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Education Challenges in Developing Nations

The document discusses some of the key issues with education in developing countries. It notes that there is often a lack of demand for education due to low motivation among children to attend school and parents' perceptions that the return on investment of education is not high enough. Additionally, the quality of education is often poor with high teacher absenteeism and children not actually learning despite being enrolled in school. While governments tend to focus on increasing the supply of education through building schools and training teachers, the document suggests demand-side issues may be more important to address through communicating the value of education and introducing incentives to increase parental demand for schooling.

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Pickle Rick
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95 views2 pages

Education Challenges in Developing Nations

The document discusses some of the key issues with education in developing countries. It notes that there is often a lack of demand for education due to low motivation among children to attend school and parents' perceptions that the return on investment of education is not high enough. Additionally, the quality of education is often poor with high teacher absenteeism and children not actually learning despite being enrolled in school. While governments tend to focus on increasing the supply of education through building schools and training teachers, the document suggests demand-side issues may be more important to address through communicating the value of education and introducing incentives to increase parental demand for schooling.

Uploaded by

Pickle Rick
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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ECN501 Education

 Biggest issues with education in developing countries are lack of demand for school, and
bad quality of education with teachers missing work and not teaching
 Some children in developing countries have no motivation to attend school. Thus they
skip school
o Is there demand for education? Even if its free?
 Problem with education in developing countries
o School in most developing countries is free
o High child absentee rate of between 14% and 50%
 Not entirely driven by sickness or needs at home
o Does this reflect failure of a top-down approach in education?
 Yes in part, building schools and training teachers can be pointless if
there is no demand for education
 But: demand for educated workers is high and this does not necessarily
translate to demand for education
o Supply-side vs demand-side issues
 Majority of policy makers believe the problem lies in the supply of
schooling
 SDG: Ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education
 National governments emphasize supply of education
o LOOK AT STATS IN THE SLIDE
 Issues with the supply focus of school
 Enrollment does not equal learning
 Policy assumption: learnings follows enrollment. But this is
incorrect because learning does not follow education
 But there are problems with absenteeism and quality of
education:
o World Bank survey of 6 development countries
 Teachers miss 1 out of 5 days of work
 Techers when they are in school, they are not
teaching
o India’s state of education report
 35% of children in 7-14 age group cannot read a
simple paragraph and 60% cannot read a simple
story
 Maybe the problem is driven by lack of demand for education. How?
 High absenteeism and low quality of education may be driven by
parents not caring
o They may believe that the ROI of education isn’t high
enough
 The outcome of the ROI (Higher wages) should be “marketed” or
communicating the value of education can help increase demand
for education
 If education is another form of investment, what problems can occur?
 Benefits are in the future and for the children (not the parents)
 LOOK AT SLIDE
 An investment in education has large number of uncertainty
 Some governments have made school attendance mandatory for kids
 Some governments have introduced incentives for the parents
 Conditional cash transfers: giving parents money when child
attends school
 Even tho the demand for school is important, supply is also important
 Especially when parents can’t pay for the schools, and increase in
free schools can have a major positive impact
 Man-made poverty
o Man made poverty trap consists of the actual vs perceived value of education
o The actual returns are constant (LOOOK AT PERSEIVED VS ACTUAL GRAPH)
o Some parents think that the value of primary education is low so they may just
send 1 child

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