ABSTRACT
The literature on the ‘Asian Miracle’ which proliferated in the early 1990s offered a range of explanations for the remarkable growth record of the Asian ‘high performers’, (or HPAEs as they have become known) but almost all the contributions agreed on the importance of education. In their analysis of ‘the key to the Asian miracle’, Campos and Root (1996: 56), stressed that:
All of the HPAEs have invested heavily in education and, unlike many other developing countries, have concentrated on primary and secondary schooling. The share of the educational budgets allocated by the HPAEs to basic (primary and secondary) education is significantly higher than the share allocated by other developing countries. Tertiary education has been left largely to the private sector.
