Adult Education at the World Bank: Poor Cousin or Key Stakeholder?

Abstract

The World Bank and the various agencies composing or associated with it have become a major driving force in educational development throughout large regions of Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Latin America and the Caribbean over the course of the last half-century. The strategies adopted by the bank and the funding that it provides have an enormous influence on international educational policy and on the implementation of programmes that affect billions of people. This chapter presents a picture of the evolution of World Bank education policy in general and its strategies of adult education in particular. Although the status of adult education has fluctuated over time between the roles of poor cousin and key stakeholder, the reality of the policies is more complex than these terms suggest. Successive sections provide a brief historical background to current World Bank adult education policies, their recent evolution from Education For All through the 2020 Learning For All Strategy, key hidden dimensions of adult education at the World Bank, and finally an interpretation of results and conclusions. To begin with, though, some definitional concerns must be addressed. Two terms in the title and topic of this chapter pose problems. First, what does the World Bank mean by ‘adult education’? And, second, how is educational ‘policy’ defined and embodied?