Publications and Research

If you are interested in further information related to basic education, international development policy and foreign asisstance delivery, below is a list of reports and publications.

2011

• Make it Right: Ending the Crisis in Girls' Education. 

  In 2011, RESULTS teamed up with the Global Campaign for Education to research and write a breakthrough analysis of gender discrimination and the right to education. Make it Right: Ending the Crisis in Girl’s Education outlines how – despite overall increases in global and national aggregate enrolments and gender parity – girls still face large challenges in effectively completing primary education and continuing through the school cycle successfully. By using a rights-based framework to assess the availability of education the report highlights the legal, policy, and budget frameworks which are needed to guarantee the right to education, especially for girls. The rights-based framework of this report is based on acceptability, accessibility, and adaptability for the special needs of gender-based marginalization. The report ends with an analysis of the role of the international financial institutions – the IMF and the World Bank – and a call-to-action for all members of the Education for All-Fast Track Initiative to 

  scale up support for girls education.

Full length report (PDF)

Executive summary (PDF)

Press release

• A Global Compact on Learning: Taking Action on Education in Developing Countries. Brookings, June, 2011. Despite major gains in school access, many children who are in school too often leave both primary and secondary levels without acquiring the basic knowledge, skills, and competencies—such as reading, writing, mathematics, problem solving, and critical thinking—that would allow them to continue to learn, grow into healthy adults, and lead safe and productive lives.  This report, calling for a Global Compact on Learning, asks for all actors—developing country governments, developed countries and other aid donors, the private sector, civil society organizations, the research community, and parents, teachers, and communities around the world—to embrace, support, and enact, within their spheres of influence, three priorities to improve learning for all children and youth, including those out of school: (1) help children get an early start on learning in life, (2) ensure that basic literacy and numeracy are learned in school, and (3) equip young people with relevant skills for their lives and livelihoods.

• Financing Education in Sub-Saharan Africa: Meeting the Challenges of Expansion, Equity and Quality. UNESCO Institute of Statistics, May 2011. This report presents a new series of data highlighting the tremendous financial commitment of African governments and the international community to achieve EFA. Over the past ten years, real expenditure on education has risen by 6% annually across sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), according to the report. It is often assumed that the resources were used to widen enrolment. Yet, recent data show that many countries also made significant investments to improve their educational services. In Burundi and Mozambique, for example, expenditure levels rose by an average of 12% each year. Out of 26 countries with available data, only one country – the Central African Republic – reduced spending on education. Given the uncertainties in the current economic climate, most African governments will have to make strategic decisions on how to provide their growing student populations with higher levels of education. This report examines these policy trade-offs by presenting the most comprehensive and timely data available on the financing of education in 45 SSA countries. Many of the indicators have never been published before and reflect a range of policy issues, such as changes in teacher salaries and private funding of education.

2010

• World Bank Financing For Education: More or Less for the Poor in IDA 16, RESULTS, June 2010.  This report seeks to provide an overview of trends in World Bank education financing with the aim of identifying the extent to which the Bank is contributing its resources for education in low-income countries.  It examines funding imbalances across regions, sectors, and country income levels in funding primary education and lays out the implications of such imbalances for the achievement of Education for All and overall development in lower income countries.
• Transformed Governance and the Education for All Fast-Track Initiative, Brookings, May 2010.  This report emphasizes the importance of analyzing and evaluating the current education structure in light of the coming shift in power and oversight in the G-8 and G-20.  It recommends that the Fast-Track Initiative adopt some of the suggestions from the recent independent FTI evaluation, and also from successful global partnerships in other sectors.  The report ultimately advises that the FTI broaden and strengthen the role of diverse stakeholders from developing countries and civil society in its governance structure in order to fully harness the energies of these stakeholders in resource mobilization and effective implementation.
• Many Paths to Universal Primary Education: Time to Replace Indicative Paths with a Real Country-Driven Approach, Brookings, February 2010.  This policy brief examines the Education for All-Fast Track Initiative in light of itsinternational commitments to improving country ownership and reducing donor conditionalities.  It argues that despite sincere efforts by the FTI to engage in a country-led process, the use of a specific global framework and its associated indicators across all contexts effectively results in limiting country ownership by imposing prescriptive, donor-designed solutions.  The brief recommends that the FTI take the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria as an example, and remodel itself in order to be guided globally by a set of core principles but that accountability for its investment should emanate from country-specific benchmarks and indicators.
• Punching Below its Weight: the US Approach to Education in the Developing World, Special Focus on Fragile and Conflict States, Brookings, February 2010.  This report analyzes the effectiveness of U.S. government education work specifically in relation to conflict-affected and fragile states, finding that U.S. education aid falls critically short of what it is capable of achieving. It underscores that the U.S. government has substantial strengths - especially in global reach, resources, and technical expertise - demonstrating a comparative advantage in the field of education in situations of conflict and fragility, but one that is prevented from maximizing its strengths by fragmented policy across agencies and limited multilateral engagement.  This report makes nine specific recommendations that would enable the U.S. government to greatly increase the effectiveness of its education aid to populations living in contexts of confl ict and state fragility.

2009

• Education on the Brink: Will the IMF’s New Lease on Life Ease or Block Progress Towards Education Goals? Global Campaign for Educaton, Global Campaign for Education, 2009. This report explains why investment in education, specifically in teachers, is crucial to the response to the recession in low income countries. It discusses the barriers to expanding investment in education while also scrutinizing how the policy conditions used in the past and recent policy changes made by the IMF affect education, and then looks at the promises of change and the new instruments being developed. Finally, it questions the role that aid can play as part of the solution and explores how the IMF policies impact on aid to education, drawing conclusions and laying out recommendations for the future.
• Projecting the Global Demand for Teachers: Meeting the Goal of Universal Primary Education by 2015, UNESCO, 2009.  This information sheet explains why meeting teacher demand is critical for the achievement of Education for All, and breaks down global demand for teachers by region.  It goes on to explore trends in filling teacher gaps: which countries have been able to achieve this, and which countries consistently experience teacher shortages. It finishes by outlining global need for teachers in order to achieve universal primary education.
• Beyond Primary Education: New Estimates of Out of School Adolescents, UNESCO, 2009.  This paper highlights the growing need for lower secondary education that has grown out of the push for primary school completion. It presents new global, regional and country-level estimates for the number of out-of-school adolescents at lower secondary education. It also examines the progress made in reducing levels of exclusion since 1999, especially with regard to gender disparities, and  analyses lower secondary participation as increasingly being recognized as being part of compulsory education.

• Start with a Girl: A New Agenda for Global Health, Center for Global Development, 2009.  In light of the extreme challenges specifically confronting girls in around the world, this report diagrams the most prevalent and serious health problems resulting from these challenges that adolescent girls face in developing countries, linking them to a combination of specific public health risks and social determinants of health. It highlights the diverse ways in which governments and non-governmental organizations have worked to break vicious cycles of ill health. Finally, the report lays out an ambitious yet feasible agenda for governments, donors, the private sector, and civil society organizations, complete with indicative costs.
• Because I am a Girl: The State of the World's Girls — Girls in the Global Economy: Adding It All Up, Plan International, 2009. The 2009 report argues that economic empowerment for girls and young women is about their capacity to make strategic life choices, and that in order to be economically empowered girls need a wide range of human and social resources, as well as the support of their families, their governments, the private sector, local and international organizations, and donors. This report looks at what needs to be done to ensure that girls are able to break the cycle of poverty and participate in the economy with dignity, quality and respect, making use of statistics and case studies to reinforce ideas. It uses a life-cycle approach, revealing the different pressures, obstacles and opportunities in girls’ lives as they make the transition from their early years through adolescence and into womanhood.
• Education in a Time of Major Economic Crises, World Bank, 2009.  This report lauds progress made in achieving education goals around the world in recent years, but warns that the current economic downturn could threaten the ability of low-income countries to continue robust investing in education.  Diminished investments in education could lead to lower enrollment, which in turn could have serious long-term negative impacts on the countries' economic performance, weakening their ability to be globally competetive once the recession subsides.  The report recommends that donor countries use the crisis as an opportunity to improve education system performance, and maintain support for education in developing countries, using both demand and supply-driven approaches to maximize effectiveness.
• We Don’t Need No Education? Why the United States Should Take the Lead on Global Education, by Desmond Bermingham, Center for Global Development, 2009.  This document puts the global need for education in perspective by highlighting the targeting of United States stimulus money towards improving education in order to boost competetiveness.  Emphasizing the their comparative advantage in the field of international education and development, it insists that the United States should take the lead on pioneering a Global Fund for Education as a way to build on the success of the Fast-Track Initiative and achieve a greater impact.  Finally, it proposes the structure and approaches that should be adopted by theis Global Fund for Education in order to maximize effectiveness.
• Redesigning the Basics: How to Improve U.S. Foreign Assistance for Basic Education, by John Middleton and Emily Mintz, RESULTS, 2009.  This report makes note of money appropriated by Congress for education in developing countries, and calls into question American aid practices and mechanisms that hinder the effectiveness of these dollars.  It identifies poor evaluation, geopolitically motivated aid allocation, and weak international coordination as the main problems, and recommends improving evaluation, bridging the gap between the Fast-Track Initiative and USAID, and improved host country coordination to improve aid outcomes.  The report concludes by suggesting that Congress consider major structural changes to U.S. foreign assistance in order to base aid on country needs.

2008

• Must Try Harder: The Challenges that Remain in Achieving Education for All, RESULTS UK, 2008. This report considers why the world is continuing to fail a generation of children, and what can and should be done to address the situation. Drawing on the latest research and analysis from a range of sources, it reveals that a complex and interrelated series of factors have come together to impede progress towards education for all. Some key findings include that achieving Education for All is contingent on making education affordable for poor families, available in fragile and conflict areas, and accessible to children with disabilities, as well as meeting teacher shortages and improving education quality. It analyses some of the most significant groups in the "missing generation" of school-age children and highlights key areas for action, making fifteen policy recommendations.

• Paying the Price: The Economic Cost of Failing to Education Girls, Plan International, 2008.  This report presents a new analysis of the economic cost of failing to educate girls. Using World Bank research and economic data and UNESCO education statistics, the report estimates that the economic cost to 65 low and middle income and transitional countries of failing to educate girls to the same standard as boys is US $92 billion each year.  It insists on the importance of education for girls, lamenting its neglect in many male-dominated societies.