From Schooling Access to Learning Outcomes, An Unfinished Agenda : An Evaluation of World Bank Support to Primary Education

The Education for All (EFA) movement, launched in 1990, has resulted in an extraordinary mobilization of World Bank and country resources in support of basic education over the past 15 years. World Bank EFA financing, mostly focused on primary education, has become increasingly progressive, targeting the most disadvantaged countries and often the disadvantaged within countries. Over the years of Bank support for EFA and its world conferences in 1990 and 2000, the Bank's policy objectives for increased support to primary education have been simple and remarkably stable: universal primary school completion, equality of access for girls and other disadvantaged groups, and improved student learning outcomes. This Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) evaluation assesses the extent to which these objectives have been met in countries supported by the Bank. and it provide lessons for countries in their development strategies and for the Bank in its support to those strategies.