|
|
 |
| |
External Advisory Panel Comments |
| |
|
Response 1: Merilee S. Grindle, Beatrice Okyere, and Paulo Renato Souza
The external panel welcomes this report. The report emphasizes the importance of the
Education for All (EFA) agenda established in 1990 and reaffirmed in 2000, as well as the significant place of primary education in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and, more broadly, their importance to the process of development and poverty alleviation. In addition, the report makes very clear that access to education is not sufficient for meeting important goals of equity and fairness in promoting the life chances of the poor, girls, those who live in remote areas, and other disadvantaged groups. To o frequently, access has been promoted at the expense of quality in education. This Independent Evaluation Group report rightly emphasizes the importance of ensuring that children not only attend school, but develop the skills and knowledge base that will allow them to live productive and rewarding lives.
The report appropriately suggests that greater attention needs to be given to improving school outcomes and using outcome measures as centrally important vehicles for determining program success and for making adjustments to projects as they are being implemented. In addition, the report is valuable for its finding that World Bank projects that were focused specifically on education tended to perform better than multisector projects that included education along with other reform activities. It is also important that the report emphasizes the importance of educational management, particularly the need for governments to invest more in the acquisition of pertinent and up-to-date information about schooling in their countries and to use this information more effectively for planning, monitoring, and assessment. The report indicates that project designers need to pay more attention to the inclusion of appropriate management incentives. Additionally, the report focuses attention on the all-too-frequent failure of projects to include appropriate political and institutional analyses as part of planning, monitoring, and assessment processes.
Overall, the report makes a strong statement about the increasing importance of emphasizing the quality of education through project objectives that include important outcome measures. This is an important emphasis, and one that is particularly difficult for many governments and education experts to attend to, given the pressure of achieving the EFA and MDG goals. The report acknowledges the difficulty of promoting quality at the same time that access is being expanded. As the World Bank considers the general recommendation of the report, it must address how access/quality tensions can be effectively managed without sacrificing important equity goals. The report urges the simultaneous pursuit of both goals; the experience of most countries, however, is that this is extraordinarily difficult. Pressures for access strongly tend to crowd out a focus on quality, and, although there is less experience with this, a focus on quality can easily increase inequity in the delivery of education. We strongly urge Bank education specialists to address this issue through research and innovative initiatives.
An issue related to the report’s emphasis on quality and outcomes measurement raises another issue that is not directly addressed in the report—that of the time required for reform projects and programs to produce effective results. It may, in fact, take 5–10 years before improvements in the quality of education begin to be clearly visible. This means that projects and programs may need to be based on longer-term commitments. We strongly urge Bank education specialists to consider if the timing of the Bank’s projects is realistic when outcome measures become a more important objective in those projects.
The emphasis in the report on quality, welcomed by this external panel (along with very real concerns about the remaining large gaps in access in a large number of countries, among them the poorest in the world), stresses the importance of outcome measures and school management. At the same time, however, the report provides only brief insights into what most education experts agree are factors central to good-quality education—the teacher and the classroom. Teachers—their recruitment, training, deployment, ongoing professionalization, and representation in the political sphere through their unions and associations—are, in the final analysis, probably as important as factors relating to the efficiency of educational management. The conditions, training, and incentives that affect their performance linked to student achievement should be placed at the center of any project that purports to improve the quality of education. Similarly, curriculum materials, class size, and hours of instruction should be much more central to projects than they appear to have been. We encourage Bank education specialists to focus more attention on efforts to work with teachers and their associations, to facilitate the professionalization of the teaching corps, and to increase that group’s ownership of education reform initiatives.
These two concerns—the importance of quality and the centrality of teachers—suggest that the report could argue more forcefully for the importance of increased spending on education. While there are undoubtedly efficiencies that can be achieved in many education systems through better management and use of resources, it is unlikely that such improvements could provide sufficient funding for the infrastructure, salaries, materials, and other inputs into education that are needed. We strongly urge the World Bank to acknowledge the need to increase funding for education if the important goals of the EFA and MDGs are to be reached or even approximated.
Response 2: David Archer
I welcome this evaluation of World Bank investments in primary education but feel that the final report fails to capture some of the significant insights gained from the preparatory work and country studies. Moreover, some of the concerns raised by the external panel over the past 18 months have not been adequately addressed in this final report, which is somewhat too single minded in its focus on learning outcomes.
Clearly, learning outcomes are important— no one will disagree with this. The question is how to operationalize this new focus, and the evaluation gives few orientations for this. Does it mean less attention should be paid to access? The report claims not—asserting that expanding access and improvements in learning outcomes do not have to be traded off against each other—but it is not very strong on this point. I would go further and say they must not be traded off. When 100 million of the poorest children remain out of school, shifting our focus from access to outcomes would have serious implications for equity. The report should have paid more attention to the remaining challenges in achieving universal access to primary education.
Part of the concern here comes from a worrying subtext that suggests that measures such as the abolition of user fees are bad ideas because they impact negatively on quality (that is, progress on access has undermined outcomes). This may be the case, but it ignores the fact that education is a fundamental right (embodied in most national constitutions as well as international treaties such as CRC) and that charging children to go to primary school is the most blatant violation of that right. The sooner fees are abolished the better, and this should have been stated simply and clearly rather than urging caution. No single measure has such a dramatic impact on equity within an education system—bringing millions of poor children into school. Rather than questioning the wisdom of governments (or political leaders) taking such abrupt measures, the emphasis should be on ensuring a rapid response (with coordinated international aid through mechanisms such as the Fast-Track Initiative [FTI]) to situations where fees are abolished so that quality is not affected.
Unfortunately, this evaluation, spanning 16 years, ignores the Bank’s own role in the controversial issue of user fees in education. It should have done a more systematic job in scrutinizing the Bank’s positions as they have shifted over the period—and it should have been unequivocal in calling for abolition of all costs that prevent poor children from going to school.
There is a danger that the shift of attention to outcomes will be seen as a substitute for much-needed attention to inputs. One effect of this attention on outcomes may be to massively increase investment in testing of pupils (which in itself does not contribute to learning) rather than to focus on inputs that might really improve learning. Most inputs are obvious: ensuring that there are sufficient numbers of well-trained teachers who are teaching classes with manageable numbers, and sufficient books and learning materials in enough classrooms. The report fails to highlight the extent to which the Bank’s focus since 1990 has been too narrowly focused on the last of these—infrastructure—often at the expense of other inputs.
Perhaps the biggest omission in this report is in regard to the most important input: teachers. Many of the country evaluations documented the deterioration in teacher quality and teacher conditions in recent years—and the failure of the Bank to pay sufficient attention to this. The call for focusing on quality outcomes should naturally lead to a call for a renewed focus on quality teachers, but it does not. As it is, very little attention is paid in this final report to the critical issues of teacher recruitment, training, retention, or deployment.
Rather, in places the report seems to do the opposite, promoting the hiring of “local teachers” as an effective measure. The Executive Summary says “recruitment of local, often untrained, youth” is one of the “most promising” measures, and elsewhere the “high dedication” of these contract teachers is celebrated.
The term “local teachers” that creeps in seems to be an attempt at rebranding para teachers or contract teachers. In fact, the spread of these “non-professional teachers” (a more accurate term) is something that the Bank has actively supported in recent years, often with a very negative impact on learning quality. In the final report there is no analysis of Bank interventions in this area or of how they have sometimes actively undermined the teaching profession. For example, the Mali study documented how the Bank’s Voluntary Departure Program led to the loss of 12.5 percent of the teaching workforce (even at a time of expanding enrolments), and the Bank did nothing to stop the closure of teacher education institutions. Instead, the Bank explicitly supported the hiring of unqualified non-public-service teachers and did nothing to support their training. There are many other examples of the Bank promoting non-professionals, and these should have been more closely documented in the final report.
On the positive side, the final report does include a qualifying refrain that calls for more local teachers “as long as those teachers have access to professional growth opportunities and job security”—something the Bank has failed to do in the past. It is also good to see the call for more “evaluative research” on contract teaching and to see some of the concerns raised about whether it is cost-effective, equitable, or sustainable in all settings. But if this report is serious in its call for quality learning outcomes, then it should have been much more systematic in looking at the teaching profession and challenging the introduction of unqualified teachers. The moderating clause calling for “professional growth and job security” feels tokenistic in this regard, failing to call for minimum requirements or time-bound processes of qualification. In practice, non-professional teachers are being seen as a long-term cheap labor solution in many countries, and this has a devastating impact on the teaching profession as a whole—undermining status and morale and destroying teacher associations and unions. This is probably the biggest single threat to achieving quality learning outcomes for all children.
It is self-evident that “what matters in education is what happens in the classroom.” If the Bank accepts this, then the quality of teachers should be at the center of its attention—that is, unless the Bank is ready to take a dose of its own medicine and start hiring para-economists….
One of the interesting elements in this evaluation is the recognition that decentralization policies and programs seem to have led to “increases in inequities across income and social groups.” There also seems to be a new recognition of the need for strong management in central ministries. This certainly warrants further research. Unfortunately, no effort is made to address the evident tensions between these observations and the call for “local teachers.” More research is also needed on the impact of private schooling, the spread of which (as inputs to this evaluation have clearly suggested) is undermining equity gains in the public sector (especially in relation to gender inequity). It is time for the Bank to be explicit in its support for public education and to acknowledge that the achievement of education goals will not come through the spreading of private provision.
One underlying problem here is that the Bank has failed to address the contradictions between International Monetary Fund (IMF) macroeconomic prescriptions and achieving education goals—and this final report fails to explore this critical issue. Some of the country studies commissioned for this evaluation showed these contradictions clearly, for example, where the Bank built schools but, because of IMF limits on public sector wages, there were no teachers to teach in the schools (for instance, in Pakistan, Peru, and Mali). The recruitment of non-professionals as cheap labor is presented as unavoidable in situations of increasing enrolment, when new teachers are needed but the government cannot increase its spending on salaries. In fact, there should be more attention paid to why wage bills are capped in the first place.
The country studies done for this evaluation show again and again that Bank investments in education have been undermined by macroeconomic constraints on governments, whether it is the freezing on hiring of teachers in Pakistan or low spending in Peru linked to IMF policies. This fits with the experiences of many other countries (see Marphatia and Archer 2005). Governments cannot even contemplate the “trade-offs” between a rise of one percent in inflation and the recruitment of more teachers, as the inflation target is sacrosanct. The IMF talks openly of the “sacrifice ratio,” whereby investments in education and health are sacrificed in the name of macroeconomic stability. It is important for the World Bank to take a stand on these contradictions and to use its influence with the IMF to seek solutions. Building new schools is of little value if governments are at the same time blocked from employing new teachers. The Bank should be championing the benefits of investment in education and helping countries remove the constraints that prevent them from making such a sound investment.
On a related issue, I welcome the recognition in the report that an increased focus on learning outcomes will “raise the unit costs of primary education.” There is a call for the FTI “to develop cost and funding gap estimates” that recognize this increased cost. This coincides with the commitment, in Abuja in May 2006, by ministers of finance from 20 African countries to develop ambitious 10-year plans to get all children into school. There is growing momentum here, building on the British government’s recent pledge of $15 billion in predictable aid to education. One key element of all this, which the report fails to pick up on, is predictability. In the past, aid to education, including from the Bank, has not been long term or predictable, so it has not been possible for countries to spend the money on what they need: the recurrent costs, particularly teacher salaries, which are the vast bulk of primary education spending. As aid to education becomes more predictable, countries should be able to spend it on recruiting more teachers— but this will be impossible unless wage bill caps and other macroeconomic conditions are removed.
I welcome the considerable attention paid by this report (at least in its recommendations) to the FTI—but regret that the report fails to call directly for the Bank to put its own money into it! In line with the Paris Aid Effectiveness guidelines, the FTI is an important means for coordinating donor responses to education, and the report should logically call for the Bank to align International Development Association/ Poverty Reduction Support Credit funding behind FTI-approved national education plans. Rather, the emphasis is placed on influencing the FTI to include learning outcomes as indicators/benchmarks/targets. As it is, the report does not give sufficient evidence to argue that indicators such as instructional time, teacher attendance, and availability of textbooks are the key ones for improving learning outcomes. The more important reforms of FTI lie in ensuring that it can make long-term commitments (for example, moving beyond the short-term aid of the catalytic fund), that it addresses the full EFA agenda, and that all donors live up to their promises to increase and better coordinate their aid to education.
The country studies show that, despite widespread rhetoric about donor coordination, in practice donors have not been good at this (and the Bank has not helped) and that donor power has often diminished the accountability of governments to their own parliaments/ citizens. This needs to change, and this should have been at the center of recommendations from this evaluation.
One reason for the Bank to channel more of its own support through the FTI is that it has not been very successful in allocating money where it is most needed. Since 1990 the most rapid growth in borrowing for primary education has been in East and Central Europe; the greatest volume of borrowing now is in Latin America. But the greatest need is in Africa (where increases have been slow and still fall short) and in South Asia (where commitments are now reducing). Bank support for FTI-approved plans in Africa should be a particular priority.
Unfortunately, from my participation in this external panel, I see an alarming shift in World Bank investment away from primary education—effectively abandoning the MDG agenda. There is an increasing investment in secondary and particularly higher education, and the policy attention to these areas suggests that they will increasingly attract a larger share of the resources from the existing education budget. The focus on the knowledge economy is already attracting significant staff time and resources that would previously have been focused on primary education. Lending to primary education has actually fallen in the period 2000–2004 compared with 1995–1999. Moreover, direct lending to primary education has fallen significantly. It is only lending from other sectors (that include some component of education work) that prevents this decline from being very dramatic and evident. This indirect support for education from other sectors is often very narrowly focused on infrastructure and is likely to have no impact on learning outcomes. The fall in spending on primary education should be explicitly opposed. The achievement of quality universal primary education (UPE) must remain the first and most fundamental priority for the Bank’s education work.
Of course the real constraint here lies in the fact that the Bank continues to underinvest in the education sector as a whole. The FTI recommends countries should invest 20 percent of their funding in education (and the Bank widely supports this position) —yet the Bank itself spends just 7 percent of its own budget on education. Why not 20 percent?
An increase in the Bank’s spending on education will certainly be needed if it is to respond to learning outcomes—and it would also be essential if the Bank were to take on the full EFA agenda. The World Bank was cosponsor of the Jomtien and Dakar conferences— apparently buying into the EFA framework. Yet a defining part of the Bank’s education narrative since 1990 has been a repeatedly reductive focus on UPE—sidelining and ignoring adult literacy and early childhood education. In many documents, including those prepared for this evaluation, UPE and EFA are conflated. This final report should have done more to acknowledge the impact of this, addressing how the Bank’s focus on primary education has impacted other parts of the EFA agenda. It is an unsatisfactory fudge (and a denial of the Bank’s power) to say that the Bank’s contribution to EFA has been through UPE. This is of particular importance given the widespread evidence of interdependency in the EFA goals. The impact of early childhood education and the home environment on learning outcomes in schools are recurrent themes in the country studies. It is clear that little progress can be made on learning outcomes if we fail to consider the role of early childhood education and adult literacy (which are key to the home environment).
Another key gap in this report concerns HIV/AIDS. It is shocking that most country studies did not raise HIV/AIDS as an issue, despite this being in the terms of reference. The impact of HIV/AIDS on education in the past 15 years is one of the biggest developments in the sector, particularly in Africa. The role that education plays in helping respond to HIV/AIDS is crucial, yet still underregarded. The final evaluation report should, at the very least, make a big issue of the fact that the reports did not touch on HIV/AIDS. There is enough ignoring of HIV/AIDS in the education sector already, without the Bank adding to the deafening silence.
In conclusion, I welcome the fact that the Bank has conducted this evaluation, but I feel that this final report is incomplete. Critical issues do not find enough space, particularly issues around the teaching profession, macroeconomic policies, and the failure of the Bank to target resources where they are most needed. The implications of the call for greater attention to learning outcomes are not made clear enough, and the Bank’s past, present, and future global role in basic education is not adequately analyzed. From earlier discussions I gained the impression that this evaluation would call for greater engagement by the Bank with the IMF on questions of fiscal space—so that countries are facilitated in making the long-term investments in education that will yield long-term economic returns. This remains the central challenge in a world increasingly driven by short-term financial planning. But sadly, this has not materialized in the final report. It is a missed opportunity to address the strategic issues that are undermining progress on quality education.
|
External Advisory Panel
David Archer
Head of International Education, ActionAid, and Chair, Commonwealth Education Fund,
London, U.K.
Merilee S. Grindle
Edward S. Mason Professor of International Development, Kennedy School of Government,
Harvard University, Boston, MA, U.S.
Beatrice Okyere
Senior Lecturer in Special Education/Teacher Education
University of Cape Coast, Ghana
Paulo Renato Souza
President, Paulo Renato Souza Consultants, and Former Minister of Education
São Paulo, Brazil
|
The
Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) is an independent unit within the World
Bank; it reports directly to the Bank's Board of Executive
Directors. The goals of IEG 's evaluations are to draw lessons
from Bank experience, and to provide an objective basis for
assessing the results of the Bank's work.
 |
|
|
