Education Next – Eric A. Hanushek and Ludger Woessmann
“Ministers and education officials from a wide range of countries and international agencies converged on Incheon in the Republic of Korea last month to discuss a new set of development goals at the World Education Forum. A draft document lays out a set of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which will follow on from the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) that included education goals to be accomplished by 2015. It is difficult to fault the SDGs as noble ambitions – end poverty everywhere, combat climate change, and more. But it is also clear that, even though they provide a plethora of targets, it will not be easy to use them either as policy levers for change or as a means of charting progress. There are also historical reasons to believe that what is not measured will not get done. The MDGs were clearer on measureable goals. In education they called for universal access to secondary schooling. And, they showed real progress was possible: primary school enrolment rates in South Asia rose from 78% in 1999 to 94% in 2012 while they moved from 59% to 79% in sub-Saharan Africa over the same period. Unfortunately, the best available evidence shows that many of the students appeared not to learn anything. The evidence on international achievement tests showed dismal levels of knowledge for many of the countries that improved in school access – seat time is not the same as learning. This is a huge problem, because it is knowledge and skills that pay off economically. In a new report issued by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Universal Basic Skills: What Countries Stand to Gain, we show the economic impact of meeting a quality goal of bringing all children up to a level of basic skills. The economic impact is huge, even for developed countries. We estimate that introducing universal basic skills by 2030 could boost GDP for lower-middle income countries by 1,302%, and 162% for high-income OECD countries.”(more)