Expanding Opportunities and Building Competencies for Young People A New Agenda for Secondary Education

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Expanding Opportunities and Building Competencies
for Young PeopleA New Agenda for Secondary
Education
Ernesto Cuadra The World Bank
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Secondary Education Why now?
Confluence of 3 forces

• After primary education, What? Surging demand
  driven by EFA.
• Youth-quake The largest ever cohort of young
  people. A global risk or opportunity? Need to
  build/harness their skills
• Primary education is not enough Globalization and
  knowledge society present new challenges to human
  capital development

Demand for secondary education is soaring
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Political Tensions

• While there are strong national and international
  lobbies for primary or tertiary, there are no
  such thing for secondary education.
• Reaching political consensus for secondary
  expansion and reform is much more difficult than
  for primary or tertiary education.
• As a result, policy choices are more ambiguous
  and complex.

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Secondary Education As a Policy Paradox

• Terminal - Preparatory.
• Compulsory - Postcompulsory
• Uniform-diverse
• Individual needs and interests - Societal/Labor
  market needs
• Integrate students and offset disadvantages
  Select and Screen according to academic ability
• Common curriculum for all - Specialized
  curriculum for some

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Demands for Job-Skills is Changing Rapidly
Source Autor, Levy, and Murnane (2003) The
Skill Content of Recent Technological Change An
Empirical Exploration, Quarterly Journal of
Economics.
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The Challenge is to Build up Meta-cognitive
Capital and Creative Capital (i)

• Ability to integrate formal and informal
  learning, declarative knowledge (or knowing that)
  and procedural knowledge (or know-how)
• Ability to access, select and evaluate knowledge
  in an information-soaked world
• Ability to develop and apply several forms of
  intelligence, beyond strictly cognitive factors
• Ability to work and learn effectively and in teams

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The Challenge is to Build up Meta-cognitive
Capital and Creative Capital (ii)

• Ability to create, transpose and transfer
  knowledge
• Ability to cope with ambiguous situations,
  unpredictable problems and unforeseeable
  circumstances
• Ability to cope with multiple careers, learning
  how to locate oneself in a job market, choose and
  fashion the relevant education and training
• Learning to Think and Learning to Learn

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How Systems are RespondingOverall Trends in
Curriculum Reform (i)

• Deferring selection and specialization of pupils
• Ability grouping, tracking and streaming may
  raise the attainment of higher achievers at the
  expense of low achievers (Ireson and Hallam),
  which, apart from equity concerns, also raises
  worries about the loss of human and social capital

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How Systems are Responding Overall Trends in
Curriculum Reform (ii)

• Increasing the status recognition of traditional
  vocational education, in part by pushing it to
  the upper secondary level and then to
  post-secondary level.
• Departing from the disciplinary tradition of
  curriculum design and development, thus moving to
  broader curriculum areas, skill
  centered-approaches, etc., which amount to a more
  relevant and inclusive secondary curriculum.

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Secondary Education Curriculum Choices and
Trade-offs SCENARIO 1

• Highly specialized (tracking starts at 11 or 12)
• Highly selective (examination at the age of 11-12
  resulting in the attendance to different type of
  school)
• Vocational education a main option in lower
  secondary
• Emphasis on traditional disciplines in academic
  tracks
• Job-preparation and practice in the vocational
  track

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Secondary Education Curriculum Choices and
Trade-offs SCENARIO 2

• Deferring specialization and selection until the
  end of lower secondary
• System of elective subjects is the only device to
  introduce some internal differentiation
• Vocational education is pushed to the upper
  secondary level
• Introducing vocational elements in the general
  common curriculum
• Cross-curricular issues and interdisciplinary
  approaches are considered, but traditional areas
  continue to frame the secondary curriculum

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Secondary Education Curriculum Choices and
Trade-offs SCENARIO 3

• Deferring specialization and selection until the
  end of upper secondary school
• Elective system and homogeneous student grouping
  form the internal system of selection within a
  given high-school
• Vocational education is a fully pos-secondary
  enterprise
• Vocational elements are built in the academic
  curriculum to a greater and greater extent
• Apart from the Languages and Mathematics, the
  rest of the curriculum departs from the
  disciplinary tradition, so that skills-based,
  project-based and cross-curricular alternatives
  are widespread

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The Shifting and Fading Frontier Between
General and Vocational Curricula

• The issue nowadays is not so much how to provide
  vocational skills but how to add basic vocational
  content to the general curriculum
• Emphasis given on the applied dimension of all
  sorts of knowledge, beginning with the most
  traditional curriculum areas
• Introducing greater diversity by diversifying
  upper secondary education through the development
  of multi-faceted programs offering alternative
  pathways for education and training

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OECD Average
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Is Sustainable Expansion of Secondary Education
Feasible?

• Hong-Kong, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan,
  Finland, demonstrate that it is possible
• And it can be done in a short period of time.
  Between 1990 and 2000 these countries increased
  the average years of schooling by more than 4.5
  years
• Finland and Korea did it, by decreasing the
  fraction of the adult population with only
  primary education and increasing the
  opportunities for all to attend secondary
  education

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Finland and Korea Balanced Expansion of
Educational Attainment
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Colombia and Bangladesh Unbalanced Expansion of
Educational Attainment
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Financial Gaps and Imbalances
Fast-growing economies Countries succeeding in expanding secondary enrollment Slow-growing economies Countries not succeeding in expanding secondary enrollment
Per-student spending on secondary students as a ratio of per-student spending on primary students 1.4 1.4 2.2 2.6
Per-student spending on tertiary students as a ratio of per-student spending on secondary students 3.0 3.2 11.0 9.3
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Access and Quality The Twin Challenge

• Develop a mass system of secondary education,
  with quality and equity
• Secondary education systems must generate
  effective demand among youth
• Improve quality, defined as different
  institutional responses to an increasingly
  diverse demand

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Access and Quality are not just twin goals but
Siamese Twins

• No country has expanded secondary education
  without creating the public opinion perception of
  a quality drop.
• Unchecked expansion can lead to increased
  inequality, particularly gender and ethnic
  inequality.

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And The Role of the State is More Important than
Ever

• Mobilizing financial resources.
• ensuring political consensus and providing
  technical leadership and support.
• Creating conditions for alternative providers
• Targeting the poor and excluded groups.
• Monitoring and evaluating service delivery and
  system quality.

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Looking Ahead 3 Key Challenges

• Minimizing the inter-country/inter-regional
  education gap
• Sustainable financing of the expansion
• Address youth needs of relevant secondary
  education experiences

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• Thank you