Education and poverty in the global development agenda: Emergence, evolution and consolidation

The objective of this paper is to analyse the role of education and poverty in the current global development agenda. It intends to analyse the emergence, evolution and consolidation of a global agenda, which attributes a key role to education in the fight against poverty. With this objective, the paper addresses four main issues: first, it analyses the context in which the emergence of the agenda must be placed, analysing specifically the changes generated by globalisation; second, it focuses on the role of the actors, and especially on the role of the World Bank in setting the agenda; third, it explains the consolidation of the agenda by the Education for All Conferences and the Millennium Development Goals; finally it presents some of the main limitations of the hegemonic agenda. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.