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International Conference on Social and Human Development Outcomes of Education, 12-14 November 2008, Nairobi, Kenya
RECOUP workshop, 23-25 September, 2008
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Forthcoming: Mid-Term Dissemination Conference, 3-4 December 2008, New Delhi
Featured publications
RECOUP policy brief no.3
Disability estimates: implications from a changing landscape of socio-political struggle
Working paper no. 20
Returns to schooling, ability and cognitive skills in Pakistan
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Research Objectives
The most direct outcomes of education are cognitive skills--such as literacy, numeracy, reasoning ability--and behavioural traits, attitudes and values. Improving these direct outcomes is obviously important for the poor. However, since these are strongly within the domain of the 'educational quality', the theme of another DFID-funded RPC, we shall conduct work on such determinants only where data sets already exist, and where potentially important results can be generated at little cost to the programme. Three broad questions will inform our overall research:
1. How can the social and human development outcomes of education be measured, improved and made central to poverty policy?
Social and human development outcomes of education lie typically outside the measured economy. Education can transform social relationships (e.g. by reducing gender and class inequalities in capabilities), and diversify the range of people's social links, building better prospects for social harmony. It can change attitudes (e.g. towards human rights or gender equality), add to social and cultural capital (e.g. self-confidence, or disposition to co-operate), and improve individuals' health, nutrition, and fertility behaviour. Much is known about these relationships, but very important gaps remain. We need more understanding of the causal impact of education on health, including HIV/AIDS, and on fertility, especially for the poor; a better picture of how educational outcomes impact on civil engagement and empowerment, particularly for women; and a better feel for the local meanings of different kinds of schooling, and how these differ by gender, ethnicity, disability and other dimensions of social exclusion.
2. How can economic and market outcomes of education be improved, particularly for the poor?
Everywhere, those with more schooling and better learning outcomes have wider job-choice and faster earnings growth. Both the allocative and the behavioural effects of schooling, however, probably change as access widens. For example, in low-income Africa a small and sometimes declining proportion of school leavers has achieved minimum learning objectives, even as participation in schooling has expanded. The gap between educational outcomes in Sub-Saharan Africa and OECD countries is widening. Our research will ask
- how the education, skills and training acquired both at school and in the workforce impact on the economic and market opportunities available to different fractions of the poor;
- how educational outcomes--particularly differentiated by gender--have been changing for the poor; and
- how such changes relate to broader patterns of social and economic development.
3. How are the outcomes of education affected by different partnership arrangements between households, governments and aid agencies?
Achieving the education MDGs will require considerable additional external financing, to three or four times the current available resources. But existing aid instruments are not necessarily able efficiently to deliver major new educational resource flows. Since 1995, disbursements of educational aid have been lower than planned and systematically below commitments. What accounts for this disappointing performance? Are new instruments, such as the Education for All Fast Track Initiative (FTI), making a difference, and if not, why not? Recent experience of educational aid will be addressed in our partner countries, to understand past performance and identify promising approaches in the future, for both recipients and donors. Other projects will investigate how different legislative frameworks, and government/household partnership and financing relationships, affect the poor.
