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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.]

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 illustrates similarities and differences between two international surveys that assess adults' skills: the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) and the Skills Towards Employment and Productivity (STEP) survey. In particular, the paper highlights the issues that can arise for researchers interested to jointly analyse the data from the two surveys and to compare their results. The paper finds that, in spite of the many similarities, important differences exist between PIAAC and STEP, both in the way the data are collected, and in the way the proficiency of respondents is estimated. These issues can indeed affect the cross-country comparability of results from the two surveys. There is instead little evidence that the literacy assessment used in the two surveys is not adequate to form a basis for a valid assessment of adults' proficiency on a global scale.

This paper and the four commissioned works on which it is based are guided by the important question: How can we start valuing practices and outcomes of teaching and learning that are difficult to reduce to numbers? As the process of developing indicators for the Post-2015 education targets unfolds, some of the targets are at risk of being dropped on account of being 'un-measurable.' However, excluding more holistic but harder to assess educational targets will inevitably remove vital focus from some of the most important aspects of high quality education provision. Three education targets, developed by the Education for All Steering Committee (EFA-SC) and the Open Working Group on Sustainable Development of the U.N. General Assembly (OWG), are the thematic foci of this paper: (1) Relevant Learning Outcomes; (2) Knowledge, Values, Skills, and Attitudes to Establish Sustainable and Peaceful Societies; and (3) Teachers and Safe, Inclusive, and Effective Learning Environments. These three targets are at risk of being excluded from the final formulation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in response to practical concerns about the number of targets being excessive as well as concerns that targets such as these "rely too much on vague, qualitative language rather than hard, measurable, time-bound, quantitative targets." This report also highlights some of the main ideas put forward by the authors of the four commissioned papers. The annex to this document briefly describes the commissioned papers and presents the indicators proposed by the authors. [For the commissioned papers, see "Capturing Quality, Equity & Sustainability: An Actionable Vision with Powerful Indicators for a Broad and Bold Education Agenda Post-2015" (ED610009), "Goals and Indicators for Education and Development: Consolidating the Architectures" (ED609905), "Indicators for a Broad and Bold Post-2015 Agenda: A Comprehensive Approach to Educational Development" (ED609982), and "Indicators for All? Monitoring Quality and Equity for a Broad and Bold Post-2015 Global Education Agenda" (ED609988).]

The purpose of this paper is to review recent developments related to the development of indicators of educational progress in the context of the Post 2015 deliberations to generate a new international architecture for educational investment through to 2030. There have been a plethora of suggestions and several parallel consultation processes since 2012 to revise and replace the goals for education and development agreed at the World Education Forum in Dakar (UNESCO, 2000) and enshrined in the Millennium Development Goals (United Nations, 2000). This process is now converging on the two frameworks that are the subject of this analysis. Specifically, there are now seven goals that the Education for All Steering Committee has developed which were consolidated in the May 2014 Muscat Agreement (UNESCO, 2014); and the ten goals produced by the Open Working Group on Sustainable Development of the U.N. General Assembly (UN General Assembly, 2014). These goal statements overlap and are largely consistent with each other but contain some significant differences. This paper reconciles the differences and develops sets of possible indicators building on the work of the Indicators Technical Advisory Group (TAG-EFA, 2014) and the UN Statistical Commission (UNSC, 2014). The paper is organized in six parts. Part 1 analyses the strengths and weaknesses of the existing goals and targets for education and development to frame subsequent discussion in the context of the evolution of Education for All since 1990. Part 2 offers a necessary clarification of the relationship between goals and objectives, and targets and indicators. Part 3 reviews and discusses the process of developing indicators that are fit for purpose. Part 4 highlights characteristics of different types of indicator. Part 5 develops a list of preferred goal statements from the Muscat Agreement and OWG goals, links these to a discussion of existing and proposed indicators, and consolidates promising indicators that could be used to assess progress. The last part of the paper collects together forward looking conclusions that profile key issues that will shape how new indicators are devised to monitor the sustainable development goals for education.