“It took a century in the US to go from getting 30-40 per cent of children in primary education to 100 per cent, and yet we are expecting the likes of Burkina Faso, which has increased enrolment rapidly, to do it in seven,” he says. “Kids get put in school when their parents become richer and better-educated, not when bureaucrats in the ministry of education are publicly shamed by international targets.”

That’s Michael Clemens in the FT on the Millennium Development Goals.

See his paper The Long Walk to School.