Featuring the Author
Lant Pritchett
Senior Fellow, Center for Global Development
Professor of the Practice of International Development, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
With Discussant
Elizabeth King
Sector Director, Education, Human Development Network, World Bank
Hosted by
Nancy Birdsall
President, Center for Global Development
The Millennium Development Goal target that each child “complete a full course of primary schooling” by 2015 will be met in nearly all countries. But a new CGD book by Lant Pritchett, The Rebirth of Education: Schooling Ain’t Learning, documents a deeply disturbing reality: for millions of children in the developing world schooling is not producing “education” in any real sense.
Consider these examples from The Rebirth of Education:
- In India less than half of children surveyed recently in grade 5 could read a grade 2 level story, one-in-four could not read a simple sentence, and only slightly more than half could do subtraction.
- In Tanzania six-out-of-ten students who took 2012 examination for secondary school completers failed.
- In Indonesia, Jordan, Malaysia, Oman, Thailand and Tunisia, scores on an internationally comparable mathematics and science test in 2011 declined compared to earlier years.
Pritchett not only sounds the alarm. He goes on to diagnose these epic failures and propose a potentially transformative new approach to education. At this CGD launch event, Pritchett will give a short presentation, to be followed by comments from Beth King and open discussion.
