Abstract
Norwegian official development assistance to education has been profoundly shaped by the political and ideological attitudes of successive national governments. Yet successive coalition governments of highly‐contrastive kinds can alike be seen to have been strongly influenced by the policy content, language and underlying assumptions of World Bank thinking about education and development, especially since the introduction of structural adjustment programmes and the more recent Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers. To an increasing extent, the traditional and much‐praised independence of thinking evident in Norwegian bilateral aid has been subsumed by uncritical adoption of World Bank policy stances, usually imposed uniformly irrespective of local conditions and preferences. Using the National Education Trust Fund as an example illustrating trends in several African countries, the article assesses the implications of this loss of critical independence in the delivery of Norwegian aid to education. There are early indications that the new red–green coalition government in Norway is putting up a fight against the conditionalities for aid to the education sector set up by the World Bank.
Published Version
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