AT A GLANCE: - Education is central to development; it empowers people and strengthens nations. It is one of the most powerful instruments for reducing poverty and inequality and helps lay a foundation for sustained economic growth. It is at the center of the World Bank’s mission of poverty reduction.
- The Bank helps countries integrate education into national economic strategies and develop holistic and balanced education systems which produce results. The aim is to help countries achieve universal primary education and learning for all while responding to the need for skills necessary for national growth and competitiveness.
- The World Bank’s began lending to education in 1963 and today is the world’s largest source of external financing to the education sector of the developing world. For the past five years, the Bank has averaged about US$2 billion per year in loans, credits, and grants to support education (double that of the previous five years). Of the slightly more than US$2 billion lent in FY07, US$1.6 million was on IDA (International Development Association) terms; projections for FY 08 show a similar trend.
- Apart from its lending activities in education, the Bank continues to take a lead role in many countries in terms of policy advice, sector analysis, and aid coordination. It is also a major player in various international education partnerships such as the Education For All Fast Track Initiative (EFA FTI). The Bank’s particular comparative advantage is promoting education’s links to economic growth.
Summary of Key Issues in Education
The pace of primary school enrollment and completion has accelerated globally in recent years. The number of primary school-aged children not able to attend school has decreased by more than 25 percent over the last seven years and stands at an estimated 72 million children. Globally, primary school completion rates have risen to 88 percent from 84 percent just five years earlier. This success owes much to the international focus on increasing access to education brought about by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). At the mid point, progress is being made in the achievement of the education MDGs of full primary completion and gender equity. The Bank and other donors have directly contributed by promoting better policies and leveraging more resources for education. But progress has been uneven; where it has taken place it has been founded on country commitments to internationally established Education For All (EFA) goals and improved policies. While some countries have made significant advances, fewer than half of IDA-eligible countries are on track to achieve their MDGs in education. The majority of countries not on track to are in Africa. About 35 fragile states hold 37 percent of all out of school children and inequities within countries such as poverty, gender, regional disparities and ethnic identity greatly impact a child’s chances of attending school. However, gains in access and in completion rates are insufficient if the education that many children receive is of low quality. Education quality should be seen equally as important as access to school. Studies show that quality is, in fact, the key determinant of the impact of education on economic growth and is essential for sustaining the gains achieved in education access. More attention by governments and donors is needed to make sure that, once in school, all children gain the skills and aptitudes that will allow them to participate successfully in the global economy. Today, both national and international assessments reveal pervasively low education achievement in most developing countries. Improving education quality is a priority for governments and donors in nearly all countries. Yet, many low-income countries lack the capacity to assess what their children are learning and how to monitor progress over time.
A combination of increased primary education completion and globalization is creating increased demand for secondary and tertiary education. An estimated 260 million adolescents of secondary school age are currently not enrolled in school. The need for increased investment in the expansion and quality of secondary and tertiary education cannot be ignored and should not be delayed until primary enrollment has been achieved. Progress may slowdown over time as those children currently not in school are often the most difficult to reach and issues regarding education quality and increased access to post-basic education still require much work and additional donor and local commitment. Increased resources will be even more important in the coming years. World Bank Support for Education
The Bank promotes the integration of education into national economic strategies and the development of holistic and balanced education systems that focus on learning outcomes. We aim to help countries achieve universal primary education and learning for all while responding to the need for skills essential for national growth and competitiveness. Specifically, the Bank seeks to help countries achieve: - Learning For All - Provide quality basic education, which serves as a minimum threshold for poverty reduction and a foundation for further education and training with an aim to help “on track” countries sustain their progress, and help jump-start those countries that need to do better. The Bank supports better measurement of learning, a key incentive to help countries focus on the issue of low quality education, and works to reach those hardest to reach such as children living in fragile states, those marginalized due to poverty, gender, ethnicity, or those afflicted by HIV/AIDS.
- Skills for Growth and Competitiveness - Provide education which creates a skilled and productive labor force leading to economic productivity and competitiveness, knowledge generation, and increased earning potential. The Bank helps countries’ link education policy to labor market outcomes and works with countries to meet a rapidly growing demand for secondary, tertiary, and vocational education as more people require skills with which to compete in a global economy.
- Education Systems for Results – Work with countries to promote the development of education systems which produce results. The Bank works with countries to implement reforms which have been proven successful and through impact evaluations and helps countries better measure the impact of their interventions.
Financial assistance: The World Bank continues to be the world’s largest source of external support to the education sector; in several countries the Bank is the only significant source of support. Over the past five years, Bank lending for education has remained at a steady US$2 billion per year, about half of that on IDA terms. An increasing share of education lending—now approximately a quarter—is provided through multi-sector investment projects and multi-sector development policy loans. As of April 1, 2008, the Bank’s education portfolio consisted of 135 operations in 92 countries, amounting to US$7.1 billion in net commitments. The amount adds up to just under a quarter of all external financing for education. New commitments in FY07 accounted for 8.2 percent of total World Bank lending.
In FY 08 the Bank expects to lend about US$2 billion for education, with almost half of this lending on IDA terms. Projections show that the amount of lending on IDA terms will be greatest in the South Asia Region in FY 08. It is urgent to increase Bank lending to education in coming years if there is any hope of making significant progress toward both achieving the MDGs and improving the quality of programs.
Policy advice and analytical support: In addition to financing and leadership in the sector, Bank lending for education is accompanied by substantial analytical work, knowledge sharing, capacity building, and policy advice. The Bank produces about two dozen major pieces of education sector work each year and numerous policy notes, publications and strategy papers. In addition to sector analysis, the Bank specializes in analytical work – such as poverty assessments, expenditure reviews, and competitiveness studies – that puts education into a broader context and links it to other sectors (health, HIV/AIDS, governance reform, etc.). Analysis is carried out in close collaboration with countries and development partners, both to build capacity for analysis and to build home-grown ownership for reform. A brief listing of topics on which the Bank’s analytical work has contributed to global knowledge and helped individual countries design and implement successful reforms include: - Quality of Education and Learning Outcomes: Recent research has helped link the quality of education with economic growth.
- Reaching poor children through demand-side financing: The Bank is helping countries to design targeted subsidies to get and keep disadvantaged children in school, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia.
- Impact evaluation: the Bank provides significant support for rigorous impact evaluations in education, to generate stronger evidence about what works under different country conditions.
- School-based management: the Bank has been at the forefront of efforts to bring decision-making closer to the service-delivery level in dozens of countries.
- Reduction of school fees: the Bank’s analytical work and policy dialogue, both in education and on fiscal management, have encouraged governments to reduce or eliminate fees at the primary level – a policy measure which is often key to increasing education access for the poor and for girls.
Partnership with donors: In addition to its own lending, the Bank continues to play a pivotal role in the Education for All-Fast Track Initiative partnership. FTI’s mandate is to promote coherent education sector strategies, better policies, more effective education spending, and an increased volume of better-harmonized aid from donors. The Bank hosts the FTI Secretariat and is the trustee for the FTI Catalytic Fund which totals US$1.3 billion in pledges and the Education Program Development Fund which has additional pledges of US$ 91 million aimed at helping countries with strategy development and capacity building. As of March 2008, 33 countries were fully endorsed by the partnership, of which 27 are receiving Catalytic Fund support for implementation. Overall a total of 60 countries are receiving support through FTI’s capacity building fund (the Education Program Development Fund). However, funding shortfalls jeopardize donor credibility and the scaling up of further investments to ensure access for all and more importantly improvements in education quality. While recent commitments to the FTI Trust Funds represent a significant step forward, the needs are greater, growing, and longer term in nature than resources currently committed. Preliminary need estimates received from countries indicate that an additional US$ 1 billion could be needed for FTI countries in FY08. Aside from financing issues, the Bank is working closely with donors and the FTI Secretariat to manage the evolution of the FTI partnership. Key issues relate to FTI’s role in relation to IDA and the need to build FTI’s quality assurance and monitoring mechanisms. Results focus: The Bank’s 2005 Education Sector Strategy Update committed the Bank to improving its results focus in education. Actions taken to advance this agenda include creating indicators and a database for the education MDGs, maintaining an education statistics database, carrying out impact evaluations and a renewed focus on the measurement of learning outcomes in most World Bank-supported operations. FTI has also established benchmarks in the areas of education access and government financial effort. A critical challenge in most developing countries is to build country capacity for measuring progress on learning outcomes. While over 80 percent of Bank-funded projects provide support for improving the quality of education programs, only about 20 percent of projects include baselines with which to systematically monitor learning achievement. Building the capacity to undertake educational measurement will be one of the Bank’s top priorities in education in the coming years. ###
For more information, visit the World Bank Education website: www.worldbank.org/education Updated April 2008 Media Contacts:
Phil Hay: (202) 473-1796, Email: phay@worldbank.org |
