Discipline: Education, Social Science
Nations in Asia usually lack sufficient funds to provide for a complete elementary education for their citizens.
Even if they should spend most of their national income on elementary education alone, it still would not be sufficient. In 1959 the Karachi Plan recommended that the nations in Asia should strive for complete elementary education by 1980. In a second meeting in Tokyo, in 1962, the ministers of education of the various Asian countries endorsed this plan. But in the Meeting of the Experts on Education, sponsored by the UNESCO and held in Manila in 1964, the very first recommendation of the group was that although elementary education is necessary to produce knowledgeable and skilled workers in developing economies a suitable percentage of national resources be spent on the improvement of higher education both in quality and quantity.