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CODE Chairman's Summary
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As one of the Board of Executive Directors' standing committees, the Committee on Development Effectiveness (CODE) monitors and assesses the Bank Group's effectiveness in fulfilling its development mandate. The Committee reviews the work of the Independent Evaluation Group for the World Bank Group, Management's Responses thereon, and select reports from Management to satisfy itself that the operations evaluation and self-evaluation activities are adequate and efficient. The committee also prepares for Board consideration select operations evaluations, draft strategies and policies, other high-priority development effectiveness issues, and monitors the implementation of Board decisions to ensure that the overall objective of poverty reduction is being served.
 World Bank Board of Executive Director website |
On July 5, 2006, the Committee on Development Effectiveness (CODE) met to discuss the report From Schooling Access to Learning Outcomes: An Unfinished Agenda—An Evaluation of World Bank Support to Primary Education, prepared by the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG), and the Draft Management Response. The Statements of the External Advisory Panel (CODE2006-0063) on the IEG report were circulated as a background document.
Background
A World Bank Education Sector Strategy, prepared in 1999, highlighted basic education for the poorest and for girls; early childhood interventions; innovative delivery; and systemic reform. On June 15, 2005, CODE discussed an Update of the 1999 Sector Strategy Paper ( Draft Education Sector Strategy Update (ESSU): Broadening Perspective, Maximizing Our Effectiveness ), which was later endorsed by the Board. It highlighted three strategic themes to help the Bank meet the diverse challenges facing the sector: (a) integrating education into a countrywide perspective; (b) broadening the strategic agenda through a sector-wide approach; and (c) becoming more results-oriented. The updated strategy focused on helping client countries (i) attain the Education for All (EFA) and the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and (ii) strengthen education for the knowledge economy, by building higher skills and knowledge needed to compete in global markets and foster economic growth. The report The World Bank’s Assistance to Primary Education—An OED Portfolio Review was prepared in 2004 as an input into the preparation of the Bank’s strategy and circulated for information and as background material for its discussion by CODE. The current report From Schooling Access to Learning Outcomes: An Unfinished Agenda is aimed at informing the implementation of the ESSU (2005).
IEG evaluation
The evaluation broadly covers the 1963–2005 period, with an emphasis on the last 15 years, in which lending for primary education amounted to about $14 billion. IEG makes three key recommendations: - Primary education efforts need to focus on improving learning outcomes, particularly among the poor and other disadvantaged children.
- Efforts are urgently needed to improve the performance of sector management in the countries assisted by the Bank in order to improve learning outcomes.
- The Bank needs to encourage the EFA–Fast-Track Initiative (FTI) to strengthen its focus on raising learning outcomes in parallel with the MDG emphasis on primary completion.
Draft management response
Overall, management welcomes IEG’s evaluation and agrees with most IEG recommendations. It suggests, however, that the Bank assistance has evolved over time toward more emphasis on results (education system outputs, instructional quality, learning outcomes). In this vein, management believes the case studies examined in the IEG review demonstrate that the Bank is addressing the right issues, and that the report reflects the trend in Bank support for educational quality and reforms in governance and management to address quality.
Overall conclusions
The Committee broadly endorsed the IEG findings and recommendations and welcomed management’s constructive and forward-looking draft response, noting that the recently approved ESSU focuses on education quality and results. It also appreciated the staff comments on country experiences, and was encouraged by the current innovative works that are undertaken in the Regions to enhance the focus on quality and learning outcomes. There was broad agreement on the importance of learning outcomes, while equal access, particularly for girls and other disadvantaged children, remained relevant. In this regard, members took note of IEG’s recommendations to encourage EFA-FTI to strengthen its focus on improving learning outcomes and universal completion in its partner countries. They commented on the challenges ahead to achieve the MDG calling for universal completion of primary education by 2015.
Overall, there was support for taking a more comprehensive approach to education, as emphasized in the ESSU. Such approach would include greater integration of multisectoral factors affecting school attendance and learning such as infrastructure (that is, the roads, electricity, transportation) and student health and nutrition, as well as more attention to post-primary options (that is, vocational and technical education), and links to the labor market and demand for skills in a knowledge economy. Members noted the need to further strengthen Bank support to improve education sector management and governance, while understanding the country political and institutional dimensions. Other comments related to the high number of primary education initiatives supported through multisectoral projects, including development policy lending (DPL) and sectorwide approaches (SWAps); availability of financial and human resources; private sector participation; the role of teachers; and measurement and results in the education sector. The issue of communication and dissemination of the IEG report, the opinions of the External Advisory Panel and the draft management response were also addressed. In this regard, the need to externally communicate balanced messages emerging from the IEG report to avoid misinterpretations was underlined.
Next steps
Management will introduce in fiscal year 2007 a Quality Review Framework for education programs and report annually on the degree to which lending and analytic activities measure school outcomes. It will also publish and disseminate at least three impact evaluations, a set of guidelines for establishing a system for measuring and reporting on learning outcomes, and two toolkits for rapid reading assessments and school-based management. The Bank and its FTI development partners will continue working with the 20 currently endorsed FTI countries to help them implement a rapid reading assessment and track implemented hours of instruction.
Members raised the following issues during the meeting:
General comments
Speakers welcomed the different perspectives of the External Advisory Panel. Although a few speakers commented on the timing of the IEG report in relation to the Bank’s ESSU, it was also noted that earlier versions of the report had been shared and discussed with Bank staff, which served as an instrumental input to the ESSU. One member asked about the budget implications of implementing the IEG recommendations. Others felt the evaluation report could have had more detailed analysis of different approaches to improve primary education, structured according to different categories of countries, for example, low-income and middle-income countries, or in urban and rural areas. IEG commented that the report gives broad suggestions on the kinds of intervention needed for countries at different levels of development but suggests that solutions must be customized to meet unique country conditions.
Overall support for primary education
Several members noted that some countries are currently halfway on the road to achieving the MDGs. They urged the international community to accelerate progress to reach the universal completion of primary education by 2015. Management reiterated its support to the achievement of the MDGs. Some members noted the shortfall in financial resources, including for the EFA-FTI, to support the achievement of the MDG in primary education. Some speakers also noted the need to consider the private sector role, fiscal space for education, and sustainability issues in the long term. The importance of coordination and partnership with other donors was emphasized.
Expanding access and strengthening learning outcomes
The Committee discussion also addressed the complementary nature of education access and quality and the challenges of doing both. Members strongly emphasized the importance of ensuring quality education for all children. At the same time, a few speakers commented on potential tradeoffs between education access and quality, and proposed more research on how to address access/quality tensions; one member cautioned against a wholesale shift away from equity of access. Some speakers observed that expanding access and improving quality will require increased unit costs in reaching EFA goals in country programs supported by the Bank. Others asked about the timing and sequencing to provide education support. In the opinion of one member, costly tradeoffs, while scaling up outcomes, could be avoided through scaling up resources and improving efficiency. Another member commented that it was too early to assess the impact of ESSU on project design and implementation including increased attention to learning outcomes. One member felt that key factors to good quality education such as the classroom (more precisely, what happens in the classroom—school books, other learning materials, incentives for pedagogic innovation, etc.) need to be better analyzed and addressed.
Education sector management
A number of speakers emphasized the important role of teachers in improving education quality and the need to consider teachers’ training, accreditation, and performance incentives. A member thought that the IEG report could have provided more analysis of performance of teachers, both regular and contract. IEG commented that the report includes references to adequate teacher supply and incentives and issues regarding the sustainability of contract teachers. A few members stressed that the Bank’s interventions should be focused on institutional reform, particularly on the reform of labor market for public school teachers. At a broader level, some members noted that more efforts were needed to enhance countries’ sector management and governance through DPL and SWAps, while recognizing the challenges associated with cultural, institutional, and political dimensions. Other speakers also noted the importance of data and assessment tools for decision making and strong ownership for reforms. A few questions were asked about the effects of decentralization on education management and the fragmentation of education management capacity building in Africa.
Bank operations
Several speakers noted the growing share of lending for primary education through multisectoral projects. One member welcomed this trend, while others asked whether there were any differences in learning outcomes of education components in multisectoral projects compared to single-sector education projects. IEG commented that it was too early to assess differences in terms of learning outcomes, and moreover, very few such components had learning outcomes as primary objectives. A member was interested in the impact of Bank support in the form of recurrent financing for primary education, while another member noted the risk of aid dependence.
| Pietro Veglio
Chairman |
The Independent Evaluation Group (IEG)is an independent unit within the World Bank; it reports directly to the Bank's Board of Executive Directors. The goals of IEG 's evaluations are to draw lessons from Bank experience, and to provide an objective basis for assessing the results of the Bank's work.
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