These institutions are the means by which policy is translated into operations, which include finance and accounting, planning and information, management services, personnel and teaching services, supervision and in-service training, curriculum development, instructional materials, tests and examinations, and school facilities and equipment. Education sector reform, if it is to be sustainable, requires the coordinated development of host-country capacity to manage all aspects of these institutional operations. Unfortunately, those outputs were often pursued at the expense of institutional capacity-building. Under the current approach, the targeted objective is now defined not just as the output itself but as an institution capable of achieving and sustaining the desired technical outputs, with its recurrent operational costs covered by the sectoral budget. Return to top of page .
Education is a primary means for strengthening the human resource base and, thus, productivity.
In Africa, where some of the most significant advancements have been seen in education, the comprehensive Education Sector Support programs, carried out in collaboration with other donors, emphasize policy reforms. Since 1989, when these programs started, enrollments increased from 50 percent to 654 percent in Benin and from 27 percent to 40 percent in Guinea . In Benin and Mali , between 1990 and 1994, the pass rate for primary-school leaving exams rose, respectively, from 40 percent to 58 percent and from 40 percent to 45 percent. In Ghana , education as a percent of the national recurrent budget increased from 17 percent in 1989 to 36 percent in 1992. In Honduras, the percentage of students graduating from sixth grade rose from 53 percent to 70 percent between 1985 and 1994.