Realizing Our Promise of Education

Realizing Our Promise of Education | (News and Research 348)

Realizing Our Promise of Education | Luis Benveniste, Jaime Saavedra | Ensuring children are learning is the key to unlocking the potential of youth. There is nothing more powerful than education to shape the world. Five years ago, in 2018, the World Bank published its first World Development Report (WDR) on Education, Learning to Realize Education’s Promise. At its core was the belief that across the world, education was in crisis. The strides that many countries had made in improving access to schooling for millions of children were not translating into meaningful learning in classrooms. The report made clear that learning, not schooling alone, is at the core of meaningful sustainable development. Shortly after, in 2019, the World Bank launched the learning poverty initiative and accompanying indicator, which measures the share of 10-year-olds that could not read and understand a simple text. This indicator was a crucial step for us to understand and communicate how deep the learning crisis actually was; it revealed harrowing statistics. Today, learning poverty is now estimated to be up to 70% in low- and middle-income countries. The World Bank is committed to ensuring all children around the world have access to free, inclusive, equitable, and quality education to achieve their potential. We are the largest external financier of education in low- and middle-income countries and our portfolio of investments has continued to grow. Today, our projects are increasingly focused on ensuring that high-quality learning takes place for everyone, everywhere and in all education levels— from early childhood through tertiary education. With the publication of Realizing Education’s Promise: A World Bank Retrospective, we explore the work of our operational and research teams across the globe over the past five years, since the 2018 WDR. We spotlight major milestones in support of our goal to ensure that all children and youth have access to high-quality learning—highlighting successes and reflecting on gaps, to help steer the way forward. The COVID-19 pandemic brought significant shocks to education worldwide and showed just how fragile education systems were. About a billion children saw their education interrupted for more than a year. Already a crisis before the pandemic, the learning crisis has only deepened. The next few years will bring meaningful opportunities and challenges. Advances in technology have the potential to expand and improve the quality of education delivery. Youth in school today will prepare for jobs that do not yet exist. Increasing conflict will cause disruption and movement. Despite notable change, the fundamentals of successful education systems remain constant: prepared learners taught essential skills by empowered teachers with quality learning resources in safe schools, supported by capable school leaders. We all know that education is not only a human right, but one of humanity’s most critical development challenges. But still, today, not every child and young person in the world is enjoying that right. That is why looking forward, we will continue to expand, collaborate, and innovate in our mission to end learning poverty, strengthen education systems, and ensure inclusive quality education for all. Every child and youth deserves a chance to gain the knowledge and skills needed to prosper in our rapidly changing world. We are committed to making that happen. 

Technology in education: A tool on whose terms? The new 2023 GEM Report addresses the use of technology in education around the world through the lenses of relevance, equity, scalability and sustainability. It argues that education systems should always ensure that learners’ interests are placed at the center and that digital technologies are used to support an education based on human interaction rather than aiming at substituting it. The report looks at ways in which technology can help reach disadvantaged learners but also ensure more knowledge reaches more learners in more engaging and cheaper formats. It focuses on how quality can be improved, both in teaching and learning basic skills, and in developing the digital skills needed in daily life. It recognizes the role of technology in system management with special reference to assessment data and other education management information.

What Explains Vietnam’s Exceptional Performance in Education Relative to Other Countries? Analysis of the 2012, 2015, and 2018 PISA Data | Dang,  Glewwe, Lee, Vu | Despite being the poorest or second poorest participant, Vietnam outperformed all other developing countries, and many wealthier countries, on the 2012, 2015, and 2018 PISA assessments. We investigate Vietnam’s strong performance, evaluating several possible explanations for this apparent exemplary achievement. After correcting for potentially non-representative PISA samples, including bias from Vietnam’s large out-of-school population, Vietnam remains a large positive outlier conditional on its income. Possible higher motivation of, and coaching given to, Vietnamese students can at most only partly explain Vietnam’s performance. The child-, household- and school-level variables in the PISA data explain little of Vietnam’s strong PISA performance relative to its income level. At most, they explain about 30% of Vietnam’s exceptional performance in math and reading. Further research is needed to understand the exceptional performance of Vietnamese students.

Regional Integration for Higher Education Development: Options for the South Asia Region | Higher education systems in South Asia have undergone significant changes in the past two decades. Each country in the region has experienced a rapid rise in university enrollment, fueled by demographic growth and the resulting expansion of secondary education. However, in the absence of sufficient financial resources to accommodate increasing student numbers, most higher education institutions are facing daunting challenges. Unlike the recent evolution in Europe and East Asia, South Asian higher education systems and institutions have made little progress in working together so far, notwithstanding the positive results of a few noteworthy partnerships, such as the creation of the South Asian University. The ability of South Asian nations to work together in the higher education sphere will, to a significant extent, determine their capacity to support the development efforts of their respective countries in an effective and dynamic manner. Against this backdrop, the main objective of this report is to explore the potential for increased regional collaboration and integration in higher education in the South Asia region.

**********

Returns to Education Turns 50 |

Submit a Manuscript to the Journal Education Economics for a Special Issue on the 50th Anniversary of the Returns to Education: An International Comparison | Manuscript deadline: 31 October 2023 | Special Issue Editor: Harry Patrinos, World Bank | Submit An Article | This year is the 50th anniversary of the publication of the book, Returns to Education: An International Comparison, by George Psacharopoulos (assisted by Keith Hinchliffe). Education Economics is publishing a special issue to mark this occasion and the contributions of Professor Psacharopoulos. The focus of this special issue is research on the returns to education. Research on international comparisons and /or  returns to education in less developed economies are especially welcome.