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 that produce results. The aim is to help countries achieve universal primary education and quality learning for all while responding to the need for skills and knowledge 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 less than US$2 billion lent in FY08, US$1.2 billion was on IDA (International Development Association) terms.
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 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 75 million children. Globally, primary school completion rates have risen to 86 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 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 264 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 in the education sector may slow down in the coming years 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 years to come. 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 that are essential for national growth and competitiveness. Specifically, the Bank seeks to help countries achieve a number of goals. Quality 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 and Knowledge for Growth and Competitiveness. Provide education that 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. The Bank supports improving education through the more appropriate and effective use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) and building science, technology and innovation capacity to reduce poverty, generate wealth and enhance competitiveness.
Education Systems for Results. Develop education systems that produce results by examining the relationship between policies, systemic change, and institutional strengthening on the one hand, and educational and labor market outcomes on the other. The Bank works with countries to develop the tools and knowledge to improve learning outcomes through accountability, governance, effective financing and system-wide reforms. Impact evaluations enable the evaluation of country reforms and help countries to 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. At the end of FY 08, the Bank’s education portfolio consisted of 140 operations in 92 countries, amounting to US$7.4 billion in net commitments. The amount adds up to just under a quarter of all external financing for education. New education commitments in FY08 accounted for 8.2 percent of total World Bank lending. The largest amount of education lending in FY08 was to the South Asia Region which accounted for 37 percent of total World Bank lending in education. 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. The Bank produces a number of sector analyses and 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. The Bank’s analytical work has contributed to global knowledge and helped individual countries design and implement successful reforms in areas including the following. 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.
School-to-work transition. The Bank works with countries to help improve the link between education policy and labor market outcomes.
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 is a partner with a number of key education initiatives and programs. The Bank continues to play an important role in the Education for All-Fast Track Initiative (FTI) 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$1.3 billion in pledges, and the Education Program Development Fund, which has pledges of US$ 96 million aimed at helping countries with strategy development and capacity building. As of August 2008, 35 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). Resource mobilization is a key priority for FTI, given the need to scale up investments to ensure access for all and, importantly, improvements in education quality. The needs are greater, growing, and longer term in nature than resources currently committed. Also a high priority for FTI is a focus on results, with significant efforts needed to ensure that Education Sector Plans and FTI Trust-Funded programs identify interventions to support improved learning outcomes, without which the benefits of education will not be realized. Preliminary estimates indicate that primary education funding to low-income countries with endorsed FTI sector plans may require at least an additional US$1 billion this year. 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. 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 Media Contact: Phil Hay: (202) 473-1796 phay@worldbank.org Updated October 2008 |
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