This focus on economy is all the more true since the World Bank expects a return on investment from actions aimed at educational policies. To measure this investment, it relies very heavily on benchmarking and the analysis of rates of return on education. The latter approach is not without its challenges, since rates of return must be calculated quickly with long-term projects, and with incomplete statistical information. Thus, it is not surprising to note that priority is given by the Bank’s specialists to the material conditions of education (construction of schools, libraries, provision of textbooks, etc.). And in this concern for profitability, educational investments that involve too high costs, and which are not effective, must be avoided.

This cost-cutting rationale led many countries in the South countries to adopt Structural Adjustment Programmes (SAPs) in the 1980s and 1990s to respond to the financial crises of the 1970s. Here are the characteristics of the SAPs1:

 

• • A sharply curtailed role for government in educational provision;

• • The rationalisation of its role in educational finance and system oversight;

• • A commitment to decentralisation, cost-recovery and privatisation in higher education;

• • Increased attention to ‘productive’ inputs like textbooks;

• • A movement out of technical vocational education.

Teachers have often been targeted by the World Bank’s cost-minimization approach. Indeed, their salaries and training were considered by the Bank’s experts to be excessive in relation to the services provided in the classroom; hence the need to reduce them. However, these measures have led to the inefficiency of the system, which is contrary to the wishes of the organization, since they have caused blockages in the school with repeated strikes. That is why today, after encouraging drastic actions in the 1980s and 1990s, the Bank recognizes the need for motivated teachers with a wide range of learning skills2.

We will conclude this section with a discussion of the World Bank’s orientations and recent developments. First, it should be noted that a reversal occurred at the end of the 1990s and in the 2000s, namely that the organization took into account the criticisms addressed to it, particularly with regard to the SAPs3. Also, while we noted that the Bank was interested primarily in quantitative aspects of education, over time, more intangible issues, such as learning outcomes, have become central to the discourse and particularly to the Bank’s loan portfolio2.

Moreover, the organization has been working for decades in areas of education that can be considered alternative or more socially oriented. These areas are not explicitly linked to a neoliberal logic such as projects related to the financing of bilingual indigenous education in Ecuador. Moreover, social and environmental aspects are becoming increasingly important in the World Bank’s discourse since the organization has been involved in the process of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which suggest a broader vision of development and education. In this sense, even if the Bank still defends a capitalist-liberal vision, there is an evolution compared to previous periods4.

Policy instruments

Beyond the World Bank’s orientations, it is relevant to look at the organization’s instruments at the level of education policies, which are much more significant than the institutions traditionally dealing with this field such as UNESCO or UNICEF (which will also be the subject of an article shortly). Three main instruments will be presented successively: 1- funding; 2- conditionalities; and 3- expertise.

Since its inception, the World Bank, through the International Development Association (IDA), has been active in 113 countries and has provided $375 billion for investments in 113 countries. More specifically, the Bank provides loans to low-income countries as well as to small island economies and some lower middle-income countries such as Nigeria and Pakistan5.

Year after year, the volume of its commitments has increased. IDA funding represents 20% of all development aid that flows worldwide. According to the evolution of its loans, the social sector, including education and health, has grown in importance over the past 30 years. It corresponds to more than a quarter of the loans today.

Since the 1990s, basic education has been at a level of 30% to 40% of the volume of credits to the education sector. The international meetings in Jomtien (1990) and Dakar (2000), which had as their motto « Education for All », encouraged the Bank to increase its commitments in this sector, which continued with the SDGs.

Thus, as an external funder of educational development worth several billion dollars, an administrator of several multidonor trust funds for education in countries affected by conflict or in crisis, and the main donor to the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) (a major antechamber for the past decade or so), it can be said that the Bank shapes education aid policy globally6.

However, in quantitative terms, the financing of education through the Bank represents a relatively small percentage of national education budgets. It is more the conditional nature of its credits that increases its influence on education systems. And even if they have not disappeared, conditionalities have reached their peak with the SAPs which, according to many authors, have been imposed on States in exchange for funding1.

Mais au-delà des financements, et des conditionnalités qui y sont attachées, c’est par sa capacité d’expertise que la Banque mondiale influence le plus les politiques éducatives. L’organisation développe des recherches et des études internes, qui assurent une large connaissance technique des secteurs aidés. Tout en tenant compte de leurs limites méthodologiques et théoriques, ces études recèlent un ensemble considérable d’informations qui sont utilisées comme références lors de la négociation des accords. Cela fait de la Banque mondiale la plus grande institution de recherche sur le développement du monde.