Drawing on the World Bank's twenty years of experience in education sector analysis and research, this book analyzes the policy issues facing educational planners, administrators, and policymakers in developing countries in choosing alternative strategies of educational investment.

For decades, the primary argument in justifying education has been based on its direct economic effects. Yet education also provides "social benefits" for individuals and society at large, including a better way of taking care of ourselves, and consequently creating a better society to live in. Though it is difficult to quantify these social benefits, a more systematic analysis would improve our understanding of the full effects of education and provide a basis for considering related policies. The Office of Research of the United States Department of Education commissioned a series of papers on measuring these effects of education. Those papers, revised and updated, are collected here. Kenneth J. Arrow provides perspective on education and preference formation, and Jere R. Behrman considers general conceptual and measurement issues in assessing the social benefits of education and policies related to education. These issues are taken up by experts in four fields--health, parenting, the environment, and crime. Themes addressed include measurement issues regarding what we mean by education and its benefits; basic analytical issues in assessing the impact of education on these social benefits using behavioral data; and whether the social benefits of education justify public policy interventions. Jere R. Behrman is William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Economics, University of Pennsylvania. Nevzer G. Stacey is Senior Research Analyst, Office of Educational Research, U.S. Department of Education.

Yasushi Hirosato and Yuto Kitamura Developing countries, including Southeast Asian countries, face an enormous challenge in ensuring equitable access to quality education in the context of deepening globalization and increasing international competition. They must simultaneously meet the goals of Education for All (EFA) at the basic education level and of developing a more sophisticated workforce required by the knowledge-based economy at the post-basic, especially tertiary, education level. To meet this challenge, developing countries need to reform/renovate their education systems and service deliveries as an integral part of national development. However, most of them have not yet fully developed the individual, institutional, and system capacities in undertaking necessary education reforms, especially under decentralization and privatization requiring new roles at various (central and local, or public and private) levels of administration and stakeholders. Provided that an ultimate vision of educational development and cooperation in the twenty-first century would be to develop indigenous capacity in engineering education reforms, this book analyzes the overall education reform context and capacity, including the status of sector program support using the sector-wide approach (SWAp)/program-based approach (PBA) in developing countries. We also address how different stakeholders have been interacting in order to promote equitable access to quality education, particularly from the perspectives of capacity development under the system of decentralization.

Every year, the World Bank’s World Development Report (WDR) features a topic of central importance to global development. The 2018 WDR—LEARNING to Realize Education’s Promise—is the first ever devoted entirely to education. And the time is right: education has long been critical to human welfare, but it is even more so in a time of rapid economic and social change. The best way to equip children and youth for the future is to make their learning the center of all efforts to promote education. The 2018 WDR explores four main themes: First, education’s promise: education is a powerful instrument for eradicating poverty and promoting shared prosperity, but fulfilling its potential requires better policies—both within and outside the education system. Second, the need to shine a light on learning: despite gains in access to education, recent learning assessments reveal that many young people around the world, especially those who are poor or marginalized, are leaving school unequipped with even the foundational skills they need for life. At the same time, internationally comparable learning assessments show that skills in many middle-income countries lag far behind what those countries aspire to. And too often these shortcomings are hidden—so as a first step to tackling this learning crisis, it is essential to shine a light on it by assessing student learning better. Third, how to make schools work for all learners: research on areas such as brain science, pedagogical innovations, and school management has identified interventions that promote learning by ensuring that learners are prepared, teachers are both skilled and motivated, and other inputs support the teacher-learner relationship. Fourth, how to make systems work for learning: achieving learning throughout an education system requires more than just scaling up effective interventions. Countries must also overcome technical and political barriers by deploying salient metrics for mobilizing actors and tracking progress, building coalitions for learning, and taking an adaptive approach to reform.