The Road Not Traveled: Education Reform in the MENA Region

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The Road Not Traveled Education Reform in the
MENA Region
Ahmed GalalThe World Bank

• 50th Anniversary Symposium
• AmidEast
• Cairo, December 6th, 2006

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The Storyline

• MENA countries invested heavily in education,
  with positive results.
• Yet, the returns were low in terms of economic
  growth, income distribution and poverty
  reduction.
• Two possible explanations
• Education reforms were not well designed, and/or
• Reforms to boost labor demand were not in place.
• Both explanations are relevant, thus the call for
  a new way of thinking about education reform.

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Contents

• The storyline
• The Case for Education Reform in MENA
• The Road to Better Education Outcomes
• Maximizing the Benefits from Education
• Concluding Remarks

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I. The Case for Education Reform in MENA

• MENA invested heavily in education.

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I. The Case for Education Reform in MENA

• As a result, access and gender parity improved
  significantly.

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I. The Case for Education Reform in MENA

• So did literacy rates, life expectancy and
  fertility rates.

Source The World Bank, GDF WDI central database
Source UNESCO Institute for Statistics
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I. The Case for Education Reform in MENA

• However, the region lags behind in terms of the
  level and quality of human capital.

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I. The Case for Education Reform in MENA

• Moreover, as education spread, its distribution
  in the population became worse.

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I. The Case for Education Reform in MENA

• More importantly, education did not translate
  into higher economic growth or job creation.

Note Public Expenditure on Education LAC, MENA,
SA, SSA - Average of 1985, 1990, 1995 and 1999.
EAP- Average of 1998, 1990 and 1995, ECA- Average
of 1990, 1995 and 1999. Source Public
Expenditure on Education UNESCO through
EdStats, Per Capita GDP Growth - The GDF WDI
database, Unemployment Rate - Unlocking the
Employment Potential in the Middle East and
North Africa, 2004 (World Bank staff estimates
from ILO 2002 and country sources)
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I. The Case for Education Reform in MENA

• Also, income distribution improved as education
  distribution deteriorated.

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I. The Case for Education Reform in MENA

• Finally, poverty remained low largely because of
  income policies and public employment rather than
  education.

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I. The Case for Education Reform in MENA

• Even if the returns to past education investments
  were high, the education systems must now cope
  with new challenges
• Globalization and the increasing emphasis on
  knowledge in development,
• MENAs youth bulge, and
• The increasing financial constraints.

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I. The Case for Education Reform in MENA
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II. The Road to Better Education Outcomes

• Analytical Framework

• Pedagogy
• Teaching capacity
• Resources
• Management

Engineering

Incentives

• Evaluation
• Monitoring
• Rewards
• Competition

Public accountability

• Voice at the national level
• Voice at the local level

Successful Education Reform
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II. The Road to Better Education Outcomes
Three actors and three contractual relationships
Policymakers
Voice
Engineering/Incentives
Services
Schools/teachers
Parents/Students
Monitoring
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II. The Road to Better Education Outcomes

• From in-depth analysis of education reform in 14
  MENA countries over the last 3 decades, we find

• Too much engineering building schools,
  recruiting teachers, developing curricula and
  establishing national examinations.
• Too little incentives School/Teacher reward
  policy, performance monitoring and evaluation
  mechanisms, and competition.
• Limited public accountability with citizens
  having few mechanisms to influence education
  policy, nationally or at the local level.

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II. The Road to Better Education Outcomes

• The emphasis on the engineering of education
  cuts across all levels of education,

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II. The Road to Better Education Outcomes

• And the neglect of incentives and public
  accountability persists over time (phase 1 50s
  and 60s, phase 2 70s and 80s, and phase 3
  90s-present).

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II. The Road to Better Education Outcomes
But some countries did better than others in
meeting education objectives. Integrated index
of meeting education objectives
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II. The Road to Better Education Outcomes

• The main differences between successful and less
  successful countries validate the analytical
  approach
• Successful reformers, like Jordan, Kuwait and
  Lebanon, have better engineering and more aligned
  incentives than, for example, Yemen and Syria.
• The better performers engage the private sector
  in providing education to a larger extent than
  the least performers, especially in tertiary
  education.
• Finally, successful reformers enjoy grater public
  accountability than the rest of the sample.

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Education outcomes correlate with public
accountability.
II. The Road to Better Education Reform
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II. The Road to Better Education Outcomes

• On the demand side, graduates are often
  unemployed or employed at low levels of
  productivity, suggesting the need for further
  reforms to

• Enhance job-creating growth through further
  structural reforms,
• Reduce public sector employment, make labor
  markets more flexible and encourage PSD, and
• Adopt better migration policies to resolve labor
  market imbalances regionally.

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III. Maximizing the Benefits from Education

• Structural Reform Index, 1985-1998
  
• Source Dasgupta et al. (2002)

• Sluggish structure reforms

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III. Maximizing the Benefits from Education

• With respect to migration,
• Although large in the region (6 percent of world
  migration), it is not fully serving the interests
  of labor exporting and importing countries.
• Markets are failing and governments are not doing
  much to correct for these failures.
• In particular, they are not
• Addressing problems of information asymmetry,
  weak intermediation, and poor contract
  enforcement,
• Nor are they adopting free labor agreements.

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Concluding Remarks

• The MENA region has invested heavily in education
  and was able to enroll a large segment of the
  population in schools, but the returns to
  education have been modest.
• The low returns to education are due to a
  combination of missing incentives, low public
  accountability, and limited job opportunities for
  graduates.
• Thus, the road to travel in the future is clear.
  It involves
• A shift in approach to education reform, and
• Reforms to enhance the demand for labor
  nationally and regionally.