World Bank Policy Paper on Secondary Education: Juan Manuel Moreno World Bank September 23, 2005

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World Bank Policy Paper on Secondary
EducationJuan Manuel MorenoWorld Bank
September 23, 2005
Seminar on Expanding Opportunities and Building
Competencies A New Agenda for Secondary
Education
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Secondary Education From Weakest Link to
Cornerstone

• The Origins as the Weakest Link
• The Change of Partner
• Access Quality Equity

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The Strategic Nature of Secondary Education

• Within any given education system, secondary
  education works as the bridging or articulation
  bond between primary schooling and tertiary
  education institutions
• Secondary education can serve as a set of
  pathways for students progress and advancement
• Or as the main bottleneck preventing the
  equitable expansion of educational opportunities.
  

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Secondary Education As a Policy Paradox

• Terminal - Preparatory.
• Compulsory Post-compulsory
• Basic Post-Basic
• Uniform-diverse
• Individual needs and interests - Societal/Labor
  market needs
• Integrate students and offset disadvantages
  Select and Screen according to academic ability
• Common curriculum for all - Specialized
  curriculum for some

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Political Tensions

• While there are strong national and international
  lobbies for primary or tertiary, there are no
  such thing for secondary education.
• Reaching political consensus for secondary
  expansion and reform is much more difficult than
  for primary or tertiary education.
• As a result, policy choices are more ambiguous,
  risky and complex.

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Secondary Education Why now?
Confluence of 3 forces

• After primary education, What? Surging demand
  driven by EFA.
• Youth-quake The largest ever cohort of young
  people. A global risk or opportunity? Need to
  build/harness their skills
• Primary education is not enough Globalization and
  knowledge society present new challenges to human
  capital development

Demand for secondary education is soaring
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Twin Challenge

• Develop a mass system of secondary education,
  with quality and equity
• Improve quality, defined as different
  institutional responses to an increasingly
  diverse demand
• Generate effective demand for secondary education
  among youth

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OECD Average
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How the demand for skills is changing (I)(Levy
and Murnane, 2004)

• Expert thinking solving problems for which there
  are no rule-based solutions, e.g. diagnosing the
  illness of a patient.
• Complex communication interacting with humans to
  acquire information, to explain it, or to
  persuade others of its implications for action.

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How the demand for skills is changing (II)

• Routine cognitive tasks mental tasks that are
  well described by logical rules, e.g. maintaining
  expense reports.
• Routine manual tasks physical tasks that can be
  well described using rules, e.g. counting and
  packaging pills.
• Non-routine manual tasks physical tasks that
  cannot be well described as following a set of
  If-Then-Do rules instead, they require
  optical recognition and fine muscle control.

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Expert Thinking
Complex Communication
Routine Manual
Routine Cognitive
Non-routine Manual
1969
1974
1979
1984
1989
1994
1998
Source Autor, Levy, and Murnane (2003) The
Skill Content of Recent Technological Change An
Empirical Exploration, Quarterly Journal of
Economics.
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PauseAsking the right questions!

• What percentage of your 16 year old population do
  you want to master the so-called 21st century
  skills?
• Which curriculum prepares best for an uncertain
  future?

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Is Sustainable Expansion of Secondary Education
Feasible?

• Hong-Kong, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan,
  Finland, demonstrate that it is possible
• And it can be done in a short period of time.
  Between 1990 and 2000 these countries increased
  the average years of schooling by more than 4.5
  years
• Finland and Korea did it, by decreasing the
  fraction of the adult population with only
  primary education and increasing the
  opportunities for all to attend secondary
  education

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Finland and Korea Balanced Expansion of
Educational Attainment
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Colombia and Bangladesh Unbalanced Expansion of
Educational Attainment
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Financial Gaps and Imbalances
1.4
1.4
2.6
2.2
3.0
3.2
11.0
9.3
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Which curriculum prepares best? Overall Trends
in Curriculum Reform (i)

• Deferring selection and specialization of pupils
• Ability grouping, tracking and streaming may
  raise the attainment of higher achievers at the
  expense of low achievers, which, apart from
  equity concerns, also raises worries about the
  loss of human and social capital

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Which curriculum prepares best? Overall Trends
in Curriculum Reform (ii)

• Increasing the status recognition of traditional
  vocational education, in part by pushing it to
  the upper secondary level and then to
  post-secondary level.
• Departing from the disciplinary tradition of
  curriculum design and development, thus moving to
  broader curriculum areas, skill
  centered-approaches, etc., which amount to a more
  relevant and inclusive secondary curriculum.

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The Challenge is to Build up Meta-cognitive
Capital and Creative Capital (i)

• Ability to integrate formal and informal
  learning, declarative knowledge (or knowing that)
  and procedural knowledge (or know-how)
• Ability to access, select and evaluate knowledge
  in an information-soaked world
• Ability to develop and apply several forms of
  intelligence, beyond strictly cognitive factors
• Ability to work and learn effectively in teams

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The Challenge is to Build up Meta-cognitive
Capital and Creative Capital (ii)

• Ability to create, transpose and transfer
  knowledge
• Ability to cope with ambiguous situations,
  unpredictable problems and unforeseeable
  circumstances
• Ability to cope with multiple careers, learning
  how to locate oneself in a job market, choose and
  fashion the relevant education and training
• Learning to Think and Learning to Learn

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The Shifting and Fading Frontier between
General and Vocational Curricula

• Reduction in the fragmentation of secondary
  school curriculum
• The issue nowadays is not so much how to provide
  vocational skills but how to add basic vocational
  content to the general curriculum
• Introducing greater diversity in upper secondary
  education through the development of
  multi-faceted programs offering alternative
  pathways for education and training

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The Shifting and Fading Tension between
General and Vocational Secondary Education

• Curriculum-based reform of secondary education is
  prioritizing skills and competencies that go
  beyond and cut across the traditional
  general/vocational divide
• Specialized vocational programs are being
  upgraded vocational and specialized training
  elements are a must in Secondary Education if
  education systems want to retain students in
  secondary schools

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Converging Agendas in the 21st Century

• Educating the citizen
• Training the worker

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Access and Quality are not just twin goals but
Siamese Twins

• No country has expanded secondary education
  without creating the public opinion perception of
  a quality drop.
• Unchecked expansion can lead to increased
  inequality, particularly gender and ethnic
  inequality.

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Is It Just More of the Same?

• It is not enough to open doors.
• Changes in the way education services are
  delivered.
• The implications of Curriculum differentiation.
• Combination of supply and demand side
  interventions.
• Need to build political consensus

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And The Role of the State is More Important than
Ever

• Mobilizing financial resources.
• Ensuring political consensus and providing
  technical leadership and support.
• Creating conditions for alternative providers
• Targeting the poor and excluded groups.
• Monitoring and evaluating service delivery and
  system quality.

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Looking Ahead 3 Key Challenges

• Minimizing the inter-country/inter-regional
  education gap
• Sustainable financing of the expansion
• Address youth needs of relevant secondary
  education experiences

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• Thank you