The SAGE Encyclopedia of World Poverty World Bank New Education Strategy Contributors: Amitabh Vikram Dwivedi Edited by: Mehmet Odekon Book Title: The SAGE Encyclopedia of World Poverty Chapter Title: "World Bank New Education Strategy" Pub. Date: 2015 Access Date: May 6, 2017 Publishing Company: SAGE Publications, Inc City: Thousand Oaks Print ISBN: 9781483345703 Online ISBN: 9781483345727 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781483345727.n872 Print pages: 1712-1713 ©2015 SAGE Publications, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This PDF has been generated from SAGE Knowledge. Please note that the pagination of the online version will vary from the pagination of the print book. SAGE SAGE Reference Contact SAGE Publications at http://www.sagepub.com. In the past five decades, the World Bank has made substantial contributions to the development of education, such as building secondary schools in Tunisia in 1962, investing $69 billion globally in 1,500 educational projects, and setting Millennium Development Goals. All these efforts indicate that the World Bank is investing in people’s skills and knowledge to promote development. The World Bank realizes that education is fundamental to growth and development, and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights noted that access to education is a basic human right. Since a sound mind makes a sound body, the World Bank directs developing countries to unleash the potential of the human mind. The World Bank Group’s (WBG) agenda for achieving “learning for all” is the focus of New Education Strategy 2020. A slight pragmatic derivation in the motto states it is now “learning” and not “schooling” for all. Earlier, the World Bank significantly achieved the goal of getting millions of children around the world, particularly from poorer countries, into schools. Moving a step forward, the WBG is committed to achieve Education for All (EFA) and the education Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The main focus is on what individuals learn from primary school through the job market both in and out of school. Over the past 49 years the development plans of the World Bank have seen great educational advances, including improved gender equality in education, an increase in the enrollment of children in schools, and success in keeping children in schools. The out-of-school numbers of children have fallen from 106 million in 1999 to 68 million in 2008. The girls’ ratio in primary and secondary education has improved from 84 to 96 percent between 1991 and 2007. Moreover, the average enrollment rates at the primary level of education have increased above 80 percent and the completion rates above 60 percent. Achieving great advances in education motivates the World Bank to fight for greater challenges ahead. The gender gap prevails, with tens of millions of children still out of school. Though the children have gained access to education, the challenge is to improve the quality of education and to accelerate learning. In its last strategy of 2000, the World Bank invested in better evaluation of program impacts and improved its orientation and results measurement. It also innovated financing through pooled funding and performance-based instruments, and recognized the role of the private sector in education. The new education strategy aims to build its objectives by incorporating the previous changes, along with instruments and strategic directions for implementing them. Objective of the New Education Strategy Individuals grow when they apply their acquired skills and knowledge to their jobs. Adapting to new technologies determines a person’s productivity. The new strategy gives importance to growth, development, and poverty reduction through increasing the level of learning in school. The current focus on learning is important as measurements show that learning levels in many developing countries are very low, especially among poorer countries. In poor learning environments, the skills individuals learned were rudimentary, and one-quarter to half of the young people were not able to read a single sentence. The 2009 results of the Programme for International Student Assessment indicated that many developing countries are lagging behind the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average, despite a few exceptions, such as the performance of Shanghai, China. Page 2 of 4 The SAGE Encyclopedia of World Poverty SAGE SAGE Reference Contact SAGE Publications at http://www.sagepub.com. The World Bank emphasizes that learning needs to be encouraged in primary education in and out of school. Investments in prenatal health and early childhood programs will be made to realize that a growing brain requires nurturing long before formal education starts between the ages of 6 and 7. In the initial level of schooling, quality education is critical for providing children the foundational skills of literacy and numeracy on which learning can advance. The majority of students drop out of school during adolescence, as many students leave school to work or to marry. Considering nonformal education another fertile period of learning, nonformal learning opportunities are to be provided as a second chance so that young people can acquire skills for the labor market. Access to education remains a major challenge for disadvantaged populations, especially women and girls, at all the levels—primary, secondary, and tertiary—with an increasing demand for the latter two levels. The new strategy, adopting the objective of learning for all, elevates the education MDGs by linking them to the universally shared objective of accelerating learning. The WBG’s strategy is to invest early, invest smartly, and invest for all. “Invest early” directs that foundational skills are to be learned at the preprimary level. Quality investments need to be made to contribute to learning. “Invest for all” includes learning for both genders and for both the privileged and the disadvantaged. New Education Strategy for Reforms The World Bank Group will focus on supporting reform of educational systems at the country level. In these, the WBG will move beyond simply providing inputs and will ensure that inputs are used more effectively to accelerate learning. The new system approach will complement the inputs and increase accountability. The goal of learning for all will strengthen education systems, aligning them with governance, management of schools and teachers, incentive mechanisms, and financing rules. To achieve this, the World Bank will focus on system reforms through technical and financial aid that promotes learning outcomes. The mantra for this agenda is to “analyze globally and act locally.” The World Bank will help develop a high standard knowledge base on education reform at the regional and global levels. The new knowledge approaches, developed by the World Bank, will help direct education reform. If, in a country, a higher proportion of available jobs require higher-level skills, then the priority is to be given to improve quality assurance and financing for advanced- level education skills for the development of the workforce. The knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of a particular education system will help the bank actively respond to the needs of a particular country. Implementation of New Education Strategy The World Bank Group will focus on three areas—knowledge generation and exchange, technical and financial support, and strategic partnerships—to implement the new strategy. Knowledge generation and exchange is necessary for increasing the effectiveness of expenditure in a country’s education. The knowledge will help guide the countries’ technical and financial support. The strategic partnerships within the World Bank, World Group, and the International Finance Corporation, at both the country and international levels, will improve education systems. The success will be measured by employing various performance, outcome, and impact indicators. All these efforts will be fruitful when children and young people learn and improve their lives, and consequently the countries across the globe will prosper. Page 3 of 4 The SAGE Encyclopedia of World Poverty SAGE SAGE Reference Contact SAGE Publications at http://www.sagepub.com. Amitabh Vikram Dwivedi Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University See Also:Children Out of School; Dropout Rates; Education, Early Childhood; Education, Primary; Education, Secondary; Education, Tertiary; Education and Opportunity; Education Equity; Education Millennium Development Goals; World Bank. Further Readings Gore, Tim, and Mary Stiasny. Going Global: Identifying Trends and Drivers of International Education. Bingley, UK: Emerald Group, 2013. Wiseman, Alexander W., and Christopher Collins. Education Strategy in the Developing World: Revising the World Bank’s Education Policy. Bradford, UK: Emerald Group, 2012. W o r l d B a n k G r o u p . “ W o r l d B a n k E d u c a t i o n S t r a t e g y 2 0 2 0 . ” http://web.worldbank.org/wbsite/external/topics/exteducation/0,,contentmdk:22474207~menup k:282402~pagepk:210058~pipk:210062~thesitepk:282386,00.html (Accessed May 2014). Amitabh Vikram Dwivedi Shri Mata Vaishno Devi University http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781483345727.n872 10.4135/9781483345727.n872 Page 4 of 4 The SAGE Encyclopedia of World Poverty