ABSTRACT
The demand for education has been enormously variable in space and time. The rapid expansion of enrolments in countries with currently high levels of education provision and attainment in Western Europe and North America has really been very recent. The main period of their expansion was in the second half of the nineteenth century and in these countries a level of almost universal enrolment for at least primary school level had been achieved only by the 1920s. At about that time, however, levels of enrolment in countries of what is now known as the Third World were low. The main period of their enrolment expansion has occurred in the second half of the twentieth century, and particularly in the three decades after the Second World War. This was the period of major political change, with the achievement of independence in many countries, and a period of unprecedented global prosperity when an increasing volume of national and international resources was channelled into education by national and international agencies. Despite these expansions, Third World countries taken as a whole still lie far behind developed countries in the quantity and quality of education provided for their populations. Although there are notable differences between major regions of the Third World, it is clear that these are normally less than differences between the developed world and the Third World. This chapter adopts a comparative perspective to describe and explain differences in levels of enrolment and achievement at the global scale. It does so in the light of the issues raised in Chapter 1 that place education and schooling in the context of broader issues in the theory and practice of development.
