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A Look Inside the Report |
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 Access Has Improved
Since 1990 primary education access has improved in developing countries. Net enrollment rates have risen from about 82 percent to 86 percent. In 12 countries visited by the IEG, enrollments have outpaced the increase in school-age population by about 19 percentage points over the past 10-12 years. In Mali and Uganda the ratio more than doubled. Countries have
targeted the disadvantaged in enrollment campaigns and improved access for girls, the poor, and children living in remote areas. |
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World Bank support, both lending and nonlending, has been instrumental in making many of these changes happen. It helped to build schools, distribute books, train teachers, raise community support, and, in some cases, increase demand for schooling.
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Learning Has Lagged
There is clear evidence that the poverty reducing effects of primary education come not from years of education received, but from improved literacy and numeracy. However, many countries are not doing a good job of measuring them. Even those receiving quality improvement support from the World Bank have yielded discouraging results. In Ghana, Niger, Peru, and Yemen no more than 19 percent of sixth graders reached mastery levels in language; and no more than 11 percent do so in mathematics. In India, nearly 50 percent of 7-10 year olds could not read fluently in their local language at the first grade level. This does not mean that countries receiving Bank support were unable to improve learning outcomes. Of the few that tried to do so, most were successful. In Ghana, India and Uruguay, three countries covered in the IEG evaluation, learning outcomes increased. IEG found that, in general, learning outcomes were underemphasized in country programs and Bank support. Among the sample of projects examined in detail, three-quarters included objectives to improve student enrollments, but fewer than one-quarter had learning outcomes objectives. Over 90 percent of these projects had improving quality in their objectives, but until recently this objective has mostly meant providing materials, training, and technical assistance to educational systems rather than ensuring improved student learning.
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Rapid Expansion can put Learning at Risk
The Millennium Development Goal of universal primary school completion by 2015 has added urgency for countries to improve primary school access, but may be pushing some of them to expand too quickly. Some countries, such as Kenya, Malawi, and Uganda, have expanded so rapidly that they have been unable to deliver basic educational services effectively. In Uganda, despite a decade of support to mitigate the negative |
| effects of explosive enrollment, there are still an average of 94 students per classroom and 3 students per book. In 2003, the Bank and its partners labeled some 70 countries "off-track" and created the Fast-Track Initiative (FTI) to accelerate progress of those countries toward achieving the education goal. Under that initiative, countries like Niger have been encouraged to reach for 100 percent completion by 2015 (the current rate is below 30), even though current school graduates are barely literate. Although some countries are tempted to expand access first and address learning outcomes later, best practice appears to be simultaneous expansion and learning improvement, as has been done in Ghana and India. Although there are no standard formulas countries can apply to improve learning outcomes and simultaneously increase access, the temptation to make a trade-off between quantity and quality can be resisted. Each country will need to undertake needs and capacity assessments, field trials, policy analysis, and planning to determine how best to do this. |
Fall out from the "Big Bang " Approach to Universal Primary Education: The case of Uganda
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| More that 100 students packed into one classroom, sitting on the floor due to the absence of desks, lacking reading and writing materials, and led by one teacher, is a harsh, yet common scene in the Bweyale village in Northern Uganda. The Bweyale Primary School, the biggest in the Masindi district, has an enrollment of approximately 2,598 students crammed in 17 classrooms, sharing 29 teachers. Read More > |
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It will also require high levels of political and material commitment, plus government efforts to control the rate of expansion, provide essential material and teaching resources, improve education efficiency, and account for results.
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Sector Management Approaches Matter
Necessary improvements in developing country education sector management have been slow to develop. For Bank projects with improvement of sector management as an objective, only about a quarter fully achieved that objective. Efforts to improve central planning, policy making, and budgeting were especially weak. Some of these weaknesses stem from incomplete project preparation, others from poor institutional incentives, particularly for improving and measuring learning outcomes. Efforts to shift more control to local governments and schools, especially school-based management, were found to be more successful. Yet ambiguities remain regarding who had authority for what, how funds should flow, and how to avoid cross-regional inequities. Some degree of community control has been good for building construction, renovation, and maintenance, and in El Salvador and Honduras, for improved teacher attendance. In general, though, community control has not had much impact on the quality of teaching or learning.
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Focus primary education efforts on improving learning outcomes, particularly among the poor and disadvantaged
Countries, in partnership with the Bank and other donors, need to make improved learning outcomes a core objective in their primary education plans and focus on the factors most likely to influence such outcomes in the local context, recognizing that improving learning outcomes for all will require higher unit costs than universal completion.
Improve the performance of sector management in support of learning outcomes
This implies the need for sound political and institutional analyses, including the incentives faced by officials and teachers to improve quality; accountability and supervision systems that cover learning outcomes in disadvantaged communities' schools; and monitoring and evaluation systems that track learning outcomes.
Re-orient the Fast Track Initiative toward support for improved learning outcomes, in parallel with the MDG emphasis on primary school completion |
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.
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