Education
The most recent and complete education model documentation is available on Pardee's website. Although the text in this interactive system is, for some IFs models, often significantly out of date, you may still find the basic description useful to you.
Overview
The education model of IFs simulates patterns of educational participation and attainment in 186 countries over a long time horizon under alternative assumptions about uncertainties and interventions (Irfan 2008). Its purpose is to serve as a generalized thinking and analysis tool for educational futures within a broader human development context.
The model forecasts gender- and country-specific access, participation and progression rates at levels of formal education starting from elementary through lower and upper secondary to tertiary. The model also forecasts costs and public spending by level of education. Dropout, completion and transition to the next level of schooling are all mapped onto corresponding age cohorts thus allowing the model to forecast educational attainment for the entire population at any point in time within the forecast horizon.
From simple accounting of the grade progressions to complex budget balancing and budget impact algorithm, the model draws upon the extant understanding and standards (e.g., UNESCO's ISCED classification explained later) about national systems of education around the world. One difference between other attempts at forecasting educational participation and attainment (e.g, McMahon 1999; Bruns, Mingat and Rakotomalala 2003; Wils and O’Connor 2003; Delamonica, Mehrotra and Vandemoortele. 2001; Cuaresma and Lutz 2007) and our forecasting, is the embedding of education within an integrated model in which demographic and economic variables interact with education, in both directions, as the model runs.
In the figure below we display the major variables and components that directly determine education demand, supply, and flows in the IFs system. We emphasize again the inter-connectedness of the components and their relationship to the broader human development system. For example, during each year of simulation, the IFs cohort-specific demographic model provides the school age population to the education model. In turn, the education model feeds its calculations of education attainment to the population model’s determination of women’s fertility. Similarly, the broader economic and socio-political systems provide funding for education, and levels of educational attainment affect economic productivity and growth, and therefore also education spending.