Facing Forward

Facing Forward lays out a range of policy and implementation actions that are needed for countries in Sub-Saharan Africa to meet the challenge of improving learning while expanding access and completion of basic education for all. The book underscores the importance of aligning the education system to be relentlessly focused on learning outcomes and to ensuring that all children have access to good schools, good learning materials, and good teachers. It is unique in characterizing countries according to the challenges they faced in the 1990s and the educational progress they have made over the past 25 years, allowing countries in the region to learn from each other. The authors review the global literature and add to it by their extensive new analyses of multiple datasets from more than three dozen countries in the region; they integrate findings about what affects children’s learning, their access to schooling, and progress through basic education. The book draws lessons from the region and for the region about what works and what is needed to better implement what is known to have worked. The book examines four areas to help countries better align their systems to improve learning: (1) completing the unfinished agenda of reaching universal basic education with quality, (2) ensuring effective management and support of teachers, (3) targeting spending priorities and budget processes on improving quality, and (4) closing the institutional capacity gap. It concludes with an assessment of how future educational progress may be affected by projected fertility rates and economic growth.