The struggle between UNESCO and the World Bank over education for development

• In Event: Highlighted Session: The ‘practice turn’ in global governance: Analysing the changing role of international organizations in education policy-making

Proposal

This paper, which draws on archival research and interviews, examines the relationship between UNESCO and the World Bank by focusing on two important periods in the history of education for development: The Co-operative Programme (CP) between the two organizations that was launched in 1964 and lasted officially until 1989; and the Education for All (EFA) initiative that was launched in 1990. The 1960s and 1970s was a period of intense collaboration and turf struggles between UNESCO and the World Bank, in the course of which the Bank challenged and overtook UNESCO’s leading role as the authority for education for development. Long before the CP with UNESCO was officially terminated, the World Bank arguably developed into the biggest external funder and most influential policy shaper in education in low-income countries, while the influence of UNESCO declined (Elfert, 2021). The financial and epistemic power represented by the World Bank can also be observed in the EFA process. While UNESCO managed to some extent to assert its legitimacy as the lead agency for EFA, the World Bank asserted its agenda of primary education and prevailed over UNESCO’s broader interpretation of basic education. The Bank took the lead of a parallel financial global governance process, the Fast-Track-Initiative (FTI), which was aligned with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), endorsed by the United Nations and backed up by the governments of OECD countries and the international financial organizations – a power structure that UNESCO only has limited access to (Packer, 2007).

I will argue that both the CP and EFA have contributed to the standardization of educational norms, policies and practices. The World Bank’s influence on education in developing countries derived from its funding power and claims to managerial-scientific efficiency, exemplified by its managerial tools, such as the highly bureaucratic lending cycle and Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers. Global agendas such as EFA led to the prioritization of measurable targets that entailed an impoverishment and “shrinking” (Torres, 2000) of education. My analysis shows that UNESCO, with its idealistic epistemic underpinnings and governing structures that were “institutionally most directly responsive to the majority of its members” (Samoff, 1996, p. 267), represented a force that had to be reigned in to enable the global homogenization of education that the CP and the EFA process represented. UNESCO’s priorities, such as literacy and adult education, were effectively crowded out by “the Bank’s…aversion to funding adult education” (Bennell & Furlong, 1998, p. 46). Another finding of the research is that the governance structures and procedures of the CP and EFA were in tension with the rhetoric of “country ownership”. There is much evidence to suggest that the politics of convergence pursued by global agendas such as EFA are not suited to serve the interest of countries.

Author

• Maren Elfert, King's College London