1. The World Bank Education
Strategy 2020
MARGARET, GODRICK AND
INGRID
17.01.13

2. The World Bank report: Summary
 Education for development and growth: Educaton as
a tool to be used to loose or set in motion the
potential of the human mind, to make possible
development and acheivement.
 World Bank agenda: «Learning for all»
 The need for a new strategy

3. Objectives
 Learning for all beyond schooling
 Two strategic directions:
 1. Reform in education systems
 2. Building a knowledge base

4. Strategy to action
 Knowledge generation and exchange
 Technical and financial supports
 Partnerships

5. Steven J. Klees
A critical perspective
 Three elements which are identified in Revisied
Mission Statement of the Bank:
 To fight poverty
 To help people
 To nurture a commited staff

6. Classification of the world
 World apart
 A world together
 World geography

7. Decision making
 Uniformed recommendations
 Who is in charge of policies?
 Who is making the decisions?

8. Partnership and donors
 Collaboration with NGOs, communities, parents,
private sector, teachers, and teacher
organizations/unions.
 Conditionalities

9. Underlying issues
 Progress
 Poverty
 Knowledge management

10. Report recommendations
 Basic education
 Early intervention
 Innovative delivery
 Systematic reform
 Klees: Maybe a change in rhetoric, but hardly new
initiatives in these areas

11. What is missing in the strategy?
 Education as a human right
 Teacher salaries
 Unemployment and underemployment
 Higher education: Hardly mentioned
 Justifications for theoretical underpinnings

12. New rhetoric, old ideology?
 New rhetoric: participation, empowerment,
partnership
 BUT: Neoliberal ideology penetrates World Bank
operations
 Free marked, privatization and policies for structural
adjustment are taken for granted as ways to enhance
development
 1980s: Elimination of poverty
 1990s - : Reduction of poverty

13. Reform
 Redistribution of income and wealth. E.g. taxes for
the rich and dept forgiveness
 Move from ideas of self-ruling market
 Get rid of the MOB – global Monopoly Opinion
Bank
 Development fund: should be controlled in a more
participatory way, not by the WB or IMF.
 New leadership
 No «best practice»