Schooling for All

Given the tight fiscal constraints governments across the world face, how can all children be granted their right to education?

Bigger investments in education are needed but, even more importantly, available financing must be used effectively!

Enter our report, Schooling for All: Feasible Strategies to Achieve Universal Education, and this related series, in which we make the case for (and against) specific public investments in education in low- and lower-middle income countries. This report purposely identifies the things that CGD researchers think money can fix; which developing countries can afford and realistically implement—as well as the policies which simply don't meet this criteria. 

We place emphasis on policies like feeding kids at school, and making attending free, that have worked at scale. Governments from Ghana to India have shown that it’s possible to effectively implement policies like these nationwide, even in imperfect schooling systems, and they are affordable.

Here, you will find a series of posts and (sometimes dissenting) commentaries on each of our proposals, from not just CGD researchers, but experts within the global education community including Rukmini Banerji, Jishnu Das, Robert Osei, and many others. 

Money might not be the binding constraint for everything that matters in education. But there is plenty for which it does matter. 

More from the Series

Blog Post
How Can the World Pay for Schooling for All? With Contributions from Jack Rossiter and Daouda Sembene.
May 11, 2022
The United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) set ambitious targets for high-quality, universal education by 2030. But existing efforts to “cost the SDGs” return unattainable price tags. In this chapter, we first review approaches to costing the SDGs in the education sector.
Blog Post
Have Public-Private Partnerships in Education Lived Up to Their Promise? With Contributions from Maryam Akmal, Susannah Hares, Rita Perakis, Jishnu Das, and Moses Ngware.
May 09, 2022
This blog post is part of a series in which CGD experts present arguments from “Schooling for All: Feasible Strategies to Achieve Universal Education” and invite (sometimes dissenting) commentary from experts within the global education community.
Blog Post
How Much Should Governments Spend on Teachers? With Contributions from Lee Crawfurd, Alexis Le Nestour, David Evans, Amina Acosta, Tessa Bold, and Esme Kadzamira.
May 02, 2022
This blog post is part of a series in which CGD experts present arguments from “Schooling for All: Feasible Strategies to Achieve Universal Education” and invite (sometimes dissenting) commentary from experts within the global education community.
Blog Post
Is Free Secondary Schooling Pro-Poor? With Contributions from Lee Crawfurd, Aisha Ali, Robert Osei, Kwabena Adu-Ababio, and Pauline Rose.
April 28, 2022
CGD's Lee Crawfurd and Aisha Ali make the case for free secondary education, arguing that experiences of free primary education shows how free secondary education could work. And Robert Osei and Kwabena Adu-Ababio say free school is pro-poor for countries that can afford it. But Cambridge University...