NN40, May 2008
Education for Sustainable Development? Or The Sustainability of Education Investment? A Special Issue
Education and Development in a Global Era: Strategies for Successful Globalisation
By Andy Green and Angela Little, London Institute of Education
Emails: Andy.Green@ioe.ac.uk and A.Little@ioe.ac.ukThis book (see end-note) is the outcome of a DFID-funded research project directed by Andy Green and Angela Little from the Institute of Education, University of London. The book examines the role that education has played and can play in ?successful? engagements with the global economy. Its regional focus is East Asia and its country foci China, India, Kenya and Sri Lanka. It is based on secondary evidence drawn from the academic social science literature and from surveys and reports produced by governments, multi-and bi-lateral lateral agencies and NGOs.
A review of the general literature on globalisation, education and development, combined with our assessment of development of the East Asian tiger economies between 1960 and 1990 as ?successful? and of Sri Lanka?s decline into civil war since the early 1980s as a negative characteristic of ?development? leads us to a working definition of successful engagement with the global economy as: export-led economic growth with income equality and peace.
Our key task in relation to the East Asian tiger economies is to outline the common characteristics of their development trajectories and to assess the role of education in development relative to strategies and actions in other sectors. Although differentiated in significant ways these economies provide a distinctive regional pattern of growth with equality which has not been matched in any other region. Various factors help to explain this regional phenomenon, including most importantly, geo-political advantages, the fortuitous timing of initial industrialisation, and the role played by the developmental state. However, education and skills have also played key roles. Education has generally supported rapid economic growth through encouraging foreign investment, enabling technology transfer, promoting productivity and progressively upgrading the skills base as required for each successive economic shift to higher value-added areas of manufacturing and service industry. Education has also played a generally positive role in promoting relatively cohesive national identities.
Our key tasks in relation to each of our ?developing? countries are four-fold. The first is to identify the points in recent world history at which each country made a deliberate choice to forge a stronger integration between respective domestic economies and the global economy. The second is to provide an assessment in each country of progress towards the three goals of ?successful engagement; i.e. export-led economic growth, income equality and peace. The third is to provide an assessment of the contributions made by education and education policies to each of these goals. The fourth is to analyse past policies for their impact on these goals and current and proposed policies for their likely impact in the future.
Our evidence suggests that education is an important factor in achieving what we call ?successful? forms of globalisation i.e. economic growth with equality and peace, but that it is not necessarily the main factor in each case. While economic and political policies have usually been the more important drivers of development, education has been a necessary, if not sufficient, component. There is no single ?quick fix? educational panacea for all dimensions of development for all countries at all times. With respect to the recent past and the present the importance of five policies appear to be common across our set of countries. The first is the achievement of high quality mass education which brings marginalised and rural populations within the mainstream of national development. The second is the planned expansion of secondary, technical and higher education that creates the skills needed for sustained economic growth. The third is the development of communication skills that facilitate international economic transactions. The fourth is the equitable expansion of education in order to enhance its contribution to social equality. The fifth is the awareness of the potential of both the official and hidden curriculum of educational institutions to promote positive ? and perverse ? contributions to national unity and social cohesion.
Education and Development in a Global Era: strategies for successful globalization, by Andy Green, Angela Little, Sangeeta Kamat, Moses Oketch and Edward Vickers, DFID Researching the Issues series, no 69, 2007.
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