John Connell: The Blog

This has been cross-posted from my new blog at iamlearner.net, which I have estab­lished to sup­port and com­ple­ment my busi­ness web­site at consult.iamlearner.net.

In the light of my recent post, about the I Am Malala cam­paign, it was inter­est­ing to come across the intel­li­gent and thought­ful arti­cle in this month’s Prospect Mag­a­zine by Clare Lock­hart of the Insti­tute for State Effec­tive­ness. Clare believes that the UN’s obses­sion with pri­mary edu­ca­tion in its Mil­len­nium Devel­op­ment Goals has backfired.

The UN’s MDGs were set more than a decade ago, and the one that is clos­est to being met is the one on uni­ver­sal pri­mary edu­ca­tion, with around 88% of school-age chil­dren across the devel­op­ing world in pri­mary school (in 2010, up from 81% in 1999). Clare’s arti­cle argues that the focus on pri­mary edu­ca­tion has had the unin­tended con­se­quence of skew­ing invest­ment away from sec­ondary edu­ca­tion and voca­tional train­ing, both vital instru­ments in achiev­ing the con­tin­u­ing and grow­ing needs of coun­tries for:

.…their next gen­er­a­tion of doc­tors, nurses, engi­neers, accoun­tants, and project managers.…without sec­ondary and ter­tiary edu­ca­tion, a coun­try can­not run its health, agri­cul­ture and finan­cial systems.…

And iron­i­cally, given the MDG’s right­ful focus on the crit­i­cal impor­tance of edu­ca­tion, this skew­ing effect has also led to:

.…a short­fall of teach­ers to train the gen­er­a­tion beyond them. Even main­tain­ing pri­mary edu­ca­tion ser­vices, espe­cially in the coun­tries with grow­ing pop­u­la­tions, requires large num­bers to be edu­cated at sec­ondary and voca­tional levels.

Clare is, of course, very care­ful to state that she does not want to see invest­ment in sec­ondary and ter­tiarty edu­ca­tion at the expense of the pri­mary sec­tor. She is advo­cat­ing a more bal­anced approach that recog­nises the need for con­tin­ued and strate­gic invest­ment in all key sec­tors. This bal­anced approach requires cer­tain key ques­tions to be asked, and answered:

• What are the skills a soci­ety needs to develop and strengthen its pub­lic, pri­vate and civic sectors?
• How can a coun­try equip its next gen­er­a­tion with the skills to meet those needs?
• How can edu­ca­tion and train­ing pol­icy bal­ance the imper­a­tives of sta­bil­ity, eco­nom­ics and civil inclusion?

There’s a lot to think about in this piece, but I think I am per­suaded that the orig­i­nal set of MDGs failed to set a firm and sus­tain­able foun­da­tion for the bal­anced approach that Clare favours — given that the suc­ces­sor goals are being debated right now, I would hope that these are issues that will be given due consideration.

Tagged development, education, literacy, millennium development goals, schooling, society, united nations