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BUILDING GENDER EQUALITY IN URBAN LIFE
TOWARD UNIVERSAL PRIMARY EDUCATION: un
millennium project report on education and gender equality
Nancy Birdsall, Ruth
Levine, and Amina Ibrahim
Countries that are
unlikely to achieve the goal of universal primary education by 2015 face
two challenges: they must simultaneously address shortfalls in access
and in quality. They must significantly accelerate the enrollment of
children and improve their ability to keep children in school, and they
must achieve major improvements in learning outcomes and educational
attainment at a level required to have an economic and social impact.
Increasing access and improving quality are mutually reinforcing; if
schools cannot offer a good-quality education, parents are far less
likely to send their children to school.
Achieving more
education and better education will require efforts in a number of
domains within the education sector, as well as within the broader
social and economic context. There are lessons to be learned both from
countries that have succeeded — sometimes at levels far above what would
have been predicted given their economic level — and from those whose
progress has been slow.
Two major strategies
can be used to address these challenges: getting out-of-school children
into school and creating better institutions and more favorable
incentives. The first strategy involves overcoming both demand- and
supply-side constraints to enrollment and retention. The second
requires successfully addressing serious and pervasive institutional
shortcomings, many of which are linked to dysfunctional incentives for
administrators and teachers. These strategies and interventions are
intended as a menu from which country-level decisionmakers can craft
approaches and solutions that are appropriate to local contexts.
Strategy 1: Get Out-of-School Children into School
Higher levels of
enrollment and longer retention in school can be stimulated in three
ways: focusing on specific interventions to reach out-of-school
children, increasing the educational opportunities (formal and nonformal)
for girls and women, and increasing access to post-primary education.
All of these approaches take into account the powerful demand-side
influences that affect the propensity of parents to send their children
to school.
Reaching out-of-school children will take special efforts,
beyond what is typically thought of as scaling up. Expanding access to
and completion of primary schooling implies reaching children from
households at society’s margins. Most of the roughly 104 million
school-age children who are not attending school are poor and have
parents who are uneducated and illiterate. In all countries poor
children are less likely to start school, more likely to drop out, and
more likely to engage in child labor or domestic chores that keep them
from schooling. In most countries, girls are less likely to be in
school than boys. Universalizing primary schooling cannot be
achieved without addressing the specific reasons that poor children and
girls do not attend school, repeat grades, and drop out.
Some interventions target getting poor children and girls
into school and keeping them there by making schools affordable,
reducing the direct costs for all children, and compensating for some of
the added opportunity costs for girls. Other measures do so by
increasing demand for schooling, through such measures as conditional
cash transfers and school feeding and health programs.
No intervention is guaranteed to work, and the
appropriateness and cost-effectiveness of each must be assessed given
the particulars of the supply of and demand for education in a country,
and the resource constraints it faces. Presented below are examples of
the types of interventions that appear to work — and in some instances
have been definitively shown to work — in improving education outcomes.
It is important to note, however, that the evidence base is weak,
particularly with respect to the type of rigorous evaluation findings
that would be required to be able to make clear statements about what
works and what does not work.
Eliminate school fees
Eliminating or reducing school fees has substantially
increased enrollment, particularly for girls. When free schooling was
introduced in Uganda in 1997, primary school enrollment nearly doubled,
from 3.4 to 5.7 million children, rising to 6.5 million by 1999.
According to the World Bank, girls’ enrollment increased from 63
percent to 83 percent, while enrollment among the poorest fifth of girls
rose from 46 percent to 82 percent. In Tanzania the elimination of
primary school fees in 2002 resulted in additional enrollment of 1.5
million students. A scholarship for girls in Tanzania significantly
increased their enrollment in secondary school (the program was
subsequently extended to boys as well). In Bangladesh a stipend for
girls in secondary school substantially increased their enrollment,
particularly in rural areas.
The increased enrollments that result from eliminating fees
represent an important achievement. For girls especially, just the
opportunity to leave home daily and participate in a larger social
setting may matter. Indeed, that opportunity may help explain why women
with five or six years of schooling, who may barely have retained
literacy as adults, have fewer and healthier children and are more
likely to ensure that their own children attend school.
It is also true, however, that a surge in enrollment can
significantly strain educational systems. In Malawi the elimination of
school fees in 1994 led to a 55 percent increase in enrollment. The
addition of 1.2 million students overwhelmed the capacity of Malawi’s
schools and was followed several years later by drop-out rates that
brought primary completion rates virtually back to where they had been.
In the immediate aftermath of fee elimination, the sudden lack of
resources at the school level and surging enrollments are bound to
overwhelm the education system, unless there is adequate planning and
new resources reach the schools. A second generation of education
reforms in Malawi, Tanzania, and Uganda, which focused on quality
improvements and replacement financing, has had far more success in
sustaining enrollment and increasing completion rates.
Of course, reducing or eliminating tuition has little impact
if school districts are permitted to levy additional fees, such as
building funds and student activity fees. Kenya first tried eliminating
tuition in 1974, but these other fees quadrupled the cost of schooling
to parents in some districts, resulting in a substantial increase in the
drop-out rate, particularly in poorer districts. Experience shows that
eliminating fees will not help poor families unless more equitable and
efficient sources of financing are provided, either by transferring
district, provincial, or central government funds to the local level or
by providing funding from locally raised revenues, something that occurs
only rarely.
Provide conditional transfers
Programs for conditional cash transfers for education provide
resources directly to targeted beneficiaries only when they keep their
children in school. Such programs serve as social safety nets, raising
the immediate incomes of impoverished families while also increasing the
human capital of the poor by educating their children. Conditional
transfer programs are well established in Mexico (Progresa), Brazil (Bolsa
Escola), and Bangladesh (Food for Education). Such programs also exist
or are being planned in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Honduras,
Jamaica, Nicaragua, and Turkey. In addition, the World Food Program
assisted 27 countries with “take-home rations” programs in 2002
(Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Benin, Cambodia, Cameroon, Chad, China,
Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Iran, the
Republic of Korea, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Malawi, Mali,
Morocco, Mozambique, Myanmar, Niger, Pakistan, Rwanda, Tajikistan,
Uganda, and Yemen participated in the program).
In Mexico, Progresa (the expanded form of which is now known
as Oportunidades) provides cash transfers to poor households in the most
marginal rural areas. The transfers are provided as long as children
attend school regularly. The program has increased enrollment rates at
the primary and especially the secondary levels, for boys and especially
girls. The greatest impact was during the important sensitive
transition year to secondary school, during which girls’ enrollment rose
20 percent and boys’ enrollment rose 10 percent. The program is
expected to increase educational attainment for the poor by 0.66 years
of additional schooling by grade 9.
In Bangladesh the Food for Education program provides a
monthly inkind food transfer (primarily wheat) to poor households as
long as their primary school-age children attend school. Enrollment at
participating schools increased 35 percent (44 percent for girls and 28
percent for boys). For the country as a whole, school enrollment had
risen just 2.5 percent over two years. Attendance was higher and
drop-out rates lower in Food for Education schools.
Nicaragua’s conditional
cash transfer program for poor households with children in primary
school has also produced results. Enrollment increased 22 percent, with
the poorest households benefiting most. Grade progression also
improved, particularly among the poorest students.
Offer school feeding programs
School feeding programs disproportionately benefit poor
children by creating incentives to enroll in and attend school and by
improving health, attentiveness, and capacity to learn. Offering meals
at school is an effective way to encourage children who are poor and
chronically hungry to attend classes. In Bangladesh school-based food
distribution increased enrollment 20 percent at a time when enrollment
at nonparticipating schools fell 2 percent. In Jamaica, Tamil Nadu
(India), and other places where school feeding programs have been
evaluated, attendance and retention generally rose. In Kenya a
randomized control study demonstrated that children’s school
participation was 30 percent higher among students attending schools
with feeding programs.
World Food Program case studies in Cameroon, Morocco, Niger,
and Pakistan have documented strong improvements in enrollment and
attendance when families receive food incentives in return for good
school attendance. In Pakistan enrollment of girls increased 247
percent in the North West Frontier Province and 197 percent in
Balochistan Province between 1994 and 1998. Student attendance and
dropout rates were also positively affected. Each month a five-liter
tin of vegetable oil was distributed to the family of each female
student who attended school for at least 20 days. In Morocco girls in
targeted rural communities who attended school regularly were given 100
kilograms of wheat and 10 liters of vegetable oil per year for good
attendance. Within the first two years of the program, the number
of girls in the first grade doubled, and in one province covered by the
project girls made up 43 percent of total primary enrollment in 1999, up
from 10 percent in the early 1990s.
Hunger and chronic malnutrition reduce learning achievement
of children already in school. In poor households the problem begins
early, with malnutrition and poor health of mothers. Poorly nourished
women give birth to children of low birth weight. In the absence of
special interventions, these children often lack the micronutrients and
energy required for normal development, critical to their learning once
in school.
The Food and Agricultural Organization estimates that 300
million children, most of them in developing countries, are chronically
hungry. Without breakfasts, students are more easily distracted in the
classroom and have problems staying alert and concentrating on lessons.
Studies in many countries suggest that hunger affects cognitive
functions and may therefore impair a child’s ability to benefit from
schooling. A program that provided breakfasts to primary school
children in Jamaica significantly increased arithmetic scores. School
feeding programs that address specific micronutrient deficiencies have
also been shown to improve school performance. Iron supplementation
raised test scores of preschool children in India. In Kenya students
participating in a feeding program had higher test scores, but only in
schools where teachers were relatively well trained before the program
started.
This evidence led the International Food Policy Research
Institute to conclude that “hunger is a barrier to learning… . A hungry
child cannot concentrate. A hungry child cannot perform. Hungry
children are unlikely to stay in school. School-based feeding programs
have proven effective in encouraging enrollment, increasing attention
spans, and improving attendance at school”.
Offer school health programs
School health programs, such as deworming and iron
supplementation, also increase school attendance and raise scores on
tests of cognition or school achievement. The World Health Organization
(WHO) has identified worm infections as the greatest cause of disease
among 5- to 14-year-old children. School health programs have
provided deworming medicine, with great success. In Kenya school-based
mass treatment of children for hookworm reduced student absenteeism by
one-quarter. In India a program to provide iron supplementation and
deworming medicine to pre-school students decreased absenteeism 7
percent among 4- to 6-year-old children. A recent study in Indonesia by
the World Bank and the Partnership for Child Development, investigating
the association between helminth infection and cognitive and motor
function in school-age children, found that children infected with
hookworm scored significantly lower on tests of cognitive function than
did uninfected children. Deworming treatments are safe, inexpensive
(the average cost is US$.30 per child per year), and so easy to
administer that teachers and even semiliterate community workers can be
trained to successfully manage school- and community-based deworming
campaigns.
Recent evidence demonstrates the benefits of deworming
treatments in addressing other critical health problems as well. Deworming
appears to improve the effectiveness of malaria control measures.
People free of soil-transmitted intestinal parasites have “the same
degree of protection against malaria as that provided by sickle-cell
trait carriage, the most potent factor of resistance to malaria
identified to date”. Worm infections make their hosts more susceptible
to HIV infection and enable the virus to replicate more rapidly; chronic
worm infections may also account for the higher prevalence of
tuberculosis in low-income countries.
Providing water and sanitation facilities at school is
critical, especially for girls. According to the Ugandan Health
Minister, Dr. Crispus Kiyonga, “Lack of latrines, especially separate
latrines for girls, was identified as the worst school experience for
girls… . Privacy issues relating to sanitation are a major factor
forcing girls out of school”. A Department of Public Health
Engineering-UNICEF study conducted in Bangladesh in 1994-98 showed that
provision of water and sanitation facilities in schools increased girls’
attendance 15 percent.
Recognizing the need to improve approaches and strategies to
health and nutrition in schools, UNESCO, UNICEF, the WHO, and the World
Bank launched an interagency initiative in April 2000. In 2001 the
World Food Program joined the initiative, called FRESH (Focusing
Resources on Effective School Health and Nutrition). Collaborators
identified a core set of best practices from health programs that
promote learning through improved health and nutrition. They also
identified interventions that would be feasible in resource-poor schools
and in hard-to-reach and urban areas. Policymakers can consult this
framework to develop their own strategy.
Create programs for girls
Increasing girls’ educational attainment is essential to
fulfilling education’s potential for positive social transformation.
Education is the key intervention for increasing inclusion of women in
decisionmaking in public life, as well as empowering them within the
home and the workplace. Given the barriers to girls’ education,
specific interventions are needed to make schools more accessible and
secure for them.
Providing female teachers for girls may address some security
concerns, as well as provide positive role models. International
cross-sectional data suggest some positive correlation between gender
parity in enrollment and the proportion of female teachers. Qualified
female teachers, however, are in short supply.
Schools need to be safe places for girls. Girls need to be
protected against harassment from male peers and predation by male
teachers. The problem is a serious one: in Cameroon 27 percent of girls
surveyed reported having had sex with teachers, according to UNICEF.
Changing this pattern of behavior involves significant cultural
changes.
Decreasing the distance to school raises girls’ enrollment
and attendance by assuaging their concerns about safety and reputation.
Research in such diverse places as Ghana, India, Malaysia, Peru, and
the Philippines indicates that distance matters for all children,
especially for girls. Providing schools in local communities
substantially increased enrollments in Egypt, Indonesia, and several
African countries. The impact is particularly pronounced for girls. In
Egypt, for example, following a campaign to construct rural primary
schools, girls’ enrollment grew by 23 percent, while enrollment of boys
rose 18 percent.
Girls and their families may find little reason to attend
school if they are taught that girls are of less value than boys or if
they are tracked into fields of study or low-paid occupations considered
traditional for women. Analyses of textbooks in Africa, Asia, and the
Middle East consistently find stereotyped material, with women portrayed
as subordinate and passive while men are shown as displaying
intelligence, leadership, and dominance. Many developing countries also
practice gender streaming in secondary school, directing girls away from
math and science. Teaching practices — such as giving boys more
opportunities than girls to ask and answer questions, use learning
material, and lead groups — may further discourage girls. Several
countries in Africa and Asia are beginning to use gender sensitivity
training for teachers and administrators to encourage girls’
participation.
The opportunity costs for girls’ education that arise from
their heavy burden of household chores can be addressed in a variety of
ways. Some measures reduce the need for girls’ work by establishing day
care centers and preschools for younger siblings or students’ children
or improving the supply of accessible water and fuel. Others — such as
flexible school schedules — enable girls to pursue an education while
assuming household responsibilities. Take-home food rations for
the families of girls in school can offset the loss to the household of
the girls’ labor. Flexible schedules, double sessions, and evening
school hours have been introduced in Bangladesh, China, India, Morocco,
and Pakistan.
No programs appear to be in place that encourage boys take on
a larger share of the domestic load, although preliminary evidence
suggest that at least in some situations, declines in boys’ school
attendance may be associated with significant increases in girls’
attendance. If such an association does exist, it is likely to be
because boys must perform some or all of the household labor previously
performed by girls. In Latin America the fact that girls’ enrollment
often exceeds boys’ enrollment may reflect the higher opportunity cost
of boys’ time (working in the fields or in the streets). This
illustrates the need to shape specific interventions based on local
conditions.
Educate children in conflict and postconflict
societies
Lack of access to education is often severe among children in
regions experiencing or recovering from armed conflict. A review of the
limited evidence suggests that provision of education during and after
conflicts is possible, despite the hardship imposed on children,
teachers, and program administrators. It is essential that
education programs start during and immediately after conflict;
countries cannot wait until “security” is established without losing a
generation of children. Education must be seen as a core part of
national healing and reconstruction.
To respond to the needs of these conflict and postconflict
countries, the Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE)
created the collaborative Initiative on Education in Situations of
Emergency and Crisis. INEE creates forums for communities,
practitioners, researchers, and experts to share resources and
information, identify problems and issues that affect education
programs, and share best practices. It encourages all donors to put
more resources into education for emergency programming and to ensure an
early reconstruction response following conflicts.
UN agencies, especially the United Nations High Commissioner
for Refugees (UNHCR), UNICEF, and the World Food Program, have worked
together and with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) to support
education in emergencies and refugee situations. UNICEF and the World
Food Program have cooperated to implement large-scale Back-to-Peace,
Back-to- School campaigns in a variety of postconflict situations,
including Afghanistan, Angola, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.
Educate children with disabilities
Of the 40 million children in the world with disabilities,
UNESCO estimated that more than 90 percent do not attend school. Both
developing countries and donors need to target this group if efforts to
increase enrollment are to reach many children with disabilities.
Country plans should include teacher training, school construction,
outreach, retention efforts, and performance assessments. Early child
development programs are important, as screening can identify
disabilities early enough to make timely, effective interventions.
Without better data and research on children with disabilities and
their experiences in the education system, such targeting will not be
possible.
In many cases a small investment can have a dramatic impact
on a child’s ability to learn and stay in school. In Brazil, for
example, more than one-third of the 14 percent of children with
disabilities have visual problems that are correctable by glasses. As
new schools are built to respond to increased demand for education, they
can be made accessible to children with physical disabilities for less
than 1 percent extra in construction costs.
Developing countries are slowly beginning to address the
education needs of children with disabilities. An effort launched in
Panama in 1995, as part of a broader education reform, created a
national directorate for special education to help students with
disabilities enter the public school system. Implementation of
this reform initially was slow, but the recently elected government has
made a new commitment to educating children with disabilities.
Beginning in 2005 the government will launch a three-year inclusive
education plan to end segregated classes for children with disabilities
and enroll them in regular classes. The government will also train
teachers to address the needs of these students in integrated classes.
Break the cycle of poverty and illiteracy by educating
mothers
Educating girls and mothers leads to sustained increases in
education attainment from one generation to the next. It can change a
society in which not sending one’s children to school is socially
acceptable into one in which the expectation is that every child
completes school. A wealth of cross-country and individual country
studies from Africa, Asia, and Latin America over the past 25 years
reveals that mothers’ education is a strong and consistent determinant
of their children’s school enrollment and attainment.
Multiple studies find that a mother’s level of education has
a strong positive effect on their daughters’ enrollment. The effect on
daughters’ enrollment is stronger than the effect on sons’ enrollment,
and it is significantly greater than the effect of fathers’ education on
daughters. Studies from Egypt, Ghana, India, Kenya, Malaysia, Mexico,
and Peru all find that mothers with a basic education are substantially
more likely to educate their children, especially their daughters, even
controlling for other influences.
Moreover, the more educated a mother is, the better. A study
by the Inter- American Development Bank found that in Latin America
15-year-olds whose mothers have some secondary schooling remained in
school two to three years longer than the children of mothers with less
than four years of education.
A study of 57 internationally comparable household datasets
from 41 countries found that the education of adults in the household
has a significant impact on the enrollment of children in all of the
countries studied. The effect of mother’s education is larger than that
of fathers in some but not all countries. In countries in which the
marginal effect of maternal education is significant, it increased the
likelihood of enrollment by less than 1 percentage point to 6 percentage
points. The study supports the view that women’s education often has a
stronger impact than men’s education in breaking the cycle of low
educational outcomes.
How does maternal education affect children’s enrollment?
Several mechanisms have been suggested. First, education is related to
an adult’s long-term earning capacity and to women’s bargaining position
for resources within the family. Educated mothers may have the
resources they need to send their children to school. Second, more
educated mothers may provide a more cognitively stimulating experience
for their children. They may play a more effective pedagogical role,
encouraging, monitoring, or helping their children do their homework or
prepare for examinations. Third, educated mothers serve as role models
for their children. If children, particularly girls, know that their
mothers attended and valued schooling, they may aim to follow their
example.
Several studies have sought to isolate these different causal
mechanisms. Research in Latin America suggests that the pedagogical
model does not apply there. “Were this a pedagogical story,” concluded
the Inter-American Development Bank in 1999, “mothers who do not
participate in the labor market would be expected to have more time to
improve their children’s schooling. However, children of working
mothers actually attain higher educational levels than those of mothers
who do not work.” After controlling for a variety of factors, the study
finds that a mother’s participation in the labor force increases a
child’s likelihood of being enrolled in school. In 13 of the 15 Latin
American countries for which data were available, this positive effect
of a mother’s participation in the labor market on a child’s educational
enrollment is positive and statistically significant. On average if a
mother participates in the labor market, her child will remain in school
two or three more years.
Is there still a positive and significant impact on
children’s education where educated women do not participate in the
labor market? A 1999 study in the Journal of Political Economy
examined the relationship between maternal education and children’s
schooling in a region of India with very low participation of women in
the formal labor market. Their findings underscore the potential
pedagogical effect of maternal education. Despite the absence of market
returns to female schooling, their study reveals a rapid increase in
demand for schooled wives in areas of high agricultural growth. They
interpret this as derived demand for female schooling as an input in the
production of child schooling. Returns to women’s schooling are found
in the household sector, where schooling increases “the efficiency of
maternal time in the production of child human capital”. Children of
literate women study two hours more a day than children of illiterate
women. Increased investment in female schooling thus has social
payoffs, even where there are not substantial labor market opportunities
for the women themselves. The authors of the study conclude that
increasing labor market opportunities for women is not necessary to
justify increased investments in female schooling, which have payoffs
even in settings with increased demand only in male-dominated
occupations. The conclusion from these studies is obvious: improving
educational opportunities for girls is essential to improving the next
generation’s educational outcomes.
Whether providing educational opportunities to uneducated or
illiterate mothers of young children today can break the cycle and
facilitate better education outcomes in the current generation remains
unclear. But some evidence suggests that it can.
In one study by the Central American Health Institute on the
survival of children of women who acquired literacy exclusively through
the adult education campaign that took place in Nicaragua in the 1980s,
researchers demonstrated a strong association between maternal literacy
and child health. Socioeconomic status did not account for the
survival and nutritional advantages of children born to educated
mothers.
A longitudinal study in Nepal concluded that women’s literacy
programs had a positive impact and contributed to women’s empowerment or
advancement or their social and economic development. Women who
participated in the program were poorer than women who did not, more
likely to send their children to school, more knowledgeable about family
and reproductive health issues and several health and related political
issues, and more likely to participate in income-generating, community,
and political activities
A 2002 USAID longitudinal study with a similar focus carried
out in Bolivia found that NGO-sponsored literacy programs had a
significant positive impact on women’s social and economic development.
Controlling for education level, marital status, locality, home
material possessions, and season, the study found that program
participants experienced greater gains in reading skills and were better
able to help their children with homework than were nonparticipants.
Few mothers were reading to their young children, however, and the
program had little impact on women’s involvement in their children’s
school. Whether or not women were participating in these programs, when
faced with difficult economic times, their daughters were at greater
risk of dropping out of school than their sons.
In light of these results, support to women’s literacy
programs should be considered an important complement to interventions
to increase access and retention at the primary school level. Adult
literacy programs may be particularly useful in settings in which there
are pockets of undereducated women, such as ethnic minorities or members
of indigenous communities.
Expand post-primary education
The Millennium Development Goals have focused much of the
world’s attention on the completion of a five- or six-year cycle of
primary education. The commitments at Dakar referred to basic education
of eight or nine years of schooling. Different countries define
“primary,” “basic,” and “secondary” in terms of different numbers of
years. However defined, the task force believes that a focus on
completion of just five or six grades is too narrow, for several
reasons.
First, the hoped-for economic and social benefits of
education may be unattainable with only five or six years of schooling.
One of these benefits is reduction in the incidence of HIV/AIDS (see
box). Between 1990 and 2000 the likelihood of a young person who
attended secondary school contracting HIV/AIDS declined by 12 percentage
points; the figure for students who had not completed primary school was
just 6 percentage points. By 2000 young rural Ugandans who were in
secondary school had a prevalence rate of just 3.2 percent — one-third
the rate of those with no education and half the rate of those with some
primary education. Evidence shows that girls who have attended
secondary school are more likely to assert their rights to protection in
a sexual relationship, reducing their vulnerability to HIV infection,
according to a 2003 Council on Foreign Relations study by Barbara Herz
and Gene Sperling. A 32-country study found that women with
post-primary education are five times more likely than illiterate women
to know the facts about HIV/AIDS. Illiterate women are three times more
likely to think that a healthy-looking person cannot be HIV-positive and
four times more likely to believe that there is no way to avoid AIDS.
In Zimbabwe only 1.3 percent of girls ages 15-18 who were still
enrolled in school were HIV-positive. Girls of a similar age who had
dropped out of school were more than six times as likely to be
HIV-positive.
Educating children can help slow the spread of HIV/AIDS |
Universal
primary education could save at least 7 million young people
worldwide from contracting HIV over a decade (700,000 cases a
year), according to a recent report from the Global Campaign for
Education. About 36 percent of young adults in low-income
countries never completed primary school, but they account for
an estimated 55 percent of new HIV cases among young people.
Education can
serve as a “social vaccine” against HIV, especially for
school-age children and young adults. A review published in
2003 in Social Science and Medicine on 11 studies of
school-based HIV prevention programs for youth in Sub-Saharan
Africa found that it is easier to establish low-risk behaviors
and build knowledge around prevention among younger students who
are not yet sexually active. Reaching children when they are
young is thus very important.
Given that the
HIV infection rate in many developing countries is growing
fastest among teenage girls, educating girls may be critical to
breaking the pattern. Girls who attend school are far more
likely to understand the risks involved in risky behavior, to
reject the myths associated with sex, and (in the case of good
school programs) know how to use effective refusal tactics in
difficult sexual situations.
Schools provide
a ready-made infrastructure for reaching the world’s children
with education to change behavior before they become infected.
Unfortunately, HIV/AIDS is also undermining education systems
and pulling children, especially girls, out of school. In
Zimbabwe, for example, a UNESCO study of five provinces found
that more than three-fourths of the children pulled out of
school to care for relatives with AIDS are young girls. In
these circumstances, it is critical to simultaneously attack
HIV/AIDS and work to preserve and improve the school system,
incorporating education on HIV/AIDS as a critical part of
teaching. |
Second, the demand for primary education may be determined in
part by the availability of secondary education slots, because parents
may understand that the economic benefits of primary schooling alone are
not great enough to offset the opportunity cost. Particularly where the
quality of primary schools is low, parents see primary school as a
necessary step their children need to take before continuing their
education, not an end in itself. Of course, success in moving close to
universal primary school enrollment generates new challenges. As more
children complete primary school, the private benefits, in higher wages,
will decline (the social benefits remain large, which justifies making
primary school access universal). Private rates of return to primary
education — perceived and real — cease to be seen as much of a reason
for sending one’s children to primary school unless access to
post-primary education increases.
Third, expanding the existing education systems in many
developing countries and scaling up other public sector functions
(particularly health services, water management, and general public
administration) requires a larger cadre of educated and trained workers.
In most developing countries, secondary and other forms of
post-primary schooling are heavily slanted toward better-off segments in
society — and, in most countries, toward boys. Countries must begin to
identify and implement strategies such as need-based scholarships to
reverse the tendencies toward inequitable access.
Spending on post-primary education should be additional to
spending needed to provide universal access to good-quality primary
education. The greater demand that post-primary opportunities can
generate for primary school is unlikely to create the kinds of
efficiencies that will reduce the cost of providing primary education.
Donors will thus need to provide additional financing for post-primary
schooling.
Implications for strategy 1
These findings suggest several actions that can be taken by
country-level decisionmakers seeking to increase the number of
school-age children in school:
• Depending on local
conditions, introduce, test, and scale up specific strategies to attract
out-of-school children to school.
• Support adult
literacy programs designed for mothers of young children, evaluate the
programs to determine whether they are working, and use that information
in future decisionmaking.
• Balance investments
in primary education with selective support to post-primary education,
paying particular attention to educational opportunities for girls and
young women. Include planning for expanding post-primary education with
planning for achievement of universal primary education.
Strategy 2: Create Better Institutions,
Increase Transparency, and Provide Better Incentives
Sustained improvements in education are impossible to achieve
without improving both parental involvement in decisions affecting their
children’s education and the way key institutions in the sector
function. These institutions include the schools and local and national
authorities that have influence over funding and school management.
Many of the countries that are performing poorly suffer from
institutional weaknesses, including low management capacity,
nontransparent resource allocation and accounting practices, and
substandard human resources policies and practices. Incentive
structures fail to reward good performance over bad create and reinforce
the most deleterious characteristics of weak institutions.
Parents who are both well informed about policies and
resource allocations in the education sector and involved in decisions
about their children’s schooling exert considerable influence and
contribute solutions. Involved communities are able to articulate local
school needs, hold officials accountable, and mobilize local resources
to fill gaps when the government response is inadequate.
While recognizing that context-specific solutions will be
required, the task force identifies five specific ways that education
institutions can be improved: strengthening the national commitment,
improving accountability through local control, improving the quality
and availability of the information base, investing in serious
evaluation to learn what affects learning outcomes, and strengthening
the role of civil society organizations.
Strengthen the national commitment
Successful education requires a strong national commitment,
expressed in the legal and institutional framework as well as in
budgetary outlays to the sector. A commitment to compulsory primary
education signals that the nation’s leaders place high priority on
education as a central pillar of development and supports healthy debate
about what constitutes education and how it can be funded. Having a
strong national framework for primary or basic education is a necessary,
although not sufficient, condition for the full set of institutional
changes required to accelerate progress.
Improve accountability through local control
One part of the solution to institutional problems is
parental and community involvement in education, which anchors education
in the social fabric of the community, fosters demand, and ensures that
schooling provides social benefits and economic returns that reflect
local priorities and values. Whether parents and communities provide
financial support, administrative support, or simply play an oversight
role, local engagement, commitment, and support remain vital to ensuring
that schooling is a priority for the community. Because the direct and
opportunity costs of schooling and the real or perceived lack of
economic returns dampen demand for education, such support cannot be
taken for granted.
Experiments that have devolved authority and fiduciary
responsibilities to parents and communities have produced encouraging
results. Evidence suggests that greater parental and community control
leads to higher teacher attendance. Evaluations in Argentina, Brazil,
Chile, El Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Nigeria, Peru, and a
number of Indian states link reduced absenteeism to involvement by
parents, the community, or the school leader.
Oversight and authority by parent-teacher associations or
parent councils were found to raise student test scores in Argentina,
Brazil, Honduras, India, Indonesia, and Nicaragua and to reduce drop-out
and repetition rates in some of these countries. A cross-country
regression of 10 Latin American countries found that parental
participation has the strongest impact on student achievement and that
autonomy without parental involvement is only marginally important.
Probably the most celebrated case of successful parental
control is that of the Community-Managed Schools Program (EDUCO) in El
Salvador, where parents select, hire, supervise, and dismiss teachers —
all responsibilities traditionally controlled by the central government.
The program links teacher salaries to performance and leaves budget
management in the hands of parent committees. Although program
households are poorer, parents have less education, and access to
services is below the average for El Salvador, EDUCO led to greater
parental participation in school affairs, lower teacher absenteeism,
more textbooks, and lower teacher-to-pupil ratios. Government transfers
were more reliable in the EDUCO schools, and EDUCO students tested
almost as well as students in other schools, a remarkable result given
that these students came from the poorest communities.
In what may be the most extensive reform in Latin America,
Nicaragua delegated management and budget to autonomous local school
councils, who hire and fire school staff, set salaries, and establish
and handle school fees. The intent of the reform was to devolve control
to communities and to generate local fee revenue to finance bonuses for
well-performing teachers. This feature of the program led to support
from teachers, whose union opposed the reform. Broad parental
participation raised additional revenue for schools from school fees and
ensured community control of the schools.
The arrangement proved popular with communities. Between the
inception of the reform (in 1993 for secondary schools and 1995 for
primary schools) and 2000, more than half of all primary schools and 80
percent of secondary schools became autonomous, all at the initiative of
communities. Teachers expressed mixed views on the new structure, but
they have also paid more attention to student performance and become
more responsive to school councils.
In Honduras the Community-Managed Education Program (PROHECO)
shifted school management, and teacher hiring, salaries, and oversight
to school directors, teachers, and communities. The degree to which
responsibility is exercised by the three players varies across
communities. Relative to traditional schools, PROHECO schools report
longer teaching hours, fewer school closings, smaller class sizes, and
more homework. The fact that teachers and directors complained about
parental intrusion suggests that parents are actively involved in
efforts to influence education. Despite the lower socioeconomic status
of students and the lower level of training of teachers, PROHECO
students performed better on science tests and no worse on math and
language tests than students at other schools. Both repetition and
drop-out rates appear to be declining.
In the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, parent-elected
community education associations work with public school directors and
administrators in managing an extensive after-school program for
disadvantaged youth. The program focuses on socialization, tutoring,
and curriculum enrichment. The associations manage their own budgets
and appoint the school director. Test scores and enrollment,
repetition, and drop-out rates all improved at participating schools,
and improvement was greater than at nonparticipating schools.
Small studies in El Salvador, Mexico, Nepal, and Pakistan
suggest that increasing school autonomy can help reduce teacher
absenteeism and increase motivation. In India and Peru active
parent-teacher associations (those that had met in the previous three
months) were associated with lower teacher absenteeism.
Despite their potential, parent associations face limitations
in low-income settings, and in some cases they have at best a minimal
effect on teachers. In Ghana parents did not feel competent to oversee
schools, and teachers, who were unfamiliar with collective
decisionmaking, felt unsure of their roles.
An innovative program in the Brazilian state of Parana, the
school report card program, engaged parents and encouraged them to rate
their school, the teachers, and overall performance. Parents attended
meetings, but like parents in Ghana they found it difficult to criticize
and take on the education establishment. Indeed, they were unsure about
what to assess. According to the then Secretary of Education, getting
parents to change their perceptions of their roles and their behavior
toward schools and teachers is the hardest step. This initiative will
therefore take time to become effective, but both the process and the
result are critical to improving the accountability of school
administrators and teachers and to raising performance in the sector.
Improve the information base, especially for parents
and communities
Information at the local level.
Information is an essential element in local control and
accountability. Parents and school administrators need information
about the effectiveness of their local schools. Simple indicators of
relative performance — spending per child, preparation of teachers,
educational outcomes compared with other schools — are essential. Such
information is generally unavailable to parents, particularly parents
who are most likely to face failing primary schools.
Examples from Brazil and Uganda illustrate the point. In
2001 the Education Secretariat of the State of Parana in Brazil
introduced the Boletim da Escola, an annual school report card of the
performance of each primary and secondary school under its jurisdiction
(www.pr.gov.br/cie/boletim). The report cards seek to increase
accountability of the schools and the government to the community. The
cards help the community, the government, and the school adopt a shared
vision of universal primary education. The report cards also seek to
empower parents to participate in the education process and inform
decisionmaking at all levels. The report card covers student
achievement, parents’ opinions (based on a survey), and other
information. In 2002 about 1.3 million report cards were disseminated
to parents and community members, stirring significant interest.
Teachers, parents, and administrators are already using the cards as
their primary source of information for implementing solutions and
monitoring progress.
A 1991-95 survey in Uganda revealed that only a small
fraction of central government funding destined for local schools was
actually reaching them. In response, the central government launched an
information campaign. Each month data on grants to school districts
were published in newspapers and broadcast on the radio. Equipped with
such information, local communities were able to monitor the flow of
federal funds precisely and effectively. By 2001 fully 80 percent of
federal funds was reaching schools. Many other changes were occurring
in Uganda during the same period, making it difficult to isolate the
impact of the transparency in information. But it is noteworthy that
schools with access to newspapers increased their funding on average by
12 percentage points more than schools without access to newspapers.
Strengthen the role of civil society organizations
Civil society organizations play a major role in advocating
for children and parents and in holding local governments, national
governments, and international organizations to their commitments.
These organizations engage in advocacy, service delivery, and sometimes
both. They are particularly effective in the areas of community
participation, empowerment, literacy, community schools and development
centers, and reproductive health and early childhood education.
Civil society organizations are active at the local,
national, regional, and international level. At the local level, the Le
Minh Xuan Commune is a network of unsuccessful state farms southwest of
Ho Chi Minh City, Viet Nam, that has left thousands of families
unemployed and children out of school. To provide basic education to
children who left government schools, Friends for Street Children
founded the Le Minh Xuan Development Center. Friends for Street
Children provides uniforms, books, and school supplies to children from
poor families. The curriculum includes literature, math, natural
sciences, health, vocational training, and family-centered activities.
Parents meet monthly with teachers to keep informed of their children’s
progress.
In rural Bangladesh the Dhaka Ahsania Mission creates
community development centers to respond to the demand from the local
community for learning life skills among adults and adolescents.
Established in 1981, the program, called Ganokendra, has created more
than 1,150 community development centers, which offer literacy programs.
The program targets women. The Movement for Alternatives and Youth
Awareness (MAYA) is a nongovernmental organization at the local
community level in India working to reform education through community
ownership. MAYA’s Prajayatna Process addresses issues of quality in
15,000 government schools in six districts in the state of Karnataka by
working with students’ parents, school committees, the education
bureaucracy, and the state bureaucracy. This method of participation in
school governance incorporates the culture and characteristics of local
communities and trains excellent facilitators and volunteers with
leadership skills. Karnataka registers relatively high levels of
enrollment and retention in comparisons with other regions in India, and
MAYA has been successfully scaled up in the state. The model of
community participation is replicable in different contexts after
redesigning to take into account the culture and context of each
community.
At the international level, the Global Campaign for Education
and the national civil coalitions affiliated with it in the North and
the South play a strong advocacy role, urging developing country
governments to abolish primary school fees and increase government
spending on education, while pushing for increased debt relief and aid
from donor countries. The African Network Campaign on Education for All
builds the capacity of African civil society to reach the goal of free
and good-quality education for all by engaging civil society in the
national and international dialogues on such issues as gender equity and
the impact of conflict on education. It also monitors and evaluates the
achievements of Education for All targets. ActionAid UK helps
communities secure education rights and ensure that schools are places
where education is respected. They hold governments accountable and
assist them in developing practical, innovative, and flexible solutions.
They hold international agencies, such as the World Bank, and developed
countries accountable for their promises on education funding.
Implications for strategy 2
Strengthening the institutions that manage and deliver
education services represents a huge challenge, particularly because
weak education institutions are typically only part of widespread
weakness in public administration. However, the experiences highlighted
above suggest that, depending on local conditions, countries can take
specific actions, including the following:
• Develop, strengthen,
and bolster the constituency for a national commitment to education with
a legal and institutional framework that places high priority on public
sector provision of quality education.
• Promote mechanisms
for local control of education, in which parents and other citizens are
given an explicit role in holding schools and teachers accountable for
delivering results.
• Improve the quality
of information about education sector performance, so that the agents
and agencies charged with planning and monitoring have accurate and
up-to-date knowledge of how many children are in school, how many
teachers are employed and on the job, whether children are remaining in
school, and so on.
• Institute systems to
assess the acquisition of skills and knowledge based on an international
standard. Ensure transparency in the dissemination of this information,
at both the national and local levels.
• Create an environment
in which civil society organizations are recognized as legitimate
participants in debates about the direction of the education system.
Nancy Birdsall
is President of the Center for Global Development in Washington, DC, and
previously served as Executive Vice President of the Inter-American
Development Bank. Her books include
Population Matters,
New Markets/New Opportunities, Distributive Justice and Economic
Development, and Beyond Tradeoffs. She recently served as a
Coordinator of the UN Millennium Project Task Force on Education and
Gender Equality and as a Lead Author of Toward Universal Primary
Education: Investments, Incentives, and Institutions. Ruth Levine
is a Senior Fellow and Director of Programs at the Center for Global
Development in Washington, DC. Her books include The Health of
Women in Latin America and the Caribbean, Millions Saved, Making Markets
for Vaccines, and Immunization Financing Options. She
recently served as a Lead Author of Toward Universal Primary
Education: Investments, Incentives, and Institutions. Amina
Ibrahim is National Coordinator of Education for All in the Federal
Ministry of Education, Abuja, Nigeria. She recently served as a
Coordinator of the UN Millennium Project Task Force on Education and
Gender Equality and as a Lead Author of Toward Universal Primary
Education; Investments, Incentives, and Institutions. Their article
is adapted from this report, and is reprinted by permission of the UN
Millennium Project.
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