Education and development the issues and the evidence - Education Research Paper
No. 06, 1993, 61 p.
[Previous Page] [Table of Contents] [Next Page]
Preamble
The material for this review was first gathered as part of a report "Dialogue for
Development; A Policy Review of British Educational Aid Towards 2000" which was
submitted to the Overseas Development Administration in mid 1992. Those parts of the
work which discuss general issues in education and development and collate recent
research findings are presented here so that the work may reach a wider audience.
This review falls into two main sections. The first part1 identifies key dimensions of the
policy debate that will condition future patterns of investment in education. The themes
chosen are the impact of recession, the effects of debt and structural adjustment
programmes on the resources available for education; the implications of demographic
trends in developing countries; technological change and changing patterns of
employment and livelihoods; the continued degradation of the global environment, the
new priorities attached to human rights and good government; and the importance of
gender issues in education and development.
1an abridged version of this part of the material will appear in Oxford Studies in
Comparative Education, Vol 3(2) 1994
The second part provides an up to date culling of the research literature relating to
seven specific fields. These are education and economic development issues; school
effectiveness and student achievement; technical and vocational education; the balance
of investment between educational levels; private educational expenditure and cost
recovery programmes; organisational reforms, assessment practices and alternative
delivery strategies; and literacy programmes.
The discussion of the school effectiveness literature has been extended by David
Pennycuick in his related review published in this series. Angus Ross assisted in
collecting material for this study, in developing the section on literacy, and in refining
its presentation.
This review has made use of a wide range of the most recent source material drawn
from the Institute of Development Studies library. I am grateful to the assistance of
many colleagues at the IDS, in the University of Sussex, and in the ODA who drew my
attention to relevant studies. This work was completed before the recent World