Future Policy Choices for the Education Sector in Asia. Background paper for the DFID organised Asia 2015 conference, 6th-7th

countries have made significant progress towards the education goals over the past decade. Fifty million more children are now enrolled in primary school than ten years ago. The gender gap has been reduced in many countries. Several large-population countries have taken bold steps to reduce their illiteracy rates’.2 The progress in Asia is laudable with 92 per cent of boys and 92 per cent of girls enrolled in primary education in East Asia and the Pacific; 85 per cent of boys and 79 per cent of girls in South and West Asia; 91 per cent of boys and 89 per cent of girls in Central Asia by 2002–3.3 The corresponding figures by region in 1990/1 were 98 per cent and 94 per cent in East Asia and the Pacific; 87 per cent and 58 per cent in South and West Asia; and were 85 per cent and 84 per cent in Central Asia, respectively. The considerable improvement in the enrolment rate is the result of a large number of initiatives across Asian countries that range from national programmes to non-governmental initiatives and vary in their approach to education as well as their scale and mode of operation. The strategies for achieving Universal Primary Education (UPE) have hitherto focussed on the expansion of enrolment and advancing towards gender parity in primary education.4 The increase