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Chloe Lindstrom

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The Education Crisis in Developing Countries

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Chloe Lindstrom

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Developed Countries VS. Developing Countries

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None-- Created using PowToon -- Free sign up at http://www.powtoon.com/ . Make your own animated videos and animated presentations for free. PowToon is a free tool that allows you to develop cool animated clips and animated presentations for your website, office meeting, sales pitch, nonprofit fundraiser, product launch, video resume, or anything else you could use an animated explainer video.

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Chloe Lindstrom

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Abstract

Brain drain is defined as the migration of health personnel in search of the better standard of living and quality of life, higher salaries, access to advanced technology and more stable political conditions in different places worldwide. This migration of health professionals for better opportunities, both within countries and across international borders, is of growing concern worldwide because of its impact on health systems in developing countries. Why do talented people leave their countries and go abroad? What are the consequences of such migrations especially on the educational sector? What policies can be adopted to stem such movements from developing countries to developed countries?

This article seeks to raise questions, identify key issues and provide solutions which would enable immigrant health professionals to share their knowledge, skills and innovative capacities and thereby enhancing the economic development of their countries.

INTRODUCTION

Brain drain is the migration of skilled human resources for trade, education, etc. Trained health professionals are needed in every part of the world. However, better standards of living and quality of life, higher salaries, access to advanced technology and more stable political conditions in the developed countries attract talent from less developed areas. The majority of migration is from developing to developed countries. This is of growing concern worldwide because of its impact on the health systems in developing countries. These countries have invested in the education and training of young health professionals. This translates into a loss of considerable resources when these people migrate, with the direct benefit accruing to the recipient states who have not forked out the cost of educating them. The intellectuals of any country are some of the most expensive resources because of their training in terms of material cost and time, and most importantly, because of lost opportunity.

In 2000 almost 175 million people, or 2.9% of the world's population, were living outside their country of birth for more than a year. Of these, about 65 million were economically active. This form of migration has in the past involved many health professionals: nurses and physicians have sought employment abroad for many reasons including high unemployment in their home country.

International migration first emerged as a major public health concern in the 1940s when many European professionals emigrated to the UK and USA. In the 1970s, the World Health Organization (WHO) published a detailed 40-country study on the magnitude and flow of the health professionals. According to this report, close to 90% of all migrating physicians, were moving to just five countries: Australia, Canada, Germany, UK and USA.

In 1972, about 6% of the world's physicians (140 000) were located outside their countries of origin. Over three-quarters were found in only three countries: in order of magnitude, the USA, UK and Canada. The main donor countries reflected colonial and linguistic ties, with a dominance of Asian countries: India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. By linking the number of physicians per 10 000 population to gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, the countries that produced more physicians than they had the capacity to absorb were identified as Egypt, India, Pakistan, Philippines and South Korea. However, the lack of reliable data and the difficulties of defining whether a migrant is 'permanent' or 'temporary' still exist.

One may claim that this migration from developing countries is both useful and unavoidable. There are definite advantages-enabling the migrant to spend time in other countries-but at the same time, the very low emigration rate of professionals from USA or UK may be as disturbing a sign as the high rates of immigration to these countries.

Young, well-educated, healthy individuals are most likely to migrate, especially in pursuit of higher education and economic improvement., The distinction between 'push' and 'pull' factors has been recognized. Continuing disparities in working conditions between richer and poorer countries offer a greater 'pull' towards the more developed countries. The role of governments and recruitment agencies in systematically encouraging the migration of health professionals increases the pull. Migrant health professionals are faced with a combination of economic, social and psychological factors, and family choices, and reflect the 'push-pull' nature of the choices underpinning these 'journeys of hope'. De-motivating working conditions, coupled with low salaries, are set against the likelihood of prosperity for themselves and their families, work in well-equipped hospitals, and the opportunity for professional development.

In many cases, the country is not only losing its investment in the education of health professionals, but also the contribution of these workers to health care. For example, healthcare expenditure in India is 3% of GDP compared to 13% of GDP in the USA and the ratio of doctor to patients in India is 1:2083 compared to the USA where the ratio is 1:500. Moreover, in many developing countries healthcare systems are suffering from years of underinvestment, which, for health professionals, has resulted in low wages, poor working conditions, a lack of leadership and very few incentives.

Employers in receiving countries take a different position; they have their own shortages of skilled people in specific fields and can drain a developing country of expertise by providing job opportunities. Kupfer et al. provided the strategies to discourage migration to the USA, a major recipient country. However, keeping the social, political and economic conditions in the developing countries in mind, can we stop the brain drain? Probably not!

Higher education is one of the principal conduits of permanent emigration. The majority of doctors acquire specialized and postgraduate professional qualifications in the host country. Half of the foreign-born graduate students in France, UK and USA remain there after completing their studies. Among the doctoral graduates in science and engineering in the USA in 1995, 79% of those from India and 88% from China remained in the USA. The recent study on brain drain from 24 major countries published by the World Bank also presented data on South Asian immigration to the USA (). Migration to OECD (Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries is also shown in . Yet more data showing the momentum and demand for skilled people by high tech and research and development (R&D) industries illustrating accelerated flows of highly skilled workers to OECD countries are shown in .

These statistics suggest that if developing countries provided world-class education and training opportunities, as well as opportunities for career advancement and employment, the migratory flow could be reduced. However, in reality, this may not make much difference. On the plus side, foreign-born graduates acquire expensive skills which are not available within their countries. On the negative side, these skills and knowledge never migrate back to their own countries.

Besides the pull-push factors described earlier, some researchers from developing countries cite other reasons for not returning after training which include: lack of research funding; poor facilities; limited career structures; poor intellectual stimulation; threats of violence; and lack of good education for children in their home country. Incentives for migrants to return to developing countries have been insufficient to override the limitations at home-both real and perceived-and the attraction of opportunities found abroad. Many of these countries have made significant investments in infrastructure and education but have not achieved the scientific development, technological and innovative capability either to retain or to recover the human capital that they have generated. Is there a solution to this problem? This raises the question of whether one can justify losing human capital or whether one should make the additional investment in science and technology and bring about the innovations that will stop the loss and convert it into wealth generation.

CONVERTING BRAIN DRAIN INTO WISDOM GAIN

Developing countries, especially South Asia, are now the main source of healthcare migration to developed countries. This trend has led to concerns that the outflow of healthcare professionals is adversely affecting the healthcare system in developing countries and, hence, the health of the population. As a result, decision-makers in source countries are searching for policy options to slow down and even reverse the outflow of healthcare professionals. Is it possible to do so? Maybe not, bearing in mind the current political and economic situations of the source countries and globalization. The increasing demand for health care in the higher income countries is fuelled to a large extent by demographic trends, e.g. the ageing of the baby-boom generation.

The opening up of international borders for goods and labour, a key strategy in the current liberal global economy, is accompanied by a linguistic shift from 'human capital flight' and 'brain drain' to 'professional mobility' or 'brain circulation'. Solutions should therefore be based on this wider perspective, interrelating health workforce imbalances between, but also within developing and developed countries.

At current levels, wage differentials between source and destination country are so large that small increases in healthcare wages in source countries are unlikely to affect significantly the supply of healthcare migrants. According to the results of a study in Pakistan, a small proportion of people funded for a doctorate face on return major nonfinancial disincentives for good performance. Thus the financial component of such flows is only part of the picture and in some cases not the major push or pull factor. Moreover, there is a need to review the social, political, and economic reasons behind the exodus, and to provide security and opportunities for further development locally. Lowering of standards should not be accepted; instead local conditions should be reviewed and rectified.

CONTRIBUTIONS BY SHARING KNOWLEDGE AND SKILLS TO DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

It is time to understand and accept that health professionals' mobility is part of life in the 21st century. Countries need to recognize that they compete with the best institutions in the world for quality manpower. It is time to bury the archaic concept of brain drain and turn to assessing the performance of health professionals and systems, wherever they are in the world. The turn of the 21st century has not only brought technology, but also modes by which scientists around the world can be connected in no time. In this globalized world the physical location of a person may or may not have any relation to the ability to make an impact on human health. Health professionals in the developed world may have most of their work portfolios in the developing world. Easy communication, quick travel, and greater collaborations between developed and developing countries are increasingly more common and we need to develop ways in which foreign professionals can contribute to their countries of origin.

Remittances from expatriates living abroad constitute a significant proportion of foreign revenue for many developing countries. In Bangladesh for example US$ 2 billion is received from citizens who have emigrated overseas, and these remittances are the second largest source of foreign revenue. The transfer and management of remittance revenues are potentially exploitable factors in plumbing the brain drain. Formalizing the transfer of remittances might permit the generation of revenues that could be invested nationally in the social and economic development of the developing home country. However, the magnitude and economic importance of remittances, economic development and growth, and ultimately social equity, depend on the endogenous capacity of each nation's human resources. If only a small percentage of the multimillion dollar sums sent home by emigrants could be invested in research and development, might not opportunities for highly skilled and educated nationals improve at home? And would this not in turn spur economic development? Maybe to some extent-but without resources and skills, this may not have a huge impact on health and disease prevention.

It has been estimated that foreign scientists from developing countries who are involved in research and development produce 4.5 more publications and 10 times more patents than their counterparts at home. Why is there such a vast difference in productive capacity? The context and conditions in which science and technology are able to prosper require political decisions, funding, infrastructure, technical support, and a scientific community; these are generally unavailable in developing countries. The value and effectiveness of individuals depends on their connection to the people, institutions and organizations that enable knowledge creation, and together constitute a propitious environment. These expatriate scientists and healthcare professionals can contribute their knowledge, clinical and research skills to their native countries by developing collaborative training programmes, research projects and teaching their own countrymen. This requires the commitment of foreign scientists and receptiveness at the other end. Scientists, political leaders and decision-makers in developing and developed countries, and international development agencies, need to appreciate the social and synergistic nature of knowledge sharing so that policies and education systems are designed to promote and enable research and development.

Healthcare services are a rapidly growing sector of the world economy and trade in health services has created diverse means of accessing these services across borders. For example, information technology can provide telemedicine services and telepreventive services. These information technologies can be used as a mode of sharing knowledge and research skills in a cost-effective manner.

One such large network is already in place called supercourse [ www.pitt.edu/∼super1] which has connected more than 20 000 scientists, healthcare professionals and researchers together through IT connectivity, and they share their knowledge in the form of teaching lectures (currently there are more than 2000 lectures) for free to a global audience. A similar kind of connectivity needs to be developed by expatriate citizens who can contribute their knowledge and skills to their countries of origin without any major costs. Policies are needed to ensure that these favourable outcomes are realized as an equitable access to the benefits of the international trade in health services.

The availability of both high-quality education and opportunities in research are the keys to retaining and attracting regional talent. The steps taken by China towards becoming a leader in biological research and biotechnology illustrate the empowerment. The scientific leadership positioned China to become the only developing country participating in the Human Genome Project. Experience gained through the participation of its institutions in the Human Genome Project (including large-scale sequencing, the use of bioinformatics and the coordination of multi-centre research protocols) provided the platform for developing biotechnology that can be applied to human diseases and agriculture. The opportunities generated by the Chinese in biotechnology attract both international collaboration in joint ventures and gifted scientists from China and abroad.

A similar example can be replicated in other developing countries with the help of their foreign expatriate citizens who have developed skills in research that are needed in their native countries. This approach to creating targeted educational opportunity together with political decision and investment in science and technology infrastructure provides a good example of a resourceful way of redirecting the brain drain. It is tempting to think that such on-site programmes involving national talent at home and abroad coupled with creative distance learning strategies could create networks of expatriates thus enabling their countries of origin to gain access to a world-class education in specific disciplines in the developing world.

CONCLUSION

Scientists who have emigrated for several reasons are recoverable assets who can play a part in developing opportunities at home. However, recovery requires the opening of diverse and creative conduits. The health services in the developing world must be supported to maintain their skilled personnel. Only when health staff, whatever their cadre, have the tools they require to do their job, training opportunities, a network of supportive colleagues, and recognition for the difficult job they do, are they likely to feel motivated to stay put when opportunity beckons from elsewhere. Foreign professionals could be used to develop innovative graduate education opportunities at home and technology to be transfered to areas of national priorities for research and development. Ultimately, involving individuals who are living abroad in creating opportunities at home favours both the retention and repatriation of national talent. Building an enlightened leadership and an enabling national scientific community, with the help of expatriate citizens, for the coherent development of scientific and technological capacity in developing countries will be mutually beneficial.

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to all Aga Khan University alumni at AKU Karachi, Pakistan and AKU USA for their valuable help.

References

1. World Bank. World Development Report, 2000/01. Washington, DC: World Bank, 2000

2. United Nations Population Division. Populations Database. New York: UN 2002

7. Levy L F. The first world's role in the third world brain drain. BMJ 2003;327: 170

8. Mejía A, Pizurki H, Royston E. Physician and Nurse Migration: Analysis and Policy Implications. Geneva: World Health Organization, 1979

9. Awases M, Gbary A, Nyoni J, Chatora R. Migration of Health Professionals In Six Countries: Report. Brazzaville: WHO Regional Office For Africa, 2003

12. Narasimhan V, Brown H, Pablos-Mendez A, et al. Responding to the global human resources crisis. Lancet 2004;363: 1469-72

14. Wibulpolprasert S. Inequitable distribution of doctors: can it be solved? Human Resources Health Develop 1999;3: 2-22

17. Meyer JB, Brown M. Scientific diasporas: a new approach to the brain drain, (Management of Social Transformations, Discussion paper No. 41). Paris: UNESCO, 1999

18. Martin RD, Terouanne D, Neher E. Higher Education In France and The International Migration of Scientists. Washington, DC: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1998

20. Adams RH. Policy research working paper 3069. International Migration, Remittances, and the Brain Drain. A Study of 24 Labor-Exporting Countries. The World Bank Report on Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Network Poverty Reduction Group. Washington, DC: World Bank Organization, 2003

24. Ratha D. Workers' remittances: an important and stable source of external development. In: Striving For Stability In Development Finance. Washington (DC): World Bank, 2003: 157-75

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Brain drain from developing countries: how can brain drain be converted into wisdom gain?

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Brain drain is defined as the migration of health personnel in search of the better standard of living and quality of life, higher salaries, access to advanced technology and more stable political conditions in different places worldwide. This migration ...

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Megan Zang
Literacy rate in East Asia and Latin America exceeds 90% but in Sub-Sahara Africa, its less than 70%.
The United Nations expects that today's 5 year old will attend 16 years of schooling.
Roughly half of today's 5-year-olds will graduate from college in developed countries, but less than half will graduate from college in developing ones.

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Megan Zang
Pupil/teacher ratio: the fewer pupils a teacher has, the more likely that each student will receive instruction.
Literacy rate: the percentage of a country's people who can read and write.

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Megan Zang
Years of schooling: the number of years that the average person aged 25 or older in a country has spent in school.
Expected years of schooling: the number of years that an average 5 year old child is expected to spend with his or her education in the future.

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Chloe Lindstrom

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Megan Zang

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Chloe Lindstrom

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Top 10 Countries With Highest Literacy Rate In 2014

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10. Russia: Russia had the literacy rate of 53% according to the data collected in 2010-2011. The country spends 4.9% of the GDP in education sector, with almost every adult with the tertiary and career based education. The country has high development rate and low poverty rate as they realize the importance of education for the successful nation.

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Megan Zang

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Global primary school attendance rates have been on a steady upward trend over the past years. As the world moves closer to the goal of universal primary education, the issue of education quality attracts increasing attention. One measure of education quality is the pupil/teacher ratio, the number of pupils per teacher in a school. Teachers of a large class can dedicate less time to each pupil than in a small class. For the pupils, crowded classrooms make it difficult to concentrate on the material and to learn. The results of overcrowding are lower academic achievement and increased dropout rates.

The map below displays the pupil/teacher ratio in primary school in 194 countries and territories for which data were available. The data were obtained from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics. For 124 countries, the pupil/teacher ratios are from 2006, 12 countries have data from 2007, 42 countries have data from 2004 or 2005, and the remaining 16 countries have data from 1999 to 2003. For the map, all countries were divided into five groups:

Fewer than 10 pupils per teacher: 7 countries

10 to 19 pupils per teacher: 90 countries

20 to 29 pupils per teacher: 43 countries

30 to 39 pupils per teacher: 27 countries

40 or more pupils per teacher: 27 countries

Pupil/teacher ratio in primary school, circa 2006

Data source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, Data Centre, May 2008.

The lowest pupil/teacher ratios in primary school were observed in Tokelau (5.8), San Marino (6.3), Bermuda (8.3), Liechtenstein (8.4), Denmark (9.9), and Sweden and Cuba (10.0). Most developed countries, countries in Eastern Europe and former members states of the Soviet Union have pupil/teacher ratios between 10 and 19. Some countries in East and South-East Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America also belong to this group, among them China, the world's most populous country, with a pupil/teacher ratio of 18.3. The majority of countries in Latin America, as well as some countries in Africa and Asia, have pupil/teacher ratios between 20 and 29.

Pupil/teacher ratios above 30 are common in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. In 11 countries, primary school teachers have more than 50 pupils on average: Afghanistan (83.4), Mozambique (67.4), Rwanda (65.9), Chad (63.2), Mali (55.6), Congo (54.8), Burundi (54.2), Tanzania (53.1), Zambia (51.2), Bangladesh (50.9), and Cambodia (50.4). 22 of the 27 countries with 40 or more pupils per teacher are located in Sub-Saharan Africa.

The following table lists the average pupil/teacher ratio in primary school by Millennium Development Goal region. The highest pupil/teacher ratios exist in Sub-Saharan Africa (40.7) and Southern Asia (37.8). In contrast, the average pupil/teacher ratio in the developed countries is 13.7. In Western Asia (17.8), the Commonwealth of Independent States (17.9), and Oceania (19.8), the average pupil/teacher ratio is also below 20. The global average is 24.6 pupils per teacher in primary school. All regional and global averages are not weighted the population of each country; instead, each country is given the same weight within its region, regardless of the size of its population.

Pupil/teacher ratio in primary school by MDG region, circa 2006

Data source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics, Data Centre, May 2008. Regional and global averages are unweighted.

The data analyzed in this article can be downloaded from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics Data Centre, under Predefined Tables - Education - Table 11: Indicators on teaching staff at ISCED levels 0 to 3.

Related articlesExternal linksFriedrich Huebler, 26 October 2008 (edited 16 November 2006),

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Permanent URL: http://huebler.blogspot.com/2008/10/ptr.html

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Global primary school attendance rates have been on a steady upward trend over the past years. As the world moves closer to the goal of universal primary education, the issue of education quality attracts increasing attention. One measure of education quality is the pupil/teacher ratio, the number of pupils per teacher in a school.

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Chloe Lindstrom

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The Human Development Index (HDI) is a summary measure of average achievement in key dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, being knowledgeable and having a decent standard of living. The HDI is the geometric mean of normalized indices for each of the three dimensions.

The health dimension is assessed by life expectancy at birth, the education dimension is measured by mean of years of schooling for adults aged 25 years and more and expected years of schooling for children of school entering age. The standard of living dimension is measured by gross national income per capita. The HDI uses the logarithm of income, to reflect the diminishing importance of income with increasing GNI. The scores for the three HDI dimension indices are then aggregated into a composite index using geometric mean. Refer to Technical notes for more details.

The HDI can be used to question national policy choices, asking how two countries with the same level of GNI per capita can end up with different human development outcomes. These contrasts can stimulate debate about government policy priorities.

The HDI simplifies and captures only part of what human development entails. It does not reflect on inequalities, poverty, human security, empowerment, etc. The HDRO provides other composite indices as broader proxy on some of the key issues of human development, inequality, gender disparity and poverty.

A fuller picture of a country's level of human development requires analysis of other indicators and information presented in the HDR statistical annex.

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Human Development Index | Human Development Reports

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The Human Development Index (HDI) is a summary measure of average achievement in key dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life, being knowledgeable and having a decent standard of living. The HDI is the geometric mean of normalized indices for each of the three dimensions.

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Megan Zang

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In most developing countries, few children graduate from secondary school and many don't even finish primary school. In Ghana, for example, only 50 percent of children complete grade 5, and of those, less than half can comprehend a simple paragraph. The UNESCO program Education for All, which as part of the Millennium Development Goals aims to provide free, universal access to primary schooling, has been successful in dramatically increasing enrollment. But, according to annual Education for All reports, many kids drop out before finishing school. Why don't they stay?

There are numerous reasons, including the difficulty of getting to school and the cost of schooling. Even when tuition is free, there are often expenses for lunch, uniforms, and examination fees. And because the quality of education is often poor, parents are forced to pay for additional tutoring to enable their children to pass tests. Opportunity costs may be even larger-while they are in school, children forgo opportunities to produce income working on the family farm or selling in the marketplace. It is not surprising that when education investments do not result in adequate learning, or even basic literacy and numeracy, parents do not keep their children in school.

Even when learning outcomes are adequate, very few students continue on to secondary school. Job prospects for most people in the developing world are poor, and staying in school past grade 5, or even through grade 10, does not improve them significantly. In impoverished regions, the vast majority will not secure formal employment and will be supported primarily through subsistence level agriculture and trading. Health outcomes in these regions are also dire. Millions of children die every year from controllable diseases such as diarrhea, respiratory infections, and malaria.

Educational programs typically adopt traditional Western models of education, with an emphasis on math, science, language, and social studies. These programs allocate scarce resources to topics like Greek mythology, prime numbers, or tectonic plate movement-topics that may provide intellectual stimulation, but have little relevance in the lives of impoverished children. Highperforming students in less developed regions face a much different future from their counterparts' in wealthier areas. There are no higher levels of schooling or professional job opportunities awaiting most of these children; they will likely end up working on family or neighborhood farms or starting their own small enterprises.

Schooling provides neither the financial literacy students will need to manage the meager resources under their control, nor the guidance needed to create opportunities for securing a livelihood or building wealth. In addition, schooling provides little assistance to promote the physical health needed for economic stability and quality of life. Life expectancy is low in impoverished regions, and not just because of lack of quality medical care. The devastation preventable disease wreaks on well-being and financial stability in poor regions can be dramatically mitigated through instruction on basic health behaviors, such as hand washing.

We fervently believe that what students in impoverished regions need are not more academic skills, but rather life skills that enable them to improve their financial prospects and well-being. These include financial literacy and entrepreneurial skills; health maintenance and management skills; and administrative capabilities, such as teamwork, problem solving, and project management.

Over the last five years, we have done extensive work on the state of education in developing countries. We have visited many government, nongovernment, and private schools and teacher training programs in Asia, Latin America, and Africa, and we have talked extensively with teachers, students, headmasters, school owners, and government officials. We have visited innovative educational programs that are among the world's largest and most successful, including BRAC, an NGO in Bangladesh that owns and operates 32,000 primary schools; Pratham, which provides literacy and other educational support programs, teaching 33 million children in India; and Escuela Nueva, the Colombian program of mono- and multigrade teaching that has grown to 20,000 schools. We have implemented training for illiterate adults in developing countries and have tested that training effectively over the last few years, applying the best of our experience to improving organizations like Opportunity International, a large microfinance institution.

These experiences have convinced us that the time is right to redefine quality education in the developing world.
A New Educational Model
We have developed a robust educational model that combines traditional content with critically important financial, health, and administrative skills, which can be delivered via existing school systems and teachers.

Our model, which we call "school for life," shifts the goal of schooling away from the achievement of standardized learning outcomes toward making a positive impact on the economic and social well-being of students and their communities. The model requires significant changes in both content and pedagogy. First, entrepreneurship and health modules are mandatory curriculum components for all primary grade students. Second, student-centered learning methods are used that require students to work in groups to solve complex problems and manage projects on their own.

This approach is inspired by models of adult education in developing countries that focus on self-efficacy as a critical foundation of positive livelihood and health-seeking behaviors, along with active-learning pedagogies used in progressive schools throughout the world. The health curriculum draws on the work of the World Health Organization and focuses on preventing disease, caring for sick children, and obtaining medical care. The entrepreneurship curriculum is informed by our work with adult entrepreneurs in developing countries, and it draws ideas from a broad range of financial and entrepreneurial programs developed by organizations like the International Labour Organization, Junior Achievement, and Aflatoun.

Conceptual knowledge is put into practice at school through activities that empower children to use what they have learned. For example, students practice routine health behaviors, such as hand washing and wearing shoes near latrines-and, to the extent feasible, gain exposure to other important behaviors, such as boiling drinking water and using malaria nets. They practice routine market-like transactions by earning points for schoolwork and budgeting those points to obtain valuable prizes, such as sitting in a favorite chair or being first in line.

Students also develop higher order skills as they work in committees to develop and execute complex projects. Health-related projects can range from planning and carrying out an athletic activity to be played during recess, to practicing diagnostic skills when classmates are ill-helping to decide, for example, when a cold has turned into a respiratory infection that requires antibiotics. Entrepreneurship projects include identifying and exploiting market opportunities through business ideas like school gardens or community recycling that create real value. Students learn and practice workplace skills and attitudes like delegation, negotiation, collaboration, and planning-opportunities that are rarely available to them outside their families.

Some school systems, especially at the secondary level, have begun to include entrepreneurship and health topics in their curricular requirements. But including information in basic lectures is not enough. Schools must simultaneously adopt action-oriented pedagogical approaches that hone critical thinking skills and enable children to identify problems, seek out and evaluate relevant information and resources, and design and carry out plans for solving these problems. This involves tackling real problems that require and empower students to take the initiative and responsibility for their own learning.

A full implementation of this new school for life approach has not yet been adopted by any major organization, but a pilot is currently being developed by Escuela Nueva in Colombia. Escuela Nueva was the pioneer in adapting student-centered approaches for use in impoverished rural environments, which often use multigrade classrooms. Escuela Nueva develops classroom materials and pedagogical approaches in which students work in self-directed teams to learn, discuss, and actively practice, using the basic content included in standard governmental curricula.

Through this unique combination of relevant content, practical implementation, and student empowerment, children develop a body of knowledge, skills, and attitudes that will enable them to succeed and thrive when they leave school, whether they are headed toward college or remain in their communities.
Dramatic Changes Are Needed
The traditional definition of school quality in the developing world is based on content mastery. But using traditional schooling approaches during the few precious years most children will spend in school leads to wasted resources and forgone opportunities for individuals and communities. Governmental agencies and organizations that support and promote quality education for all children must move beyond traditional models to help children develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that are relevant to their lives and that can lift them out of poverty.

For too long, governments and organizations investing in developing-world education have operated under the unquestioned assumption that improved test scores were clear evidence that their investments have paid off. But if, as we argue here, mastery of the basic primary school curriculum is not the best means for improving life chances and alleviating poverty in developing countries, that model is broken. Investing in interventions that produce the highest test scores is no longer a valid approach for allocating scarce educational dollars or the scarce time available for the development of young minds. It is time to seek out the interventions that lead to the greatest social and economic impact for the poor.

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Redefining Education in the Developing World (SSIR)

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In most developing countries, few children graduate from secondary school and many don't even finish primary school. In Ghana, for example, only 50 percent of children complete grade 5, and of those, less than half can comprehend a simple paragraph.