Cultivating Minds

• Author: Joel E. Cohen /David E. Bloom
• Position: Professor of Populations at Columbia University/Professor of Economics and Demography at the Harvard School of Public Health

Over the past century, three approaches have been advocated to escape the consequences of widespread poverty, rapid population growth, environmental problems, and social injustices. The bigger pie approach says: use technology to produce more and alleviate shortages. The fewer forks approach says: make contraception and reproductive health care available to eliminate unwanted fertility and slow population growth. The better manners approach says: eliminate violence and corruption; improve trade, the operation of markets, and government provision of public goods; reduce the unwanted aftereffects of consumption, such as environmental damage; and achieve greater social and political equity between young and old, male and female, rich and poor (Cohen, 1995).

Providing all the world 's children with a high-quality primary and secondary education, whether through formal schooling or by alternative means, could, in principle, support all three of these approaches. Education provides economic benefits (see "Why Quality Matters in Education" on page 15 of this issue), builds strong societies and polities, and improves health. It is also a widely accepted humanitarian obligation and an internationally mandated human right.

The good news is that over the past century, access to education has increased enormously, illiteracy has fallen dramatically, and a higher proportion of people are completing primary, secondary, or tertiary education than ever before. But huge problems remain. About 115 million children of primary school age are not currently enrolled in school. Most are illiterate and live in absolute poverty; the majority are female. Some 264 million children of secondary school age are not currently enrolled. Large educational disparities exist within and between countries. The quality of schooling is often very low. Moreover, demographic projections suggest that developing countries will have 80 million more children of primary and secondary school age (typically 6-17 years old) by 2025 than now-an increase of 6 percent to 1.35 billion.

In 1990, the global community pledged at the World Conference on Education for All in Jomtien, Thailand, to achieve universal primary education (UPE) and greatly reduce illiteracy by 2000. In 2000, when these goals had not been met, it repeated the pledge, this time at the World Education Forum in Dakar, Senegal, with a target date of 2015. The UN Millennium Development Conference in 2000 also adopted UPE by 2015 as one of its goals, along with the elimination of gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2015. But even the modest UPE goal now looks unlikely to be achieved by 2015 at the current rate of progress. An estimated 335 million school-age children will be missing primary or secondary school in 2015; of these, an estimated 118 million will be absent from primary school. About one in five of these children will never enroll in or attend school.

Given this series of missed targets, what is feasible? Estimates are that UPE can be achieved by 2015 if the global community invests another $6 billion to $35 billion per year, on top of the approximately $82 billion developing countries already spend each year on primary education. This article argues that this sum is not only affordable but essential. It also argues that the UPE goal is not ambitious enough: the world should aim for, and can achieve, high-quality, universal secondary education, possibly by 2015 but certainly by the middle of the 21st century. The price tag for achieving this goal might be an additional $27 billion to $34 billion per year starting now, on top of the approximately $93 billion developing countries already spend each year on secondary education. However, the obstacles are not just financial. Leaders need to devise and implement policies that will make educating children unquestionably worthwhile, in the eyes of parents and everyone else.

Education today

How is the global community doing in enrolling more children in school? Are educational data reliable and useful for international comparisons?

The good. Remarkable progress has been made in formal schooling over the past century, especially as measured by the primary gross enrollment ratio (GER)-the ratio of the number of children enrolled in primary education, regardless of age, to the population of the age group that corresponds to the nationally defined ages for primary schooling.

- In 1900, estimated primary GERs were below 40 percent in all regions except northwestern Europe, North America, and Anglophone regions of the Pacific, where the ratio was 72 percent (Williams, 1997). But by 2000, the estimated global primary net enrollment ratio (NER)-the ratio of the number of children in the official primary school age group enrolled in primary education to the population of the primary school age group-had reached 85 percent globally. The NER is a stricter standard than the GER, so the achievement is all the more remarkable.

- In developing countries, literacy tripled in the 20th century, from 25 percent to 75 percent, and the average years of schooling more than doubled between 1960 and 1990, increasing from 2.1 to 4.4 years (Bloom and Cohen, 2002). That figure has risen further since 1990.

- The number of students enrolled in secondary school increased tenfold in the past 50 years, roughly from 50 million to 500 million.

As for data quality, developing countries have begun to participate in international measurements of educational status in greater numbers. Even so, more statistical measures of schooling have been defined (for example, net and gross enrollment ratios, attendance rates, completion rates, average years of attainment, and school life expectancy) than are well supported by reliable, internationally comparable, and comprehensive data. The UNESCO Institute for Statistics, Montreal, maintains the highest-quality data (for example, UNESCO, 2000, 2004).

The bad. While progress is being made, colossal shortfalls remain.

- Roughly 380 million children are not enrolled in school (28 percent of the age group, typically 6).

- More than one-fourth of these children are absent from primary school (with the rest missing secondary school).

- Of school-age children who enter primary school in developing countries, more than one in four drops out before attaining literacy (World Bank, 2002).

Moreover, enrollment does not necessarily mean attendance, attendance does not necessarily mean receiving an education, and receiving an education does not necessarily mean receiving a good education. Thus the high enrollment ratios may give the mistaken impression that a high proportion...