledge. The

obvious measure of the Bank‘s success as a generator of knowledge is citations. The broadest citation

data today come from Google Scholar which covers not just journal articles but books, book chapters,

working papers, dissertations, and technical reports. Journal articles have a highly skewed citation

distribution: a lot of articles never get cited, or get cited just a few times, while some get cited a lot. The

median citation count for education articles is 13, while that of books is 10. On mean citations, however,

books do better than articles—47 compared to 43. Book chapters get cited very infrequently—a mean of

just 8.5.

Source: Estimates by Wagstaff, based on Ravallion and Wagstaff (2010)


43. Per-capita GDP levels yield a familiar grouping of countries into low-income and low

Box 8. Country Groupings

Past sector strategies have largely been based on a geographical grouping of countries. While useful,

this region-based grouping does not fully exploit the World Bank‘s global coverage and its ability to

connect countries with similar levels of economic and educational development across the world. A

client grouping based on economic and educational development, overlaid on geographical location,

can lead to clearer and more strategic priorities. However, measuring the level of education system

development presents a challenge. Considering that educational development, in broad lines, closely

correspond to economic development, the Bank will consider specific challenges and vision in

determining priorities at the income grouping of the country.

Using geographical divisions alone does not yield country groupings that are similar with respect to

education indicators. A plot of the latest available secondary net enrollment rates against per-capita

GDP which identifies regions shows that the countries in each region span a range of low and high

levels of secondary enrollment. Other education variables such as enrollment rates for primary and

tertiary education and learning outcomes show similar levels of dispersion within regions.

Box Figure 9.1: Net Enrollment Rate in Secondary Education

Timor-Leste

Tajikistan

DjiboutiSierra LeoneTogo

Gambia, The

Guinea

Lao PDRCambodia

Kyrgyz Republic

Bangladesh

Madagascar

Niger

Kenya

Samoa

Marshall Islands

MongoliaMoldova

Azerbaijan

Belize

El SalvadorParaguay

Jordan

Maldives

Lesotho

Cape Verde

Fiji

MalaysiaTurkey

Bulgaria

Lithuania

Mexico

St. Vincent and the Grenadines

Chile

Lebanon

Seychelles

Hong Kong, China

PortugalMalta

020

4060

8010

0

Enr

ollm

ent r

ate

2000

0

4000

0

6000

0

Per Capita Income, 2000 dollars (*)

Fragile States Low income

Lower middle income Upper middle income

High income

(*) Income shown in log scale

By income

Net enrollment rate (%), secondary

Sierra LeoneTogo

Gambia, The

GuineaMadagascar

Niger

Kenya

Lesotho

Cape Verde

Seychelles

Bangladesh

Maldives

Djibouti

Jordan

Lebanon

Belize

El SalvadorParaguay

Mexico

St. Vincent and the Grenadines

ChileTajikistan

Kyrgyz Republic Moldova

Azerbaijan

Turkey

Bulgaria

Lithuania

Timor-Leste

Lao PDRCambodia

Samoa

Marshall Islands

MongoliaFiji

Malaysia

020

4060

8010

0

Enr

ollm

ent r

ate

2000

4000

6000

8000

1000

0

Per Capita Income, 2000 dollars (*)

Sub-Saharan Africa South Asia

Middle East & North Africa Latin America & Caribbean

Europe & Central Asia East Asia & Pacific

(*) Income shown in log scale

By region

Net enrollment rate, secondary


middle-income and high middle-income countries, but a number of countries have experienced

(or are experiencing) major and long-running conflicts and face a particular set of challenges in

addition to those related to their economic situation. These countries can also be grouped by

whether they experience conflict or fragile situations (Box 8). Armed conflicts, natural disasters

and other catastrophic events threaten education outcomes because they damage school

infrastructure, distract the attention of leaders and communities from service delivery, expose

children and youth to severe physical and mental stress, and interfere directly or indirectly with

school operation and teaching and learning. According to the World Development Report 2010,

―a child of primary school age is 3 times as likely to be out of school if she or he lives in a fragile

or conflict-affected country as would be the case if she or he were born in another developing

country or one of the BRICs. Likewise, a child in a country recovering from conflict or fragility

is 1.5 times as likely to be out of school than a child in a developing country not affected by

conflict‖ (World Bank 2010c). Youth who participated directly in armed conflict may have

missed the crucial period in which they should have built social and human capital skills.

(Blattman and Annan 2010, Gilligan et al. 2010) In countries experiencing fragile situations,

education has the potential to be a powerful and cost effective tool to speed up social and

economic recovery. The priorities for the Bank‘s education work in those countries would be a

place-dependent mix of the relevant categories.13

44. The strategy thus takes the approach of grouping countries by whether they are low-

income countries, middle-income countries, or countries with fragile situations. This grouping

differentiates countries by level of economic development and also by institutional capacity.

Although nearly all the countries in fragile situations are low-income countries, they differ from

other low-income countries in that their institutional context, the ―ecosystem‖ for any

educational reform, is fraught with additional political challenges. This proposed grouping of

countries does not imply a reorganization of the World Bank to replace the regional divisions,

but instead proposes a way to organize knowledge production and exchange as well as staff

assignment and training within the current regional setup. Despite differences between them, the

three groups of countries share common challenges which are best addressed globally through a

set of cross-cutting priorities, such as how to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the use

of resources in the education system and how to improve learning outcomes; however, the

specific solutions to these challenges are likely to take different shapes and timing. Briefly, the

differentiated priorities for the Bank‘s education work for these country groups are:

45. Countries with fragile situations. The main challenge in these countries is to address

short-term needs without undermining the long-term development of the system. Given this

challenge, the priorities of the Bank‘s education sector in fragile states are to (i) assess the

system; (ii) keep the system running, using local stakeholders as leaders of institutional change

and transition; and (iii) promote learning and equality from the outset. In other to achieve this,

the Bank will support equitable cost-effective and sustainable modalities of service delivery to

respond in a timely basis to reactivating learning needs in difficult contexts. At the same time, it

will advise on teacher and paraprofessional selection and management and promote the use of

learning assessments to build the capacity of the education sector and a solid institutional

structure.


46. Low-income countries. The main challenge in these countries is to support the balanced

expansion of opportunities to learn at all levels with adequate quality, including universalizing

basic education of 8-10 years, including out-of-school children and youth, and early childhood

development. To address this challenge, the Bank will prioritize (i) enhancing access to and

performance of the education system; (ii) supporting adequate finance of education in the context

of expansion of access; and (iii) more specifically, for those countries that have not met the

MDGs, providing additional US$750m in grants and zero-interest loans for basic education over

the next five years.. To this end, the Bank will identify and support innovative strategies for

serving underserved populations and increasing completion rates and addressing access barriers

from the demand side. It will also invest in quality assurance systems for all providers, through

learning assessment systems and improved regulatory frameworks.

47. Middle-income countries. The main challenge in these countries is to ensure equity of

learning opportunities and to invest in skills that contribute to the economy‘s competitiveness.

Therefore, the Bank‘s priorities in those countries will be to (i) enhance the education system for

quality and relevance, in order to improve links with the labor market and school-to-work

transition, and respond to a growing demand for flexible skill acquisition programs; (ii) promote

policy frameworks for ensuring the quality of privately provided services; (iii) improve the

efficiency of the education system; (iv) promote equity of opportunities for disadvantages

populations; and (v) support sensible financing mechanisms for tertiary education. Therefore, the

Bank will advise on the development of flexible skill acquisition systems, regulatory frameworks

for private provider participation, national qualification frameworks, and quality assurance

systems in order to enhance the quality and relevance of education and match the supply and

demand for skills.

Implementation Levers

48. The Bank‘s contributes to development in three ways: knowledge generation and

diffusion and policy debate, financial and technical support to countries, and partnerships. These

are the broad implementation levers for the new strategy, and under each are specific actions in

the next ten years. Among those broad challenges, consider: (a) financing for results. (b)

Teacher policies for learning. The effectiveness of teacher policies (e.g., training, hiring,

compensation, deployment, supervision) is critical to an education system‘s performance; this is

one area that typically needs a major overhaul in order to motivate and support teachers. These

reforms have to be consistent with a quality assurance framework.

Knowledge generation and policy debate

49. System diagnostics, results measurement and benchmarking. In support of

implementing a systems perspective, the World Bank launched a multi-year program called

Benchmarking Education Systems for Results (BESR). The program is developing a

comprehensive tool for system diagnostics to assess the characteristics and effectiveness of

education systems and their component sub-systems against global standards, best practice, and

performance of comparator countries. This knowledge program will fill a major gap in the


availability of institutional data about education systems. The country diagnostics and

performance reports produced under the program (in collaboration with national researchers and

decision-makers and other actors) will make it possible for all parties with a stake in the

performance of their education system to have a simple, objective, up-to-date snapshot of how

their systems function and how well they are performing and what countries can do concretely to

get measurably better results (Box 9). To improve aid effectiveness, a culture of results

monitoring and assessment should pervade the work in the sector. When budgetary resources and

staffing are constrained, knowing which interventions produce the desired outcomes most

efficiently and effectively is crucial.

50. Increasing learning assessment and other education data. The World Bank has

partnered with UNESCO‘s Institute of Statistics to improve global education data on enrollment

and completion rates, among other indicators. The Bank will continue to help countries improve

their EMIS systems. At this time, there is no international consensus on best practices for EMIS

systems, and countries have vastly different systems that are often built from the ground up

without benefitting from the experience of other countries, so the Bank will identify best practice

for country EMIS systems, produce best practice guidelines and develop the appropriate training

modules for staff. Information technologies can be used to facilitate education-related data

collection and processing efforts in ways previously not possible (EduTech Group 2010).

51. Adopting a systems perspective and results orientation is possible only if countries have a

sufficiently strong framework of data collection, analysis and usage, so in the next decade, the

World Bank will support also efforts to expand the availability of learning data and skills

measures. It will support also the development of a program of regular assessments in partner

countries and the mechanisms that will use and feed back the results of such assessments to

administrators, policymakers and other stakeholders. In this, it will be joining governments as

well as other international organizations in collecting learning data. Second, the Bank will

support the development or improvement of learning assessment systems. Previous experience

with assessment systems through Bank projects has been mixed. The 2004 IEG report flagged

that only half of student assessment activities in projects were fully fulfilled, and only 57 percent

were at least partly fulfilled. This failure may be due to a lack of systemic approach to student

assessment. (Box 10) In addition to national assessment systems, the Bank will promote country

participation in international and/or regional assessments as a means to build the global database

Box 9. Benchmarking Education Systems for Results (BESR)

The BESR program takes a systems approach to examine the core functions and sub-systems of the education

system, understand how they are connected with one another, and identify potential leverage points for policy

makers to improve system performance and results. The program is developing diagnostic tools to:

(i) collect data on the policies and performance of core education sub-systems in a given country or jurisdiction,

including the teacher system, learning assessment system, financial management system, equity and inclusion

system, and the quality assurance system, and each of these subsystems has specific functions;

(ii) analyze the data to identify and describe the key functions, rules and regulations, and incentive mechanisms

within the system, its challenges and good practices; and

(iii) help countries use the data and analytical findings to inform policy decisions and investments.


on learning gains. More and more countries have shown interest in benchmarking their learning

outcomes against the outcomes of other countries.

52. Analytical and evaluative research. As discussed above, the World Bank has made

large contributions to education knowledge creation and diffusion. When the social returns to

these activities exceed the private returns, it makes sense to subsidize them. Even country-

specific or project-specific research adds value to the global market for knowledge and

experience. Governments, international agencies and individual researchers are devoting more

attention to examining which policies and programs yield measurable results and are most cost-

effective. Establishing the impact of policies and programs requires an understanding of the

incentives and constraints faced by all parties involved, the school providers, the parents and the

learners. Increasingly, evaluative research is making use of experimental methods to estimate the

impact of policy reforms and investments, but most of these studies pertain to specific inputs

such as an increase in the number of teachers in a school or to policy reforms such as the

abolition of fees. With the new strategy, more research is needed on the impact of institutional

change, such as the establishment of a national learning assessment, a national accreditation

mechanism for private schools and universities, or decentralization of education finance.

Institutional change is likely to be more unwieldy for designing an impact evaluation as defining

the appropriate counterfactual would be more difficult.

Box 10. ABCs of a Learning Assessment System

Assessment is the process of gathering and evaluating information on what students know, understand, and can

do in order to make an informed decision about what to do next in the educational process. An assessment system

is a group of policies, structures, practices, and tools for generating and using information on student learning.

Countries may be in four stages of assessment system—mature (best practice), established (desirable standard),

emerging (on the way to meeting standard) and latent (at the beginning stages of building the assessment system).

A system may be at different stages of development in relation to different types of assessment activity – i.e., a

system may be Established in the area of examinations, but Emerging in the area of surveys, and vice versa. The

main factor that characterizes systems that make the shift from Emerging to Established is a concerted focus on

reforms, inputs, and practices that strengthen the enabling environment for assessment.

Types of assessments are classroom assessments (they provide real-time information to support teaching and

learning in individual classrooms), examination (provide information about individual student‘s progress through

the education system), and large-scale assessments (for monitoring and providing policy- and practitioner-

relevant information on overall performance levels in the system, changes in those levels, and related or

contributing factors.)

There are three main drivers of information value/quality in an assessment system: enabling environment (it

refers to the broader context in which the assessment activity takes place and the extent to which that context is

conducive to, or supportive of, the assessment); system alignment (it refers to the extent to which the assessment

system is aligned with the rest of the education system), and technical quality (it refers to the psychometric

quality of the instruments, processes and procedures used for the assessment activity).

Source: Clarke 2010


Technical and financial support for countries

53. In order to help strengthen education systems, the World Bank will adopt three priorities

for its operations. First, the Bank will establish a feedback cycle between financing and results to

implement a systems perspective that focuses on learning goals. Operationally, this means that

financial aid from the World Bank to governments will be increasingly geared towards and based

on the achievement of improvements in the education system that will lead to learning outcomes.

The presumption, of course, is that aid agencies have the same objective as countries (or at least,

their policymakers) (Steiner-Khamsi, 2006).14

Second, it will pay a high degree of attention to

teacher issues given their key role in learning and the very large share of spending in education

to pay for teachers‘ salaries. To improve the teaching force, policies must provide teachers the

incentives for good performance besides establishing and enforcing proper qualifications

(through pre- and in-service training and support services, in which most teacher-related

investments are focused on). Third, the Bank will respond to opportunities for multisectoral

approach to building knowledge and skills.

54. Financing for results. The Bank will support country programs to reform their funding

arrangements and resource allocations so that they are aligned with goals, functions and

accountability mechanisms. The Bank will support the strengthening of fiscal controls and

provide the tools and resources for assessing the performance of the education system, and will

pursue innovative results-based financing schemes in education. To be able to work from a

system perspective, it is important to understand the financing conditions that countries face. In

education systems throughout the world, central governments play a major role in the provision

and/or finance of education, usually, but not exclusively, for basic education. Despite increased

trends towards decentralized education systems, in many developing countries the central

government continues to control a large share of education financing and to make a majority of

decisions regarding the allocation of education budgets. These include the level of education

spending, the revenue sources, the allocation mechanisms, the explicit and implicit relationships

between institutions that determine incentives, accountability and power, and finally what

instruments exist for fiscal control and capacity building.

55. Adopting a systems perspective implies that the Bank would seek to strengthen the link

between financing and results, through what is sometimes referred to as ―results-based

financing.‖ Overall, the goals of education financing should be to ensure adequacy, promote

equity, and improve efficiency (Alderman and Vegas 2010). Results-based financing can be seen

as an omnibus term for various mechanisms that link financing to results which can be defined as

behaviors, services, outputs or outcomes. A useful starting definition is the one used by the

Bank‘s health sector: Results-Based Financing is ―a cash payment or non-monetary transfer

made to a national or sub-national government, manager, provider, payer or consumer of health

services after predefined results have been attained and verified. Payment is conditional on

measurable actions being undertaken.‖


56. The education sector has piloted a number of results-based loans/credits in which

government financing to providers is conditioned on quantity and/or quality of service or

outputs. This type of agreement mirrors interventions in the health sector, where a large number

of RBF mechanisms allow the government to reward health service providers. For example, the

2010 Vietnam Education Project pilots an output-based subsidy to semi-public schools and

private schools to increase access to upper secondary education for poor students. The

performance-based nature of the project is expected to provide incentives for providing quality

education. However, sometimes the results-based financing is directly between governments and

recipients. For example, Conditional Cash Transfers (or CCT‘s) are a much-used multi-sectoral

approach whereby the government rewards recipients for certain output like increased school

attendance. In some instances, direct financing to students is combined with financing to teachers

and institutions, such as in the Bangladesh Secondary Education and Access Project (2008)

which provides monetary incentives to encourage rural students, teachers and institutions to

reach and maintain higher enrollments, better attendance rates and higher levels of achievement.

In addition, the education sector has also spearheaded a number of loans/credits that include

results-based agreements between the government and the Bank (e.g. Jamaica Early Childhood

Development Project (2008), Sindh and Punjab Education Sector Projects (2009)). (See Box 11.)

Box 11. Results-based Financing in the Punjab and Sindh Education Sector Projects

Two Pakistan education operations illustrate the potential benefits of tying financing more closely to

results. They (i) conditioned disbursements on implementation progress and performance targets

(referred to as Disbursement Linked Indicators-DLIs) in the government‘s reform program; (ii)

supported initiatives to improve governance and accountability; (iii) supported improvements in

budget and fiscal management, fiduciary management, and environmental safeguards that have broad

implications; and (iv) upgraded government monitoring and evaluation systems. Approved in June

2009, the projects provided retroactive financing of implementation targets met by the government

over FY2008/09. Because the government met all ten FY2008/09 DLIs and nine out of the ten

FY2009/10 DLIs in both projects, over 60% of the financing was disbursed within the first year of

implementation. The projects are in compliance with fiduciary and safeguard requirements and have

additionally leveraged improvements in fiduciary management, fiscal and budget management and

environmental safeguards. Some lessons that may prove beneficial for future results-based operations

are:

i. The DLIs, coupled with dialogue and client engagement, promote a results focus, and puts

pressure on government to act on politically-difficult but potentially-beneficial governance

initiatives supported by reform-minded stakeholders.

ii. The verification of DLIs also supports improvements in monitoring and evaluation practices.

iii. The DLIs help sustain the implementation of programs, consistent with the program design. This

is conducive to attaching impact evaluations which require that programs are implemented per

their design and on schedule in order to efficiently administer baseline and end line surveys.

iv. Where possible, spreading the timing of expected DLIs and their verification over the fiscal year

can ease the administrative and supervision burden on the government and the task teams.

v. There is presently sufficient internal flexibility to adjust disbursements to unanticipated crises

(e.g. floods in Pakistan) while preserving the high-powered incentives for achieving results.

vi. Supervision demands are likely to be high. Sufficient resources will have to be mobilized to

support the required level and quality of supervision.


Under this setup, the event and amount of disbursements from the loan/credit are tied to pre-

specified annual implementation progress and performance targets, referred to as Disbursement

Linked Indicators (DLIs). The funds are disbursed against pre-determined budget line items that

do not necessarily correspond with the budget lines that were used for buying the inputs and

services needed to achieve the targets. The approach moves away from financing inputs and

disbursing against proof of government expenditures. Instead, it finances outputs and results, and

disburses against achievement of targets.

57. The Bank‘s proposed systems approach lends itself quite naturally to results-based

financing. Bearing in mind that the systems approach seeks to improve the institutions,

relationships of power and accountability and incentive structures within education,

disbursements of proceeds from Bank loans to governments could be linked to:

- Products: for example, completing a critical study of the private sector in education,

completing a round of national learning assessment, participating in an international test,

- Changes in institutions: for example, improvements in teacher management procedures,

establishment of a national certification board, development of a quality assurance

process for universities

- Changes in incentive structures: for example, conditioning financing at the sub-national

level on a measure of performance of secondary schools,

- Changes in policies: for example, improvements in teacher recruitment policies;

promotion of academic autonomy for universities.

58. Teacher policies. Addressing teacher shortages, quality, and performance is a cross-

cutting priority in all three country groups for primary and secondary education and even for

vocational and technical education. Teacher shortages, sometimes stemming from the poor

deployment of teachers rather than from low numbers, continue to block progress in some

countries. Teacher presence and effectiveness in the classroom are, of course, critical for

learning. The 2005 education strategy emphasized the importance of teacher recruitment,

assignment, compensation, and career development as key to teacher effectiveness and noted the

usefulness of community involvement in recruiting teachers and curbing absenteeism. The new

strategy adds a systemic view of teacher reforms in which policy goals relate to setting clear

expectations for teachers, ensuring that pay and benefits are competitive so as to attract the best

into the teaching profession, prepare teachers through both pre-service training and classroom

practice, monitoring the performance of teachers, as well as supporting and motivating them as

needed. Connecting these policy goals require that teacher training must be aligned with the

curriculum and with monitoring and assessment system. Countries in each country group may

focus on a particular aspect of these teacher policies. In low-income countries, for instance, the

critical issue might be to train teachers fast enough and effectively enough in order to address

severe shortages in hard-to-staff areas and schools, while in middle-income countries, the critical

issue might be to offer sufficient incentives to attract the best graduates into teaching and away

from other jobs in a relatively dynamic labor market.


59. The Bank will support the implementation of teacher reform programs through financing

and analytical work. In particular, the Bank‘s knowledge agenda will: (i) build evidence and

develop best practice guidelines on teacher selection, management, incentives for performance,

pedagogical practices, professional development, and alignment with the curriculum and

assessment systems. (ii) develop diagnostic tools to assess teacher policies and inform reforms;

and (iii) build the knowledge base on the political economy of education reform, including

teacher reforms. (Box 12). Over the next three years the Bank will take on the following actions

to implement priorities in this area: (i) Build access to expertise on teacher quality and

performance issues through a combination of expert database, staff training, and hiring. (ii) Train

staff on topics including: i) effective practices for teacher selection, management and incentives;

ii) effective pedagogical practices and professional development; iii) analysis of political

economy of education reform. (iii) Pilot analysis of political economy of teacher reform during

project preparation.

60. Multisectoral approach. Using a multisectoral approach repeats a theme from the 2005

strategy update. While the Bank‘s involvement in education should be strategic and selective, the

Bank‘s engagement in a country must reflect a broad understanding of the whole education

system (e.g., the country‘s learning needs for growth and poverty reduction, the range of

available public and private services) as well its linkages to other sectors such as health,

nutrition, agriculture and industry, water and transport, and environment. For example, children

need to be healthy and well-nourished so they are physically able to attend school and learn

Box 12. Political Economy of Reform in Education

Theoretical research and (limited) empirical evidence suggest that there are windows of opportunity for

introducing education reforms. Reforms are more likely to be introduced when (i) there is an observable sector

crisis; (ii) there is a new government; (iii) the costs of reform are dispersed among groups that have little

political power and its benefits are concentrated on a powerful group; (iv) powerful groups that bear the costs of

reform can be compensated; (v) demands for reform come from a group with relatively homogeneous interests

and preferences; (vi) few players have influence on the decision-making process; (vii) education reform is

combined with other reforms (e.g., efficiency in public expenditure, poverty reduction); (viii) reform is

introduced incrementally rather than all at once; and (ix) political agreements and commitments can be sustained

over time. Identifying windows of opportunity requires TTLs to be constantly aware of the sector‘s political

context. This context is dynamic; understanding and operating within it requires a day-to-day monitoring of the

political scenario, to inform project design, implementation and supervision, rather than a one-time in-depth

analysis. In turn, monitoring the political context requires a conceptual framework –preferably, one that is

simple, straightforward and adapted to the particularities of the education sector.

There is a tendency to approach education reform in a sequential form: first access, then quality. Some countries

had followed this approach, gaining support for education reforms by increasing the based of educated people.

However, access reforms can create powerful groups that subsequently oppose and hinder quality reforms.

Quality reforms will be difficult to introduce because on one hand, the main beneficiaries are students, who are

usually not organized, and who will not see any tangible benefits in the short term; and on the other hand, the

reform will likely entail a cost to one or more powerful players, in the form of higher efficiency in the education

sector, accountability measures of teachers, or more selective criteria to become a teacher, with implications for

the power of the Ministry of Education and its employees, individual teachers and teacher organizations. In

contrast to students, these players do have an organized way to express their interests, and can be expected to do

so if a potential reform threatens their power base or interests.

Source: Barrera-Osorio, Paglayan and Jorrat (2010).


(SHN 2010, ECD Community of Practice 2010). The availability of roads and transport facilities

determines the burden of getting to school every day for both students and teachers. Civil service

rules often determine just how easy or difficult it would be to implement teacher management

reforms. Another example of the benefits of a multisectoral approach is that educational progress

can be better understood using analyses of both the supply of learning opportunities and the

economy and its labor markets. But a multisectoral approach serves not only as a lens for

analyzing the role of education policy; it should serve also as a business model for choosing the

best policies and investments to bring about more learning. Thus, investments in early childhood

nutrition, water and sanitation facilities in schools, or shifts in labor regulations might induce

more educational progress than a change in an education policy. To practice a multisectoral

approach is to be open to promising reforms outside the realm of familiar education

interventions. The challenge to date has been to implement this approach and to provide Bank

staff with the right incentives, tools, and skills to work across sectors. It requires both that

education staff are knowledgeable about the issues and impact of other sectors on education and

that budgetary and administrative arrangements provide the appropriate framework for education

staff to work with staff in other sectors. In FY09 more than 40 percent of new lending for

education sector was made jointly with Bank staff working in another sector.15

Strategic partnerships

61. The global challenge of improving education is immense. The World Bank Group

partners with multilateral and bilateral agencies on knowledge products, investment operations

and programmatic initiatives. Collaboration with a host of development partners, in particular

with UN agencies such as UNESCO and UNICEF, promotes global commitment towards the

achievement of the MDGs and learning goals. There are also close ongoing partnerships with

Box 13. Regional and Bilateral Education Strategies

Most development agencies share the goal of helping partner countries attain universal access to basic education,

and prioritize efforts to improve the quality of services and equal opportunities to access them. Similarly, most

donors recognize the linkages between education and economic growth and increasingly focus on strengthening

post-basic education levels. Through lending operations and analytical work, regional development banks prioritize

different areas to support countries in meeting these goals, thus responding to particular regional and country-

specific challenges. For example, the Asian Development Bank is increasingly focusing on raising the quality of

technical and vocational education, while the Inter-American Development Bank is focusing its efforts on early

childhood development, teacher quality, and the transition from school to the work place. The African

Development Bank, on the other hand, emphasizes the reform of higher education and enhancing math and science

teaching at the secondary level.

Bilateral development agencies follow targeted approaches to support particular aspects of education systems,

within a larger framework of poverty reduction and inclusive growth, mainly through budget support, grants and

analytical work. For instance, the UK Department for International Development‘s priority is to support quality

education for all by focusing on teachers and learning assessments with special attention to Fragile States. The

Alliance Francaise de Developpement focuses on strengthening the management of education systems, curriculum

and training of teachers and managers, and analysis of demand problems in access and student retention, while the

Danish Development Agency works to ensure that girls and women gain access to education. In Asia-Pacific

countries, the Australian Agency for International Development aims to reach the disadvantaged and marginalized

to complete basic education and progress to higher levels while improving the relevance and quality of vocational

and technical education. Most of the bilateral development agencies have been actively involved in supporting the

Fast Track Initiative that works towards accelerating the process to meet universal primary education by 2015.


bilateral organizations and with private foundations, local and global technical institutions, and

civil society groups. These partnerships will continue to be crucial for mobilizing resources for

education and for improving policymaking within countries. (Box 13) A system‘s approach takes

into consideration the role of private donors including philanthropic foundations, corporations,

and business networks that play an important role in funding education investments and

providing expertise. In many cases, private donors work outside governmental structures and

primarily cooperate with civil society organizations because they see themselves as ―problem-

solvers;‖ in others they partner with governments to support policy reforms.

Performance and impact indicators

62. The success of the new strategy will be measured by a number of key measurable

performance and impact indicators. Table 2 lists eight performance indicators which reflect

specific Bank actions and achievements towards helping countries strengthen their education

systems, and five impact indicators which measure the combined effect of Bank action and

country-led polices and interventions. In a detailed results framework, each performance

indicator is produced by specific actions taken by the Bank. Those specific actions will differ

depending on the country‘s particular circumstances and capacity. In the first three years of the

implementation of the strategy, it will be critical to undertake the knowledge activities and staff

capacity development needed to support technical and financial aid to partner countries.

63. Performance Indicators. Regarding the Knowledge generation & exchange,

performance indicators include the generation of the diagnostic tools of education sub-systems

(such as teachers or assessment); analytical work and research, including impact evaluation; and

the development of tools to measure skills. Performance indicators concerning Bank organization

are the development of staff training and development regarding system approaches to education

and the generation of system-oriented staff practice groups. The performance indicators of Bank

products are the number of operations with a result-based financing approach; loans/credit that

has (systemic) learning assessments component; the number of countries that participate in

regional or international assessments; and the number of countries further from the goal of

MDG‘s in 2010 that have receive financial and technical assistance.

64. In turn, the impact indicators of this work are the number of countries with system

diagnosis; number of countries that apply and use the skills tools; number of loans/credits with

satisfactory outcomes and that uses a multisectoral approach; and finally the number of countries

with significant progress towards the MDGs.


Table 2 Performance and Impact Indicators for the 2020 Education Strategy

Implementation

Levers Performance Indicators

Impact Indicators

Knowledge

generation &

exchange

1. Availability of diagnostic tools for

education sub-systems (e.g., teacher

recruitment, compensation & promotion;

school inspection; higher education

financing)

2. Number of analytical and evaluative

research pertaining to policies and

interventions that use a systems approach

3. Development of skills measurement tool

beyond measures of literacy & numeracy

1. Number of countries that have

applied system diagnostic tool,

collected and used system data

2. Number of countries that have

applied skills measurement tool,

collected and used skills data

Bank organization

4. Development of staff development

program around the systems approach,

and number of staff trained

5. Development of system-oriented staff

practice groups 3. Number of loans/credits with

satisfactory outcomes

4. Number of loans/credits that have

used a multisectoral approach

Bank products

6. Number of loans/credits that have used

results-based financing

7. Number of loans/credits that supported

countries to carry out learning

assessments and/or participate in regional

or international assessments

8. Number of countries furthest from the

education MDGs in 2010 that have

received financial and technical assistance

from the Bank

5. Number of assisted countries that

have progressed significantly

towards MDGs


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Annex xx. Education priorities of development partners, according to their latest

education strategies Development Agency Priorities in Education Strategy

Asian Development Bank

(ADB) Increasingly direct its attention to raising the quality of technical and vocational

education and training

Continue to support expanded, higher-quality, more accessible basic and secondary

education in poorer countries

Inter-American

Development Bank

(IADB)

Focus its work on three main areas over the next three years:

Early Childhood Development, School to Work Transition, and Teacher Quality.

African Development

Bank Group

(AfDB)

Reforming and transforming higher education systems in Africa by:

Strengthening national and regional centres of excellence for training in selected

priority areas

Building and/or rehabilitating the existing science and technology infrastructure

Linking higher education to the productive sector.

UK Department for

International Development

(DFID)

Strategic priorities will help realize the vision of quality education for all are:

Access to a basic cycle of primary and lower secondary education with emphasis on

fragile states.

Quality of teaching and learning, particularly for basic literacy and numeracy;

Skills so that young people benefit from opportunities, jobs and growth.

Alliance Francaise de

Developpement (AFD) Complete universal enrollment by 2015 and to achieve equity between boys and girls.

Access to productive and decent employment and adaptability to changing needs in

labor market through apprenticeships

Capacity building and technical assistance to governments

Danish Development

Policy

Access to education improves women‘s economic opportunities with emphasis on

attaining stability on fragile states

Australian Agency for

Internatinal Development

(AUSAID)

Improve the functioning of national education systems to enable more girls and boys to

complete primary school and progress to higher levels of education

Improve the relevance and quality of education, including in vocational and technical

education

New Zealand Aid

(NZAID)

• Assisting core bilateral partner countries to achieve the Education For All goals

• Post-basic and tertiary education with a particular emphasis on achieving gender

equality at these levels of education by 2015.

US Agency for

International Development

(USAID)

Focus its education programs on: promoting equitable access to quality basic education

and enhancing knowledge and skills for productivity

http://ideas.repec.org/a/ucp/ecdecc/v45y1997i3p613-32.html

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1 The Commission‘s report brings together the views of 19 leaders, mostly from developing countries, and of

internationally known academics, and draws upon the discussions in workshops that featured papers presented by

more than 300 distinguished academics. 2 Poor people are less able than non-poor people to maintain their consumption in the face of income shocks. For

example, during the East Asian crisis in the late 1990s, poorer households in Indonesia resorted to taking their

children out of school (Thomas et al. 2003). 3 See Filmer (2008) for findings on the negative impact of disability on schooling attainment.

4 The assessment was carefully adapted to the Malian context by local and international experts, using locally-

developed passages and word lists (not translations from an English assessment). It has to be noted that French is

not a mother tongue in Mali, and Grade 2 is a very early grade in which to test in a language that is not the mother

tongue. See Centre National de l‘Education (CNE), Programme Harmonisé d‘Appui au Renforcement de

l‘Education (PHARE), and RTI International. 2009. ―Evaluation initiale des competences fondamentales en lecture

ecriture basee sur l‘utilisation de l‘outil ‗EGRA‘ adapté et completé en français et en arabe au Mali;‖ and RTI

International and CEPROCIDE. 2009. ―Evaluation des Compétences Fondamentales en Lecture des Elèves de 2ème

Année des Ecoles Bamanankan, Bomu, Fulfuldé Et Songhoï du Premier Cycle de L‘Enseignement Fondamental‖. 5 The damage of the global financial crisis that struck in 2008 has weakened the growth prospects of the rich

countries in the near future, as they reduce excessive current account imbalances and unwind stimulus policies, and

as households pay off debt and rebuild their net worth (Brahmbhatt and Pereira da Silva, 2009; Global Economic

Prospects Report, World Bank 2010). 6 The same call is being made in OECD countries (OECD, Going for Growth, 2009): ―Early education helps to

broaden opportunity and stimulate subsequent learning, while secondary and tertiary education improves workforce

skills and enhances absorptive capacity. …Policies to improve higher education performance and output are a

priority for Austria, the Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Poland, the

Slovak Republic, Sweden, Switzerland and Turkey.‖ 7 Autor, Levy and Murnane (2003) conclude that within industries in the U.S., computerization is associated with

reduced labor input of routine manual and routine cognitive tasks and increased labor input of non-routine cognitive

tasks. 8 ―Knowledge … includes the codified knowledge that can be set out in books, blueprints, and manuals, but also the

tacit knowhow acquired through experience. … It extends from abstract ideas, such as scientific formulae, to

eminently practical ones, such as the traffic circle or roundabout. … Knowledge does not only consist of ideas for

making more things, cheaper things, or new things. It includes the accumulated wisdom of human and social

experience—as historians and social scientists interpret and reinterpret it. For example, the ―invention‖ of the

separation of powers between three branches of government, and the checks and balances it ensures, is possibly one

of the most creative and influential innovations of the last few centuries. Many other institutional innovations have

been tried and refined through trial and error, and have helped achieve economic and social goals more efficiently

and fairly. (Commission on Growth and Development, 2008, 41) 9 For additional references, see King and Özler 1998; Jimenez and Sawada 1999; Gunnarsson et al. 2004; Duflo,

Dupas and Kremer 2007; Paes de Barros and Mendonça 1998; Jimenez and Sawada 2003; di Gropello and Marshall

2005; Gertler, Rubio-Codina, and Patrinos 2006; Skoufias and Shapiro 2006; Sawada and Ragatz 2005; Lopez-

Calva and Espinosa 2006. 10

A strong criticism of the sector in this regard is found in the Growth Commission‘s report: ―Researchers in this

field have settled on ―years of schooling‖ as a convenient, summary indicator of education. This is the measure they

most often cite in debate, and it is much envied by their counterparts in health policy, who lack a single, ―vulgar‖

measure (to use their term) in their field. … But years of schooling is only an input to education. The output—

knowledge, cognitive abilities, and probably also social skills and other noncognitive skills—is often not captured.

When it is measured, the results are often quite worrying. … We still need to know much more about education—

how to get the most out of the government‘s budget, and how to get the best out of teachers and their students. We

recommend this as a high priority for policy research. One place to start is measurement. The abilities of students—

their literacy and numeracy—need to be gauged far more widely around the world.‖ (Commission on Growth and

Development 2008, p. 38, 40)


11

Examples are demand-side interventions, such as conditional cash transfers, implemented mostly in middle-

income countries with the aim of reaching children not in school as well as keeping children in school. This type of

intervention is spreading also to low-income countries (Fiszbein and Schady 2009). On the supply side, examples

include public-private partnerships (Patrinos et al. 2009), school-based management reforms (Barrera-Osorio et al.

2009), providing parents or the community with information about the quality of the institution (Duflo et al. 2008),

and different incentives to teachers (Lavy 2007). 12

This figure includes both funding from the Bank‘s own resources (BB) and Trust Fund sources. 13

As of 2009, the countries with fragile situations were Afghanistan, Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, Central African

Republic, Chad, Comoros, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Republic of Congo, Côte d'Ivoire, Djibouti, Eritrea,

The Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Kiribati, Kosovo, Liberia, Myanmar, São Tomé and Principe, Sierra

Leone, Solomon Islands, Somalia, Sudan, Tajikistan, Timor-Leste, Togo, Tonga, West Bank and Gaza, Republic of

Yemen, and Zimbabwe. 14

Steiner-Khamsi (2006) warns that ―[T]oo often, policy transfer is framed in terms of coercion and imposition with

little critical analysis of why and how decision-makers in Third-World countries actively borrow reforms, both for

political and economic reasons, from elsewhere.‖ 15

The World Bank Group‘s International Finance Corporation has emerged as an increasingly strong investor in

private sector education since 2000. Working with IFC to identify joint projects and opportunities for public private

partnerships will provide new opportunities to meet national education goals.

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