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Counting the Full Cost; parental and community financing of education in East Asia MARK BRAY, 1996
Washington, DC, World Bank/UNICEF $20.00
ISBN 0-8213-3827-7
In this book Mark Bray offers a lucid and well-written account of the issue of parental contributions to schooling in nine East Asian countries. Counting the Full Cost deals with an important issue, focusing on the high percentage of schooling costs met in some countries by parents. This is a joint World Bank/ UNICEF study largely developed while Bray was a visiting research fellow at the bank. The study is offered in four main sections issues', dealing with education as a human right, political and economic constraints on the financing of education, pressures on parents to pay more and the policy problems confronting developing countries in this area. 'Profiles' of nine East Asian countries are presented as case studies. 'Policy' implications of the findings are presented and 'Conclusions' from the study are drawn.
There is a certain irony about David de Ferranti of the World Bank signing a foreword which laments the increasing burden of parental contributions, in particular by the poor, when the bank's 1995 publication Policies and Strategies...