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The paper presents a first global investigation of the longer-term inequality implications of COVID-19 by examining the effect of school closures on the ability of children from different countries and backgrounds to engage in continued learning throughout the pandemic, and their implications for intergenerational mobility in education. The analysis builds on the data from the Global Database of Intergenerational Mobility, country-specific results of the learning loss simulation model using weekly school closure information from February 2020 to February 2022, and high-frequency phone survey data collected by the World Bank during the pandemic to assess the incidence and quality of continued learning during periods of school closures across children from different backgrounds. Based on this information, the paper simulates counterfactual levels of educational attainment and corresponding absolute and relative intergenerational educational mobility measures with and without COVID-19 impacts, to arrive at estimates of COVID-19 impacts. The simulations suggest that the extensive school closures and associated learning losses are likely to have a significant impact on both absolute and relative intergenerational educational mobility in the absence of remedial measures. In upper-middle-income countries, the share of children with more years of education than their parents (absolute mobility) could decline by 8 percentage points, with the largest impacts observed in the Latin America region. Furthermore, unequal access to continued learning during school closures across children from households of different socioeconomic backgrounds (proxied by parental education levels) leads to a significant decline in relative educational mobility. [This report was prepared by the World Bank Poverty and Equity Global Practice & Education Global Practice.]

This paper presents credible and comparable evidence on intergenerational educational mobility in 53 developing countries using sibling correlation as a measure, and data from 230 waves of Demographic and Health Surveys. It is the first paper to provide estimates of sibling correlation in schooling for a large number of developing countries using high quality standardized data. Sibling correlation is an omnibus measure of mobility as it captures observed and unobserved family and neighborhood factors shared by siblings when growing up together. The estimates suggest that sibling correlation in schooling in developing countries is much higher (average 0.59) than that in developed countries (average 0.41). There is substantial spatial heterogeneity across regions, with Latin America and Caribbean having the highest (0.65) and Europe and Central Asia the lowest (0.48) estimates. Country level heterogeneity within a region is more pronounced. The evolution of sibling correlation suggests a variety of mobility experiences, with some regions registering a monotonically declining trend from the 1970s birth cohort to the 1990s birth cohort (Latin America and the Caribbean and East Asia and Pacific), while others remained trapped in stagnancy (South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa). The only region that experienced monotonically increasing sibling correlation is the Middle East and North Africa. The recent approach of Bingley and Cappellari (2019) is used to estimate the share of sibling correlation due to intergenerational transmission. The estimates show that when the homogeneity and independence assumptions implicit in the standard model of intergenerational transmission are relaxed, the estimated share is much larger. In the sample of countries, on average 74 percent of sibling correlation can be attributed to intergenerational transmission, while there are some countries where the share is more than 80 percent (most in Sub-Saharan Africa). This suggests a dominant role for parents in determining the educational opportunities of their children. Evidence on the evolution of the intergenerational share, however, suggests a declining importance of the intergenerational transmission component in many countries, but the pattern is diverse. In some cases, the trend in the intergenerational share is opposite to the trend in sibling correlation. [This report was prepared by the World Bank Group's Development Research Group, Development Economics.]

The World Bank's focus on foundational skills requires that issues of language and Language of Instruction be brought to the forefront of education policy discussions. Poor Language of Instruction policies harm learning, access, equity, cost-effectiveness, and inclusion. Yet nearly 37% of students in low- and middle-income countries are taught in a language they do not understand. Massive learning improvements are feasible by teaching in a small number of additional languages. The World Bank's first Policy Approach Paper on Language of Instruction offers an indication of the work that will be undertaken to support countries in introducing reforms that will result in more resilient, equitable, and effective systems by promoting teaching in the languages that students and teachers speak and understand best. [The report was edited by John Steinhardt.]

In 2019, 135 million people in 55 countries were in food crises or worse, and 2 billion people did not have regular access to safe, nutritious and sufficient food. COVID-19 has exacerbated these hardships and may result in an additional 121 million people facing acute food insecurity by the end of 2020. Further, since the beginning of the pandemic, an estimated 1.6 billion learners in 199 countries worldwide were affected by school closures, with nearly 370 million children not receiving a school meal in 150 countries. The paper presents the evidence on the potential negative short-term and long-term effects of school meal scheme disruption during COVID-19 globally. It shows how vulnerable the children participating in these schemes are, how coping and mitigation measures are often only short-term solutions, and how prioritizing school re-opening is critical. For instance, it highlights how girls are at greater risk of not being in school or of being taken out of school early, which may lead to poor nutrition and health for themselves and their children. However, well-designed school feeding programmes have been shown to enable catch-up from early growth failure and other negative shocks. As such, once schools re-open, school meal schemes can help address the deprivation that children have experienced during the closures and provide an incentive for parents to send and keep their children, especially girls, in school.

This paper looks at how countries have mobilized additional resources for education and assesses their impact on access and learning outcomes, using the World Bank's new Learning-Adjusted Years of Schooling measure. The paper shows that global spending on education has risen significantly over the past two decades, although spending as a share of gross domestic product has remained relatively unchanged, at about 4.5 percent. However, global trends mask large differences across regions and country income groups. For example, low-income countries recorded the largest increases in terms of the share of GDP spent on education, but the absolute amount they devoted to education remained low compared to other countries. Economic growth has been the main driver of increases in public education spending. Yet, countries that achieved the largest and most rapid spending increases did this through a combination of increases in overall government revenues, a greater prioritization of education in the government budget as well as healthy economic growth. Increases in public education spending did not generally result in major improvements in average education outcomes. Using the available data, the paper shows that a doubling of government spending per child led to an increase in learning-adjusted years of schooling of only half a year. Preliminary findings also show that countries with lower efficiency and spending are expected to get the most from increases in spending in improved education outcomes. The paper concludes by outlining an approach that allows countries to assess their potential for increasing education funding and the expected effects on their education outcomes, based on benchmarks drawing from the data of comparable countries. It also underscores the urgent need to improve data on public education spending and education outcomes, to extend this analysis to cover a wider set of countries and increase the robustness of country-level benchmarks. [This paper is a product of the Education Global Practice.]

This paper studies the contribution of parental influence in accounting for cross-country gaps in human capital achievements. We argue that the cross-country variation in unobserved parental characteristics is at least as important as the one in commonly used observable proxies of parental socio-economic background. We infer this through an indirect empirical approach, based on the comparison of the school performance of second-generation immigrants. We document that, within the same host country or even the same school, students whose parents come from high-scoring countries in the PISA test do better than their peers with similar socioeconomic backgrounds. Differential selection into emigration does not explain this finding. The result is larger when parents have little education and have recently emigrated, suggesting the importance of country-specific cultural traits that parents progressively lose as they integrate in the new host country, rather than of an intergenerational transmission of education quality. Unobserved parental characteristics account for about 15% of the cross-country variance in test scores, roughly doubling the overall contribution of parental influence.

The gender gap reversal in educational attainment is ubiquitous in high-income countries, as well as in a growing share of low- and middle-income countries. To account for the reversal, this paper proposes a theoretical framework in which the interplay between the distributions of academic aptitudes and changes in the net benefits of schooling over time affect the gender composition of those getting more schooling. The framework is used to formulate and test alternative hypotheses to explain the reversal. The paper introduces the tail dynamics hypothesis, which builds on the lower dispersion of academic achievement among females observed empirically. It also studies the mean dynamics hypothesis, which is based on previous literature. Both hypotheses can explain the reversal in this framework. However, the assumption behind the tail hypothesis is better supported by the data. Its predictions are also consistent with gender differences in Scholastic Achievement Test score dynamics and in international test score distributions that cannot be explained by previous theories.

International students are critical to the competitiveness of American higher education in terms of financial, intercultural, and educational contributions. However, recent data indicates that the U.S institutions enrolled 31,520 fewer international students in Fall 2017 as compared to Fall 2016. At average tuition and fees of US$ 25,000, higher education institutions are likely to lose potential revenue of US$ 788 million for the first year of studies alone. This paper examines the shifting landscape of international enrollment from the lens of three overlapping Waves spread over seven years and takes a deeper dive into implications for American universities. Wave I was shaped by the terrorist attacks in September 2001 and resulted in slower overall growth in international student enrollment of 11% between 1999 and 2006. Wave II has its origins in the global financial crisis which prompted universities to search for self-funded students and experienced overall robust growth of 44 percent in international student enrollment between 2006 and 2013. Finally, Wave III is shaped by the new political order and intensified competition from English-taught programs in Europe and Asia which will slow down the pace of projected growth in international enrollment to 18 percent between 2013 and 2020. In this current Wave of intensified global competition, overall international student enrollment is likely to flatten or decline for most universities. While the reputation and quality of American higher education is admired and emulated around the world, resting on its past laurels will not be sufficient for attracting international students in the Third Wave. This means that universities must get proactive and strategic in reaching, engaging and supporting international students throughout their educational lifecycle. Demand for studying abroad among international students remains robust, however, increasing competition and expectations for value for money will requires proactive and concerted efforts to maintain the global competitiveness of American higher education.

A singular vision has propelled higher education and ministries of education in Asia since the new millennium. It is a vision launched by the once rising tide of a globalized world order that spilled into higher education: in order to be competitive on the world scene, each Asian country had to build "World Class Universities," which could be compared and rank-ordered with the pre-eminent research universities of America, Britain and elsewhere. And if the pre-eminent American and British research universities could not be quickly surpassed, punctuated jumps up the status ladder of global higher education would establish an "heir-apparent" trajectory. Now, however, the rising tide of globalism has perhaps crested. Indeed, as some scholars of globalism and higher education point out, in certain aspects of national policy the rising tide is turning into a receding one. Nation-states are recoiling from an elite-driven, transnational world order into an "inside economy" that is concerned with its own issues of development and sustainability, quite apart from measuring itself against the rest of the world. In time, higher education in Asia is likely to follow suit. Globalism created the vision of "World Class Universities" ranked in an imitative hierarchical order; its demise suggests the need for other ideals that can drive the quest for excellence in higher education in Asia. The bedrock of educational quality for the New Flagship University in Asia is excellence in all of the forms of knowledge and understanding of human experience. The stronger the excellence in each form, the better the university's earned standing amongst its peers. But this is not a relative relationship, like the World Rankings, where worth is measured against other institutions in a game of winners and losers. Rather, it is measurement against the standards of excellence inherent in each form itself.

The number of countries that regularly participate in international large-scale assessments has increased sharply over the past 15 years, with the share of countries participating in the Programme for International Student Assessment growing from one-fifth of countries in 2000 to over one-third of countries in 2015. What accounts for this increase? This paper explores the evidence for three broad explanations: globalization of assessments, increasing technical capacity for conducting assessments, and increased demand for the microeconomic and macroeconomic data from these assessments. Data were compiled from more than 200 countries for this analysis, for six time periods between 2000 and 2015, yielding more than 1,200 observations. The data cover each country's participation in each of six cycles of PISA as it relates to the country's level of economic development, region, prior experience with assessment, and OECD membership. The results indicate that the odds of participation in PISA are markedly higher for OECD member countries, countries in the Europe and Central Asia region, high- and upper-middle-income countries, and countries with previous national and international assessment experience; the paper also finds that regional assessment experience is unrelated to PISA participation.

Despite the fact that access to education has dramatically increased over the past decade, 57 million children do not currently have access to education, and many of those who do receive limited, low-quality services. Recent estimates have shown that the stagnation of aid and inflation has meant that the funding gap needed to provide basic education for all children and adults has increased from $16 billion to $26 billion. In this context, impacting investing, which uses the tools of commercial capital deployment for social good, has emerged as a potential tool to support education access, equity, and quality. This study maps the emerging landscape of education impact investing, with a view to identify potential areas for intervention by investors. It describes the characteristics of impact investment, including sources of capital, investor profiles and preferences, and areas of investment. Its focus is on investments that broaden access to quality education, especially for the most vulnerable populations. This study, conducted by D. Capital Partners, is part of the Open Society Education Support Program's efforts to identify innovative financing mechanisms and approaches that can increase the availability and allocation of resources for education systems. [The working paper was written by D. Capital Partners.]

Set against the backdrop of increasing economic interdependence in East Asia, the idea of regional integration is now being discussed as a long-term political process in the region. As in the field of the international economy, de facto integration and interdependence exist with respect to the internationalization of the higher education system in East Asia. Based on the results of a comprehensive Japan International Cooperation Agency Research Institute (JICA-RI) survey of 300 leading higher education institutions active in cross-border higher education, located in ten Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) member Southeast Asian countries and three Northeast Asian countries (China, Japan, and Korea), this paper examines universities perceptions of the degree of cross-border activities, the significance of their expected outcomes, and their regional preferences for partners. The objective is to envision a direction for a future regional higher education framework in East Asia and to consider the policy implications of the internationalization of higher education in East Asia in the context of regionalization. The findings related to the degree of cross-border activities suggest a current perception that there is more prominent in conventional than in innovative activities, but that innovation will rise considerably in the future. With respect to the significance of expected outcomes,academic and political expected outcome are perceived to be more significant than economic expected outcome, which are nevertheless expected to be more significant in the future. Finally, in terms of their preferred regions of partners, universities in East Asia overall place a high priority on building partnerships within their own region. Yet, among Northeast Asian universities, North America is perceived as the most active partner. (Contains 3 figures, 21 tables, and 13 footnotes.) [This paper was prepared as part of a Japan International Cooperation Agency Research Institute (JICA-RI) research project titled, "Cross-border Higher Education for Regional Integration and the Labor Market in East Asia."]

In the United States, developing "human capital" for both economic and social benefit is an idea as old as the nation itself and led to the emergence of world's first mass higher education system. Now most other nations are racing to expand access to universities and colleges and to expand their role in society. Higher education is growing markedly in its importance for building a culture of aspiration and, in turn, the formation of human capital, the promotion of socioeconomic mobility, and the determination of national economic competitiveness. This paper outlines a convergence of approaches toward building what I call "Structured Opportunity Markets" (SOM) in higher education--including diversified providers and expanding enrollment and program capacity. Increasingly, higher education systems in developed and developing nations, and in some cases, supranational entities such as the European Union and emerging cooperation among nations in South East Asia, will move to most if not all of the components of SOM, in part influenced by a global process of policy transfer. Those nations and regions that do not pursue major components of SOM will be compelled to present rational arguments in both domestic and international forums as to why they are not adopting some aspects of the model. The paper concludes by arguing that while the US offers structural and operational models for many evolving national higher education systems, the EU offers important insights on how to pursue higher education reform in the modern and increasingly competitive global context. (Contains 6 footnotes.)

In the midst of the global recession, how have national governments viewed the role of higher education in their evolving strategies for economic recovery? Demand for higher education generally goes up during economic downturns. Which nations have proactively protected funding for their universities and colleges to help maintain access, to help retrain workers, and to mitigate unemployment rates? And which nations have simply made large funding cuts for higher education in light of the severe downturn in tax revenues? This essay provides a moment-in-time review of the fate of higher education among a number of OECD nations and other countries, with a particular focus on the United States, and on California--the largest state in terms of population "and" in the size of its economy. Preliminary indicators show that most nations have not thus far resorted to uncoordinated cutting of funding for higher education that we generally see in US state systems. Their political leaders see higher education as a key to short-term economic recovery, long-term competitiveness, and often their own political viability--particularly in nations with upcoming elections. Further, although this is speculative, it appears that many nations are using the economic downturn to actually accelerate reform policies, some intended to promote efficiencies, but most focused on improving the quality of their university sector and promoting innovation in their economies. One might postulate that the decisions made today and in reaction to the "Great Recession" by nations will likely speed up global shifts in the race to develop human capital, with the US probably losing some ground. The Obama administration's first stimulus package helped mitigate large state budget cuts to public services in 2009-10 and to support expanded enrollments largely at the community college level. But it was not enough to avoid having universities and colleges lay off faculty and staff, reduce salaries and benefits, often eliminating course offerings that slow student progress towards a degree, or making sizable reductions in access in states such as California. States have very limited ability to borrow funds for operating costs, making the federal government the last resort. "In short, how state budgets go, so goes US higher education; whereas most national systems of higher education financing is tied to national budgets with an ability to borrow." Without the current stimulus funding, the impact on access and maintaining the health of America's universities would have been even more devastating. But that money will be largely spent by the 2011 fiscal year (Oct 2010-Sept 2011), unless Congress and the White House renew funding support on a similar scale for states that are coping with projected large budget gaps. That now seems unlikely. The Obama administration announced its proposed 2011 budget in February, including $25 billion in state aid targeted for Medicaid. This is a modest contribution to states that face projected cumulative budget deficits of $142 billion in 2011, and there is uncertainty regarding the final federal budget. This is because Obama's proposal will be debated and voted on in a Congress increasingly focused on stemming the tide of rising federal budget deficits. Without substantially more federal aid to state governments, many public colleges and universities will face another major round of budget cuts. There is the prospect that higher education degree production rates in the US will dip in the near term, particularly in states like California that have substantially reduced access to higher education even as enrollment demand has gone up. (Contains 49 footnotes and 4 figures.) [A version of this paper was presented at the Beijing Forum, University of Peking, November 7, 2009.]

This paper traces the historical development of the American research and technology enterprise from its origins in the post-Civil War period to its current international dominance in the discovery and dissemination of scientific knowledge. U.S. research universities have become the vital center of this enterprise over the past 60 years. But competitors in Europe and Asia, many of them looking to the American research university as a model, are beginning to challenge U.S. leadership in science and technology. The paper analyzes the nature of this challenge and the problems research universities must address to continue their remarkable record of success.

Secondary education continues to expand rapidly worldwide. Equally important is its diversification. The present paper contends that the diversification of secondary education, while acknowledged, is not well studied. Despite the widespread expansion of secondary education in different world regions, the information available to researchers--and policy makers--for informed comparisons of secondary education systems has been, and remains, rather superficial and limited. The present paper compares the programmatic foci and contents of secondary education systems. It seeks to move beyond existing characterizations of secondary education, by reporting initial results from an International Bureau of Education-sponsored, cross-national study of secondary level programs, tracks and curricula. This study, while mainly limited to academic-oriented tracks, provides an empirical basis for comparing the diversification of secondary education systems. (Contains 12 tables and 14 footnotes.) [Additional funding for this report was provided by: the EFA Global Monitoring Report. An earlier version of this paper was prepared with the collaboration of Massimo Amadio for the publication: "Expanding Opportunities and Building Competencies for Young People: A New Agenda for Secondary Education." (Washington DC: World Bank, 2005). This is a slightly revised version of "La diversificacion en la educacion secundaria: Curriculos escolares desde la perspectiva comparada," "Profesorado: Revista de curriculum y formacion del profesorado" 10(1): 1-29, 2006; published by the University of Granada, Spain.]

School choice research mostly focuses on academic outcomes. Policymakers increasingly view entrepreneurial traits as a non-cognitive outcome important for economic growth. We use international PISA-2006 (Programme for International Student Assessment -2006) student-level data to estimate the effect of private-school competition on students' entrepreneurial intentions. We exploit Catholic-Church resistance to state schooling in 19th century as a natural experiment to obtain exogenous variation in current private-school shares. Our instrumental-variable results suggest that a 10 percentage-point higher private-school share raises students' entrepreneurial intentions by 0.3-0.5 percentage points (11-18 percent of the international mean) even after controlling for current Catholic shares, students' academic skills, and parents' entrepreneurial occupation. (Contains 6 tables and 8 footnotes.) [Partial funding for this research was provided by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation.]

There is growing evidence that students throughout the world no longer see the US as the primary place to study; that in some form this correlates with a rise in perceived quality and prestige in the EU and elsewhere; and further, that this may mean a continued decline in the US's market share of international students. There clearly are a complex set of variables that will influence international education and global labor markets, including the current global economic recession. Ultimately, however, we think these factors will not alter the fundamental dynamics of the new global market, which include these facts: the international flow of talent, scientific or otherwise, is being fundamentally altered as nations invest more in educational attainment and human capital; the US will continue to lose some of its market share over time--the only question is how quickly and by how much; and without a proactive strategy, nations such as the US that are highly dependent on global in-migration of talented students and professionals are most vulnerable to downward access to global talent, with a potentially significant impact on future economic growth. This study provides data on past and recent global trends in international enrollment, and offers a set of policy recommendations for the US at the federal, state, and institutional level. This includes our recommendation of a national goal to double the number of international students in the US over the next decade to match numbers in a group of competitor nations, and requires recognition that the US will need to strategically expand its enrollment capacity and graduation rates to accommodate needed increases in the educational attainment rate of US citizens, and to welcome more international students. Attracting talent in a global market and increasing degree attainment rates of the domestic population are not mutually exclusive goals. Indeed, they will be the hallmarks of the most competitive economies. (Contains 6 figures and 41 endnotes.)

"Can You Hear Me? The Right of Young Children to Participate in Decisions Affecting Them" emphasises that participation enhances children's self-esteem and confidence, promotes their overall capacities, produces better outcomes, strengthens understanding of and commitment to democratic processes and protects children more effectively. Participation provides the opportunity for developing a sense of autonomy, independence, heightened social competence and resilience. The benefits are therefore significant, and adults with both direct and indirect responsibility for children need to acquire a greater humility in recognising that they have a great deal to learn from children. But the case for listening to young children goes beyond the beneficial outcomes. It is also a matter of social injustice and human rights. All people, however young, are entitled to be participants in their own lives, to influence what happens to them, to be involved in creating their own environments, to exercise choices and to have their views respected and valued. (Contains 4 footnotes.)

Many educational institutions are developing or expanding open and distance learning (ODL) programs, and all face difficulties ensuring that teaching materials of the right quality are developed on time. This report examines solutions to the problem, focusing on training, policies, and management structures that encourage timely development of good materials. Section 1 examines the training of course development staff in ODL. The data come from: surveys of educational institutions worldwide; case studies; in-house or published training literature; a literature review; and discussions with leading professionals. Two distinctions emerge as critical in developing training policies and practices: the distinction between industrialized and developing countries and between single- and dual-mode institutions. Descriptions of staff and materials development in targeted institutions are offered, as well as an examination of what remains to be done. Section 2 examines policies and management structures designed to encourage timely development of good materials. Surveys of practice in universities and colleges in developing and industrialized countries examine how writers of ODL course materials are rewarded (focusing on payment and benefits provided), and examine some of the policies and practices developed. (SM)