How does investing in education support national development?

Nations must invest across a wide array of sectors if they wish to achieve growth and development. In each case, a calculation must be made to show whether investments will promote development and improve the lives of people.

Development investments are often thought of as providing infrastructure such as a road or bridge. While these are important, other investments to raise human resource levels of the population are equally important because skilled workers are needed to maintain infrastructure.

Education, skills and training allow people to participate in national development through improved wages and greater opportunities for mobility and advancement.

How does ADB influence development in the region through its educational investments?

ADB, developing member countries (DMCs), and other development stakeholders agree that nations need to reach and maintain a critical level of basic skills to provide the social and economic means for societies to grow and prosper.

If ADB can help each DMC in Asia to strengthen its own formal and informal education and training system, then each country and the region collectively will stand a better chance to compete in the global economy.

Does ADB offer learning and research opportunities to individuals from member countries?

ADB offers scholarships through the ADB–Japan Fund for Scholarship Program as well as internship and research fellowship opportunities to eligible candidates from DMCs.

Does ADB give higher priority to providing primary schooling to rural and female students or  skills development for unemployed youth?

ADB and the international community stress the importance of reaching the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) including universal primary education with gender parity and near universal primary school completion through grade 6. Each nation really needs to ensure that all children have the opportunity to attend local schools of high quality standards.

Keeping this in mind, ADB recognizes that universal basic education goes hand-in-hand with expansion of post primary education, teacher education, and skills training that together rest on the strong primary school foundation. ADB will help each country determine a good mix of financing across the various school subsectors.

As post secondary education becomes more important for national development, what will be the focus of education and training in Asia?

ADB will assist middle-income DMCs determine the best strategy for human resource development to make the knowledge economy work for people. As development funds are scarce, ways will have to be found to allow more students to also acquire quality higher education and skills and training programs at competitive cost.

There is also a need for close cooperation between service providers and beneficiaries to avoid any mismatch between skills and jobs. Strong policies, compliance monitoring, and standard setting are roles that the public sector can provide while actual provision of training will more and more reside with profit and nonprofit training institutions.