International Journal of Educational Development 22 (2002) 565–577www.elsevier.com/locate/ijedudev

Re-visioning from the inside: getting under the skin of theWorld Bank’s Education Sector Strategy�

A. Hickling-Hudson∗

Faculty of Education, Queensland University of Technology, Kelvin Grove, Brisbane, Australia 4059

Abstract

This paper uses the device of imagining Education personnel at the World Bank engaging in study and discussionthat causes them to rethink their 1999 Education Sector Strategy document. The Bank’s educators discuss issues thatlead them to see that the World Bank’s assumptions of human capital theory are deficient. Having studied the severelimitations in the effectiveness of the education reforms of several countries, they admit not only that the educationmodel being promoted by the Bank is flawed, but also that its preferred paradigm of modernist development is unsus-tainable. Thanks to the program of study and reflection, Bank educators decide to meet the challenge of reinventingthemselves as educators collaborating with their national clients in developing new paradigms in which both creativeeducation and sustainable development can flourish. 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.

Keywords: Educational dysfunctionality; Subordinate literacies; Powerful literacies; Planetism; Education rethinking

The World Bank’s 1999 Education Sector Strat-egy gives a situation analysis of the context of edu-cation in a changing world, and what it sees as theglobal priorities for education. It sets out a visionas to how quality in education for all through whatit calls ‘systemic reform’ could be achieved. Thegoals and the thinking of the 1999 Education Sec-tor Strategy can be briefly summarised as follows:

1. Investment in the education of human ‘capital’will bring returns in the form of economicgrowth, ‘development’ and social cohesion.

∗ Fax: +61-7-3864-3988.� PII of original article S0738-0593(02)00025-1.

E-mail address: a.hudson@qut.edu.au (Anne Hickling-Hudson).

0738-0593/02/$ - see front matter 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.PII: S0738 -0593(02 )00004-4

2. This investment in human capital will take theform of improving the current formal edu-cation system.

3. This education system must be expanded, sothat all can have access to it from early child-hood (increased early interventions) to adult-hood, and across genders and culturally diversegroups. The emphasis is on expanding basic,non-formal education for the poorest.

4. The education system must be improved interms of quality

5. New partnerships are to be forged between edu-cation stakeholders—governments, parents,communities, non-government organisations,financial foundations, and teachers and theirorganisations.

6. Other social requirements, such as studenthealth and good governance, must be attendedto as well as education.

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On the surface, these might all be satisfactorystrategies by themselves, but when considered inthe context of the reality of the impoverished coun-tries that turn to the World Bank for educationloans, they are problematic unless the economiesof these countries are significantly strengthened.They are such a small part of the picture of edu-cation and development, and so selective, that thesequence of recommendations is arguably simplis-tic—that is, it projects a misleading surface gloss,ignoring the murky problems below. It is notenough to assert that the education system mustbe expanded, without an analysis of the model ofeducation that is to be expanded, the assumptionsbehind expanding it, the model of development towhich it is required to contribute, and the impli-cations of such development for the planet. Thefocus of the World Bank’s education strategy ongoals divorced from their ideological assumptionsis like a magic wish-list, giving a distorted under-standing of global educational problems and possi-bilities. This essay will explore a different way ofunderstanding the global education picture byusing the device of a hypothetical future scenariowhich allows us to discuss current assumptions andfuture alternatives.

1. A new director of education at the WorldBank

We are leaping three years ahead of the present,to the year 2005. In this future scenario, there is anew education leadership at the World Bank.Heading the education sector, a multilingualAfrican–Brazilian woman encourages her staff todevelop alternative understandings of the strategiesneeded to change and improve education and towork in new ways to support this process. She inturn is supported in her drive for change by newsenior leadership at the World Bank, including sev-eral African women. With their socially commit-ted, activists backgrounds, the new leaders havebeen able to promote the implementation of newprograms in the World Bank. Through these pro-grams the World Bank, with its US$30 billion ayear development assistance budget, has been moreeffectively than in the past helping the poorest

people on earth. One prominent official stands bythe assertion that she made in 2000, that ‘TheWorld Bank is a global institution owned by all ofus. Unless we dismantle it, we have to engage withit... If we... engage with it an eye to making it workbetter, we can do a lot more good than demonstrat-ing in the streets for those people who are strug-gling on the margins of life, who have no hope ofgetting on top of all their problems, such asHIV/AIDS, the digital divide, etc, etc’ (Mayne2000: 31). Within the Bank there have always beensome dissenting voices critiquing narrow neo-lib-eral assumptions, and these lend their support tothe Bank’s new, more effective development pro-grams.

In this climate of change, the Bank’s conven-tional approach to education, embodied in the Edu-cation Sector Strategy of 1999, clearly had to berethought. Between 2002–2005, the staff in theEducation section of the World Bank, many ofwhom had done their degrees in neo-classical/neo-liberal economics at the famous Friedman-RostowUniversity in Chicago, agreed to engage in a differ-ent course of study in order to prepare themselvesfor their role as technical advisers to governmentsin the countries which seek education loans. Thenew director of Education made a point ofemploying women and men from a range ofdeveloping countries to join the Bank’s Educationstaff, and this became a source of much creativerethinking. In the professional development pro-cess that she set up, collaborative, group-organisedstudy was key, as was the absorption of ideas fromdiverse views including those of socially critical,ecology-oriented scholars from both ‘North’ and‘South’ . It is now over five years since the Edu-cation Sector Strategy paper of 1999 was pub-lished, and with reorganisation at the Bank, thestaff in the education sector are applying their newideas to reviewing, rethinking and rewriting it.

First, the study groups took a critical look at thebasic philosophical assumption of the 1999 docu-ment, that of human capital theory. Next theydebated the document’s ideas about the nature andpowers of literacy, and from there went on to dis-cuss the inherent weaknesses of the system of edu-cation inherited from 19th century Europe,implanted around the world by colonial regimes,

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and minimally modified by decolonising states.Then, they considered an alternative role for Bankeducation sector staff. In the past, despite wantingto help countries to improve their educationarrangements, all their advice had been inadequateto prevent the entrenchment of dysfunctionality inthe system. Their critique of the 1999 document ispart of a process of re-visioning the educationalrole of the World Bank. Arrived at after much dis-cussion, it elaborated the following ideas.

2. Debunking claims for ‘human capital’

Most of the educators in the Bank study groupsat first clung to the idea that there was no alterna-tive to human capital theory. It seemed as clear asday that countries needed to achieve the highestpossible degree of literacy and universal schoolingin order to ‘succeed’ in a globalising economy.Obviously, argued the Bank educators, the ills anddisparities of society can be remedied by anincreased investment in education as a means ofimproving the quality of human capital. Who coulddoubt that the gap between rich and poor countriesand people could be substantially diminished bywell-planned educational programs? The words ofthe 1999 document expressed their faith: “ It haslong been self-evident that education, in additionto its immediate benefits, is also a form of invest-ment, building people’s capacity to be more pro-ductive, earn more, and enjoy a higher quality oflife. The rise of human capital theory since the1960s, and its widespread acceptance now afterthorough debate, has provided conceptual under-pinnings and statistical evidence” (p. 6). Holdingfast to these assumptions, they were initially dis-missive of scholarly critiques such as those byMaglen (1990), Jones (1992, pp. 237–238), Corag-gio (1994), Watson (1996), Arnove (1997), Samoff(1999), Welch (2000) and others.

After a lot of reading and debate, however, thestudy groups came to see the validity of such cri-tiques. They acknowledged the point that thehuman capital model of the labour force is basedon incorrect assumptions of deficits. The modelassumes that some individuals or social subgroupspersistently occupy the lower rungs of the occu-

pational ladder because they suffer from somepsychological or skill deficit—that they are ‘cul-turally deprived’ or ‘socially disadvantaged’ . Itrests on the belief “ that the root of problems ofmaldistribution of resources and statuses lieswithin the individual, not the social structure, andcan best be remedied by prescribing more edu-cation as cure for the deficit” (Bock and Papagi-annis, 1983, pp. 8–9). This preoccupation with per-son-centred variables lead to a ‘blaming the victim’bias which has several functions. It displacesblame for the society’s prior political and techno-logical failures onto the poor. It reinforces socialmyths about people’s degree of control over theirown fate. It leads to a focus on individual countriesrather than on the international system, in effortsto understand and tackle the problems of poverty.It encourages and justifies continued studies of thepoor, their presumed learning deficiencies andcompensatory strategies to tackle these, rather thanof the powerful and influential, and of the way inwhich the privileged use elite authority and powerto keep education for the poor in a subordinate role(Bock and Papagiannis, 1983; Connell, 1994).

In their new-century study groups, Bank edu-cators learnt to see how education and socio-econ-omic conditions are dialectically interlinked. Theyreached the conclusion that, even if impoverishedcountries were to improve their education systemsin the way that the document advocates, this wouldnot necessarily lead to “more productive econom-ies, more cohesive societies, more effective partici-pation in collective affairs, and ultimately healthierand happier populations” (World Bank, 1999, p.29). What it is more likely to do in the currentcontext is to prepare minimally-educated workersto fit easily as low-paid, expendable cogs in thewheels of a globalising capitalist economy basedon disparities that continue to impoverish many ofthe workers themselves (Sivanandan, 1989). TheBank’s traditional emphasis on expanding the pri-mary school education of human capital rested onthe assumption “ that the main resource of adeveloping country will be its cheap and flexiblelabour pool, producing goods and services forexport” (Coraggio, 1994, p. 168).

Bank educators realised that admitting the flawsin human capital theory does not, as many of them

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had feared, reject the argument that education canbring many benefits. What it does is to refuse tomislead people and feed false hopes by makingsweeping and unproven correlations between aparticular model of formal education and particularbenefits. Moving away from adherence to humancapital theory committed Bank educators to seek-ing for a more realistic and contextual appreciationof how labour markets work, how employment isstructured, how jobs are created, and the ways inwhich education can contribute to the economicgrowth process. This research would be the foun-dation for reshaping education strategy. Influentialin their rethinking were studies that showed thateconomic improvements in countries such as Tai-wan, Hong Kong and South Korea were a resultof a combination of factors such as active stateplanning along with entrepreneurship and massivefinancial assistance from Western countries, alongwith expanded and improved education (seeMcAfee, 1991, pp. 147–156). Economic develop-ment is more likely to stimulate widespread liter-acy and higher levels of education rather than viceversa. They were also impressed by the argumentsof Maglen (1990, p. 292), who pointed to detailedcountry studies which showed that productivitygains associated with education are to do with thequality of the grounding workers have in maths,science and language, combined with the extentand thoroughness of the on-the-job training theyare subsequently given. Such research suggestedthat education investment should seek to build upthe quality of the core curriculum and to supportgood programs of vocational training.

The Bank study groups gain a new understand-ing of the contradictions, problems and com-plexities of the current globalising economy. Theysee that it is simply not enough for the 1999 docu-ment to insert a few throwaway lines to the effectthat recent events such as the East Asian economiccrisis show that “sustainable development requiresmany things in addition to strong economic per-formance” (p. 6). They see the necessity, vividlyexpressed by Comaroff and Comaroff (2000), ofinterrogating the contradictions of neo-conserva-tive, ‘millennial capitalism’ which presents itselfas a gospel of salvation, invested with the capacityto transform the universe of the marginalised and

disempowered (p. 292). This capitalism “appearsboth to include and to marginalize in unanticipatedways; to produce desire and expectation on a glo-bal scale… yet to decrease the certainty of workor the security of persons; to magnify class differ-ences but to undercut class consciousness; aboveall, to offer up vast, almost instantaneous richesto those who master its spectral technologies-andsimultaneously, to threaten the very existence ofthose who do not” (p.298).

Bank educators also read material which madethe case more starkly, implying that the globalis-ation of neo-liberal capitalism is at the stage ofneeding concerted challenges from civic and con-sumer groups, rather than just interrogation. Theirattention was drawn to the United Nation’s HumanDevelopment Report with its stinging indictmentof the negative impact of economic globalisationon the well-being of many of the world’s peoples(Shalom, 1999). The report points out that the gapbetween rich and poor has today ‘ reached gro-tesque proportions’ , and that poverty is greater thanever before (UNDP Human Development Report).As Michel Chossudovsky (2000) puts it, “ the late20th century will go down in World history as aperiod of global impoverishment marked by thecollapse of productive systems in the developingWorld, the demise of national institutions and thedisintegration of health and educational programs” .And this occurred in spite of the large post WorldWar 2 expansion of education that the Bank itselfhas highlighted (World Bank, 1999, p. 11).

After their study of the world economic system,some members of the Bank study groups reachedthe conclusion that it might well be thought of asa cruel hoax to assure Bank clients that progresswill be assured if only they improve their weaknational education systems in the Western way.They realised that one of their major incorrectassumptions had been that people are poor becausethey lack education. They were now able to seethat this was a blaming the victim stance—instead,they realised, people lack education because theyare kept in an impoverished position. The studygroups also came to understand that conventionaleconomic growth in the current world system isnot a self-evident good (Mies and Shiva, 1993;Rowe and Silverstein, 1999) as much development

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thinking would have it. They gained a new respectfor the movements of people in impoverishedcountries struggling to protect their traditionalenvironments from the ravages of the global mar-ket economy. Realising that neo-conservative/neo-liberal development is not the answer to povertyand inequality, Bank educators are now willing toexplore the certainty of many in the ‘Third World’that this kind of development is ‘ the latest incar-nation of the five-hundred-year legacy of Europeancolonialism’ , intensifying toxic hazards, sweatshopindustries, environmental destruction, malnutritionand social decay. Not only does it assault people’shealth and well-being; more importantly, as India’sVandana Shiva points out, it “systematicallydegrades the knowledge, skills and cultural prac-tices that have made it possible for people to thrivecompletely outside of a commercial context forthousands of years” (Norberg-Hodge, 1996; Tokar,2000). The institutions of Western-style schoolingare all too often complicit in the degradation ratherthan the enhancement of local culture (Aikman,1999).

There is agreement that what the World Bank’sEducation section should be advocating is a com-pletely different approach—starting, for example,with Bank clients being assisted to undertake a sys-tematic study of the dysfunctionality of the tra-ditional Western education system, its demon-strable inability to prepare majorities adequately todeal with globalisation. Where might this lead theBank’s nation-state clients? Perhaps it will contrib-ute to a national process of designing educationsystems in a new way that can help people fightthe negatives of economic globalisation while atthe same time utilising the collaborative potentialof globalism to forge a sustainable way of life.

3. Debunking overblown claims for literacy-and-education

The Bank study groups came to the new under-standing that it is simplistic to argue, as they didin the 1999 document, that “advances in literacyand other learning may well have done more toimprove the human condition than any other publicpolicy” (p. 17). The groups realise that people are

not necessarily empowered by an undefined ‘ liter-acy and learning’ . They learn that the standard pic-ture of literacy-as-empowerment is not onlysimplistic, but is seen as dangerously misguided byscholars who have analysed literacy within itssocio-historical context in specific countries (forexample Graff, 1987; Gee, 1988). These scholarsseek both to take away the ‘crutch’ that enables usto lean on the powerful and redeeming effects ofliteracy, and to reconceptualise the role of literacyand education in history and society. Gee (1988)demonstrates from the European experience thatliteracy and education neither necessarily follow,nor necessarily stimulate, economic development.As with the history of literacy everywhere, peoplewere taught to ‘see’ meanings from the perspectiveof an authoritative institution. The way in whichliteracy has been used has been to solidify thesocial hierarchy, empower elites, and ensure thatpeople lower in the hierarchy accept the values,norms and beliefs of the elites, even when it is notin their interest to do so. In educational institutionsin the USA, as elsewhere, “ (T)wo quite differentsorts of literacy are being taught, one stressingthinking for oneself, suitable to higher positions inthe social hierarchy, and the other stressing defer-ence, suitable for lower positions” Gee (1988, pp.204–205).

Economic development is more likely to stimu-late widespread literacy and higher levels of edu-cation rather than vice versa. If economic develop-ment is thwarted by the injustices of the kind ofglobal and national capitalism, which maintainsneo-colonial structures, then educational moderniz-ation and expansion cannot be expected to be themain instrument for developing the economy. In acrisis-ridden, decaying economy, improved edu-cation will probably result in the twin problems ofeducated unemployment and a large migration ofexpensively educated people to the rich world (seeDale, 1989; Ramphal Report, 1993, pp. 238–239).Only a strong economy and polity will be able touse surplus educated people, at home and overseas,as a source of strength. This is not to say that uni-versal literacy and higher levels of education arenot important goals. Rather, it is to stress that liter-acy and increased education cannot be seen as thepanacea that will lead impoverished countries and

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societies into Western-style ‘progress’ . The fact isthat neo-colonial economies are so deeply distortedand constrained by the injustices of internationalcapitalism—deepened by the contradictions of glo-balisation—as well as by internal inefficiencies,that it would take much more than higher levels ofliteracy and education to tackle economic prob-lems.

It was a big learning curve for the Bank studygroups to realise, further, that all is not well withthe Western-style education system thatdeveloping countries inherited from their colonialeras. Expanding and improving this system maynot be the answer to problems in the way that manyBank staff seemed to take for granted. The troubleis that efforts to reform education systems, eventhe efforts supported by the World Bank, tend notto get to the heart of deeper problems whichinclude: (i) the stratification of school-based liter-acy through a curriculum and examination systemthat serves to perpetuate social inequality (ii) thefailure of the average school curriculum to com-bine general and vocational studies in such a wayas to prepare students for, and engage them in, thetasks of holistic and sustainable social and econ-omic development, and (iii) the failure of mosteducation systems to help teachers utilise the bestof pedagogical and technological possibilities toimprove the educational experience. The studygroups come to understand how the education sys-tem is stratified in terms of the literacies that areprovided for clients. This is a key step in helpingthem to reconceptualise their inadequate ideas ofthe meaning of ‘quality’ in education that was builtinto Bank policies and programs.

The Bank study groups learned not to assumethat literacy is a unitary skill of reading and writ-ing, which by itself can empower people. Instead,they came to understand it as ‘ literacies’ , a set ofdiscourses and competencies applied to tasks in agiven culture. People are initiated into these dis-courses in different ways according to their socio-economic and cultural status. Theseliteracies/discourses can be usefully conceptualisedin at least four domains—epistemic (the literaciesof formal academic knowledge with a mastery ofwritten texts), technical (procedural knowledge inareas of practical action), humanist (the literacies

of constructing positive self and culturalknowledge), and public (the ability to participate inand contribute significantly to the public, politicalsphere). Literacies are practised along a continuumthat ranges from basic, to dominant, to critical andpowerful. Education systems inculcate these, andperhaps other literacy domains, into citizens alonglines deeply stratified by social class, gender andethnicity. Through schooling, people are placed ona certain track or channel in the education hier-archy. Some are initiated by their education andupbringing into the content and techniques ofdominant literacy in each domain, and this is usedto justify their continuance in elite positions. Otherare denied this initiation. Instead, they are shuntedinto the less adequate, often grossly under-resourced and neglected education channels thatprovide subordinate literacies, which are then pen-alized as being of inferior worth and status in thesociety. When a political process is serious aboutputting in place change with equity, it has to learnhow to change the stratified nature of these liter-acies (see Hickling-Hudson, 1999a, pp. 235–236).

Changing the stratified nature of the literaciestaught through education is the nub of the problem.This obviously cannot be done by expanding theexisting model of schooling, when so many prob-lems are inherent in it. One of the Bank’s studygroups drew up a diagram something like this toshow that it would be far better to invest in makingsweeping changes throughout the school systemrather than in expanding it in all its manifest dys-functionality (Table 1).

4. Educational reform—what criteria forquality?

These exercises in analysing the weaknesses ofthe Western education model, including recognis-ing the tendency for so many US schools to beplaces of suffering and alienation for many stu-dents (Gillespie, 1999), suggest to Bank studygroups that serious barriers to change lie in the nat-ure of the current education system, and in its cur-rent context. In their discussions, they found thatit was difficult even to define how quality shouldlook in an education system in an impoverished

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Table 1Changes needed in the education system

Tradition Changes needed

The age-graded structure of schooling and lock-stepped Use media, information technology and the fine arts creativelycurriculum constrains learning within ‘average’ levels to get rid of rigidity. Move towards multi-age groupings

according to interest and competence.The ‘high stakes’ , selective and essayist examination system Provide more places to lower the exam stakes. Provide moreputs many students at a disadvantage which follows them varied assessment (for example by portfolio, media,throughout their schooling performance, quiz shows, workplace performance, inventions

etc) to develop creativity.A hierarchy of school types (ranging from elite to Make it a priority to equalise budgetary allocations and to miximpoverished) disadvantages the majority different social groupings. Perhaps establish uniquely excellent

programs and teachers in formerly poor schools?Competitiveness which benefits only a minority Use assessment to build in collaboration and teamwork in

solving local and global problems.A hierarchical administrative system deprives schools of the Mandate participatory decision-making and team workenergy and synergy of team work.The division of knowledge into separate ‘disciplines’ Reorganise curriculum around a model of multiple intelligencesdiscourages essential links between subjects (see Gardner, 1983).Access, and curricular and pedagogical practices, are still Encourage boys and girls to develop their talents in a non-gendered gendered wayAn almost exclusive emphasis on Anglo-European knowledge, a Promote multicultural and global perspectives, postcolonial andlack of respect for non-European perpectives, a lack of ‘ futures’ planetist understandings, and futures studies.thinking across the curriculum

Sources: Hickling-Hudson (1999b), Hickling-Hudson (2000a).

country, let alone how it could be implemented.They found that their 1999 definition of improvingquality (“detectable gains in the knowledge, skillsand values acquired by students” , p. 7), and theirassumptions about what would lead to educationalquality (pp. 29–35) were inadequate, because thequestion of equity was not addressed. The 1999document singled out the following areas as beinglikely to have a big impact on the quality of teach-ing and learning: expanding early childhood edu-cation, decentralizing school governance, usingnew technologies and upgrading the school cur-riculum, especially for girls and for the poorest.But it spelt out no way of determining what wouldshow that the upgraded and decentralized productand its delivery through new technologies was asgood as the education being received by studentsin the country’s traditionally best, elite schools.

Not to specify what quality meant in the rec-ommended strategies emptied the word quality ofmeaning. The 1999 document implied neither qual-ity in the sense of equity, nor quality in the senseof equality (see Farrell, 1999, pp. 158–159). It

implied, instead, a restricted idea of quality as the‘ improvement’ of the existing system, an expan-sion of education for the poor, especially for girls,making it somewhat ‘better’ than previously. TheBank study groups in our future scenario ponderedover several case studies of the problematic goalsand processes of reaching for quality and equalitythrough attempts at school improvement. Thishelped them to see the extreme difficulty, if notimpossibility, of achieving goals of reaching edu-cational quality in the current educational model,and in the context of the current global economy.For example:

� In Burkina Faso, real efforts had been made toimprove levels of literacy and upgrade class-room processes for the poorest, yet, manyschools and families had so few resources tosupport these improvements that schools oftenachieved “ little more than producing unem-ployed and poorly adapted young people…. Forthis to change, it has been estimated that anincrease of non-salary expenses of somewhere

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between 40 and 3000 times the rate spent inmany Third World contexts needs to occur”(Welch, 2000).

� In Nicaragua, education under the UNO (thepost-Sandinista government), has lost its driveto social reform. One indication is the sharpreduction in education for non-literate adults.Although the UNO stated that literacy and adulteducation were to be priorities, its actions fellfar short of its rhetoric. “ In a country whereunofficial estimates of illiteracy run over 35 per-cent, and there are over 700,000 illiterates…thecurrent budget for literacy efforts is just underUS $5,000. In 1992, the MED (Ministry ofEducation) planned to reach no more than15,000 to 25,000 adults with literacy instructionand another 10,000 with postliteracy courses”(Arnove, 2000, p. 50.)

� In Jamaica, the improvement of selected disad-vantaged schools (the ‘Reform of SecondaryEducation’ project, financed by World Bankloans) is a pilot project, with no guarantee thatfinancially strapped governments now or in thefuture will be able to expand it with equity tothe entire school system. The project abolishedthe high school Common Entrance exam(copied from the old ‘Eleven-Plus’ in Britain),and replaced it with new tests assessing a gre-atly improved curriculum. But this has notstemmed the ability of the educational systemto select out an elite minority—now about25%—for the best secondary schools (see Hic-kling-Hudson, 2000b, p. 180) and to relegate therest to schools to which no politician or pro-fessional would send their children.

The point is that cases like these show that cur-rent strategies, even if they improve educationcompared to what has gone before, will not neces-sarily lead to educational efficiency, and do notestablish anything like educational equity. Improv-ing education in the way the World Bank advocatesis token, and will almost certainly not bring aboutthe amazing outcomes of “greater economic com-petitiveness, lower poverty and inequality, strongerdemocratic institutions, and greater social stability”(World Bank, 1999, pp. 33–34) so often flagged inthe 1999 document.

Eventually the Bank educators in their studygroups reached agreement on three sets of criteriato determine the extent of quality in the educationsystem. One set of criteria was that the strategiessuggested by the 1999 document would demon-strate quality to the extent to which they coulddemonstrate equity. This means showing that theliteracies being provided at whatever level and inwhatever aspect of the system were not of a subor-dinate type, but as valuable, as dominant and aspowerful as the literacies being taught to elites.The second cluster of criteria was that that schoolswould demonstrate quality to the extent to whichthey could help students develop their ‘multipleintelligences’ along lines advocated by Gardner(1983), their ‘multiliteracies’ (Cope and Kalantzis,2000) and their ‘planetism’ (Ellyard, 1999) to suitnew conditions of learning in the global age. Thethird criterion was that schools would show thatthey were successfully combining general, techno-logical and vocational studies for all students. Allof this would, of course, necessitate a completerestructuring of the curriculum and of teacher edu-cation. It would mean not talking about qualityeducation only in terms of strategies and insti-tutions, but additionally, in terms of values, cultureand substance. Quality would integrally involveequity, in its definition. No longer would it beposed as dichotomously different, with quality onthe one hand and equity/equality on the other.

5. Different ways of supporting educationalchange.

Bank study groups learned, from their investi-gation of the comparative data about education inthe past few decades, that there is no ‘one size fitsall’ type of education system that will improveeducational provision everywhere (Farrell, 1999, p.170). They conclude that success in using edu-cational reform to promote productivity and equitydepends on several factors, such as:

� whether there is real and meaningful change inthe model of education

� the extent to which educational reform is tail-ored to the needs of particular local conditions

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� whether the economy is being strengthenedrather than weakened by global factors includ-ing the pressure of global financial agencies

� whether economic changes are creating newjobs in higher occupational categories whichwill absorb greater numbers of people beingeducated.

To help them with the work of envisaging howalternative World Bank policy in education couldlook, Bank groups studied concrete educationalexperiments which have had extraordinary success.Some impoverished countries have improved edu-cation by allowing or encouraging decentralizedexperiments in devising new models of schooling.Cuba, on the other hand, has achieved outstandingsuccess by using a centralized policy and planningapproach to bring about meaningful change in themodel of formal education.

Scholars such as Farrell (1999, pp. 170–171)point to the relative success of attempts to alterfundamentally the traditional teacher-directedmodel of schooling throughout the developingworld. These experiments, emphasising learningrather than teaching, have provided a superior edu-cational experience for highly marginalised people.The experiments have been trying different combi-nations of teachers including fully-trained and par-tially-trained teachers, para-teachers and com-munity resource people. They are using a varietyof delivery methods—radio, television, correspon-dence, and sometimes computers. Teachers andstudents are together constructing new materials.They are using multi-grade classrooms, child-centred rather than teacher-driven pedagogy, freeflows of children and adults between the schooland the community, and they are changing thecycle of the school day and year to match workand social imperatives in particular communities.Not constrained by centralised strait-jackets, theseexperiments stimulate and unleash the creativity,enthusiasm and practical knowledge of teachers.Such change programs do not tinker with adding,subtracting or changing one or two features ofexisting schools (e.g. add more textbooks, modifyassessment, give teachers a little more training)while leaving the system intact. Rather, says Far-rell, “ they represent a thorough reorganization and

a fundamental re-visioning of the standard school-ing model such that the learning program, whileoften occurring in a building called a school, is fardifferent from what we have come to expect to behappening in a school. They tend to break downthe boundaries between formal and non-formaleducation and to focus less on teaching and moreon learning. Where they have been evaluated, theresults have generally been very positive” (p. 171).Major examples include the Escuela Nueva in Col-ombia, ‘Faith and Happiness’ schools in Venzuela,the non-formal Primary Education Program of theBangladesh Rural Advancement Committee(BRAC), and community schools in Pakistan, allof which have spread from localised experimentsto thousands of communities which have embracedthem as opportunities for high-quality learning(Farrell, 1999; Arnove et al., 2000).

The Bank study groups also investigate reasonsfor the outstanding educational achievements ofschoolchildren in Cuba, a country in which theeconomy has had to struggle to survive the crip-pling blows of decades of a trade embargo imposedby hostile US administrations, and a devastatingloss of support when the Eastern bloc communisteconomy collapsed in the early 1990s. In spite ofthese hardships, the Cuban government has soeffectively restructured and supported educationthat Cuban school students ranked first in aUNESCO assessment of language and mathematicscarried out across 15 Latin American nations(UNESCO, 1998). According to a Caribbean Edu-cation Task Force of academics and governmentofficials (2000), the following are among factorswhich have contributed to the high performance ofthe Cuban educational system, and which represent‘ important lessons to be learned by other countriesin the Region’ (Table 2).

The Bank study groups came to see that the1999 document, and indeed Bank educational pol-icy over the decades, had neglected serious con-sideration of most of these factors in the strategiesrecommended to governments. Bank policy overthe years particularly neglected vocational edu-cation (Watson, 1996, p. 53). It also neglectedhigher education, including the education and pro-fessional development of teachers (Torres, 1995,pp. 9–10; Watson, 1996, p. 52). The 1999 docu-

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Table 2Factors contributing to the high performance of the Cuban educational system.

Sustained high levels of investment in educationHigh levels of non-salary expenditures: approximately 40% of the education budgetNation wide provision of low cost, high quality instructional materials, adapted to local realitiesA consistent policy environment supportive of quality educationHigh professional status of teachers; regular in-service professional development through formal and informal methodsInvolvement of teachers in applied research aimed at improving learning outcomesEmphasis on evaluation and accountability throughout the system and aimed at school improvement through identification ofproblems and formulating and implementing plans of actionA system of ‘emulation’ rather than competition in which collaboration among peers is emphasised, high performing schoolsserving as a model to othersWide stake-holder participation in school managementStrong commitment and support to rural children and those with special needs, ensuring access and provision of incentives toteachers who work in remote areasLinking school and work through ‘ labour education’ emphasis on technical vocational education (50% of students who completeGrade 9 pursue these subjects)Provision of ‘values education’ as a core subject in the curriculum.

ment continued the pattern of treating theseimportant keys to educational improvement rhe-torically rather than specifically. For example, thedocument asked rhetorically as one item on itschecklist of key interventions: “ Is adequate atten-tion being paid to linking education with the restof the country’s development?” (p. 41), but set outno strategies to develop or improve the vocationaleducation for youths and adults which wouldclearly be needed to achieve this link. Similarly,although the 1999 document mentioned supportingscholarships for the poor to go to traditionalschools (p. 34), there was little in it about helpinggovernments to support the kinds of creativeexperiments in education outlined by Farrell(1999) which, more successfully than conventionalschooling, brought basic education to the mostmarginalised groups. The document mentioned theimportance of higher education (p. 8), and theimportance of good teachers (pp. 8 & 19), butfailed to follow this up with commitment to sup-porting countries in upgrading higher educationincluding that of teachers, or the working con-ditions of teachers. Obviously this had to berethought, given the vital role to be played bynational higher education institutions in stimulat-ing the kind of education, research and develop-ment that can become the cornerstone of a coun-try’s progress (Arnove et al., 2000, p. 323;Hickling-Hudson, 2000c).

The Bank Education study groups realise thatalthough their 1999 document set out many well-meaning ideas, its weakness was that it was basedon an outdated conceptualisation of education.They agree that a new framework is needed forthinking about ways in which they can influenceand support educational change in the countriesimpoverished by the workings of global capitalism.First, they decide to state their support for thoseWorld Bank trends, embodied by Zwelitsha’sdynamic work, to move out of its disastrouslyeconomistic mind set, and towards making theBank more responsive to balancing economic andsocial development. This is a background for theiragreement to cease their uncritical advocacy of themisleading ideas of human capital theory whichsees education as serving one narrow economicmodel rather than broader humanist goals, and asbeing correlated with outcomes that it cannot poss-ibly guarantee. Next, they decide to state that theywill be encouraging and supporting nation statesand global agencies to explore and develop newparadigms of educational change which will bemore likely to tackle problems than the old para-digms of nineteenth century education. This isbased on their recognition that the postmodern erais, as Aviram (1996) argues, making the traditionaleducation system obsolete and old educationalinstitutions dysfunctional. The most fundamentalaspects of education are being challenged by post-

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modern thinking and circumstances. The aims ofindividualism and old ideas of the ‘good life’ areunder question, the target audience is unclear sincethe distinction between childhood and adulthood isless sharp, traditional curriculum content isincreasingly irrelevant, methods based on booksand writing have to compete with a range of modesof electronic communication, and educationalorganisations need no longer be hierarchical orspatially fixed. Education leaders who develop neweducational strategies on the basis of these under-standings are the ones who can help pull othersinto new educational paradigms which can meetthe challenges of the future in ways explored byBeare and Slaughter (1996); Aviram (1996); Sar-dar (1996); Lankshear (1997); Luke (2000) andHickling-Hudson (2000b). Only then will edu-cation systems be more likely to be able to movetowards achieving these overall goals of quality:

� getting rid of the subordinate literacies for themajority built into the stratified educationalstructure

� ensuring that education provides not only formultiliteracies and the multiple intelligences ofstudents, but also that it provides dominant andpowerful literacies for all

� restructuring the curriculum so that all studentsare required as a matter of course to combinegeneral and vocational education in ways thatrelate to economic, environmental and socialimprovement

Whatever strategies it takes for impoverishedsocieties to reach these goals are the ones that theWorld Bank education loans and grants shouldsupport. Thanks to the program of study andreflection, Bank educators decided to meet thechallenge of reinventing themselves as educatorscollaborating with their national clients in lookingto the future in these ways, rather than remainingwedded to the outmoded and dysfunctional insti-tutions and strategies of the neo-colonial past.

6. Conclusion

This essay has used the device of imaginingEducation staff at the World Bank engaging in

study and discussion that could put them on thepath of rethinking their 1999 Education SectorStrategy document. The conclusion of the essay isthe time to admit the obvious—that this rethinkingreflects my own views on educational reform incountries impoverished by the world economicsystem. I do not wish to be dogmatic about thesequence of arguments that I have advocated, butrather to put them forward as ‘game openings’inviting dialogue, in the manner in which Foucault(1981) advocates putting forward propositions. Myobservations are based on the vast disparities thatI see when I travel, as I do regularly, between edu-cation systems in wealthy countries such as Aus-tralia and the USA and impoverished ones such asmany of those in the Caribbean, my region of ori-gin. It is these disparities and contradictions,explained in the literature that I have cited, thatlead me to agree with the stance that seekers ofglobal change with equity need to try to engagewith the World Bank by suggesting how it couldbetter use its vast resources, rather than just critiqu-ing its activities.

My engagement asks Bank educators to considerthe proposition that the strategies that they areadvocating might well improve conventional edu-cation minimally, but will fail to bring about eithereducational efficiency or a high quality curriculumthat meets the ‘planetist’ needs of new times(Ellyard, 1999). This is not only because the edu-cation model itself is flawed. It is also because theeconomic model that global economic agenciessuch as Bank and the IMF are enforcing evenfurther saps the economies of countries which,recently emerging from a debilitating colonialism,are not strong enough to be flung into the deep endof neo-conservatism. The tearing down of protec-tion for infant industries, thus destroying most ofthem, and the truncation of the social responsi-bilities of government suit the rich who havealready built up their industries through protection,not those who are late starters. As Ellyard (1999,p. 36) points out, the successful Asian economies“have long-term vision that is directed towardsindustrial development programs which involvedhigh levels of government intervention” . The glo-balisation of an individualistic, Wall-Street type ofcapitalism is not only harming economies, it is also

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having disastrous consequences for social and eco-logical environments. Human capital theory is seri-ously deficient in assuming that if only the tra-ditional education system inherited fromcolonialism were to be strengthened, it would pre-pare people effectively for a competitive globaleconomy, thus magically ensuring outcomes suchas material sufficiency, harmony and socialcohesion. A good education strategy means littlewithout an economic strategy in which the WorldBank helps governments implement policies thatcreate more and better jobs, not relying entirely onthe market to do so, that envisions a much largerrole for the public sector, and that encourages pro-gressive taxation to fund social safety nets andresearch and development initiatives.

The World Bank education sector could, indeed,use its vast resources more effectively. It couldstart by defining quality in education as theaddressing of equity issues through the de-stratifi-cation of literacies, in the manner argued above.It could learn much more from the strategies andphilosophies of groups (such as the BRACpractitioners), agencies including NGOs, and coun-tries (such as Cuba) which have organised for edu-cational success in the face of adversity. It couldcontribute to financing more South–Southcooperation. It could help provide national clientswith the funds and expertise to make basic and pri-mary education more flexible and creative, com-bine sophisticated levels of general andvocational/technological secondary education forall, and expand higher education systems in a waywhich educates large proportions of their popu-lations, enhances research and applies it to econ-omic and social development combined with theconservation of the environment. All of this shouldbe carried out within the overall framework ofhelping countries to develop post-industrial edu-cational paradigms and structures that would achi-eve culturally sensitive educational change appro-priate for the challenges of the new global age.

Acknowledgement

The author completed this paper while on aresearch fellowship at the School of Education,University of Queensland, St Lucia, Brisbane.

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