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How to Spend $50 Billion to Make the World a Better Place

Page 8

by Bjorn Lomborg


  For example, a large part of the educational deficit results from drop-outs rather than failure to enrol. Likewise, substantial gaps in attainment between students from richer

  and poorer households occur in all countries.

  Most importantly – and disappointingly – levels of learn-

  ing achievement in nearly all developing countries are

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  How to Spend $50 Billion to Make the World a Better Place abysmally low. Only former Soviet bloc countries and the

  Southeast Asian tiger economies achieve results compara-

  ble to those of OECD members. In recent tests, virtually

  all developing countries perform far worse than Greece

  (the poorest performing major OECD country). Only 3.1%

  of Indonesian students scored higher in reading compe-

  tency than the average French student, and the average Brazilian maths student achieves the same as the bottom

  2% of Danes.

  Poor performance is caused, at least in part, by systems

  that are geared to measure inputs (money spent, schools

  constructed, etc.) instead of students’ performance. Also, in many countries, the entire system is seriously deficient, with school infrastructure being inadequate, the most basic teaching materials (pencils, paper, chalk, textbooks) in short supply, and teachers poorly trained, supervised, and monitored. In lower- and middle-income countries, there is a

  severe lack of educational achievement, but it is not due to children not enrolling in school.

  In summary, this challenge requires several factors to

  be addressed so that mastery of basic competencies can be

  achieved:

  r Increasing the competence of children entering school.

  r Increasing learning achievement at school by –

  r Reducing the number of children who never enrol

  r Reducing late enrolment

  r Increasing the number of years schooling completed

  by each student.

  r Increasing the competence gain per year of schooling.

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  Toward a New Consensus for Addressing

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  F

  Improve

  'quality'

  School II

  (School I to

  D

  School II)

  E

  C

  Threshold

  Extend enrolment

  (Never enrolment (A),

  B

  drop-out (B), extend

  Raise competency at

  A

  low learning (C))

  initial school age

  'Basic'

  Age

  schooling

  Figure 4.1. How to raise the levels of competence through schooling: the proximate determinants of learning achievement

  Analytical framework for evaluating opportunities

  None of these proximate factors is directly under the direct control of national or regional policy makers: outcomes

  are determined by individual decisions of children, par-

  ents, and teachers. Many opportunities can be proposed,

  but to be credible there must be a coherent causal chain

  from proposed action to desired output; it is not good

  enough to state that simply building more schools will mean higher enrolment.

  Demand

  Parents and children make decisions about schooling by

  balancing expected benefits (for instance, increased income or better health) against costs (for instance, books, uniform, and travel, plus the opportunity cost of the child doing

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  How to Spend $50 Billion to Make the World a Better Place something else). Even if the benefits exceed the costs,

  demand may be constrained by lack of current income.

  Supply

  Formal schooling can in principle be supplied by either

  the public or private sectors (including commercial com-

  panies, religious organizations, and NGOs). Supply is virtually unconstrained in the longer term, although schooling

  provided at below market cost clearly is limited.

  What opportunities exist and how can they

  be assessed?

  Improvements to educational achievement may arise either

  through policy action or systemic reform. Below, four policy options are considered:

  r Expanding provision by building or expanding schools

  (supply-side).

  r Improving quality with targeted increases in expendi-

  tures (supply-side).

  r Direct support to households to reduce the real costs of schooling (demand-side).

  r Raising the benefits of schooling (demand-side).

  But policy changes may not be enough: The present pub-

  lic sector framework may provide the wrong incentives to

  improve overall standards of basic education. This does

  not mean that governments cannot provide good quality

  education – they do indeed provide it in high-performing

  countries such as Korea or Hungary. This chapter considers

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  systemic reform of the role of government in setting policy, focusing on outcomes, incentives, and responsibilities.

  Evaluating the four opportunities for policy action

  In this section, the various policy options are assessed for their potential to produce high returns in tackling the challenge of poor educational achievement.

  Opportunity 1: Supply side; expanding the quantity

  of schools

  A commitment to universal primary education has been

  a high priority in development programs for many years.

  However, it is generally assumed that providing more

  money for governments to build schools will effectively

  increase take-up of education. The cost of educating the

  100–120 million children who have not yet received primary education has been estimated as between $9.1 billion and

  $27.6 billion, depending on the assumptions used.

  However, these figures might better be interpreted as the

  cost of providing educational facilities if all these children decided to attend. Empirical evidence strongly suggests that provision of spaces is not in itself the answer. Research

  in small communities in 21 different developing countries

  showed that, although school construction positively affects enrolment, the impact is very small. For the communities surveyed, enrolment of 6–14 year olds averaged 53.2%.

  Building a primary school in every community would only

  marginally increase this, to 55.4%.

  Similarly, analysis of the District Primary Education

  Project (DPEP) in India shows that the $1.62 billion spent

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  How to Spend $50 Billion to M
ake the World a Better Place since 1994 to expand and improve the quality of schooling

  has increased enrolment by only 1–2% compared with areas

  not in the program.

  While in some remote areas supply is a key constraint,

  simply expanding the school system is not the general

  answer.

  Opportunity 2: Improving quality; supply side

  policy actions

  Raising the quality of education would have multiple posi-

  tive impacts, including reducing the drop-out rate, increasing overall enrolment, and raising the level of achieve-

  ment of those already enrolled. The question that looms is whether increased spending per pupil is sufficient, or serious systemic reform is necessary to realize the benefits of additional expenditure.

  In simple terms, certain combinations of teaching ser-

  vices and instructional materials lead to particular learning achievements. Assuming that the balance between teaching and materials is not optimized, a given expenditure will have much better results if it is spent on the input that is furthest from optimum. For example, there would be little

  point in employing more teachers if learning was constra-

  ined by a severe shortage of textbooks or writing materials.

  This framework can be used, for example, to analyze the

  evidence on class size, which illustrates four fundamental points:

  1. Smaller class size is only good for education in some

  cases. If learning is already effective, a smaller class will

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  Toward a New Consensus for Addressing

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  yes

  Are schools currently

  Opportunity 2A:

  efficient?

  Expand expenditures

  per pupil

  no

  Are these interventions

  yes

  yes

  Are there known

  implementable in the

  Opportunity 2B:

  interventions that are

  current institutional

  Expand expenditures

  cost-effective?

  setting?

  on cost-effective

  interventions

  no

  Opportunity 5:

  Systemic

  reform

  no

  Are interventions

  Are there promising

  yes

  to be evaluated

  yes

  Opportunity 2C:

  interventions

  implementable in

  Experimentation

  to be evaluated?

  current institutional

  with rigorous

  setting?

  evaluation

  Figure 4.2. Decision tree for evaluating supply-side policy actions for improving education

  have no effect, but reducing the size of a very large class may be a significant positive factor.

  2. There seems to be a small (less than 3%) increase in

  student scores in some subjects when class sizes are

  reduced by five from a typical level of 25 students. For

  poorer countries, where class sizes may be much larger,

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  How to Spend $50 Billion to Make the World a Better Place there can be real and significant effects (supported by

  evidence from apartheid-era South Africa and Bolivia).

  3. Only a fraction of the variation in learning achievement can be attributed to differences between schools. Much

  of the difference in achievement occurs within schools,

  and a large part of the remainder is due to differences

  in student background. Typically, a maximum of about

  20% of student performance can be attributed to school

  performance.

  4. Class sizes as determined by public policy do not necessarily represent the optimum use of resources. Although

  smaller class sizes in some circumstances may be very

  beneficial, in other cases there may be no positive effect (for instance, if poorly trained teachers are unable to

  apply appropriate teaching methods).

  2A: Overall budget expansion Increased funding of education alone rarely achieves increased quality, and crude

  proxies such as class size or share of GDP say nothing

  about achievement. Indeed, during 1970–1994, OECD coun-

  tries significantly increased real expenditures per pupil, but estimated learning achievement in maths and science at

  best made very modest gains – and in most cases actually

  decreased.

  The current consensus amongst education specialists is

  that extra spending on education in developing countries is necessary, but will only increase quality if

  a) The extra budget is targeted at highly productive activities (Opportunity 2B).

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  Toward a New Consensus for Addressing

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  b) It is devoted to, or combined with, new educational techniques (Opportunity 2C).

  c) It is accompanied by systemic reform.

  2B: Targeted expansion of particular elements of the education system. Improved attainment levels could be aided by interventions in three categories: instructional materials, key infrastructure, and teacher training. Such interventions would almost certainly have substantial, cost-effective impacts on learning achievement. The particular interventions will depend on the individual circumstances of the

  countries, regions, and schools.

  However, cause and effect are difficult to determine,

  given the large influence of parental choice and the fact

  that additional educational inputs may be ineffective if the school itself is dysfunctional.

  Effective changes are not easy to implement. There are

  many examples of teacher training initiatives that have had no positive impact on educational achievement. Moreover,

  if a particular change would dramatically improve attain-

  ment levels, why has it not already occurred? The conclu-

  sion is that the present policy system does not offer appropriate incentives to improve efficiency.

  2C: Experimentation with rigorous evaluation. Rigorous evaluations of the impact of interventions are carried out

  infrequently. They often produce surprising results that

  challenge the conventional wisdom about the effectiveness

  of particular actions.

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  How to Spend $50 Billion to Make the World a Better Place Impact evaluations of interventions should be carried

  out more readily: not just “before and after” studies, but also

  “with and without” as a better measure of the true effect.

  However, the results must also be used as a basis for future improvements: If they are ignored, they have zero value.

  To summarize, supply-side improvements to quality are

  clearly possible in a variety of circumstances. However, the present author believes that nearly all developing countries will meet the educational challenge far more effectively via a process of systemic reform.
>
  Opportunity 3: Demand side; raising the benefits

  of schooling

  There are two demand-side opportunities that are indirect, but may be strongly correlated with educational achievement. Moreover, these are not education specific: Their general positive impact will probably make them cost-effective even without considering effects on education.

  3A: The effect of income on education. Household factors –

  income and parental education – are strongly correlated

  with educational outcome. International comparisons sug-

  gest that a child from a rich household where both parents have had five years schooling would be 28% more likely to

  be enrolled at school than a poor child with uneducated parents. Over time, such factors can have large social effects, such as in Vietnam, where significant reductions in child

  labor (with presumably large increases in school enrolment) occurred as households emerged from poverty. Because

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  such demand-side changes occur relatively slowly, so does

  the transition from moderate to near universal uptake of

  basic education.

  3B: The effect of raising returns to education. In situations where the apparent benefits are low (i.e., stagnant economic and technological conditions), parents may decide

  not to send their children to school, or may discourage their children from staying in school. However, evidence suggests that parents respond positively to perceived increased returns, and the catalyst is often technological change.

  For instance, the “green revolution” of the 1970s intro-

  duced high-yielding, dwarf varieties of rice and wheat, and increased farm profits significantly. Regions of India that adopted the new technology experienced a large increases

  in the return on education and these resulted in significant expansions of education.

  Opportunity 4: Demand side; direct support that

  lowers the cost of schooling

  Various initiatives can reduce the household cost of education. On an economic basis, these should clearly increase

  the demand for schooling.

  Blanket fee reductions can increase school enrolment.

  Experience in Africa with fee elimination shows that initial enrolment increases dramatically, but it does not necessarily translate to higher attainment at secondary school level.

  Reductions in school budgets because of lost income may

  indeed reduce overall quality.

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