Education, skills, sustainability and growth: complex relations - Kenneth King

Many developing countries since Jomtien in 1990, and more especially since Dakar in 2000, and the elaboration of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) later that same year, have seen international concern to assist them to reach the six Dakar targets. While there has been some very detailed work on analysing progress towards these Dakar Goals (e.g. the Global Monitoring Reports on Education for All - EFA), much less attention has been given to the sustainability of these externally-assisted achievements. Will countries that have been assisted to reach universal primary education be able to sustain this when development assistance is terminated? It is not therefore just a question of whether the world is on track to reach the Dakar Goals, but whether individual countries have an economic and political environment that will secure them. Intimately connected to that challenge is an assessment of what is available after school to the millions of young people who hve been persuaded to enter and complete basic education. What has happened to the labour market environment, and especially to the nature of work in the widespread urban and rural informal economy, during the years that countries have been encouraged to focus on the achievement of the Dakar Goals?
From: Southern African Review of Education, Vol. 13 no. 2 (2007)