Education is a powerful driver of development and one of the strongest instruments for reducing poverty and improving health, gender equality, peace, and stability. This potential is too often unrealized due to weaknesses in education systems. Peru carried out a series of successful education sector reforms in recent years, and the country’s performance in standardized international tests rose sharply. In 2016, Peru’s results in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) exam showed one of the largest gains among countries worldwide.
Dr. Jaime Saavedra, Senior Director of the Education Global Practice of the World Bank and former Education Minister of Peru will talk about global education challenges, his experience in leading successful education reforms in Peru, and implications to the on-going education reform in the Philippines. This forum aims to provide a platform for CSOs, academe and other interested partners to share their experiences and discuss solutions to the education reform challenges.
Dr. Jaime Saavedra Chanduvi leads the Education Global Practice at the World Bank Group. He rejoins the World Bank Group from the Government of Peru, where he served as Minister of Education from 2013 through 2016. During his tenure, the performance of Peru’s education system improved substantially as measured by international learning assessments. Throughout his career, Dr. Saavedra, a Peruvian national, has led groundbreaking work in the areas of poverty and inequality, employment and labor markets, the economics of education, and monitoring and evaluation systems. He has held positions at a number of international organizations and think-tanks, among them the Inter-American Development Bank, Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, International Labour Organization, Grupo de Análisis para el Desarollo and the National Council of Labor in Peru. He has also held teaching and research positions in academia and has published extensively. Prior to assuming his role as Minister for Education of Peru, he had a ten-year career at the World Bank where, most recently, he served as Director for Poverty Reduction and Equity as well as Acting Vice President, Poverty Reduction & Economic Management Network. Dr. Saavedra holds a Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University and a Bachelor's degree in economics from the Catholic University of Peru.