The material for this review was first gathered as part of a report "Dialogue for Development; A Policy Review of British Educational Aid Towards 2000" which was submitted to the Overseas Development Administration in mid 1992. Those parts of the work which discuss general issues in education and development and collate recent research findings are presented here so that the work may reach a wider audience.
This review falls into two main sections. The first part¹ identifies key dimensions of the policy debate that will condition future patterns of investment in education. The themes chosen are the impact of recession, the effects of debt and structural adjustment programmes on the resources available for education; the implications of demographic trends in developing countries; technological change and changing patterns of employment and livelihoods; the continued degradation of the global environment, the new priorities attached to human rights and good government; and the importance of gender issues in education and development.
¹an abridged version of this part of the material will appear in Oxford Studies in Comparative Education, Vol 3(2) 1994
The second part provides an up to date culling of the research literature relating to seven specific fields. These are education and economic development issues; school effectiveness and student achievement; technical and vocational education; the balance of investment between educational levels; private educational expenditure and cost recovery programmes; organisational reforms, assessment practices and alternative delivery strategies; and literacy programmes.
The discussion of the school effectiveness literature has been extended by David Pennycuick in his related review published in this series. Angus Ross assisted in collecting material for this study, in developing the section on literacy, and in refining its presentation.
This review has made use of a wide range of the most recent source material drawn from the Institute of Development Studies library. I am grateful to the assistance of many colleagues at the IDS, in the University of Sussex, and in the ODA who drew my attention to relevant studies. This work was completed before the recent World Symposium on the Economics of Education sponsored by the ODA, British Council, the World Bank and the GTZ which was held at Manchester in April 1993. The papers from this conference extend some of the analysis and arguments presented here.
Keith Lewin
Hove 2nd June 1993
