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stagnation and mass poverty. To the extent illiteracy adversely affects the lives and productivity
of individuals, these deficits in education have political implications.
The poor quality of education therefore poses a serious policy challenge in many OIC countries
where in general, the level of human development is already low. Member countries are
significantly poorer and suffer from lower levels of education compared to non-OIC countries.
They also lag behind the rest of the world in health indicators such as the high prevalence of
open defecation, the lack of community health workers, the number of hospital beds and spend
less on health as a share of GDP.
While the OIC comprises 57 member states across four continents, there is significant variation
in terms of differences in economic opportunities. Extreme income poverty is very high in Sub-
Saharan African member states and South Asia but low in most member countries in the MENA
region, Central and East Asia.1 Income inequality is highest in African member states though the
OIC average is lower when compared to other developing regions such as Latin America.
However, compared to other regions, youth unemployment is high in most MENA countries (e.g.
Egypt, Jordan, Tunisia and Yemen). In addition, labor market opportunities are limited for
women in most OIC countries. Therefore pre-market investments in education and equalizing
opportunities to learn are critical to reducing socio-economic inequalities in market
opportunities in the OIC.
Taking into account the importance of quality education for social and economic development,
the recently announced SDGs set a clear target to deliver quality education for all by 2030.
According to UN (2017), education matters because it is “…..the key that will allow many other
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved. When people are able to get quality
education they can break from the cycle of poverty. Education therefore helps to reduce
inequalities and to reach gender equality. It also empowers people everywhere to live more
healthy and sustainable lives. Education is also crucial to fostering tolerance between people
and contributes to more peaceful societies”2 The importance of quality education is not only
recognized in SDG 4, educational progress by 2030 is also critical for meeting other SDGs targets.
The renewed emphasis on quality education in the SDG campaign and the global efforts to tackle
the challenge of delivering quality education for all is an important development for the OIC.
Objectives and Methodology of the Study
The aimof the study is to analyse the current status and causes of school attainment and student
learning as well as efforts addressing student achievement in OIC countries, with a focus on
poverty and maternal education. Given these objectives, the study aims to answer the following
research questions:
1. What is the current quality of education in the OIC member states? How has it changed over
time?
2. What are the main factors that determine the quality of education, particularly student
learning?
3. What are the existing policy efforts to increase quality of education and the critical success
factors?
1 Only in 3 Arab countries poverty rate (based on 2 dollar a day cut-off) is above 20%. These are Egypt,
Djibouti, and Yemen.