Achieving Universal Primary Education by 2015: A Chance for Every Child

One hundred and eighty-nine countries have committed themselves to eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) aimed at eradicating extreme poverty and improving the welfare of their peoples by the year 2015. The second of the goals is: 'Achieve universal primary education,' with the specific target of ensuring that, by 2015, boys and girls everywhere will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling.This book assesses whether the Millennium Goals can be met. Specifically it asks: • Where do we stand today in relation to the target of universal primary completion?  • Is universal primary completion achievable by 2015?  • If so, what would be required to achieve it, both in terms of education policy reform and incremental domestic and international financing? In a globally integrated and highly competitive world economy, no country can any longer consider primary schooling a terminal level of education for its labor force, but increasing the share of children who do complete primary school is the essential first step. In a borderless world, where the gulf between the educated, empowered rich and the stagnating and powerless poor increasingly poses threats to all, the achievement of universal primary completion is of global interest. Few global goals have been as consistently and deeply supported as the notion that every child in every country should have the chance to complete primary school. Perhaps it is time to make it a reality.The volume includes CD-ROM containing a 'hands-on' version of the simulation model developed by the authors and all of the background data used.

Business & Money

Bruns, Barbara

Mingat, Alain

Rakotomalala, Ramahatra

Economics

World Bank

This book is about the threats to education quality in the developing world that cannot be explained by lack of resources. It reviews the observed phenomenon of service delivery failures in public education: cases where programs and policies increase the inputs to education but do not produce effective services where it counts - in schools and classrooms. It documents what we know about the extent and costs of such failures across low and middle-income countries. And it further develops the conceptual model posited in the World Development Report 2004: that a root cause of low-quality and inequitable public services - not only in education - is the weak accountability of providers to both their supervisors and clients. The central focus of the book, however, is a new story. It is that developing countries are increasingly adopting innovative strategies to attack these problems. Drawing on new evidence from 22 rigorous impact evaluations across 11 developing countries, this book examines how three key strategies to strengthen accountability relationships in developing country school systems have affected school enrollment, completion and student learning. The book reviews the motivation and global context for education reforms aimed at strengthening provider accountability. It provides the rationally and synthesizes the evidence on the impacts of three key lines of reform: (1) policies that use the power of information to strengthen the ability of clients of education services (students and their parents) to hold providers accountable for results; (2) policies that promote school-based management–that is increase schools’ autonomy to make key decisions and control resources, often empowering parents to play a larger role; (3) teacher incentives reforms that specifically aim at making teachers more accountable for results, either by making contract tenure dependent on performance, or offering performance-linked pay. The book summarizes the lessons learned, draws cautious conclusions about possible complementarities across different types of accountability-focused reforms if they are implemented in tandem, considers issues related to scaling up reform efforts and the political economy of reform, and suggests directions for future work.

Making Schools Work: New Evidence on Accountability Reforms (Human Development Perspectives)

Education & Teaching

Patrinos, Harry Anthony

Filmer, Deon

Schools & Teaching

World Bank Publications

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