Today, amid a growing urgency prompted by widespread joblessness on the one hand and serious skills shortages on the other, the World Bank is more committed than ever to expanding opportunities for children and youth and nations alike, through education. In fiscal year 2014, the World Bank’s new support for education totaled US$3.6 billion, up sharply from US$2.9 billion in 2013 and boosted by increased support for basic education.
The World Bank is one of the largest external education financiers for developing countries, managing a portfolio of US$11 billion, with operations in 71 countries as of June 2014. The World Bank supports education through an average of US$2.8 billion a year in new financing for the poorest countries as well as for middle-income countries. The World Bank helps countries achieve their education goals through finance and knowledge services in the forms of analytic work, policy advice, and technical assistance. This support includes working with countries to help identify the role and contribution of education to their overall development and poverty reduction strategies. This means understanding countries’ individual priorities, needs, and constraints, and collaborating with governments, donors and development partners to design programs in response to countries’ respective needs.
The World Bank’s Education Sector Strategy 2020 “Learning for All” recognizes that the knowledge and skills that children and youth gain through learning help lift them out of poverty and drive development. The strategy encourages countries to “invest early” because foundational skills acquired early help lifelong learning, “invest smartly” in efforts proven to improve learning, and “invest for all” children and youth, not just the most privileged or gifted.
To achieve learning for all, the World Bank is promoting reforms of education systems and is helping to build a robust evidence base to guide these reforms. In over 100 countries, the World Bank is using a systems approach to achieve better education results, with support from analytical tools developed under the Systems Approach for Better Education Results (SABER) initiative. SABER is a global knowledge platform that is helping countries assess their education policies and identify actionable priorities to help education systems achieve learning for all. Policy areas covered by SABER include early child development, student assessment, teachers, and workforce development, to name a few.
Better evidence and knowledge are the levers that make effective reform possible. The World Bank conducts and supports rigorous impact evaluations to generate stronger evidence about what works in education under different conditions. In Africa, for example, the Service Delivery Indicator (SDI) surveys track performance and quality of service delivery in education and health across countries and over time. At a global level, the EdStats website features more than 2,500 internationally comparable education indicators on access, completion, learning outcomes, expenditures, and more.
From getting children off to the right start with effective Early Childhood Development (ECD) programs through facilitating labor mobility and job matching, it is imperative that education systems provide students at all levels with the skills necessary to promote productivity and growth. The Labor Market Returns to Early Childhood Stimulation in Jamaica report concentrates on the critical need to invest early in order to ensure good outcomes later in life. A recent report on the quality of teachers, Great Teachers: How to Raise Student Learning in Latin America and the Caribbean, distills the latest evidence and practical experience with teacher policy reforms from both within and outside the region.
Several initiatives focus on increasing labor market productivity and examine how education can play a role in addressing the skills mismatch present in many countries around the world. The new Skills Toward Employment and Productivity (STEP) skills measurement survey is shedding light on skills gaps and mismatches by generating new, internationally comparable data on adult workers’ skills, and several regional skills reports, including Developing Skills for Innovative Growth in the Russian Federation and the Vietnam Development Report 2014.
The World Bank collaborates with United Nations (UN) agencies and development partners to support countries’ education goals, including progress toward the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Most recently, the World Bank joined the UN Secretary-General as a member of the Global Education First Initiative to help put every child in school, improve the quality of learning, and foster global citizenship. As an important contribution to this initiative, the World Bank has convened and co-hosted several Learning for All events that brought together global development leaders and other partners with ministers of education and finance for a discussion that focused on accelerating progress toward ensuring that all children can go to school and learn.
The Global Partnership for Education (GPE) has been a critical partner in basic education since 2002, when the World Bank was instrumental in creating this multi-donor partnership. Efforts to better coordinate financing for education from GPE and the International Development Association (IDA), the World Bank’s fund for the poorest countries, are underway.
The World Bank partners with a number of bilateral donors as well, including Russia, through the Russia Education Aid for Development (READ) trust fund, which supports activities to strengthen student assessment systems. Several other trust funds support the World Bank’s operational and knowledge work in education, reflecting collaboration with Australia, the European Commission, Ireland, Korea, the Netherlands, Norway, Japan, Spain, and the United Kingdom. The World Bank is also working with new partners including Teach for All, the Arab World Initiative, the Early Childhood Consultative Group, the Building Evidence in Education (BE²) Group, and the Global Compact on Learning Donor Network to help these learning-focused programs have a global impact.
Last Updated: Sep 24, 2014