Everyone who has been working on and is devoted to education is about to be confronted with an important deadline: the target date for reaching the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is 2015.
On May 19-22, the World Bank Group- along with other UN agencies, ministers of education, civil society organizations, and other key players- will be revisiting the targets we’ve established 15 years ago in Dakar and will be putting together a powerful new education agenda that will transform lives in the years to come.
I’m really excited about participating in the upcoming World Education Forum in Incheon, Korea, where World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim, my colleagues, and I will be making the moral and economic case for learning and equity in education.
The importance of true learning
Looking back, we should celebrate the gains that we’ve made. The developing world has made huge progress during the MDGs era. In 2012, 184 million children were enrolled in pre-primary education worldwide, an increase of nearly two-thirds since 1999. Net enrolment ratios improved significantly, rising at least 20 percentage points from 1999 to 2012 in 17 countries, 11 of which were in sub-Saharan Africa. However, there is still much that can be done.
As we adopt a bigger and bolder education agenda in 2015, getting all children into school is one of the challenges ahead. I’m very concerned about the 250 million children who are in school but are not learning basic reading, math, and the essential cognitive and non-cognitive skills they’ll need in life.
I’m also worried about the students who have to leave school…and then return to the same grade older than their classmates. In my native Brazil and other countries in the world, it’s not uncommon to hear the story of a boy or girl dropping out at the seventh grade to work and help their families and then, when circumstances improve, return to the same grade as a teenager. There needs to be a strategy so that they can get up to speed when they return and are in the age-appropriate classes or, better yet, stay in school.
If we want to ensure learning, we have to empower teachers by providing them with the tools that will help them and their pupils excel in the classroom. This means giving them textbooks and access to technology so that their subjects come alive and become interesting to students.
We need to also talk about adequate assessments. Students are assessed but so should teachers and school management. For a school to improve, timely feedback must be given to teachers so that they can adjust their teaching style to the needs of students. Ideally, the assessments will help the teacher tailor classes to those students who need remedial work or to the bright sparks who can advance further with extra work.
Equality of opportunities for all
I recently read “Our Kids” by Robert Putnam, an intriguing book about equity which argues that class advantages begin in the womb and grow wider at every life stage. According to Putnam, the type of schools based on socio-economic background exacerbate this inequality of opportunities. For instance, a poor student would not be able to take part in extracurricular activities or classes that foster good grades and better skills (such as piano classes, science camp, and sporting events) that would otherwise be available to a student from a well-off background.
Here’s the thing about education: it’s the best way to level the playing field but it can also be harmful if not done well. For example, if countries invest only in the smartest kids then it isn’t fair. If countries provide the same funding to all schools (even those populated by rich students) then it’s detrimental to equality.
Equality must be embedded in school systems. In particular, we need to look at the regions or provinces where children are poorest and hardest to reach or where they go to school but have less hours of study. Let’s build school systems that offer the same or similar opportunities for all.
The World Education Forum
I will be tweeting throughout the World Education Forum so do follow me at @ClaudiaCostin and @wbg_education. If you’d like to share your ideas on how to improve learning and equity, you can post these below or tweet using the hashtag #worldeducationforum.
Given the recent press release and petition cited below and the failed policies of the Bank to introduce school fees in African countries in the 1990's can someone from the Bank explain how equity and the right to education are promoted through the aged an of private for profit education which undermines the delivery of public education and relives States of their obligation to provide education.
http://globalinitiative-escr.org/more-than-one-hundred-organisations-ar…
(Nairobi, Kampala, Washington DC, Geneva) Today, more than one hundred national and international organisations across the world released a joint open statement addressed to the president of the World Bank, Jim Kim. The statement expresses their deep concerns about the World Bank’s expressed support for the development of a multinational chain of low-fee profit-making private primary schools targeting poor families in Kenya and Uganda, Bridge International Academies (BIA). It comes as a response to a recent speech of the president of the World Bank, Jim Kim, who praised BIA as a means to alleviate poverty.
Sylvain Aubry, research and advocacy advisor with the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights emphasised that “with signatories including community-based, national, and international organisations, as well as networks and trade unions representing thousands of organisations and millions of individuals in five continents,the statement reflects a large movement rejecting policies in support for private education in developing countries, including from the World Bank”
The statement was written and signed by 31 organisations in Uganda and Kenya, which are the countries primarily affected by the World Bank policy, and received the additional support of 119 organisations.
BIA uses highly standardised teaching methods, untrained low-paid teachers, and aggressive marketing strategies to target poor households, building on their aspiration to a better life to sell them its services.
According to a resident of Mathare, one of the oldest informal settlements in Nairobi, where BIA operates: “Bridge, they come here, but they don’t understand how things work. They don’t work with other schools, with the community. They just come from door to door to sell their product.”
Nevertheless, the World Bank has invested 10 million dollars in BIA, while on the other hand it has no active or planned investments in either Kenya or Uganda’s public basic education systems.
In his speech delivered earlier in April, Jim Kim claimed that that “average scores for reading and math have risen high above their public school peers” in Bridge International Academies. Yet, the source of the data quoted by Jim Kim has not been disclosed by the World Bank, and it appears to have been taken directly from astudy conducted by BIA itself.
The World Bank president further stated that “the cost per student at Bridge Academies is just $6 dollars a month”. This suggestion that $6 is an acceptable amount of money for poor households to pay reveals a profound lack of understanding of the reality of the lives of the poorest. Kenyan and Ugandan organisations have calculated that for half of the population in Kenya and Uganda, spending $6 per month per child to send three primary school age children to a Bridge Academy would cost at least a quarter of their monthly income – whereas these families are already struggling to be able to provide three meals a day to their children.
Moreover, the real total cost of sending one child to a Bridge school may in fact be between $9 and $13 a month, and up to $20 when including school meals. Based on these figures, sending three children to BIA would represent 68% (in Kenya) to 75% (in Uganda) of the monthly income of half the population in these countries.
Salima Namusobya, the Director of the Initiative for Socio-Economic Rights, a Ugandan organisation that also signed the joint statement, said: “If the World Bank is genuine about fulfilling its mission to provide every child with the chance to have a high-quality primary education regardless of their family’s income, they should be campaigning for a no-fee system in particular contexts like that of Uganda.”
The speech from Jim Kim came shortly after members of civil society from several countries, including Uganda, met with senior education officials of the World Bank specifically to discuss its support for fee-charging, private primary schools, and funding for BIA in particular.
It also comes at a time where there is an unprecedented increase in financing of private education across the world, especially in Africa, often with the support of foreign investors. These investments have attracted equally growing criticism, including in a recent report highlighting how the UK government, via its Department for International Development (DfID), supports privatising education and health services. DfID is also an investor in Bridge International Academies.
The organisations’ statement calls on the World Bank in particular to stop promoting and cease investing in Bridge International Academies and other fee-charging, private providers of basic education, and instead to support the free, public, quality education which the laws applicable in Kenya, Uganda, and other countries require.
The World Bank will be present next week at the World Education Forum, where State representatives from around the world will be meeting to take crucial decisions about education development goals for the next fifteen years. This will include key choices about the potential role and support to private actors in education.
Dear John - thanks for the comment.
We at the World Bank Group, believe that all children should be able to get a quality education, regardless of their ability to pay. We are committed to working with the governments of Kenya and Uganda to help strengthen their public education systems. Our support for Bridge Academies is complementary, to ensure that parents who invest in private schooling are also getting the best possible education for their children.
We need more evidence of which programs work best. That’s why we are launching a rigorous, independent impact evaluation of the Bridge program in Kenya, the first large-scale randomized controlled trial of fee-paying schools in sub-Saharan Africa. Measuring effectiveness of these schools will help governments, policymakers and parents determine how best to manage growing school enrollments, improve quality, and ensure that all children can learn.
Thank you for your very useful input on raising learning and equity issues. The fourth grade learner you speak of is a familiar experience in most developing countries. I am not sure whether age appropriate classes work. Putnam is absolutely correct. "According to Putnam, the type of schools based on socio-economic background exacerbate this inequality of opportunities"
My sense is that many children who are poor are not socialised into a reading and print culture in the formative years. They live in poor homes where there is no or limited print culture. In many working class homes and families there is'nt a commitment to educational improvement since education has not worked for those families. The parents, aunts and uncles of many poor people have not benefitted from education. They probably dropped out of school as well. For many of these children the lack of a print culture and the poor development of oral language leaves them with a very limited vocabulary when they go to school. By grade 4 they are unable to read. Our research tells us that if a child has not learnt to read by the age of 8 they are unlikely to learn to read in the future. In most cases these children drop out of school. The World Forum should commit itself to advancing early childhood education in developing countries but also in the underdeveloped sectors of developed nations. If one examines African American youth in the USA, these problems persist. In other parts of the world mainly in developing nations many young children drop out of school before or after primary school since they are unable to read. Often it is for the reasons I have cited earlier on. Putnam and other Colleagues who have written on the issue of equity should be taken very seriously. My view is that 75% of the problems in education will be solved if children who are poor receive a very good early childhood education. It should not be a watered down version. Investing in other parts of the system for quick wins is a useful strategy but if your foundations are not solid, the system will not yield the desired results. Thanks again for writing on this very crucial topic and alerting the wider community of our real challenge which is equity and raising learning
Dear Claudia,
Thank you for your reply but the underlining tenants of my point are not dealt with and post from Sigamoney further elaborates on the concerns I raise. On the one hand you will be representing the Bank at the World Education Form and putting for a case for equity yet your colleagues that oversee the Banks work in Kenya and Uganda are using Bank funds to promote a private for profit education providers to extend their enrollment rates. We know from research on private education in Asia and Africa that many low fee private schools do not in fact increase enrollment rates but exactly take children out of the public education system in addition there is plenty of in-depth research that raises serious questions over the assertion that private for profited schools delivery better learning outcomes, indeed literature reviews by DIFD and UNICEF on the topic highlight that studies that control for socio-economic and-family factors show no significant difference in learning outcomes, Sigamoney has correctly pointed out the issue is related to non-school factors in this sense the Bank would be much better served supported the demand side of education so the parents do connect the value of good education, by support a private provider the. Bank is undermining the State obligation to provide the right to education and undermine social equity. I can happily provide you with r ever feel to several literature reviews to support my case I hope that Bank can live up to its commitment to human rights and social equity by reviewing this social experiments.
Below are just two publications that raise serious questions about for profit education provision both from rights based, economic and learning outcomes approach.
1. Education, Privatisation and Social Justice case studies from Africa, South Asia and South East AsiaEdited by IAN MACPHERSON, SUSAN ROBERTSON & GEOFFREY WALFORD
2. Education economics: A guide through the subject By Joseph Holden, Nathan Associates, Monazza Aslam, Oxford University