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| Education
For All: Investing in a better Future |
| By
Matis O. Rourke |
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|
 Ten
years ago, governments all over the world made a number of
commitments at Jomtien aimed at increasing the knowledge and
skills of their populations. Amongst other things, they set
the year 2000 as the time by which all their young citizens
should be able to complete basic education.
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| After
ten years, we are now looking back to assess what we have achieved,
and looking forward to chart our path into the future to reach
the goal of "Education for All." |
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| Developing
countries have experienced extraordinary progress in education
and the social sectors generally in the past three decades -
more so than in any prior period in human history. The greatest
successes have been in access to schooling. Despite these achievements,
major challenges remain: to increase access to education in
some countries, to enhance equity, and to improve quality -
due in part to the pressure of high population growth. Still,
125 million children aged between 6 and 11 have no access to
education as we enter the new millennium. Many more attend school
without completing the primary grades, and still others have
an educational experience lacking in quality. This has hampered
efforts to build up the capacity needed in communities to become
informed and competitive, to close the digital divide that separates
developing from developed countries, and thereby to reduce poverty. |
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| The
World Bank and Education |
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| The
Bank's advantages in education, as in its other work, include:
the global and cross-country knowledge that it can mobilize
and bring to bear; the people and expertise it can dedicate
to vital and often difficult policy and implementation tasks;
and the finance it can assemble from its own and others' resources.
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| The
overarching priority of World Bank support to education is to
provide the world's poorest with opportunities for learning.
We see the Education For All goals as an important tool for
focusing the attention of governments, donor agencies, non-governmental
organizations and ourselves on doing this, particularly, for
basic education. |
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| At
the Jomtien conference in 1990 the Bank committed itself to
doubling its lending for education. This goal has been achieved.
In absolute terms, education lending has increased from an annual
average of $ 918.7 million in the period 1986-1990 to $ 1,910.8
million for 1991-99. In the post-Jomtien period of 1991-1999
an average of 8.2% of the Bank's lending has been directed to
education compared to 4.8% of the pre-Jomtien period of 1986-1990. |
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| The
World Bank's commitment to Jomtien is further evident in the
increased attention that lending for basic education has received.
The percentage of basic education to total education lending
has risen from 27% in the 1986-90 period to 44% during 1991-99
following Jomtien, due to the Education for All directives. |
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The
World Bank has played a role in education that has been global
and focused on long-term results. Its particular contribution
in the past decade was in
- improving
the world wide collection of educational statistics,
- improving country's evaluation and assessment systems,
- providing significant technical expertise to the EFA Global
Technical Advisory Group (GTAG) and development of robust
EFA indicators,
- encouraging innovative approaches to delivery of education,
- actively sharing knowledge,
- supporting targeted efforts on improving girls' access
to education and
- supporting targeted efforts on improving quality of education
in Africa.
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| Partners
in Education |
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| Given
the present education scenario, governments can be more effective
when they work together with NGOs and local stakeholders, with
the support of bilateral and multilateral development agencies.
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| During
the past ten years, UNESCO, UNICEF and the World Bank joined
hands with governments, donor agencies, and NGOs, to move forward
with the goal of education for all. United Nations organizations
-- including UNESCO, UNICEF, UNFPA, and UNDP -regional development
banks and a range of professional bodies have also pursued this
goal with dedication. |
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| The
entities involved in education have a wide range of different
comparative advantages and strengths, such as strong presence
on the ground, good local knowledge and cultural understanding,
ready access to global knowledge, special expertise or a unique
mandate, the natural authority of being the families and communities
most affected, the ability to convene stakeholders, the political
power to bring about change, and the capacity to mobilize resources
including finance. |
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| Technology
and Education: The Changing Scenario |
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| Changing
technology and economic reforms are creating dramatic shifts
in the structure of societies, polities and economies throughout
the world. The rapid increase in knowledge, the pace of changing
technology and improved communications pose new challenges and
opportunities also for education. The technological advances
of the years ahead will provide people with virtually unlimited
access to information. In the hyper-competitive global market
economy, knowledge is rapidly replacing raw materials and labor
as the input most critical for survival and success. |
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| The
revolution in information technology will provide unprecedented
opportunities to change the nature of education itself. New
ways to expand access and improve quality - and fundamentally
rethink what should be learned and how - will become widely
available at affordable costs. The "digital divide" between
developed and developing countries is now large, but it does
not have to widen since poorer countries can acquire the developed
world's technologies at much lower costs than they used to be
when they were devised. |
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| The
stakes are high. The choices that countries make today about
education could lead to sharply divergent outcomes in the decades
ahead. Countries that respond astutely should experience extraordinary
progress in education, with major social and economic benefits,
including "catch-up" gains for the poor and marginalized. Countries
that fail to recognize and respond risk stagnating or even slipping
backwards, widening social and economic gaps and sowing the
seeds of unrest. |
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| Unfortunately,
many developing countries are failing to keep pace with external
changes and many others are failing to harmonize internal changes.
There is a lack of preparedness to face these new challenges
and make use of the new opportunities in the field of education.
Many, if not most, education systems are built on a nineteenth
century model designed for a world then facing the industrial
revolution, rather than on a twenty-first century model conceived
for a world now in the middle of the knowledge revolution. Also,
institutional capacity in many countries, at all levels of government,
is too weak to sustain the kind of educational development that
is needed to respond to the challenges ahead. |
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| This
scenario is partly to be attributed to the socio-political and
economic problems of the last decade. In the past few years,
economic and financial instability, low prices for developing
countries' export commodities, declining levels of development
aid, widespread civil wars and steady population growth have
multiplied the numbers of those living in poverty. Today, 1.3
billion people, over a quarter of the world's population, survive
on less than US$1 a day, often without clean water and with
little or no education and health services. Hundreds of millions
more people face the constant risk of sinking below the poverty
line. |
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| This
situation endorses all the more the fact that education is particularly
important for the poor, who have to rely on their human capital
as the main, if not the only, means of escaping poverty. Education
makes a significant contribution to reducing poverty. It confers
skills, knowledge and attitudes that increase the productivity
of the people which in turn changes their lives and also contributes
to the nation's economic growth. |
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|
For ten years the World Bank has been an active co-convenor
of EFA. While there were some achievements in meeting the EFA
goals proclaimed at Jomtien, much remains to be achieved, more
so because of the changing demands of the time and socio-political
imperatives. The World Bank is committed to working with all
partners in ensuring basic education for all and better life
free from poverty. |
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| Maris
O'Rourke is Director of Education in the World
Bank. |
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