Thinking Forward: A World Bank for a Changing World Order

• In Event: New Directions in the Study of Global Policy Actors in Education

Abstract

This paper looks at the evolution of the World Bank’s work in education. The World Bank is the largest single source of intergovernmental finance for education, dwarfing both bilateral foreign aid providers and United Nations organizations. It has a checkered history due to its engagement in structural adjustment programs of the 1980s and 1990s, where it advocated the introduction of user fees into putatively public educational systems. Over the last decade, the Bank has become better known for its efforts to expand access to primary and secondary education, through policies that focus on new governance techniques, such as greater use of standardized assessment, decentralization of management and financing, and the introduction of non-state based providers of educational services.

Research presented in this paper will be based on a review of Bank educational financing and country level activities, a review of its corporate policies and research, and interviews with key education sector and regional staff inside the World Bank. Beginning with a historical overview of the evolution of Bank activities in education, the paper asks how the World Bank is adjusting its education sector activities to address sharp changes in geopolitical power and world order, including the rise of emerging economies as key actors within intergovernmental organizations, and the decrease in the category of “low income countries” alongside the paradoxical emergence of the large populations affected by acute poverty in middle income countries. The paper will look in detail at Bank financing by level of education and at key policy directions in the Banks educational activities. It will also consider the Bank’s contributions to the achievement of the Millennium Development goals, and the role it plays in agenda setting for education internationally.

Author

• Karen Mundy, University of Toronto - OISE