Brief

Children with disabilities are often the most marginalized and excluded from educational opportunities, limiting their opportunities to build independent lives free from poverty. Fifteen percent of the world’s population is estimated to have a disability. The exclusion of children with disabilities is severe globally and especially in low-income countries and regions. The problem is not limited to attending school.

Ensuring girls can go to school and complete their education is critical for improving lives. Girls who benefit from a quality education become healthier, more productive adults. They’re less likely to marry at an early age and more likely to be formally employed and to have higher earnings. But poverty remains the key factor for determining whether a girl goes to school.

People with a quality post-secondary education are more employable, earn higher wages, and cope better with economic shocks. Higher education benefits both individuals and society. Economic returns for college graduates are the highest in the entire educational system—an average 17 percent increase in earnings per year of schooling as compared with 10 percent for primary school. The social benefits are also substantial.

Countries need strong education systems that promote learning, life skills, and social cohesion. However, systems struggle to deliver education services in adverse contexts such as armed conflict, natural disasters, political crises, health epidemics, and pervasive violence. Education can help mitigate the risks associated with such adversity and help children and youth to succeed despite severe challenges.

Early childhood experiences have a profound impact on brain development, affecting learning, health, behavior, and ultimately, lifetime opportunities. Yet millions of young children are not reaching their full potential due to a lack of nurturing care and support, which include adequate nutrition and health, early stimulation, and protection from stress.

Education systems need a broad range of high-quality data to monitor and promote student progress and to understand the links between inputs, policies, practices, and learning. From basic information on teacher absenteeism to detailed assessment of student learning outcomes and skills acquisition, data makes it possible for countries to understand the performance of their education systems and to identify changes needed in programs and policies.

Developing countries have made tremendous progress in getting children into the classroom, and more children worldwide are now in school. But learning is not guaranteed. For about half of students, schooling is not learning. And in Sub-Saharan Africa, almost 90 percent of students do not have the minimum skills. And not even all children are in school. Education systems need to be strengthened and aligned so that the focus is on ensuring that all children learn. Education is fundamental to building the human capital that allows people and countries to thrive.

Successful education reforms require good policy design, strong political commitment, and effective implementation capacity. This is extremely challenging. Weak management capacity at all levels of education ministries and in schools hinders the successful rollout of complex reforms and delivery of quality education services needed to improve learning. Many countries cannot efficiently utilize existing resources to improve the quality of services because they may not have the financial management, procurement, and administrative capacity to do this right.

This note provides a rapid summary of a first set of eight notes in this series on girls’ education and child marriage in West and Central Africa. The eight notes were prepared ahead of the High Level Meeting on Ending Child Marriage in West and Central Africa held in Dakar on October 23-25, 2017. Several notes in this first set look at the economic impacts of girls’ education and child marriage on a range of other development outcomes.

Greater access to high quality and relevant technical training opportunities is essential to reap the benefits of a growing youthful population and modern technologies. With a bulging youth population – around 40 percent are below 20 years of age - Bangladesh has a great opportunity to reap the benefits of the large and growing working population. This Policy Note provides insights on how technical skills and vocational training can promote employability of students in Bangladesh and what more needs to be done.