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4. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Educational attainment in most OIC countries has expanded from a privileged few to large
masses of the population over the last two decades. However this has also created numerous
policy challenges. The quality of education has not improved while access increased. This
remains an important explanation for the decline in labor market returns to education in the
Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, which has frustrated the youth causing political
unrest in some countries. The lack of further educational development is one of the most serious
threats to long-term growth and prosperity of most OIC countries. Given the youthful population
of most Muslim countries, quality education is key to ensuring greater skills and capabilities in
the workforce at a time of globalization and changing labor market conditions. Quality education
is also central to achieving SDG 3 (Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages)
and SDG 5 (Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls) by 2030. It is in this
context that this report examined the state of education quality in the 57 OIC member countries.
In the first chapter of this report, a frameworkwas presented to conceptualize quality education.
A high quality education systemwas defined in terms of high intake, high retention and ensuring
basic numeracy and literacy for all. In the second chapter, the framework was use to motivate
the statistical analysis of indicators of education quality. In addition to highlighting the broader
trends in the OIC member countries, the analysis painted a comparative picture of student
performance vis-à-vis other non-OIC countries. This was based on international assessments of
student performance such as TIMSS and PISA.
In all assessments, the OIC as a group showed a declining trend in education quality, measured
in terms of student achievement in math, science and reading. In terms of learning in school,
children in many wealthy OIC countries are falling behind those from economically much poorer
countries. Country case studies also reveal significant inequalities in within-country resource
distribution across regions, schools and grades. At the same time, children from the lower socio-
economic strata were underrepresented in the sub-population of top performing students. This
highlighted the problem of low quality and high inequality in learning outcomes in the OIC
member countries, compared to their OECD counterparts.
Economically worse-off member countries are under-represented in international assessments.
Hence evidence of the state of education quality is limited for these countries. However, desk
review of the evidence based on country-specific assessment exercise confirms that these
countries are very likely to be undergoing severe learning crisis. Newly available evidence
shows a flat learning profile (i.e. weak empirical relationship between years of schooling
completed and the level of learning achieved) in Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nigeria.
A number of barriers to children’s access to quality education were highlighted in the report.
These included poverty (family wealth), location, gender as well as system-wide problems such
as lack of accountability, shortage of qualified and motivated teachers.
Below is a list of preliminary recommendations to national governments, as well as to the
broader international community and development partners, to improve education quality in
OIC countries based on statistical findings as well as interview responses gathered from and
lessons learned from 4 country case studies, which have emerged from this research.