POLICY IMPLEMENTATION IN POOR COUNTRIES

M. Simons, M. Olssen & M. Peters (eds) Re-reading Education Policies: A Handbook Studying the policy agenda of the 21st century. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers, 2009

During the last decades the World Bank (WB) has been without any doubt the most significant subject of globalisation processes in education and development. Political and economic transformations have transformed the Breton Woods institutions as actors with the ability to shape and even impose agendas to less developed countries. Although education does not represent one of the most important sectors of the Bank portfolio, the growth in educational loans and, especially, the ideological capacity of the WB in shaping national policies have located education as one of the clearest examples of the supranational leverage in domestic policies. An education policy suitable for fighting poverty has been the main leit motiv in the shifting processes of the WB educational agenda. Interestingly enough, WB strategies to combat poverty have suffered important changes under different WB Presidencies, and so have changed (not always simultaneously) education and other social policies. This paper examines the relationship between the emergence of anti-poverty strategies in the WB and dominant models of education policy. The paper reviews changes in WB anti- poverty agenda since the 1980s until the most recent policy papers, and particularly the new Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP). The paper shows the main failings that underlie the positive and hoped-for relationship between investment in education and the reduction of poverty, and concludes that a good number of these failings can be attributed to an underestimation of the inverse relationship, i.e. the effects that poverty has on education.

Means, A. and Saltman, K. (eds.) The Wiley Handbook of Global Educational Reform, 2019

This paper examines the twin issues of poverty and inequality as well as the underdevelopment of Third World Countries to see if the above have been caused by bad state polices of these countries or bad state global rules using the Neo-Marxist or Dependency School, the paper discovers that even though many developing countries have good state policies, their implementation has been hindered by bad global rules which are weighed against Third World Countries, especially Africa. This has hindered development in these counties. It is an established fact that development cannot take place where there is mass poverty and inequality. Drawing examples from some Third World Countries, it is clear that global rules are not in favour of the Third World. It is the position of this paper that if Third World Country must develop they must extricate themselves from the intricacies of global rules through the globalization process.

International Journal of Educational Development 24 (2004) 649–666, 2004

This paper focuses on the relationship between the World Bank’s education policy and the recent anti-poverty pri- orities and strategies that shape the present Bank’s agenda for development. The paper provides a critical assessment of the explicit strategies of the World Bank’s education policies aimed at fighting poverty by identifying the contra- dictions embedded in anti-poverty discourses and strategies, and relating them to an education policy that generates inequalities and shows little effectiveness in helping people to escape from poverty. This analysis is applied to the situ- ation of Latin American education systems, which have, during the last decade, experienced an important expansion but have also maintained strong inequalities in educational performance and access to post-compulsory education. # 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

An understanding of the contextual nature of poverty has implications for responses that seek to improve social status and economic well-being. This issue is particularly relevant in developing countries where the dynamic causes, symptoms, severity, and persistence of poverty are often under investigated and remedies deemed unresponsive. This paper explores the implications of using a "one size fits all approach" to eradicating poverty and postulates that effective anti-poverty programs must be based upon a sound understanding of the local context of a country. The aim of this paper is to stimulate critical debate and discussion of the ways in which the multidimensional and context specific causes of poverty can be integrated into dynamic and comprehensive perspectives on poverty eradication as a modification to the prevailing neo-liberal prescription in developing countries.

The past decade has seen the governments of developing nations undertake a series of policies aimed specifically at alleviating the poverty of their nations. Today those governments are forced to re-evaluate such policies in the face of a negative international economy.

During the last decades the World Bank (WB) has been without any doubt the most significant subject of globalisation processes in education and development. Political and economic transformations have transformed the Breton Woods institutions as actors with the ability to shape and even impose agendas to less developed countries. Although education does not represent one of the most important sectors of the Bank portfolio, the growth in educational loans and, especially, the ideological capacity of the WB in shaping national policies have located education as one of the clearest examples of the supranational leverage in domestic policies. An education policy suitable for fighting poverty has been the main leit motiv in the shifting processes of the WB educational agenda. Interestingly enough, WB strategies to combat poverty have suffered important changes under different WB Presidencies, and so have changed (not always simultaneously) education and other social policies. This paper examines the relationship between the emergence of anti-poverty strategies in the WB and dominant models of education policy. The paper reviews changes in WB antipoverty agenda since the 1980s until the most recent policy papers, and particularly the new Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSP). The paper shows the main failings that underlie the positive and hoped-for relationship between investment in education and the reduction of poverty, and concludes that a good number of these failings can be attributed to an underestimation of the inverse relationship, i.e. the effects that poverty has on education.

International Journal of Educational Development, 2010

The objective of this paper is to analyse the role of education and poverty in the current global development agenda. It intends to analyse the emergence, evolution and consolidation of a global agenda, which attributes a key role to education in the fight against poverty. With this objective, the paper addresses four main issues: first, it analyses the context in which the emergence of the agenda must be placed, analysing specifically the changes generated by globalisation; second, it focuses on the role of the actors, and especially on the role of the World Bank in setting the agenda; third, it explains the consolidation of the agenda by the Education for All Conferences and the Millennium Development Goals; finally it presents some of the main limitations of the hegemonic agenda.