# 1 Introduction

This research examines the education policy priorities of senior government officials in ministries of education and ministries of finance in East Asia Pacific (EAP) countries and compares them with the priorities of international development partners. A 2020 survey conducted by the Center for Global Development (CGD) found “(m)isalignment with donor agendas” in three dimensions: (i) objectives for education; (ii) beliefs about the state of the world; and (iii) beliefs about the effectiveness of specific education interventions (Crawfurd et al., 2021). Using new survey data based on 188 interviews with senior government officials in five middle-income EAP countries and 601 interviews with officials in seven additional countries globally in 2022, this paper explores policy makers’ perceptions on a range of technical topics in education, including foundational literacy and barriers to learning.<sup>1</sup> ￼ In our 2022 survey, conducted jointly with CGD, officials were interviewed about their education sector knowledge, beliefs, and values. This work is built on the assumption that education policy is shaped by senior officials and that their opinion influences policy (Smets, 2020; Baekgaard et al., 2015; see discussion in Crawfurd et al., 2021).<sup>2</sup> We focus on EAP officials’ perceptions of learning poverty, barriers to improving learning, levels of education spending, and expected returns to education, as well as opinions about gender, violence and inclusion of students with disabilities. We then compare the stated perspectives with those of officials outside the region, as well as with actual and official data, when available.

We present data from seven low- and middle-income countries in the EAP region, two which were surveyed in 2020 (Solomon Islands and Vanuatu) and five surveyed in 2022 (Indonesia, the Philippines, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Vietnam, and Mongolia). These countries were chosen to provide a range of middle-income education systems in EAP and for which the team was able to hire enumerators and get permission to collect data from relevant ministries. We compare data from these countries with seven other participating countries of either the 2020 survey or the 2022 survey if the question item was present in both surveys. The non-EAP country participants in the 2022 survey were officials in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Ghana, Peru, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nigeria, and Uganda. The list of participating countries for both surveys can be found in Table 1.

# 2 Methodology

The survey design and data collection were conducted by the World Bank together with the CGD. The full survey and data are available, along with a complete description of the methodology (CGD, forthcoming). This survey, conducted in 2022 together with CGD, builds on earlier surveys of public officials on their priorities and beliefs about the education sector in their countries (Crawfurd et al., 2021). A summary of the methodology is presented here.

> 1 This paper is a double companion paper; it is a companion paper both to the regional flagship report “Fixing the Foundation: Teachers and Basic Education in East Asia Pacific” (2023) and a companion paper to CDG’s global analysis of the 2022 survey, also forthcoming.

> 2 This paper focuses on areas not already covered in detail in the EAP Education Flagship (Afkar et al., 2023).

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