La Banque Mondiale et l'éducation, ou : est-il plus simple de construire de grands barrages que de petites écoles ?

An indirect consequence of the economic globalisation is the questioning of the States as economic actors. In the context of developing countries, structural adjustment policies' constraint sometimes brutally destructured the educational systems. Reversibly, the social demand for education grew as the access to instruction was perceived as the most effective individualised strategy to escape underdevelopment. The international community quickly understood that such a degraded situation could only compromise the objective of education for all. The World Bank which was conscious of such problem as well as the economic inefficiency of many national educational systems decided to divert its action towards the assistance with the universal access to education. Even if the awareness of this institution in the educational field is not much convincing, the will to defend the emergence of a "Paretian" framework of justice must be noticed. Unfortunately, if all the actors, and above all the Bank itself, are convinced of the contribution of education to economic growth as meant by Lucas, it seems that the shape of its intervention does not make it possible to target a single formula.