Routledge Handbook of International Education and Development 2015005116, 9780415747547, 9781315797007

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ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION AND DEVELOPMENT

This timely Handbook takes stock of the range of debates that characterise the field of international education and development and suggests key aspects of a research agenda for the next period. It is deliberately divergent in its approach, recognising the major ideological and epistemological divides that characterise a field that draws on many traditions. Leading and emergent voices from different paradigms and contexts are afforded a space to be heard, and each section puts current debates in larger historical contexts. The Handbook is divided into four parts and book-ended by an introduction and a conclusion, the latter oriented towards the implications that the volume has for future research agendas. The first part explores major strands of debates about education’s place in development theory. The second acknowledges the disciplining of the field by the Education for All movement and examines the place that learning, teaching and schools play in development. Part three looks beyond schools to consider early years, adult and vocational education but focuses particularly on the return to thinking about higher education’s role in development.The final part considers the changing, but still important, role that international cooperation plays in shaping education in developing countries. Featuring over thirty chapters written by leading international and interdisciplinary scholars, the Routledge Handbook of International Education and Development offers the first comprehensive and forward-looking resource for students and scholars. Simon McGrath is Professor of International Education and Development at the University of Nottingham, UK. He is also an Extraordinary Professor at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa, and a research associate of the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa. Qing Gu is Associate Professor at the University of Nottingham, UK. She is Vice Chair of the British Association for International and Comparative Education.

“This Handbook makes a timely, helpful and critical contribution to ongoing work in the field of education and international development. Great diversity is revealed relating to research paradigms and traditions, theoretical orientations, scales of analysis and priorities for attention. Readers will find a collection of well informed and challenging analyses in four main sections relating to the nature of the relationship between education and development; learning, teaching and schooling; adult, vocational and higher education; and international cooperation. This is an important collection that has much to offer all involved in post 2015 education and development policy, planning, research and action from the local to the global level” Michael Crossley, University of Bristol, UK ‘This volume, edited by two leading scholars in the field, represents a formidable analysis of issues around education and development. There are few greater global challenges than the successful education of all our children. So much still needs to be done. This exploration of policy and practice, by leading international experts, will become a core text for a significant number of years’ Bob Moon, The Open University, UK ‘This is an important book on an important subject. The Handbook examines international education and development through multiple lenses as it explores which models of development are most appropriate regarding the roles of education in society, within the global political economy of knowledge production. I anticipate that this scholarly handbook, which effectively blends together both education theory and practice, and which maps the interactive relationship between education and development, will achieve a wide global readership from education policy makers, researchers, practitioners and students who have an interest in the dynamic, changing relationship between international education and development.’ Rupert Maclean, The Hong Kong Institute of Education ‘Education remains the number one development priority in a number of countries. Despite the long tradition of education we still debate the philosophy, purpose, nation and direction of education. This Handbook contributes a discourse on how to engage the broad area of educational development. Congratulations to the authors for assembling this extensive collection.’ Vijay Reddy, Human Sciences Research Council, South Africa

ROUTLEDGE HANDBOOK OF INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION AND DEVELOPMENT

Edited by Simon McGrath and Qing Gu

First published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2016 Simon McGrath and Qing Gu The right of the editors to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Routledge handbook of international education and development / edited by Simon McGrath and Qing Gu. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. 1.  Education—Economic aspects—Handbooks, manuals, etc.  2.  Economic development—Effect of education on—Handbooks, manuals, etc. I.  McGrath, Simon A., editor. LC65.R68 2015 338.4'737—dc23 2015005116 ISBN: 978-0-415-74754-7 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-79700-7 (ebk) Typeset in Bembo by Apex CoVantage, LLC

CONTENTS

List of boxes ix List of figures x xii List of tables Acknowledgmentsxiii xiv List of abbreviations xix List of contributors Introduction1   1 International education and development: using multiple lenses or remaining in multiple silos? Simon McGrath and Qing Gu

3

SECTION 1

Rethinking the relationship between education and development

9

  2 Human capital and development Milan Thomas with Nicholas Burnett

11

  3 Education as a humanitarian response as a global objective Colin Brock

25

  4 Education and political development: contradictions and tensions in relationships between education, democracy, peace and violence Clive Harber

v

37

Contents

  5 Education for sustainable development: the rising place of resilience and lessons from small island developing states Terra Sprague

50

  6 Reframing gender and education for the post-2015 agenda: a critical capability approach Joan DeJaeghere

63

  7 Education and rural development: proposing an alternative paradigm Anna Robinson-Pant

78

SECTION 2

Learning, teaching and schooling for development

91

  8 Building global consensus on measuring learning: debates and opportunities Kate Anderson and Rebecca Winthrop

93

  9 Literacy and development Lesley Bartlett and Julia Frazier

108

10 Teaching and learning for all? The quality imperative revisited Robin Alexander

118

11 Language, education and development: implications of language choice for learning Barbara Trudell, Catherine Young and Susan Nyaga 12 The Heyneman/Loxley effect: three decades of debate Stephen Heyneman 13 Nutrition in international education and development debates: the impact of school feeding Lesley Drake, Carmen Burbano and Donald Bundy 14 Does educational exclusion explain health differentials among children? An empirical analysis of children in Ethiopia using Young Lives data Ricardo Sabates, Mariachiara Di Cesare and Barry Reilly 15 Spaces for 21st-century learning Ola Uduku

133 150

168

182 196

vi

Contents

16 Inclusive education and international development: multilateral orthodoxies and emerging alternatives Guy Le Fanu

210

17 Low-cost private schools: what we need to know, do know, and their relevance for education and development James Tooley

227

SECTION 3

Beyond schools: adult, vocational and higher education for development241 18 The importance of early childhood for education and development Emiliana Vegas and Analía Jaimovich 19 “115 million girls . . .”: informal learning and education, an emerging field Alan Rogers

243

260

20 Vocational education and training for human development Simon McGrath and Lesley Powell

276

21 The impact of higher education on development Tristan McCowan and Rebecca Schendel

289

22 Economic globalisation, skill formation and development Hugh Lauder and Phillip Brown

303

23 Universities as a public good Melanie Walker

313

24 Meaning, rationales and tensions in the internationalisation of higher education Jane Knight

325

25 Trends, issues and challenges in internationalisation of higher education: where have we come from and where are we going? Hans de Wit and Fiona Hunter

340

26 Transnational flows of students: in whose interest? For whose benefits?359 Qing Gu and Michele Schweisfurth

vii

Contents SECTION 4

International cooperation in education and development

373

27 The history and future of international cooperation in education Kenneth King

375

28 Lessons from 25 years of Education for All Pauline Rose

390

29 Education and the post-2015 development agenda Simon McGrath

401

30 Aid for human resource development: the rise of Asia I-Hsuan Cheng and Sheng-Ju Chan

416

31 The role of civil society in education for development Bronwen Magrath

428

32 Public-private partnerships and international education policies Alexandra Draxler

443

Conclusion463 33 Looking beyond 2015: the future of international education and development research Simon McGrath and Qing Gu

465

Index 477

viii

LIST OF BOXES

  2.1 13.1 13.2 27.1 29.1 29.2 29.3 29.4 29.5

Human capital through the ages The Ghana School Feeding Programme The O’meals Programme, Osun State, Nigeria The six dimensions of EFA targets at Jomtien The MDGs The HLP goals The SDGs (07/14 draft) HLP education goals (including economic subgoal on NEETs) Education goals in the OWG zero draft

ix

18 172 174 379 402 405 406 407 409

LIST OF FIGURES

  8.1 LMTF global framework of learning domains 96 12.1 Relationship between SES, attitudes and academic performance among students characterised by social class divisions and students in Uganda in 1972 153 162 12.2 Family background effects in different countries 187 14.1 Height for age z-score by zone of exclusion at age 12–13 years 14.2 Decomposition of the gap in height for age z-score in percentages for 191 different zones of exclusion 14.3 Decomposition of the gap in height for age z-score in percentages for different precursors of silent exclusion 192 198 15.1 International ‘Aid’ to schools in the South cartoon critique 199 15.2 Escuela Nueva 15.3 St Luke’s Infant and Junior School, Wolverhampton, England 200 201 15.4 Kontonase Secondary School, Kumasi, Ghana 15.5 ICT classroom prototype illustration – daytime 205 206 15.6 ICT classroom prototype illustration – nighttime 18.1 Lifetime returns to investments in human capital 244 248 18.2 Share of children attending formal childcare or early education centres 18.3 Percentage of 3 and 4 year olds attending ECCE services by income quintile249 18.4 Inequality in ECCE and primary school attendance between first and 250 last income quintile 21.1 Pathways to impact framework 292 22.1 Linear model: corporate inward investment and national skill formation strategy 308 22.2 Differentiated model: corporate supply chains and national skill formation strategy 310 391 28.1 Trends in net enrolment rate, 1985–2012 x

List of figures

28.2 32.1 32.2 32.3 33.1

Trends in number of children out of school, 1985–2012 Some definitions of public-private partnerships Percentage of enrolment in primary education in private institutions Percentage of enrolment in secondary education in private institutions Raworth’s development doughnut

xi

392 446 448 448 470

LIST OF TABLES

  5.1 Sustainable development and SIDS: key international documents and conferences   8.1 LMTF recommended areas of global measurement 12.1 Comparison of H/L effect examples: per capita income and school effects 12.2 Differences in reading scores by family wealth in PISA 2007 14.1 Operationalisation of zone of exclusion (12–13 years) 14.2 Descriptive statistics for background variables, mean and standard deviation 14.3 Decomposition of the gap in average height for age z-score between children with different zones of exclusion 14.4 Decomposition of the gap in average height for age z-score between children with different precursors of silent exclusion 18.1 The state of ECD in developing countries. Selected indicators. 20.1 Four possible informational bases of judgement in justice 24.1 Three generations of cross-border education 24.2 Change in rationales driving internationalisation 28.1 Clarity, measurability and equity in the six Education for All goals 30.1 India’s ODA (including loan) to other countries 30.2 Courses offered under ITEC and SCAAP

xii

53 97 159 163 185 188 190 191 246 280 328 329 394 424 425

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Elsevier for permission to reproduce Robin Alexander (2014) Teaching and learning for all? The quality imperative revisited. International Journal of Educational Development 40: 250–258. Kate Raworth for permission to reproduce Figure 32.1. Cadena, Suarez & Al Borde for permission to reproduce Figure 15.2. White Architects for permission to reproduce Figure 15.3. ESALA, University of Edinburgh for permission to reproduce Figure 15.5. ESALA, University of Edinburgh for permission to reproduce Figure 15.6.

xiii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

AAI ACER ADEA AERA AIDS AIMS AOSIS APL ASER ATT AusAID BICS BMI BMZ BRAC CA CAADP CALP CARE CCNGO/EFA CCT CEF CFS CFT CIBV CLASS CONFEMEN CREATE CSER

ActionAid International Australian Council for Educational Research Association for the Development of Education in Africa American Education Research Association auto immune deficiency syndrome Africa, Indian Ocean, Mediterranean and South China Sea Alliance of Small Island States assessment of prior learning Annual Status of Education Report average treatment effect on the treated Australian Agency for International Development basic interpersonal communicative skills body mass index German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development Bangladesh Rural Action Committee capability approach Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme cognitive academic language proficiency Christian Action Research and Education Collective Consultation of NGOs on EFA conditional cash transfer Commonwealth Education Fund child-friendly schools competency framework for teachers Centre for Infant Wellbeing classroom assessment scoring system Conference of Francophone Ministers of Education Consortium for Research on Educational Access, Transitions and Equity Centre for the Study of Existential Risk xiv

List of abbreviations

CSO DAAD DAC DDR DESD DFID DIBELS DMR DPEP DRC ECCE ECD ECDI ECEC EDGE EDI EDI EFA EFA SC EGMA EGRA ERASMUS ESD EU EUA FAO FDI FODI FRESH FSQL FTI FYP GAD GADN GAP GATS GBC-E GCE GDP GEFI GEI GII GIZ GMR GNP GoI GPE

civil society organisation German Academic Exchange Service Development Assistance Committee disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration Decade for Education for Sustainable Development Department for International Development Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills diminishing marginal returns District Primary Education Programme Democratic Republic of Congo early childhood care and education early childhood development early child development index early childhood education and care education and gender Early Development Instrument education development index Education for All Education for All Steering Committee Early Grade Math Assessment Early Grade Reading Assessment European Community Action Scheme for the Mobility of University Students education for sustainable development European Union European Universities Association Food and Agriculture Organisation foreign direct investment Children’s Development Fund focusing resources on effective school health fundamental school quality level Fast Track Initiative five-year plan gender and development Gender and Development Network Global Action Programme General Agreement on Trade in Services Global Business Coalition for Education Global Coalition for Education gross domestic product Global Education First Initiative gender equity index gender inequality index German Agency for International Cooperation Global Monitoring Report gross national product Government of India Global Partnership for Education xv

List of abbreviations

GSFP GUNI GVC H/L HDI HDR HforA HGSF HIV HLM HLP HRD IALS IAU ICCS ICDF ICS ICT IDA IDTs IEA IET IFAD IFC IIE IJED ILO IMF INGO INRULED IPCC IQ IRC ITEC ITERS JEI JOCVs J-PAL KICE KOICA L1 L2 LAMP LFP LLECE LMTF

Ghana School Feeding Programme Global University Network for Innovation global value chain Heyneman/Loxley human development index Human Development Report height for age home grown school feeding human immunodeficiency virus hierarchical linear modelling High Level Panel human resource development International Adult Literacy Survey International Association of Universities International Civics and Citizenship Study International Cooperation and Development Fund Research Centre for International and Comparative Studies information and communications technology International Development Agency international development targets International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement International Education Team (ActionAid) International Fund for Agricultural Development International Finance Corporation Institute of International Education International Journal of Educational Development International Labour Organisation International Monetary Fund international non governmental organisation International Research and Training Centre for Rural Education Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change intelligence quotient International Rescue Committee Indian Technical Economic Cooperation Programme infant/toddler environment rating scale Jordan Education Initiative Japanese Overseas Cooperation Volunteers Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab Korea Institute of Curriculum and Evaluation Korean International Cooperation Agency first language (mother tongue) subsequent language Literacy Assessment and Monitoring Programme low-fee private Latin-American Laboratory for the Evaluation of the Quality of Education Learning Metrics Task Force xvi

List of abbreviations

MD MDG MEPSP MICS MLE MNC MNPs MOOCs MSF MSPs MTB-MLE NAM NEET NEPAD NFE NGO NORRAG NRC US NRP NTD ODA OECD OLS OMS OWG PACES PASEC PCD PIAAC PIDI PIRLS PISA PPP PPVT PRIDI R&D RBA RTI SABER SACMEQ SC SCAAP SDG SD SDOH SES

managing director Millennium Development Goals Ministry for Primary, Secondary and Vocational Education multiple indicator cluster survey multilingual education multinational corporation micronutrient powders massive open online courses Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) multi stakeholder partnerships mother tongue-based multilingual education Non-Aligned Movement not in employment, education and training New Partnership for Africa’s Development non formal education non governmental organisation Network for International Policies and Cooperation in Education and Training National Research Council National Reading Panel neglected tropical disease official development assistance Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development ordinary least square Oxford Martin School Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals Plan for the Expansion of Coverage of Secondary Education Programme for the Analysis of Education Systems of CONFEMEN Partnership for Child Development Programme for International Assessment of Adult Competencies Integrated Project for Infant Development Progress in International Reading Literacy Study Programme for International Student Assessment public-private partnership Peabody picture vocabulary test Regional Programme of Indicators for Infant Development research and development rights-based approach Research Training Institute systems approach for better education results Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality scheduled castes Special Commonwealth Assistance for Africa Programme Sustainable Development Goal sustainable development social determinants of health socio economic status xvii

List of abbreviations

SICOLE-R-Primaria SIDS SSA SSC ST STEM TCD TCDC TED TIMSS TNC TVET TVSD UCL UCLA UCT UDHR UIS UK UN UNDESA UNDP UNECA UNESCO UNESCO-IIEP UNGEI UNHCR UNICEF UNU UPE US USA USAID VET VSO WCARO WCEFA WFP WHO WID YL

multi media early years reading assessment small island developing states Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (The Education for All Movement (India)) South-South cooperation scheduled tribes science, technology, engineering and mathematics Technical Cooperation Division Technical Cooperation between Developing Countries Technology, Entertainment, Design Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study transnational corporation technical and vocational education and training technical and vocational skills development University College London University of California, Los Angeles University of Cape Town Universal Declaration of Human Rights UNESCO Institute of Statistics United Kingdom United Nations United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs United Nations Development Programme United Nations Economic Commission for Africa United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning United Nations Global Education Initiative Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees United Nations Children’s Fund United Nations University universal primary education United States United States of America United States Agency for International Development vocational education and training Voluntary Service Overseas West and Central Africa Regional Office (UNICEF) World Conference on Education for All World Food Programme World Health Organisation Women in Development Young Lives

xviii

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Robin Alexander, University of Cambridge Kate Anderson, Brookings Institution Lesley Bartlett, University of Wisconsin Colin Brock, University of Oxford Phillip Brown, Cardiff University Donald Bundy, World Bank Carmen Burbano, United Nations World Food Programme Nicholas Burnett, Results for Development Institute Sheng-Ju Chan, National Chung Cheng University I-Hsuan Cheng, National Chi Nan University Joan DeJaeghere, University of Minnesota Mariachiara Di Cesare, Imperial College London Lesley Drake, Partnership for Child Development and Imperial College London Alexandra Draxler, independent consultant Julia Frazier, International Rescue Committee and Hunter College Qing Gu, University of Nottingham Clive Harber, University of Birmingham Stephen Heyneman,Vanderbilt University Fiona Hunter, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore Analía Jaimovich, Inter-American Development Bank Kenneth King, University of Edinburgh Jane Knight, University of Toronto Hugh Lauder, University of Bath Guy Le Fanu, Sightsavers International Tristan McCowan, University College London Simon McGrath, University of Nottingham and University of the Western Cape Bronwen Magrath, University of Nottingham Susan Nyaga, SIL Africa Lesley Powell, University of Nottingham Barry Reilly, University of Sussex Anna Robinson-Pant, University of East Anglia xix

List of contributors

Alan Rogers, University of East Anglia and University of Nottingham Pauline Rose, University of Cambridge Ricardo Sabates, University of Sussex Rebecca Schendel, University College London Michele Schweisfurth, University of Glasgow Terra Sprague, University of Bristol Milan Thomas, Results for Development Institute James Tooley, University of Newcastle Barbara Trudell, SIL Africa Ola Uduku, University of Edinburgh Emiliana Vegas, Inter-American Development Bank Melanie Walker, University of the Free State Rebecca Winthrop, Brookings Institution Hans de Wit, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences and Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University Catherine Young, SIL International

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Introduction

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1 INTERNATIONAL EDUCATION AND DEVELOPMENT Using multiple lenses or remaining in multiple silos? Simon McGrath and Qing Gu

Introduction The contributions that comprise this Handbook represent a set of test pits dug into the complex field of international education and development. As with archaeological test pits, the chapters may provide important insights into what the field looks like as a whole, but it is possible, indeed likely, that important details are missing. Nonetheless, even from this fragmentary picture, it is immediately obvious that the field of international education and development is characterised by great diversity. Such diversity itself is multidimensional. There is no single research tradition in the field but rather multiple traditions that only partially align to disciplinary delineations or to the logics of ontology, epistemology and methodology. Thus, in this Handbook, we see approaches that draw on economics, medical sciences, political science, history, philosophy, human geography and sociolinguistics, to name but a sample of the disciplinary traditions on show. There are a great range of theoretical concepts employed, most of which have origins in other disciplinary spaces.We have work that is analysing policy documents, experiments and epidemiological data, as well as work that is essentially nonempirical. Positivist, interpretivist and critical paradigms are all employed. There is much pragmatism that never speaks of theoretical or epistemological traditions, though these can often times be traduced from the text. There are huge variations in the scale of research in the field: from multimillion, multiyear, multicountry, multimethods and multiresearcher studies to small, unfunded, solo projects including literature reviews and think pieces. Much of the work is funded by major international development agencies, and some authored by their staff, but there is much that is explicitly critical of the agencies and of the development orthodoxy. Crucially, the explicit and imagined contexts of the contributions vary hugely. This is not just a matter of scale and/or the attitudes of different traditions to universality versus context-specificity. Rather, there is a sense that the “development space” is understood in very different ways. Some chapters clearly see this as global, both in terms of generalisability of data and in terms of theoretical or policy messages. Others, however, are clearly working with some

3

Simon McGrath and Qing Gu

notion of “developing countries” or are focused on a particular region, type of state (e.g., small island developing states) or country. As we sit in 2015 with a new global development agenda, notions of whom and where development is about and for are particularly salient. To deploy a different metaphor, there is a plurality of voices in the book, even if we would have wished for (and indeed planned for) even greater diversity. However, one of the biggest questions that we want to pose is about the nature of this plurality. A brief reading of the reference lists of the chapters is quite instructive. Rather than a set of authors coming together from different traditions and issue sets to discuss common concerns in international education and training and constructing a shared corpus of literature, it is apparent that there is more of a practice of authors staying largely within separate traditions. Only a handful of names are apparently important enough to transcend traditions: Psacharopoulos and Hanushek from the human capital tradition and Sen and Nussbaum from the capability approach. Even here, the way that they are mobilised is noteworthy. Whilst Sen is cited with approval both within economics and outside, Psacharopoulos is often cited in order to delineate a position to be critiqued rather than really deeply engaged with. Strikingly, not one contributor to the Handbook appears more than ten times in the reference lists of others. Thus, there is an overwhelming sense of a set of “invisible colleges” (Crane 1972) bounded by high walls. This leads to the question contained in the title of the chapter: are we talking here of a coherent field that is enriched by multiple traditions and perspectives or rather a field on which different factions have encamped that try to keep themselves apart from the “others”? Of course, this leads to further questions as to whether the latter, if true, matters; and, if so, whether there is anything that can be done about it. Whilst there is no real sense of fertile interactions between different traditions, there are a number of flashpoints represented within the Handbook.These include disputes over the nature of development; the definition of and means of ensuring quality education; and the relative roles to be played by the public and private sectors in the funding and delivery of education. The Handbook is organised into four sections, which also highlight four key questions asked across the volume. However, these questions are not neatly contained by the artificial logic of sections and seep across the boundaries throughout.

What is the nature of the relationship between education and development? This question underpins the whole volume and the decisions that were made in commissioning papers. It is apparent that authors hold differing views about the nature and purpose of education, of development, and of the relationship between them. In Section 1, some important perspectives on these issues are explored. Human capital theory provides the most influential account of the education-development relationship, but its importance has often led to oversimplified accounts being propagated by supporters and critics alike.Thus, it is important, as Thomas and Burnett do, to look very carefully at the evolution of the approach and how it has developed new methodological and theoretical tools over time. Other traditions that have policy purchase at the moment include human rights and sustainable development perspectives; these, too, are explored in Section 1 through Brock’s consideration of the humanitarian case for education and Sprague’s exploration of sustainable education and education for sustainability in the specific context of small island developing states. As can be seen from across the Handbook as a whole, human development and capability accounts are of growing significance in the field of international education and development. This approach informs DeJaeghere’s chapter, in which she makes clear the links between 4

International education and development

capability thinking and justice approaches. She also brings a strong gender lens to bear on the question of education and development, reminding us that the issues embedded in the relationship are experienced in highly differentiated ways. Robinson-Pant puts rural development and learning beyond schools more firmly on the Handbook’s agenda, a further illustration of the importance of contextualisation and analytical differentiation. Much of the education for development debate, particularly in the policy and advocacy spheres, is focused on the positive nature of education’s contribution to development. Whilst several of these authors touch on the negative effects of educational exclusion and violence within education, Harber’s use of a political science lens brings to the forefront the complex and often problematic relationship between education and the state. Such an approach insists on the complex playing out of power in the educational space and on the inevitable complicity of formal education with structural inequalities.

How do we improve education? A number of chapters in Section 2, and much of the wider policy debate at national and international levels, sidestep these larger philosophical issues about education and development for a focus on improving education. However, this is also the section where the debates are at their hottest. Whilst authors share concerns about improving the quality of education, they differ hugely on how to achieve this. Anderson and Winthrop argue the case for a new set of global learning tests, designed to drive a revolution in the quality of teaching and learning. However, Bartlett and Frazier focus on the weaknesses of existing international testing regimes. Alexander notes the recent attention to both quality learning and teaching in recent Global Monitoring Reports but develops a powerful critique of the conceptual weaknesses of the approach. He argues that there is a wealth of research on pedagogy already available but an apparent inability of the international policy community to access and utilise this. Trudell,Young and Nyaga call for a greater focus on issues of language of instruction as a major element both in the drive towards improving educational quality and as a key vector of thinking about identity, culture and development. Heyneman takes this debate about education quality to a different level of aggregation by revisiting the long-standing question of the relative weight of “in-school” and “out-of-school” factors in determining educational achievement. In the international education and development field, this debate has been centred on the “Heyneman-Loxley effect,” named after a paper that Steve cowrote 30 years ago. It is a particular pleasure, therefore, to have him revisit this literature in the Handbook. In his chapter, he reflects on the rise of international testing (see the discussion of the previous paragraph) and the continued effects that poverty has on educational performance. Heyneman’s insistence on understanding the effect of nonschool factors on educational performance is reflected also in the policies, practices and literatures around nutrition and education. These are rarely discussed within the international education and development field, but Drake, Burbano and Bundy show the importance of thinking about nutrition and learning.The nutrition-development and education-development debates are then bridged in a chapter by Sabates, Di Cesare and Reilly, who look at the relationship between educational exclusion and child health. This is done by building a conversation between two large DFID-funded research projects, combining data from Young Lives with a conceptual framework developed by the Consortium for Research on Educational Access, Transitions and Equity. If nutrition is a metaphorical building block for education, then school architecture is a more literal one. Uduku revisits the educational quality debate through the lens of her profession of 5

Simon McGrath and Qing Gu

architecture to consider the question of how we build more effective learning spaces to support quality and inclusive education. The section concludes with two very different perspectives on the question of educational quality, although both are focused on the question of inclusion. First, from the inclusive education tradition, Le Fanu examines how international agency policies and the international education and development literature conceptualise inclusive education. He cautions against the dangers of global, top-down models that define inclusion in ways that actually exclude local inclusion and agencies in agenda setting. Finally,Tooley asks whether low-cost private schooling may be a highly effective mechanism for including the poorest into schooling. He critically evaluates recent literature on the issue and argues that such schooling reflects the agency of the poor and needs to be taken very seriously as a result.

What is the role of education (not just schooling) in development? The wording of this question may appear rather clumsy, but it reflects a problem with an educational orthodoxy in which schooling has come to be seen as synonymous with both learning and education. This tendency has been strengthened immeasurably by the Education for All (EFA) and Millennium Development Goal (MDG) processes, even though this was not the intention of the former (as King notes in Section 4). Section 3 in particular talks back to this orthodoxy. In doing so, it includes chapters on early childhood, adult, vocational and higher education and notes the importance of informal and nonformal learning. Vegas and Jaimovich review the evidence from both economics and neuroscience suggesting that early childhood education is a highly effective intervention, both in terms of generating income and in reducing inequality. However, they note that access to early childhood interventions is both very limited and extremely unequal. Thus they place early childhood firmly at the centre of our consideration of the origins of and responses to inequality. Rogers takes issue with some of the discourse that was at the heart of Section 2: the claim that many millions of young people are not learning.Taking as his starting point a Global Monitoring Report claim that “Today, all over the world, 115 million girls are doing no learning”, Rogers shows how this statement is based on the aforementioned assumption that learning = schooling but reviews a literature that shows this is simply not true. Rather, he notes that because they are human beings, these girls (and boys experiencing inadequate schooling) are learning from others and through reflection on their own life experiences.They are learning school-related knowledge but also a range of other useful knowledges and skills. This existing fund of knowledge needs to be the starting point for formal education interventions. Vocational education and training (VET) has been neglected within the international agency orthodoxy yet has ascended domestic policy agendas both north and south in recent years. However, McGrath and Powell point to the dangers of this, arguing that there is an inadequate theory of VET’s contribution to development. Indeed, they suggest that there is a critical need for a reimagining both of VET and of development. In order to advance this project, they draw upon the human development and capability approach, as do a number of other chapters across the book. This leads them to resist the instrumentalism that is so engrained in thinking about VET. Rather than a focus on the needs of the economy, they call for an approach that starts from the needs of people and that is attentive both to their aspirations and the ways in which their dreams and experiences are limited by structural injustices. Higher education has also fallen from grace amongst the development community. From being a central tool of national development in the 1960s and an important tool of Cold War

6

International education and development

international relations, by the 1980s it had become stereotyped by the development community as an expensive way of reproducing elites. Indeed, from the time of the World Conference on Education for All in Jomtien in 1990, it has been established that public resources should be shifted from higher education to primary schooling. However, important countercurrents have been building up. The growth of primary enrolments since 1990 has filtered through eventually to significant increases in upper-secondaryschool-leaver numbers. Rising prosperity, particularly amongst enlarged middle classes in many countries of the South, is also fuelling demand. At the same time, the discourse of the global knowledge economy and recent human capital data suggesting that returns to higher education are greater than those for primary schooling have also made governments more willing to see economic as well as political benefits in higher education expansion.This has resulted in massive increases in higher education participation and enrolment rates, particularly in Africa. UNESCO data shows that the tertiary gross enrolment rate (GER) for sub-Saharan Africa doubled from 4% to 8% between 1999 and 2011. At the national level there have been rapid expansions both in low and high participation countries. Ethiopia’s tertiary GER grew from 1% to 8%, whilst Mauritius increased its GER from 10% to 40%. In absolute numbers, several countries saw a more than ten-fold expansion of students in higher education: e.g.,   Angola 7,000–140,000; Ethiopia 50,000–700,000; Rwanda 5,000–70,000; Mozambique 10,000–110,000. The Association for Commonwealth Universities has launched a campaign to assert the importance of higher education in development, and there are a number of hints about its importance in the key post-2015 documents. It is in the light of these shifts in attention to higher education that this Handbook includes several chapters on the issue. McCowan and Schendel present a systematic review of the literature on higher education’s impact on development and conclude with persuasive evidence that higher education is essential for economic growth, prosperity and competitiveness. However, Lauder questions the neoclassical orthodoxy on which such arguments are based, suggesting that they underplay the importance of national varieties of capitalism, with their distinct models of educational and labour market institutions, and fail to engage theoretically or methodologically with the changing nature of globalisation and the role of nation states therein. In contrast to both, Walker insists on the status of higher education as a public good, with far broader benefits for human development. The recent rise of national university systems in the South is taking place at the same time the North is increasingly trying to export its higher education provision. This is achieved through diverse mechanisms, including recruitment of international students to attend Northern universities, the growth in online learning offerings and the emergence of international branch campuses and for-profit cross-border education programmes. This phenomenon of the internationalisation of higher education is not normally given attention in the international education and development literature but is highly salient to the concerns of the field. Two accounts of the emergence of this field of activity provided by Knight and de Wit and Hunter reveal that internationalisation has, without a shadow of a doubt, become integral to the financial health of many institutions in the world of higher education. Its sustained development and expansion in the North, and increasingly the South, is closely linked with national political and economic drivers for economic and innovation competitiveness and the great brain/talent race. Gu and Schweisfurth’s analysis of the experiences of international mobile students adds to the wider debate about the transnational flows of knowledge and skills and raises some critical questions as to whether the evidence about international student mobility is universally applicable in the new context of emphasis on sustainable development.

7

Simon McGrath and Qing Gu

What is the future of international cooperation in education? 2015 marks a symbolic transition point in development thinking and, hence, in international education cooperation. Whether or not that becomes a genuine transformation is unknowable at this point, but there is an overall discourse of an end to an era of international cooperation being thought of simply in terms of multilateral and (Northern) bilateral agencies, official development assistance and strong conditionalities. Section 4 begins with reflections about the past and future of international cooperation in education. King reviews the long sweep of cooperation history and takes a broad view of education, whilst Rose looks at the specific case of the Education for All movement. McGrath begins with a critique of EFA and the MDGs but then shifts to a focus on the emerging post-2015 development agenda as it had progressed by the end of 2014. This leads him into a final discussion of the implications the new agenda might have for the field of international education and development, an issue to which we will return in the concluding chapter of this Handbook. New dynamics already evident in the international cooperation in education field are the subject of three further chapters. Cheng and Chan look at the rise of new bilateral actors, specifically South Korea, Taiwan and India. They show how their own experiences of development have shaped profoundly their approaches to development cooperation. Cheng and Chan highlight the particular importance that they attach to human resources development, seeing this as essential to the building of a dynamic economy and the achievement of social development goals. Magrath considers the role of civil society in education for development and the problematic ways in which national and international civil society organisations have come to mirror the discourses and practices of official international cooperation. Her analysis of large international NGOs in particular illustrates the ways in which they influence the discourse of global educational governance and reinforce the power imbalance embedded in civil society advocacy networks operating in the international and development education field. Draxler critiques the way in which public-private partnership has become a core of much of the recent international cooperation in education and asks hard questions about whose interests are served by this approach.

A final invitation This introduction can only scratch the surface of the richness of the discussions that follow. In the coming pages, you will find approaches that clash with each other in multiple ways.We hope that readers will find this useful in reminding them, if that is needed, that issues of education and development are so important that they are always contested and that they will be encouraged to look at the field through unfamiliar lenses that could enrich their existing work. We invite you to read on.

Reference Crane, D., 1972. Invisible Colleges: Diffusion of Knowledge in Scientific Communities. University of Chicago Press, Chicago.

8

SECTION 1

Rethinking the relationship between education and development

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2 HUMAN CAPITAL AND DEVELOPMENT Milan Thomas with Nicholas Burnett

Introduction This chapter reviews theory and evidence on the economics of human capital, with an emphasis on the education aspect of human capital and its impact on economic growth in developing countries. We focus our discussion on development as measured by economic growth (i.e., change in gross domestic product) while recognising that there is a range of other dimensions that human capital accumulation influences, such as social development and health. Tracking the evolution of economic thought on this topic from its origins to its inclusion in macroeconomic growth models, we first review the concept of human capital and then labour market research on its relationship with individual earnings before turning to its impact on aggregate income. We review evidence primarily from human capital’s inclusion in neoclassical growth models rather than endogenous growth models because the former is relatively strong at explaining cross-country differences in national income while the latter is more pertinent to advanced economies in the global technological frontier (Barro and Lee 2013).We also consider how the estimation of education’s impact on development has changed due to recent advances in the measurement of human capital. Understanding the nuances of human capital’s role in development is not an academic exercise. Evidence on it can guide public policy and encourage it so that scarce resources are channelled to impactful investments in human productive capacity that will accelerate economic growth and poverty reduction. In addition to reviewing research on human capital’s impact on growth through labour force productivity, we highlight emerging evidence on the importance of human capital investment for promoting equity and environmental sustainability – both of which will be critical for sustaining economic growth through the 21st century.

Economics and human capital Sparked by the Industrial Revolution in Britain, the last two hundred years have been an era of unprecedented global economic development. After millennia of global economic stagnation (Clark 2007), gross domestic product (GDP) in today’s advanced economies grew from $1,000 per capita in 1820 to $21,000 in 2000 (Maddison 2001). Meanwhile, GDP per capita in today’s developing countries grew only fivefold over that period. Thus, while average standards 11

Milan Thomas with Nicholas Burnett

of living measured by income, life expectancy and other development indicators show unambiguous improvement in the global average standard of living, the benefits of growth have been unevenly distributed within and among nations (Ostry, Berg and Tsangarides 2014). Although the income gap between early industrialisers and today’s developing economies remains large, over the past fifty years developing countries have exhibited growth rates far exceeding the average growth of Western Europe since industrialisation (1.7% per year, Maddison 2001). Between 1980 and 2012, average annual GDP per capita growth was 2.8% in low- and middle-income countries, compared to 1.8% in high-income countries (World Bank database). However, there has been wide divergence in rates of development since 1960, when per capita income in some East Asian economies (Taiwan, South Korea) was comparable to that of poor African countries like Ghana, Senegal and Mozambique (Rodrik 1995). In the following decades, some East Asian incomes have grown rapidly to reach the level of leading Western economies, while GDP per capita in sub-Saharan Africa is less than 5% of the average income in high-income countries (US$37,000). In response to these global disparities, growth accounting has emerged as a major branch of modern macroeconomics. This subfield analyses the drivers and mechanisms behind economic growth to understand why average national or subnational incomes diverge over time. Similarly at the microeconomic level, labour economics focuses on understanding variation in earnings of individual economic agents. Central to both of these subfields of economics is the concept of human capital. Capital refers to factors of production that generate goods or services in an economy – the various inputs that produce economic output. For decades, mainstream economic theory had emphasised physical, tangible capital (machinery, natural resources, factories, equipment, etc.) as the strongest source of short-run economic growth, with exogenous and inexplicable technological change serving as the catalyst for long-term growth. However, intangible capital also has a role in the history of economic thought. As far back as 1776, Adam Smith formally recognised the productive capabilities of the populace as part of a nation’s capital stock in An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Nelson and Phelps (1966) emphasised the role of human capital in enabling economies to adopt technologies and new ideas discovered elsewhere, while Romer (1989) identified the causal role of human capital as the generation of ideas and development of new products. Mankiw (1995) defines ‘knowledge’ as the sum total of technological and scientific discoveries (written in textbooks, scholarly journals, websites, etc.), and defines ‘human capital’ as the stock of knowledge that has been transmitted from those sources into human brains through learning. More recently, Frank and Bernanke (2007: 355) define human capital as “an amalgam of factors such as education, experience, training, intelligence, energy, work habits, trustworthiness, and initiative that affect the value of a worker’s marginal product.” In short, human capital includes anything that contributes to the productive capacity of the workforce. Still, from its foundations in the early modern work of Ricardo, Mills and Malthus until the 1960s, economic thought on the wealth of nations has been dominated by the study of tangible capital accumulation, and the human element of economic growth was largely neglected. Led by Schultz (1961), Denison (1962), Becker (1964) and others, there was a renaissance for human capital in economics in the 1960s, from which emerged a debate on the role of education in development. There is a broad distinction between theories by which observable measures of human capital like schooling are directly useful to economic productivity (Becker 1964; Nelson and Phelps 1966) and those in which they are not. According to Marxian critiques, the positive relationship between education and earnings reflects schooling’s role in building workers’ capacity to obey orders and adapt in capitalist societies (Bowles and Gintis 1975). 12

Human capital and development

At the other extreme of the productive human capital theory of education is the signalling theory, in which education serves as a signal of inherent ability and is not independently useful in production processes (Spence 1973). By this set of theories, education does not increase the productive capacity of an economy but instead overcomes labour market information imperfections. Individuals with high levels of innate ability elect to invest in education to signal to employers that they are of high skill and deserving of higher wages. The disutility of education is prohibitive for low-ability workers, so they do not invest in education and earn lower wages. Although the bulk of empirical studies support education as a productivity-enhancing investment (as we discuss below), evidence does not unambiguously support human capital theory over signalling theory nor are the theories necessarily mutually exclusive.

Human capital and the labour market While the central economic role of education had been posited centuries before, human capital did not take off in economic modelling until the 1960s, in part because of difficulties with measurement. Among the earliest applications of human capital in economics was explaining differences in wages in developed economies. Mincer (1974) proposed that years of schooling could be used as a measure of human capital, claiming that the primary reason that children attend school is for labour market preparedness. Based on that idea, he formulated the human capital earnings function below: ln y = ln y0 + rS + β1X + β2 X 2

where ln is the natural log operator, y is an individual’s labour market earnings, s is the individual’s years of schooling, X is years of labour market experience and y0 is the expected base wage of a person with no experience and no education. The variables r and B1 are the average returns to education and work experience respectively, which the earnings function is designed to estimate. This type of equation has been specified in a number of ways, including different characteristics such as ethnicity and sex, and is the basis for a vast literature testing the relationship between education and earnings. For decades to follow, empirical analysis of human capital would be largely based on education attainment as measured by years of schooling (for micro studies) and average years of schooling (for macro studies). Psacharopoulos and Patrinos (2004) analyse the wealth of evidence that emerged from applying the Mincerian approach to a variety of labour markets. Their review finds a 10% increase in earnings for an extra year of education at the mean of the distribution (i.e., r = 0.1). A survey by Card (1999) similarly finds a 6–10% return to an additional year of education. However, the marginal return to a year of schooling varies substantially by geography, by level of education, by demographic group and over time. Psacharopoulos and Patrinos (2004) find a premium to female education (9.8% return to a year of female education versus 8.7% for male education). Psacharopoulos and Patrinos (2008) show that returns to education are higher in low-income areas; labour market evidence for working males from the 1960s to the 1990s suggested that in developing countries, primary education provided the highest returns, with the marginal benefit from education diminishing in years of schooling. However, more recent evidence from the 1990s and 2000s (summarised by Colclough, Kingdon and Patrinos 2009) suggests that there has been a shift in the relative returns of different education levels, with postprimary returns rising above primary school returns in developing countries. For example, Behrman, Birdsall and Szekely (2003) find that for a sample of 18 13

Milan Thomas with Nicholas Burnett

Latin American countries, returns to tertiary education increased greatly throughout the 1990s while returns to primary and secondary education fell. This could be interpreted as evidence that skill-biased technological change has increased demand for workers with higher education (lowering the relative wages of low-skilled workers), that expansion of primary education has saturated labour markets with workers with basic education (increasing the premium for workers with postprimary education), that the quality of primary education has declined (reducing the productivity gains associated with primary school completion) or some combination of these explanations. There is also growing evidence that early childhood education yields high economic returns (Heckman 2011). Based on longitudinal data from the High/Scope Perry randomised controlled experiment, Schweinhart et al. (2005) find that American children raised in poverty that completed a high-quality preschool program had significantly higher rates of employment in adulthood than individuals in the control group. Median annual income for the preschooled group was also 36% higher at age 40. Furthermore, comparison of the two groups’ propensity for crime and health suggests large public externalities of early childhood education. Similar evidence for developing countries is scarce. While Mincer-type studies provide empirical evidence that education accounts for much of the variation in individual earnings in developing countries, they face several limitations.The approach only allows the study of formal employment with wage data (often for males) and thus does not capture the returns to education within the informal economy. However, there is emerging evidence that education increases informal sector productivity (e.g., De Brauw and Rozelle 2006 for rural China; Nguetse Tegoum 2009 for Cameroon; Arbex et al. 2010 for Brazil; and Yamasaki 2012 for South Africa), as well as ability to secure employment in the growing digital economy (Results for Development Institute 2013).There is also an established literature (reviewed in Huffman 2001) showing that schooling improves farm yields, particularly in settings where farmers are able to benefit from their education by accessing affordable agricultural technologies. Furthermore, the Mincerian approach was critiqued by Heckman, Lochner and Todd (2003) for not being able to capture the complexity of modern labour markets. Mincerian returns do not capture the value of education in increasing a worker’s employment stability (discussed for the US case in Cairo and Cajner 2014), which is particularly relevant in postrecession economies with high unemployment rates. In addition, it is unclear that years of schooling (which do not account for quality of education) are the optimal measure of an individual’s human capital. There is growing focus on microeconomic data that captures skill levels acquired through education (an output of education) rather than years spent in school (an input into education). This measurement issue with respect to human capital is discussed further later in this chapter.

Human capital and economic growth In the 1950s, Solow (1956) and Swan (1956) investigated the divergence in economic production of nations using exogenous growth models, which specify per capita income as a function of physical capital, size of the labour force, assumed (exogenous) rates of technological progress, saving, population growth and residual total factor productivity (which augments the productivity of capital and labour). All inputs into economic production are thus tangible (physical capital and labour). The basic exogenous growth model is applied to data by regressing log per capita income on log savings rate and log of the sum of the depreciation rate, technological growth rate and population growth rate. As discussed in Mankiw, Romer and Weil (1992), empirical testing shows that the basic exogenous growth model has promising features but is ultimately inconsistent with reality. A typical 14

Human capital and development

Solow-Swan regression explains half of the variation in per capita income, with the remaining half attributed to the residual (total factor productivity). However, the estimated magnitudes of the effects of saving and labour force growth are too great. The difference in income between India and the USA, for example, could only be explained by implausibly huge differences in physical capital stock. By the basic specification, the implied value of capital’s share of income is 0.6, but globally the true value of capital’s share of income is about 0.3. Y (t ) = K (t ) ( A (t ) L (t ) )

1− α

a

where Y(t) is output for time period t, K(t) is the physical capital stock at time t, L(t) is the size of the labour force at time t, A(t) is a residual, catchall variable, and α is the elasticity (responsiveness) of output with respect to physical capital. A and L grow over time at exogenous rates g and n, respectively, while a constant fraction of output s is saved in each period and invested in physical capital. These weaknesses suggest that the basic Solow-Swan model omits key variables that account for economic growth. Given the strong evidence that education is a central determinant of earnings at the individual level, it should follow that human capital is a determinant of income and growth of nations and thus should be included in Solow-Swan-type growth accounting exercises. This idea was tested empirically by Mankiw, Romer and Weil (1992), who augmented the Solow-Swan exogenous growth model with the inclusion of human capital. They tested the relationship between investment in human capital and economic development using cross-country regressions that included human capital as a factor of production along with labour and physical capital. The rate of accumulation of human capital is proxied in their augmented model by a country’s proportion of youth (age 12–17) currently enrolled in secondary school multiplied by the fraction of the working-age population that is of secondary-school age (15–19). They find that for nonoil based economies, a 1% increase in their proxy measure raises GDP per working-age person by 0.66%. This effect is highly statistically significant. Y (t ) = K (t ) H (t ) ( A (t ) L (t ) ) α

β

1− α − β

where Y(t) is output for time period t, K(t) is the physical capital stock at time t, L(t) is the size of the labour force at time t, H(t) is the human capital stock at time t, A(t) is a residual, catchall variable, α is the elasticity of output with respect to physical capital and β is the elasticity of output with respect to human capital, while constant fractions of output sk and sh are saved in each period and invested in physical and human capital, respectively. Accounting for human capital eliminates the original Solow-Swan model’s issues. The augmented model explains 80% of the cross-country variation in per capita income. The implied value of alpha falls to a more reasonable 0.33 in the augmented model. The elasticity of output with respect to saving rises from 0.5 in the original version to 1, so implausibly large differences in phys