Staying the Course? The World Bank’s 2010 Pledge to Basic Education

Despite basic education being a foundational component to the development of individuals, communities, and nations, evidence in 2010 pointed toward trends in international aid that threatened progress. In response, the World Bank made a pledge to increase support to basic education by $750 million over the next five years, 2011 to 2015.

Since then, the Bank has changed the terms of this pledge in such way that it can actually decrease financial assistance to basic education while still claiming to have increased it by $750 million.

RESULTS, its international affiliates, and its volunteers across the globe have been working with the World Bank in 2012 to rectify this situation. RESULTS and its partners are now calling for the Bank’s new president, Dr. Jim Yong Kim, to intervene to ensure that a total of $6.8 billion is provided to basic education over the 2011–2015 period in accordance with the pledge the Bank made in 2010.

This report takes an in-depth look at how this pledge was renegotiated, the implications of the pledge as it is today, and what can be done to alleviate the issues the pledge was originally supposed to address.