Education quality and economic growth
Access to education is one of the highest priorities on the development agenda. High-profile international commitment to progress has helped galvanise policy-makers into action. This book aims to contribute to the World Bank’s education agenda by communicating research findings on the impact of education quality on economic growth. It shows how differences in learning achievements matter more in explaining cross-country differences in productivity growth than differences in the average number of years of schooling or in enrolment rates.
The authors argue that a development-effective educational strategy should thus focus not only on sending more children to school, as the second Millennium Development Goal is often interpreted, but also on maintaining or enhancing the quality of schooling.
The following findings are highlighted:
- educational quality directly affects individual earnings
- early analyses have emphasised the role of quantity of schooling for economic growth
- the quality of education matters even more for economic growth
- improving educational quality requires a focus on institutions and efficient education spending, not just additional resources
- the need to alter institutions fundamentally is inescapable
The authors conclude that the largest problem in current school policy is the lack of incentives for improved student performance. Neither students nor the school personnel in most countries of the world are significantly rewarded for high performance. Without such incentives, it is no surprise to find that added resources do not consistently go toward improvement of student outcomes.
