Events

Abstract: Educational systems in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) have gone through considerable reforms and changes, especially during the last four decades. The World Bank (WB), among other international organisations, has been a major player in this process. To understand the pattern of educational inequalities in LMICs, it is paramount to examine these reforms. The presentation has two parts. In the first part, I will introduce the trends and types of educational system reforms implemented by the WB across 99 LMICs using an original dataset. Specifically, I will focus on WB’s efforts to decrease the standards (that is, de-standardisation) of educational systems. Furthermore, I will show how the degree of authoritarianism in LMICs is associated with implementing these reforms by the WB. I will also discuss the methods of data collection through quantifying archival documents since there is data scarcity in this field. In the second part, I will show how the process of de-standardisation of educational systems is associated with inequality in educational attainment by social origins in 27 LMICs, merging original country-level macro data with household surveys. 

The Sociology Seminar Series for Michaelmas Term is convened by Christiaan Monden and Leo Azzolini.  For more information about this or any of the seminars in the series, please contact sociology.secretary@nuffield.ox.ac.uk.