Appendix 10 Statement by World Bank, WEM of 35 MC 2000

Statement by World Bank Presented by Alfonso F de Guzman Senior Education Specialist, East Asia and Pacific Region
Your Excellencies, Distinguished guests, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Just thirty days ago in Bangkok, at the stocktaking of progress in Asia of Education for All 2000, the World Bank congratulated you on the great progress you have achieved, despite the crippling financial crisis that gripped many of our countries in recent years. We said that the task of providing education for all should now continue in earnest and invited you to set our collective sights beyond Jomtien, farther than the here and now, to a vision:
	First, that would ensure that all countries completely achieve Education for All;
	Second, that would ensure that we obtain maximum benefit from every cent we spend on education; and
	Third, that would boldly embrace the twenty-first century and develop education systems that are flexible and responsive to the requirements of a fast-changing world.
A number of your Excellencies present here have the privilege of leading education systems that have achieved Education for All, or have even surpassed that goal. You have succeeded in making education accessible to all. You provide and assure every school-age child, at the very least, his or her place in a classroom, in the instructional care of a teacher.
Having put all children to school, you now direct your respective education organizations to obtain the maximum benefit from every cent you spend on education. You seek ways of providing education that is also meaningful, that is effective, that is in a word, quality.
Ideas abound, and debates are vigorous, on how best to enhance the quality of education we provide for all. During my brief moment with your Excellencies, allow me to focus simply on only one quality input that is known to enhance quality in a most cost-effective way: textbooks.
*Textbooks and Education Quality*
One of our regional partners in development finance put it succinctly in a recent country report: International research suggests that textbooks may be the single most important input to student learning. Textbooks select, organize, sequence, and pace instruction. Good texts can help offset low teacher qualification by providing content in ways that can support teachers' classroom instruction. They allow students to review, practice, and learn when teachers are not available.
Based on its own experience over many years of lending in education, and documented in evaluative studies which consistently show textbooks directly influencing student achievement and the quality of education, the World Bank considers textbooks a critical part of education, as necessary as the classroom itself, as indispensable as the classroom teacher. In the last five years:
	Textbooks have become an important part of World Bank lending in Asia. From 1995 through 1999, US$ 193 million were allocated to textbooks, nearing 9% of the US$ 2.3 billion of our education lending in Asia. Of the 25 loans for education during that period, 13 loans, or half the total, have textbook components.
	Textbooks are becoming a fast-growing part of our lending in Asia. Five years ago in 1995, only one of the five education projects approved that year included financing for textbooks. Four years later in 1999, five of the six education projects approved that year had textbook components.
*Textbooks of Quality*
And yet we find that the provision of textbooks in a number of the World Bank's client countries in this region -- in some of the very education systems your Excellencies lead -- is less than desirable, likely not satisfactory now and not likely to be sustainable in the future.
In terms of sources and resources, the area networks of the local bookselling trade, the wealth of illustration and art direction at the regional book publishing companies, and the global streams of digitized content free-floating in cyberspace -- all of these remain out of the reach of official curriculum writers.
In terms of processes, basic publishing wheels are, even now, still being reinvented by governmental education agencies, when similar wheels had been fashioned and refashioned many times over throughout the book industry's five hundred years of history.
In terms of products, the textbooks that do reach their intended beneficiaries -- the school children for whom you have worked so hard to provide schooling -- are found wanting: their content uninterestingly assembled by a government agency, their form poorly printed by a government monopoly.
*Textbooks and the World Bank*
To organize our own thoughts on ways of helping our clients identify and resolve issues in the areas of concern highlighted above, we have drafted an operational policy note on textbooks and reading materials. We share copies of this draft with you today. The draft provides a framework, a set of guiding principles the Bank upholds, and the options and considerations we will take into account in appraising proposals for the Bank's financing of textbooks. These include:
	Support to good classroom teaching and learning practice;
	Protection of copyright and other intellectual property rights;
	Agreed roles of the public and private sectors in textbook provision;
	Transparent and competitive processes in the selection or acquisition of textbooks;
	Longer term financing of book development and provision; and
	Assurance of poor students' access to textbooks.
The draft has been in unofficial circulation for a little over a year now and has since benefited from the comments of our partner agencies in international development and finance, multinational publishing firms, regional publishing associations, and individual educators and publishers.
Our Next Steps
We in the World Bank are now reviewing our draft Standard Bidding Document for Textbooks and its accompanying Procurement Technical Note, a development I am sure you will welcome. To those among you who will read the World Bank's draft operational policy note on textbooks and reading materials, we welcome your thoughtful comment.
To your Excellencies we here reaffirm the World Bank's willingness to assist you in fulfilling the difficult task of finding ways of providing quality textbooks for quality education. We are ready to help in your search of the right policy, institutional, technical, and financial interventions that you need to bring about the improvements that you seek.
During our brief stay together here in Bali, on the World Bank's behalf, I will be happy to receive -- in person today or by e-mail soon afterwards -- your Excellencies' expressions of interest to participate in a meeting on textbooks, to be organized somewhere in our region, on a date to be determined.
And to our multilateral partners in development, I will be pleased to hear of your interest to cosponsor with us the above-envisioned meeting on textbooks. Together we can benefit from a shared vision and the common goal of quality education development assistance.
Thank you for your kind attention.
Statement by WEM Presented by Ms Judith Tobin Consultant, International Development, World Education Market
Your Excellencies, Distinguished guests, Ladies and Gentlemen,
From May 24-27, 2000, the first World Education Market will be held in Vancouver, Canada. This Market will bring together leaders and decision-makers from all over the world, from government, primary and secondary education, universities, technical and vocational training, development banks, and foundations as well as publishing, television, Internet, hardware, software and new medial companies. Participants will be able to see and learn about best practices and models from around the world, find partners, develop collaborative relationships and buy and sell resources, rights and systems that can be adapted to specific educational needs. The extensive conference program will highlight successful examples of educational initiatives in the international and national marketplace. WEM is a unique opportunity to discover the products, partners, expertise and models that can support educational development according to national priorities and directions.
We are very pleased that both Singapore and Thailand have already committed to exhibit at the World Education Market through their Ministries of Education and Universities Affairs, as well as their export boards. The SEAMEO Secretariat will also be one of our exhibitors.
It gives my great pleasure to extend a special invitation to His Excellency Dr Yahya Muhaimin, the President of the SEAMEO Council to attend WEM as one of our VIP guests. In closing, I would like to say that we would be pleased to welcome all of you as participants at WEM. I would be pleased to discuss the event with you in more detail.
For more information, consult the Web Site at www.wemex.com or contact Judith Tobin at WEM, Reed Midem Organization, 11 rue du Colonel Pierre Avia, 75726 Paris, France; tel: 33 1 41 90 49 69; fax 33 1 41 90 49 60; e-mail Judith.tobin@reedmidem.com.

Last updated: 19 September 2001
Last updated: 19 September 2001	Back	Top	Next