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A World Bank blog on the power of investing in people

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Education is universally recognized as one of the most fundamental building blocks for human development and reducing poverty. Our blog explores issues related to global education policy.

What's New?

ThinkEQUAL: What Would Educational Opportunity Mean for Women and Girls Around the World?

Submitted by Education Team on Tue, 2011-09-13 15:00


Although the gender gap in education has been decreasing over the past decade, many girls continue to lag behind their male counterparts in equal access to schooling and acquisition of basic skills such as literacy. In Sub-Saharan Africa, 17 million girls are still out of school; in South Asia, another 9.5 million are shut out.


What would equal educational opportunity mean for women and girls around the world?

SABER: Innovative Assessment Tool Helps Countries Use Evidence to Guide Global Education Reform

Submitted by Robin Horn on Fri, 2011-07-29 09:17

Effective education reform? Evidence-based policy making can light the way.At the launch of the World Bank's new Education Strategy for 2020 during the "What Works in Education” Policy Research Colloquium this spring, World Bank President Robert Zoellick urged the international development community to focus on interventions that produce learning results and emphasized the vital role that evidence must play in propelling smart investments in education. The strategy also emphasizes the Bank's role in helping countries move beyond the provision of inputs to a system-level approach for improving the quality, performance, and outcomes of education programs.


To improve learning for all, we are rolling out an innovative assessment tool to help our partners use knowledge more effectively to drive education reform.


The System Assessment and Benchmarking for Education Results (SABER) initiative is being designed to help countries systematically examine and better understand their education system's policies.  SABER's policy diagnostics are being built upon a solid evidence base and draws from research on the education policies of well performing or rapidly improving education systems. By leveraging global knowledge, SABER fills a gap in the availability of policy data and evidence on what policies matter most to improve the quality of education and achievement of better results.

Who's Talking About Learning for All? A Round Up

Submitted by Christine Horansky on Fri, 2011-07-22 17:25

In the months since we released our new Education Strategy 2020, we have been happy to see many of our development partners and counterparts talking about "learning for all," our new mantra that promotes global efforts to ensure all children, everywhere, are in school and learning. (See "Let's Make it Learning for All," for more from our Education Director Elizabeth King.) Here's a round up from our partners. Check out their great blogs below...


Making an Impact in Education, USAID Impact Blog, by David Barth 


The New Education Strategy at the World Bank, Time for a Millennium Learning Goal? Center for Global Development, by Nancy Birsdall


From Education for All to Learning for All, PREAL Inter-American Dialogue

Podcast: Can We Get All Children in School and Learning by 2020? Harvard interviews Halsey Rogers

Submitted by Christine Horansky on Tue, 2011-05-31 11:00

How we can make the next decade one in which all children, everywhere, are in school and learning? The World Bank's Lead Economist for education, Halsey Rogers, joins the Harvard EdCast from Washington to discuss the new Education Strategy 2020 and a global agenda for learning.


Are You In? Stay Connected to the World Bank's Education Wire

Submitted by Christine Horansky on Mon, 2011-03-14 16:03

For illuminating research, news and commentary from the World Bank on global education policy and development effectiveness, make sure you are connected to all our electronic information streams.

The World Bank's blog on all things education, Education for Global Development, can be subscribed to through our RSS feed by clicking here and read in any feed reader or mobile smart device through which you are connected. You can also subscribe to our blog by email.

The Education blog features top-level commentary on the biggest education challenges of the day, while our EduTech blog explores the mystery of technological innovation and its promise for advancing educational access, quality and accountability.

What Keeps Kids from Learning?

Submitted by Christine Horansky on Fri, 2011-02-18 13:17

What keeps kids from learning? It’s a question that is on everyone’s mind – and an important one -- as the global community looks to move beyond universal access to universal educational achievement. Watch below as Shanta Devarajan, the World Bank’s Chief Economist for Africa, interviews Rakesh Rajani of the East African NGO Twaweza, who gives an excellent overview of the learning problem faced in Tanzania and by many other low-income countries around the globe.

 

Shanta Devarajan interviews Rakesh Rajani from Sense Film Production on Vimeo.

Education: the 2010 Year in Review

Submitted by Christine Horansky on Fri, 2011-02-04 17:58

2010 was a banner year for education as global attention brought by the UN Millennium Development Goals summit in New York City spotlighted the catalytic role education plays in fighting poverty and meeting a number of critical development goals. As countries and development partners alike strive to maximize development effectiveness, investing in education has emerged as a clear priority for this reason -- as well as as part of the solution to rising unemployment, a point echoed by US President Barack Obama in last week's State of the Union. The World Bank's forthcoming Education Strategy, which launched global consultations in 2010, takes special aim at the critical need for learning to translate into skills for work and life. While the global economic downturn has threatened to slow hard-won progress, the World Bank scaled up development assistance with over $5 billion in support to education during FY2010.

Quality Education is Unfinished Homework for Latin America, says World Bank's VP for the Region

Submitted by Christine Horansky on Thu, 2010-12-30 09:03

In conjunction with the Ibero-American Summit this month, Pamela Cox, Vice President for Latin American and Caribbean, emphasizes the urgent need to focus on education quality in a recent op-ed that appeared in major news outlets across the region:

If education were simply a matter of attending classes, Latin America and the Caribbean would have already done its homework. Most regional countries have made enormous progress towards achieving universal access to basic education. There is also clear progress at the secondary and tertiary levels.

But more than access, the key goal of education is learning. Making sure that children and youngsters perform according to the requirements of the day is a necessary condition for the advancement of society. In that respect, the region still has some unfinished business. 

 

Charting a New Course for Education

Submitted by Elizabeth King on Thu, 2010-11-18 12:11

Last week I attended the fall meeting of the board members of the  Education for All – Fast Track Initiative  (EFA-FTI), hosted by the government of Spain.  Present were senior representatives of bilateral aid agencies, UN agencies, civil society organizations, and high-level government officials from Burkina Faso, Mongolia, and Rwanda.  In the wake of the recent Millennium Development Goals (MDG) Summit in New York City, the discussions among the members about the future direction of the EFA- FTI partnership—which coalesces critical financial and technical support around country-owned education plans—illustrated that in these times the need for sustained support to education remains greater than ever. Commitment to the principles of education for all is needed from all stakeholders.