Reforms of Educational Efficiency and Quality in Developing Countries: an overview

It is possible to distinguish different ‘themes’ of educational reform in developing countries. These can be categorised as planning/management and efficiency reforms, quality reforms, and curricular reforms; the first two only are discussed here. The first of these ‘themes’ has been typically dominated by the economist's agenda, the second by the educationalist's. Planning/management and efficiency reforms have been set within a context of overriding concern with educational expansion, with the consequence that insufficient attention has been paid to the quality of the educational systems being developed. Moreover, under prevailing conditions of austerity, the recent efficiency‐oriented solutions proffered by greater competition have served to exacerbate the disparities in the provision of quality education. Educational reform focused on quality has, perhaps, been the most intractable of the themes under discussion. What makes for a high quality educational system is a moving target. The pendulum swing has been away from state interventionism, but the state's role as regulator and equaliser of disparities may be on the return. The extent of the swing back will be dependent on the success of participatory strategies to involve the more marginalised stakeholders in all the different aspects of educational reform reviewed in this paper.