Tag: Education

New social contract

The fourth Industrial Revolution and the reskilling challenge: a view from the Global South

By Ramiro Albrieu, Senior Researcher and Megan Ballesty, Project Co-ordinator, Center for the Implementation of Public Policies for Equity and Growth (CIPPEC-Argentina, member of the Southern Voice network)

The fourth industrial revolution is redefining the role of people in the workplace and, consequently, challenging 20th century education systems.
Many of the breakthroughs in the field of applied artificial intelligence and related technologies enable the automation of “codifiable” or repetitive tasks, representing hard-to-beat competition for workers performing them. Societies are therefore making efforts to redirect human capital investments away from learning goals associated with performing routine and repetitive tasks. Although this goal is clear, the specific features of policy frameworks to achieve it are hard to design, as they are highly context-dependent. A few examples follow.

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Digitalisation west Africa education
Africa, Building resilience, Français

Le numérique au service de l’éducation en Afrique de l’Ouest

Par Guy Mehou, Économiste Macro-Financier & Charles Millogo, Responsable de l‘Économie Numérique, La Banque Ouest Africaine de Développement (BOAD)

On entend souvent dire qu’avec Internet, l’accès au savoir est simplifié. Les possibilités données aujourd’hui au plus grand nombre de faire des recherches sur Internet ou de se former via des MOOC (cours en ligne ouverts et massifs) ont significativement accru l’accès à des contenus. Avec Internet, la connaissance n’est plus réservée à une élite mais est dorénavant l’affaire de tous. De plus, une part accrue de ce savoir est disponible gratuitement, pour peu que l’on dispose d’une connexion Internet, et donc à la portée de chacun. Pour un enseignant, donner un cours en ligne permet d’avoir une audience décuplée et pour un étudiant, suivre un cours en ligne permet de choisir le moment privilégié pour s’instruire.

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School children in Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria
Africa, New social contract

Five ways to build resilience in Nigeria’s education system

By Adedeji Adeniran, Director of Research at the Centre for the Study of the Economies of Africa (CSEA) and Thelma Obiakor, PhD Candidate at the London School of Economics and Political Science

COVID-19 has compounded a long-standing learning crisis in many African countries, where millions of children were already out of school before the pandemic.

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Education, Latin America and the Caribbean, New social contract

How Brazil’s schools are overcoming education inequalities through student-centred learning

By Camila Pereira, Director of Education, Lemann Foundation

With over 180,000 schools closed from March 2020 to August 2021, remote learning became the only option for Brazil’s 47 million students. Despite huge efforts by educators, public officials and families to support children while they were away from classrooms, a big impact on learning is expected. Brazilian education has long suffered from deeply entrenched inequalities and gaps that have been worsened by COVID-19. What solutions are needed for Brazil to overcome these inequalities?

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Natural Resources, New social contract

Do resource rich economies have better or worse human development outcomes?

By Antonio Savoia, Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) at the University of Manchester and a Non-Resident Senior Research Fellow at UNU-WIDER and Kunal Sen, Director of UNU-WIDER

Although increasingly challenged, we often hear that being resource rich can adversely affect growth prospects. Here we concentrate instead on a lesser-known aspect: how resource rich economies fare in terms of education, health, income inequality and poverty. The IMF classifies over 50 developing and emerging economies as resource rich. Many are in Africa, where a significant share of the world’s poor lives. With the increasing prices of many internationally traded commodities in the post-COVID recovery, resource revenues could provide a welcome boost to development spending for such governments.

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Africa, Building resilience, Covid-19, Education, New social contract

COVID-19 impact on higher education in Africa

By Peter Koninckx, Strategic and Commercial Advisor, Cunégonde Fatondji, Analyst Intern, and Joel Burgos, Senior Project Manager, ShARE

Beyond the death toll and illness of millions of people due to COVID-19, businesses, healthcare, culture and education have had to cope with severe disturbances. But in our opinion, one could argue that higher-education students are amongst the most affected populations, particularly those in Africa. Although Africa is the continent with the least reported cases, the closure of higher education institutions was more widespread, and mitigation measures less effective than in other regions, according to a survey we conducted with more than 165 students across 21 African countries. No quick-fix solution exists, but the current crisis has highlighted the weaknesses in higher education in Africa, indicating where governments, international institutions, NGOs, and the private sector should focus their efforts.

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Education, New social contract

To measure real progress in education we must include out-of-school children

By Michael Ward, Senior Analyst, Education and Skills Directorate, OECD

In many low- and middle-income countries – including some that have participated in PISA – relatively large proportions of 15-year-olds are not enrolled in school or are not enrolled in PISA’s target grades (grade seven and above) and are thus not covered by the assessment (see figure 1). With an increasing number of low- and middle-income countries participating in PISA, and with 61 million children of lower secondary school age, out of school around the world, this population can no longer remain beyond the reach of programmes that try to evaluate the success of education systems.

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Covid-19, Education, New social contract

Education funding and COVID-19: what does the future hold?

By Laura Abadia, Policy Analyst, OECD Development Centre

This blog is part of a series on tackling COVID-19 in developing countries. Visit the OECD dedicated page to access the OECD’s data, analysis and recommendations on the health, economic, financial and societal impacts of COVID-19 worldwide.

With prolonged school closures affecting over 90% of all learners worldwide at the peak of the first wave, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the urgent need to explore new and more effective approaches to education delivery and content. From hybrid models that combine in-person with remote learning, to widening academic curricula to include social and emotional competencies, the opportunities for change are manifold. However, recovering from prolonged school closures and seizing these opportunities will require making significant headway against the deep structural challenges perpetuating inequalities in education.

To better understand how COVID-19 is changing education donor behaviour and priorities, the OECD Centre on Philanthropy analysed years of OECD data on official development assistance (ODA) and private philanthropy, and interviewed dozens of donors. Here is what we learned:

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Covid-19, Latin America and the Caribbean

Is COVID-19 widening educational gaps in Latin America? Three lessons for urgent policy action

By Nathalie Basto-Aguirre, Paula Cerutti and Sebastián Nieto-Parra, OECD Development Centre

This blog is part of a series on tackling COVID-19 in developing countries.

COVID-19, like most crises, is exacerbating inequalities in the region. To contain the pandemic, most Latin American countries have closed their schools, affecting the learning of 154 million students. However, not all students are affected equally. While distance education can contribute to alleviate the immediate impacts of school closures, it requires a number of conditions to deliver meaningful results. Students from poorer socio-economic backgrounds tend to suffer the most and risk bearing lasting consequences in terms of learning outcomes and, ultimately, opportunities. In particular, three interconnected dimensions stand out.

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Africa, Covid-19, Français, Human Development, Youth

Avec ou sans, pendant et après le Covid-19, priorité aux réformes des systèmes de santé et d’éducation en Afrique de l’Ouest

Par Gilles Yabi, fondateur de WATHI, think tank citoyen de l’Afrique de l’Ouest

Ce blog fait partie d’une série sur la lutte contre le COVID-19 dans les pays en voie de développement. Visitez la page dédiée de l’OCDE pour accéder aux données, analyses et recommandations de l’OCDE sur les impacts sanitaires, économiques, financiers et sociétaux de COVID-19 dans le monde.

SWAC-blog-covid19En Afrique de l’Ouest, les impacts de Covid-19 seront-ils catastrophiques ? La crise Ebola a révélé la très grande faiblesse des systèmes sanitaires des pays touchés à l’époque dans la région, Liberia, Sierra Leone et Guinée principalement. Si des enseignements importants ont été tirés, avec la mise en place de centres dédiés aux urgences sanitaires dans plusieurs pays, les systèmes de santé dans leur ensemble ne se sont pas particulièrement renforcés. Les ménages assument l’essentiel des dépenses de santé par rapport aux États, les inégalités d’accès aux soins sont frappantes, et les hôpitaux manquent cruellement de personnel qualifié, de matériel, de dispositif de maintenance des équipements et de médicaments, ainsi que de capacités d’accueil et, parfois, de salubrité. La crise du coronavirus exacerbera sans doute la situation. Il est plus que jamais primordial de renforcer et d’investir dans les systèmes de santé, sans quoi la plupart des pays d’Afrique de l’Ouest ne pourront faire face ni aux crises sanitaires, comme celle du Covid-19, ni aux nombreuses autres maladies infectieuses ou chroniques.

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