Seminar on
“Growth Strategies for Secondary
Education in Asia”
September 19-21, 2005
Changes in Secondary Education:
From Weakest Link to Cornerstone
Juan Manuel Moreno
World Bank
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
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.
Secondary Education
As a Policy Paradox
•
•
•
•
Terminal - Preparatory.
Compulsory – Post-compulsory
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
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 and complex.
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
Education Attaintment Gaps Grow
Percentage of Population
With at Least Some Secondary Education
100%
ME & N Af
80%
Percentage
Sub-Sah Af
Lat Am/Car
60%
E Asia/Pac
S Asia
Developed
40%
E Europe
20%
0%
1960
1970
1980
Year
1990
2000
2010
Some Regions are Catching Up
Secondary GER by World Region
100
80
60
40
20
0
East Asia
ECA
LAC
1980
MNA
1990
2001
South
Asia
Africa
Demands for Job-Skills is Changing Rapidly
15
Percentile Change
10
Expert Thinking
Complex Communication
5
Routine Manual
0
Routine Cognitive
-5
-10
Non-routine Manual
1969
1974
1979
1984
Years
1989
1994
Source: Autor, Levy, and Murnane (2003) “The Skill Content of Recent Technological Change: An Empirical Exploration,” Quarterly Journal of Economics.
1998
Cumulative % of learners
Pisa Results for Selected
Developing Countries and OECD
100
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
OECD total
Peru
Indonesia
Brazil
Mexico
Thailand
OECD Average
<1
1
2
3
Pisa Proficiency Levels
4
5
Pause
Asking 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?
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 and in teams
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
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
Finland and Korea
Balanced Expansion of
Educational Attainment
KOREA
Population over 15
FINLAND
Population over 15
26%
22%
2000
2000
48%
55%
30%
18%
11%
1980
9%
1980
24%
49%
42%
66%
3%
4%
1960
1960
8%
88%
17%
80%
Colombia and Bangladesh
Unbalanced Expansion of
Educational Attainment
BANGLADESH
Population over 15
COLOMBIA
Population over 15
10%
2000
2000
3%
14%
27%
83%
63%
4%
1980
1980
23%
1%
15%
73%
2%
1960
84%
1960
14%
84%
0.4%
3%
96%
Financial Gaps and Imbalances
FastCountries
Slowgrowing
succeeding growing
economies in expanding economies
secondary
enrollment
Countries
not
succeeding
in expanding
secondary
enrollment
Per-student spending
on secondary students
as a ratio of perstudent spending on
primary students
1.4
1.4
2.2
2.6
Per-student spending
on tertiary students as
a ratio of per-student
spending on secondary
students
3.0
3.2
11.0
9.3
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 by diversifying upper
secondary education through the development of
multi-faceted programs offering alternative
pathways for education and training
How Systems are Responding
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
How Systems are Responding
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.
The Rise and Fall of Curriculum
Knowledge Areas Politics of
Knowledge and its Market Value
• More subjects have become socially and
economically meaningful and therefore aim to
occupy a place in the school curriculum
(Technology, Economics, Citizenship education,
Second Foreign Language, Environmental
education, Health).
• Foreign Language, Music, Arts and Physical
Education have been promoted from elective to
compulsory status.
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.
Is It Just
More of the Same?
• It is not enough to “open doors”.
• Changes in the way education services are
delivered.
• Targeting the poor and excluded groups.
• Combination of supply and demand side
interventions.
• Need to build political consensus
Looking Ahead:
3 Key Challenges
• Minimizing the inter-country/interregional education gap
• Sustainable financing of the expansion
• Address youth needs of relevant
secondary education experiences