Publication: The Learning Crisis of Developing Country Elites: Lessons from PISA-D
Loading...
Date
2023-02-27
ISSN
0258-6770 (print)
1564-698X (online)
1564-698X (online)
Published
2023-02-27
Author(s)
Editor(s)
Abstract
How much of the learning crisis can be addressed through inclusion, the equalization of grade attainment and learning outcomes across groups (e.g., girls/boys, rural/urban, poor/rich), and how much of the learning crisis requires improvement in the country’s system of basic education to improve learning outcomes across the board This study uses the data from the seven countries who participated in Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) for Development (PISA-D) to show that for most countries and subjects the average learning outcome for the advantaged (male, urban, native-born, speakers of assessment language), and elite (95th percentile in PISA measured socio-economic status) students was below the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) minimum learning level target of PISA level 2. Even if every child in these countries were fully included had the same distribution of learning outcomes as the advantaged, SES elite, public school children, 80 percent of all children would still fall short of proposed global minimum levels of learning.
Link to Data Set
Citation
“Pritchett, Lant; Viarengo, Martina. 2023. The Learning Crisis of Developing Country Elites: Lessons from PISA-D. World Bank Economic Review. © World Bank. http://hdl.handle.net/10986/41308 License: CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO.”
Associated URLs
Associated content
Other publications in this report series
Journal
World Bank Economic Review
1564-698X
Journal Volume
Journal Issue
Citations
- Cited 7 times in Scopus (view citations)
Collections
Related items
Showing items related by metadata.
No results found.
Users also downloaded
Showing related downloaded files
Publication Collapse and Recovery(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2023)Worldwide, the COVID-19 pandemic has been an enormous shock to mortality, economies, and daily life. But what has received insufficient attention is the impact of the pandemic on the accumulation of human capital—the health, education, and skills—of young people. How large was the setback, and how far are we still from a recovery? Collapse and Recovery estimates the impacts of the pandemic on the human capital of young children, school-age children, and youth and discusses the urgent actions needed to reverse the damage. It shows that there was a collapse of human capital and that, unless that collapse is remedied, it is a time bomb for countries. Specifically, the report documents alarming declines in cognitive and social-emotional development among young children, which could translate into a 25 percent reduction in their earnings as adults. It finds that 1 billion children in low- and middle-income countries missed at least one year of in-person schooling. And despite enormous efforts in remote learning, children did not learn during the unprecedentedly long school closures, which could reduce future lifetime earnings around the world by US$21 trillion. The report quantifies the dramatic drops in employment and skills among youth that resulted from the pandemic as well as the substantial increase in the number of youth neither employed nor enrolled in education or training. In all of these age groups, the impacts of the pandemic were consistently worse for children from poorer backgrounds. These losses call for immediate action. The good news is that evidence-based policies can recover these losses. Collapse and Recovery reviews governments’ responses to the pandemic, assessing why there was a collapse in human capital accumulation, what was missing in the policy architecture to protect human capital during the crisis, and how governments can better prepare to withstand future shocks. It offers concrete policy recommendations to recover losses in human capital—programs that will end up paying for themselves in the long term. To better prepare for future shocks such as climate change and wars, the report emphasizes the need for solutions that bring health, education, and social protection programs together in an integrated human development system. If countries fail to act, the losses in human capital documented in this report will become permanent and last for multiple generations. The time to act is now.Publication Demographic Change and Development(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2016-11)Demographic change can be a positive contributor to development at any stage of demographic transition. This paper revisits the literature on the determinants and economic impacts of demographic change, and presents a new global typology that classifies countries into four categories based on demographic characteristics and future development potential. In the first group are high-fertility, low-income countries that are lagging in many human development indicators. In the second group are mostly low- and lower-middle-income countries where fertility rates have started falling recently and where changes in age structure offer tremendous opportunity for growth in the near future. The third group comprises mostly upper-middle-income countries that experienced rapid fertility declines in the 1960s, and where working age people will be a shrinking share of the population in the coming decade. The last group is made up of mostly high-income countries that have some of the highest shares of elderly in the world, and below-replacement fertility rates since at least the 1980s. The typology helps identify development policy priorities for countries in different stages of demographic transition, and opportunities through globalization due to demographic differences between countries.Publication Business Ready 2024(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2024-10-03)Business Ready (B-READY) is a new World Bank Group corporate flagship report that evaluates the business and investment climate worldwide. It replaces and improves upon the Doing Business project. B-READY provides a comprehensive data set and description of the factors that strengthen the private sector, not only by advancing the interests of individual firms but also by elevating the interests of workers, consumers, potential new enterprises, and the natural environment. This 2024 report introduces a new analytical framework that benchmarks economies based on three pillars: Regulatory Framework, Public Services, and Operational Efficiency. The analysis centers on 10 topics essential for private sector development that correspond to various stages of the life cycle of a firm. The report also offers insights into three cross-cutting themes that are relevant for modern economies: digital adoption, environmental sustainability, and gender. B-READY draws on a robust data collection process that includes specially tailored expert questionnaires and firm-level surveys. The 2024 report, which covers 50 economies, serves as the first in a series that will expand in geographical coverage and refine its methodology over time, supporting reform advocacy, policy guidance, and further analysis and research.Publication Doing Business 2020(Washington, DC: World Bank, 2020)Doing Business 2020 is the 17th in a series of annual studies investigating the regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it. It provides quantitative indicators covering 12 areas of the business environment in 190 economies. The goal of the Doing Business series is to provide objective data for use by governments in designing sound business regulatory policies and to encourage research on the important dimensions of the regulatory environment for firms.Publication A Blue Transformation for Pacific Maritime Transport: Overarching Regional Transport(World Bank, Washington, DC, 2023-06-29)This report has eight chapters. Following the introduction (Pacific Peoples and the Sea), the next six chapters each focus on a separate significant component of Pacific maritime transport, analyzing the major influences and challenges, and, where relevant, key areas for future attention. The topics are: international shipping, gateway ports, domestic maritime transport, four related sectors, cruise ship tourism, tuna fisheries, fossil fuel imports, and bulk shipping, natural disasters and climate resilience, and sector governance and institutions. The final chapter, transforming pacific maritime transport, ways forward, distils the report’s findings into the most significant and far-reaching opportunities to transform maritime transport in the Pacific. These are grouped into three broad themes, infrastructure, services, and governance and capacity building. Ways Forward comes at the end and, for readers unable to view the whole report, is a good place to begin. The rest of this executive summary explains why the Pacific is a special case for investment and provides a summary of the main chapters and findings. But first, it describes which Pacific Island countries contributed to the study.