Over the last 40 years, countries in Sub-Saharan Africa have experienced a level of reform and expansion in education that is historically unique, moving from low participation in schooling to nearly universal access to primary school across the continent at a breathtaking pace. Published in late 2018, the World Bank’s new book on schooling in Sub-Saharan Africa, Facing Forward: Schooling for Learning in Africa offers an encyclopedic, if sometimes uneven opportunity, to take stock of this progress and the challenges that continue to limit equitable learning for all through primary and lower secondary education in Africa. The central message of Facing Forward is that Sub-Saharan African education systems are poised to better use themounting evidence about “what works” to improve (and equalize) learning outcomes for all children and youth. To do so, governments are advised to consider adopting and implementing 28 policy reforms in six areas (dependent on context); all aimed at the realization of fundamental improvements at the school/classroom level. Throughout the report, the tag line—from “science to service delivery” is repeated frequently, bringing the volume into alignment with other recent World Bank reports and policies on education (World Bank 2011, 2018). Beneath the tag line, readers will find interesting efforts to use comparative analysis to make differentiated policy prescriptions and a fair number of heterodox reflections about previous World Bank policy prescriptions. This makes the volume interesting reading not only for African policy makers but also for students of comparative education and for those who follow the Bank’s changing approach to education. The report does a huge service to the field by documenting and juxtaposing a wealth of evidence from Bank-sponsored sources of new data on African education (such as the evidence generated from the Bank’s Service Delivery Indicator (SDI) program, Bank sponsored household surveys, pubic

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向前看，向后看？世界银行关于撒哈拉以南非洲基础教育的新报告

在过去的 40 年里，撒哈拉以南非洲国家经历了历史上独一无二的教育改革和扩张，以惊人的速度从低入学率转变为几乎普及整个非洲大陆的小学。世界银行于 2018 年底出版的关于撒哈拉以南非洲学校教育的新书《面向未来：非洲的学校教育》提供了一个百科全书式的、有时甚至是不均衡的机会，可以评估这一进展和继续限制公平学习的挑战在非洲通过小学和初中教育为所有人提供服务。Facing Forward 的核心信息是，撒哈拉以南非洲地区的教育系统准备好更好地利用越来越多的关于“有效方法”的证据来改善（和均衡）所有儿童和青年的学习成果。为此，建议各国政府考虑在六个领域（视情况而定）通过和实施 28 项政策改革；所有这些都旨在实现学校/课堂层面的根本改进。在整个报告中，标语——从“科学到服务提供”频繁重复，使本书与世界银行最近的其他报告和教育政策保持一致（世界银行，2011 年，2018 年）。在标语下，读者会发现有趣的努力是使用比较分析来制定差异化的政策处方，并对世界银行以前的政策处方进行相当数量的异端反思。这使得本书不仅对非洲政策制定者，而且对比较教育的学生和那些遵循世行不断变化的教育方法的人来说都是有趣的读物。