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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.]

Students who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex or somewhere else on the gender/sexuality spectrum (LGBTQI+) are among the diverse student groups in need of extra support and protection in order to succeed in education and reach their full potential. Because they belong to a minority that is often excluded by heteronormative/cisgender people, they are often the targets of physical and psychological harassment. Such discrimination can place them at risk for isolation, reduced academic achievement, and physical and mental harm. This paper provides a brief history of how the LGBTQI+ population has often been misunderstood and labelled in order to understand challenges faced by students who identify as a part of this population. It continues by considering supportive educational policies and programmes implemented from national to local levels across OECD countries. Finally, the paper considers policy gaps and discusses policy implications to strengthen equity and inclusion for LGBTQI+ students.

The aim of this research was to assess how the COVID-19 global pandemic impacted overseas school partnerships in 2020, through to January 2021. It was undertaken with teachers involved in the British Council Connecting Classrooms through Global Learning (CCGL) programme to provide insight into how and why partnerships have been impacted. It also looks at what these teachers perceive to be the challenges that make it difficult for schools to maintain partnerships in a time of global crisis and provides examples of how schools have overcome these challenges. Online questionnaires were used to collect both qualitative and quantitative data and were distributed to teachers in UK using a network of British Council Local Advisors. 52 questionnaire responses were collected and analysed to explore the impact of the global pandemic on overseas school partnerships.

A multinational, multidisciplinary team examined the impact of globalization on education, training, and small and medium sized enterprise development in Ghana, Kenya, and South Africa. The study focused on the following issues: developing a learner-led competitiveness approach; building learning enterprises; education for microenterprises and macroeconomic growth; and training for self-employment and competitiveness. The study documented the importance of learning-led competitiveness and identified obstacles to development of learning enterprises in all three countries. The following are among the 12 recommendations offered to national governments and international agencies with development concerns: (1) insert learning-led competitiveness into development debates; (2) understand the implications of globalization better; (3) address the range of barriers to development of learning enterprises; (4) consider interenterprise linkages and the role of learning therein; (5) place learning-led competitiveness at the heart of small enterprise development policy; (6) broaden the universal primary education vision; (7) construct a curriculum for competitiveness; (8) improve public training's ability to support competitive self-employment; (9) empower training providers to be more market responsive; and (10) emphasize skills transfer from large to small firms. (The bibliography lists 139 references. Brief profiles and addresses of the research team members and a list of project papers are appended.) (MN)

The first part of this paper describes some of the basic issues facing education policymakers in Africa, including the introduction of school fees and private provision of schools. Insufficient attention has been paid to how policy advice is implemented, especially to the relation between planning and budgeting. Most African public-sector budgeting procedures and formats have not changed significantly since colonial times, and they cannot cope with translating short- and medium-term adjustment policies into practice. The second part of this paper is concerned with approaches to strengthening and/or reforming the planning and budgeting for education in African countries. With the improvements described, better use can be made of external assistance. The objectives of the suggested changes are to enable countries to use their limited resources better and to avoid stop-go educational policies so that the capability of providing a sustainable and affordable education service can be achieved. In this respect, governments have a crucial role to play in the process of change, even if in some aspects the "market" will succeed where government planning has failed. (Contains 78 references.) (RT)

This paper reviews the scholarly literature concerned, directly or indirectly, with the implementation of educational policies in Sub-Saharan Africa. The first part considers the reasons both for the past neglect of implementation issues and for the current interest in the subject. It also introduces some conceptual issues relevant to the analysis of implementation questions, drawing heavily on the literature that focuses on policy processes in Western countries. The second part offers general observations concerning the literature on the implementation of educational policies in Africa, and characterizes this literature with respect to the policies considered, the countries studied, and other variables. The third part outlines the major conceptual frameworks that have been developed for the analysis of implementation issues. It then considers the matter of causation as this is addressed, explicitly or implicitly, in the literature on educational policy implementation in Africa. Six major sets of variables are identified, and the arguments that have been advanced with respect to the explanatory significance of each set are summarized. The paper concludes with some comments on the deficiencies of literature reviewed and with a call for research that is better informed by the often more sophisticated work of those who have studied implementation issues in other policy domains and in other parts of the world. The appendices follow the text. The first lists the journals surveyed systematically for purposes of this paper, and the second is a bibliography. (Author)

This paper reviews a number of educational policy statements in East African countries, on issues ranging from combining education with production at the primary level to the financing of higher education. An assessment is made as to how successful the policies have been in achieving their original intention. The paper's conclusion is that policy outcomes fall far short of matching expectations, mainly because of insufficient, or the absence of, implementation. The reason most educational policies are not implemented is that they are vaguely stated and the financing implications are not always worked out. Another reason for failure is that the content of a policy is based on an empirically unsustained theoretical relationship between instruments and outcomes. The paper makes a plea for the formulation of more concrete, feasible and implementable policies based on documented cause-effect relationships. (Author/DB)

This publication contains a set of five case studies and two analytical overview chapters that lay the foundation for a deeper understanding of the process of educational policy formation in Africa. Reflecting developments until late 1992, the cases include Botswana, Tanzania, Uganda, Mali, and Senegal. The articles describe and analyze current approaches to educational policy formation. Specifically, the case studies examine the policy-making process, the policy product, and the policy environment. Each of the cases contains a summary table of key policy events and a detailed bibliography of the major educational policy documents. Most cases provide a more detailed description of policy making in recent years, including an analysis of the role of major donors, the influences of political and economic events at the national level, and the extent that external factors have driven internal policy making. The contents are: (1) "Introduction and Overview" (David R. Evans); (2) "Case Summaries" (Jeanne Moulton); (3) "Education Policy Formation in Anglophone Africa: The Work of Education Commissions" (Ash Hartwell); (4) "Education Policy Formation in Botswana: The Transformation of Traditional Politics" (Jakes Swartland and Ash Hartwell); (5) "Education Policy in Tanzania: Self-Reliance and Dependence" (Joel Samoff); (6) "Education Policy Formation in Uganda: Continuity Amid Change" (David R. Evans and W. Senteza Kajubi); (7) "Education Policy Formation in Francophone Sub-Saharan Africa" (Francois Orivel and Christopher Shaw); (8) "Education Policy Formation in Mali: As a Response to Political Crisis" (Mamadou Bagayoko and Jeff Hittenberger); and (9) "Education Policy Formation in Senegal: Evolutionary Not Revolutionary" (William M. Rideout, Jr. and Mamadou Bagayoko). References accompany each chapter. (LMI)

A detailed description is presented of the types, functions, performance levels, governance, administration, and funding of public examinations in 14 Sub-Saharan African countries with different educational traditions, based on English, French, or other backgrounds. The countries are: (1) Kenya; (2) Lesotho; (3) Mauritius; (4) Swaziland; (5) Uganda; (6) Zambia; (7) Chad; (8) Guinea; (9) Madagascar; (10) Mauritania; (11) Rwanda; (12) Togo; (13) Cape Verde; and (14) Ethiopia. In virtually all of these countries, public examinations are offered at the end of primary (elementary) school, lower-secondary school, and upper-secondary school. Procedures for funding, constructing, administering, and scoring the examinations are discussed. Issues discussed include passing rates, the effects of examinations on teaching and grade repetition, the roles of assessment, implications of national policies, and other current international issues in education. Guidelines are offered for improving the quality of examinations and their uses. This synthesis report draws on a series of studies supported by the World Bank. Findings from the 14 studies confirm that public examinations may help raise academic standards, but can also cause many problems in an educational system. Nine tables present data from the studies. A 105-item list of references and three appendices with supplemental information are included. (SLD)

Transforming education systems to be fit for the 21st century is the common thread for creating inclusive and equitable societies resilient to conflict, climate change and economic crises. Now is the time for increased investment in African education systems. This paper describes: (1) the state of Africa's educational landscape; (2) innovative approaches to increase education financing; and (3) what can be done to put education back at the forefront of Africa's policy agenda while sparking improved outcomes across the entire education spectrum. [Additional collaborators for this paper include the African Development Bank and the African Union.]

This paper provides an overview of the available information concerning selected policy instruments intended to promote employer-provided training, including the stated rationale and objectives, the target groups and operational design as well as a at a summary of the evaluative evidence regarding their operation. The analysis focuses on policy instruments providing financial assistance or incentives, specifically, subsidies (including tax incentives and grants) and levy schemes that devote a least some share of their resources to continuing training. Training leave regulations are considered only to the extent that they can be treated as a form of subsidy or a levy scheme, depending on the main financing mechanism involved. Instruments that focus solely on improving the quality of training or enhancing transparency in the training market are not addressed. In addition to offering a description of different instruments, the paper discusses the strengths and weaknesses (or risks and opportunities, respectively) of different types of instrument or particular elements of instrument design. It also specifies principles of successful instrument design that have been put forth in the literature and concludes with some remarks regarding the choice of policies. Training funds in combination with levy schemes in OECD and non-OECD countries are appended. Individual sections contain endnotes. (Contains 1 figure and 1 table.)

The youth-led revolutions that rocked the Arab world earlier this year have refocused attention on the region's 100 million-strong youth demographic and its critical role in the transformation of existing political, economic, and social structures in the Middle East and North Africa. Youth under the age of 25 represent an estimated and unprecedented 60 percent of the region's population, and in many of the region's countries, approximately 30 percent of the population is between the ages of 15 and 29. They have heightened expectations for themselves and their societies, but are constrained by the economic and political realities in which they live. The current demands of Arab youth for change are rooted in deep frustrations with the existing status quo--not least of which is the failure of the social contract for advancement that should be offered by higher education. Despite more than a decade of dramatic expansion--in enrollment, female participation, numbers of institutions, and programs--higher education in the Arab world continues to fall far short of the needs of students, employers, and society at large. In most countries, the majority of students are enrolled in institutions that lack key human and physical resources for success and suffer from overcrowding and poor quality. Efforts to address these chronic problems have had only marginal success. High unemployment among university graduates is only one measure of the reality of an educational system that is not producing graduates with the skills needed to succeed in the modern global economy and economies that are not producing opportunities for massive numbers of new entrants. Higher education has a critical role to play in the national and regional restructuring of Arab economic and political institutions that is currently underway. The long term success or failure of today's reform initiatives will rest, to a large degree, on the ability of these societies to place higher education where it belongs--as the engine of social and economic progress. The new pressures for political change may provide a unique opportunity to break free from some of the obstacles that have held back meaningful educational changes in the past. This working group, convened at the 2011 U.S.-Islamic World Forum in Washington, DC, brought together educators, specialists, and public sector officials from the United States and the Middle East to review the current state of higher education in the Arab world and consider the key challenges facing this critical sector of society. How are different actors in the diverse landscape of Arab higher education advancing or impeding the goals of improving educational outcomes? To what degree do regional partnerships and cooperative efforts offer opportunities to overcome local obstacles in specific areas? Finally, where has important progress been made and what policy responses and initiatives should be encouraged to improve the ability of Arab educational institutions to meet the challenges of this transformational period? (Contains 11 footnotes.) [The 2011 U.S.-Islamic World Forum was convened by Safwan Masri and Katherine Wilkens. This report was produced by the Saban Center at Brookings

Without large increases in the number of health workers to treat HIV/AIDS (HAHW), most developing countries will be unable to achieve universal coverage with antiretroviral treatment (ART), leading to large numbers of potentially avoidable deaths among people living with HIV/AIDS. We use Markov Monte Carlo microsimulation to estimate the expected net present value (eNPV) of a scholarship for health care education that is conditional on the recipient entering into a contract to work for a number of years after graduation delivering ART in sub-Saharan Africa. Such a scholarship could increase the number of health workers educated in the region and decrease the probability of HAHW emigration. "Conditional scholarships" for a team of health workers sufficient to provide ART for 500 patients have an eNPV of 1.23 million year-2000 US dollars, assuming that the scholarship recipients are in addition to the health workers who would have been educated without scholarships and that the scholarships reduce annual HAHW emigration probabilities from 15% to 5% for five years. When individual variable values are varied from this base case within plausible bounds suggested by the literature, eNPV of the "conditional scholarships" never falls below 0.5 million year-2000 US dollars.

This document contains information about and papers from meetings of educational practitioners and policymakers in the Asia-Pacific region, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, Europe, and the Arab States and a collective consultation of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) on literacy and education for all. Contents (arranged by region) are as follows: "1996 Jomtien Declaration on Adult Education and Lifelong Learning"; "The Bank Has a Re-Think"; "Maoris: A Longtime Educative Tradition" (Nora Rameka); interviews and reports from parts of Asia; "Intellectual Responsibility in Development"; "Declaration on Adult Education and Lifelong Learning"; "Setting Up a Programme Is Not Enough" (Alice Tiendrebeogo); "A Book for Six Inhabitants" (Antonio da Silva); "Peace in the Land of Blue Plastic" (Uwizeyimana Adorata); "Unwanted Gifts" (Ousmane Faty Ndongo); "Backing the Commitment of African Intellectuals" (A. Niameogo); "South African Adult Education Post-1994" (Joe Samuels); interviews; "Education of Young People and Adults to Consolidate Democracy"; "Declaration and Recommendations of the Latin American and Caribbean Regional Preparatory Conference"; "Read the Word..." (Sergio Haddad); "We Also Count!" (Lola Cendales); "Calandria" (Rosa Maria Alfaro Moreno); interviews; "The Role of NGOs in the Transformation of Adult Education in Latin America" (Jorge Osorio Vargas); "'Everyone Has to Learn Everything'" (Ximena Machicao Barbery); "Adult Education, Society and the Strengthening of Democracy" (Jose Rivero); "We Learned..." (Ximena Eugenia Paniagua Padilla);"Defining Cultural Identities"; conference report; "Is Literacy Neglected?" (Serge Wagner); "Creative Protagonists: The Role of Environmental Pedagogy" (P. Orefice); "An Already Long State--Civil Society Dialogue" (Anne Depuydt); "Masks""Meeting with Mr. D. Lenarduzzi"; "The New Modern Concept of Adult Education in Russia" (V. Onushkin); "Adult Learners' Week" (Alan Tuckett); "A Strengthened Partnership"; "The Hamburg NGO Platform on Adult Learning for the 21st Century"; "Vocational Education and Training" (Ulf Fredriksson); "You Can't Tie Up a Bundle of Firewood with One Hand" (Mariam Kone Traore); "Turning the Disadvantaged into Free Decision-Makers" (Ton Redegeld); "Some of the Contributions of Non-Formal Teaching to Formal Teaching" (Max Cloupet); "Adult Education and the Changing World of the Workplace" (D. Kahler); "Growing Together through Partnership" (Adama Ouane); "Beyond Programmes: Commitment, Values and NGOs" (Clinton Robinson); "Constructing Society"; "Arab Declaration on Adult Education"; "Campaigning for All Rights" (Aicha Barki); "Adolescent Women and Civic Society in MENA (the Middle East and North Africa)" (Frank Dall); "Culture and Spirituality" (Bacher Bakri); "The Emergence of a Civil Society" (Kacem Bensalah); interviews; "A Society Which Includes Women" (Aicha Belarbi); "The Socio-political Dimension of Gender: A Tool for Fair Development" (Marcela Ballara); and "Using Modern Technology Is Almost a Second Nature" (Mark Tennant). (MN)

In 2015, the world, through UNESCO adopted the 2030 agenda for sustainable development floated on 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to "transform our world." SDG4 titled "Quality Education" seeks to "ensure inclusive and equitable quality education for all and promote lifelong learning." An ordinary look at SDG4 would make it appear as an extension of "Education for All." However, there are differences. One difference that stands out is the undercurrent of the need to connect education to the key indicators of existence in its context especially through learning and equity. SDG4, as indeed many policies and agenda at the global level, tends to face challenges peculiar to the uniqueness of the African continent. Most governments struggle to include such goals in their national plans in ways that connect the real context of their people. One major area of concern for us is the area of culture where most programmes introduced into Africa, including into schools, are dressed in cultures foreign to the receiving communities. The authors of this paper argue that for SDG4 and similar programmes to fulfill their objective; they must find ways of embracing and adapting authentic African culture. The authors theorise in literature and use African cultures to drive its analysis. We conclude that African culture is the most viable framework for ensuring quality education that causes and sustains development along the lines envisaged by SDG4. [For the full proceedings, see ED597456.]

COVID-19 has caused considerable disruption to education around the world. Disadvantaged and marginalised learners are being particularly hard hit. Naturally, throughout the pandemic, the focus of much attention has been on how to open schools safely with a preoccupation with the hygiene and social distancing considerations. A shift is noticeable and welcome. With schools in many jurisdictions reopening partially or fully there is a growing interest in the immensely important area of recovering the lost learning that has occurred while learners have been away from face-to-face education. This report documents an analysis of policy and grey literature. It is one output from the first phase of our collaboration and links are made to two other outputs: (1) A rapid evidence assessment (REA) of the academic literature; and (2) An overarching summary paper drawing out key messages and introducing the next phase of the collaboration. [This report is written with assistance from Anna Riggall, Ella Page, Elnaz Kashefpakdel and Sonia Guerriero. For the companion report, "Learning Loss, Learning Gains and Wellbeing: A Rapid Evidence Assessment," see ED615066.]

As the world seeks to build back better into a new era of green and equitable economic growth, tertiary education systems are at the heart of the big transformations required throughout economies and societies. Tertiary education is vital for the development of human capital and innovation. Strategic and effective investments in tertiary education can serve every country - from the poorest to the richest - by developing its talent and leadership pool, generating, and applying knowledge to local and global challenges, and participating in the global knowledge economy. Effective tertiary education sectors ensure that countries have well-trained doctors, nurses, teachers, managers, engineers, and technicians who are the main actors of effective education and health service delivery and public and private sector development. Decades of insufficient and ineffective investment in postsecondary education and the advanced skills developed through higher learning opportunities have only exacerbated global equity gaps. This paper describes the approach of the World Bank to support the development of effective, equitable, efficient, and resilient tertiary education systems and institutions. It discusses and illustrates five principles that guide the Bank's financial and policy advisory support to STEER tertiary education systems toward optimizing their contribution to equitable and green growth: (i) building diversified Systems, (ii) investing smartly in new Technologies, (iii) ensuring Equity in access and financing, (iv) achieving Efficiency in resource utilization, and (v) acquiring Resilience in service delivery so that learning continues.

In 1920, the Phelps-Stokes Fund, based in New York, sent a commission to investigate educational conditions in West, South, and Equatorial Africa. After the first Phelps-Stokes Commission, two additional commissions were sent from the United States to investigate African educational practices and conditions until the mid-1940s. These efforts to transfer U.S. educational experience, backed by U.S. philanthropic organizations in the United States, were driven by a feeling of moral responsibility as veteran promoters of Black education and financial power. Why were U.S. philanthropic organizations so interested in African education and why did Europeans, particularly the British, look to the United States for guidance? This paper considers these questions in the context of American racial politics and how this was perceived in the international arena. Related is the fact that the U.S. has minimal political and economic relations with Africa, creating the perception that it could act as a neutral referee. The image of the U.S. specialists carries strong symbolic meaning, and often counted for more than the actual substantial value of any U.S. model. The paper explores this point by showing some of the common characteristics of the main actors involved. (Contains 42 notes and 20 references.) (BT)

As the 20th century closes, the general consensus is that education in Africa is in crisis. The challenge is to revitalize education in Africa and to do so in ways that enable African countries not only to close the development gap but also to leap ahead. Pointing out the rich diversity and considering carefully the bounding conditions for each general comment, this paper explores major issues and themes in education in contemporary Africa. The paper states that, as the general crisis has unfolded, external aid agencies increasingly have come to provide development advice as well as finance, and that, consequently, their influence may be far greater than the absolute value of their aid suggests. It reviews the trajectory, from education as social transformation, broad development engine, and foundation for self-reliance to aid dependence and education as targeted skills formation. The paper finds that: (1) in Africa, although education for all remains a distant goal, the commitment is still to expanded access; (2) another commitment of Africa's post-colonial leadership was to desegregate the schools and the curriculum; and (3) a third commitment of the leadership was to use the education system to address inequality. It discusses in detail the difficulties of fulfilling those commitments. The paper concludes that notwithstanding the rhetoric of liberation and empowerment, the commonly held view is that education must enable Africa to run faster as it tries to catch up with those who are ahead rather than to forge new paths or to transform the international economy and Africa's role in it. Contains 10 tables of data, 35 notes, and 59 references. (BT)