Senior Education Finance Specialist

At the World Bank Group (WBG), you’ll join a diverse, global community working across cultures, disciplines, and borders to address the world’s most pressing development challenges. With 1.2 billion young people reaching working age in the decade ahead, the challenge of job creation has never been greater. Through partnerships across 145 countries and more than 182 offices worldwide, we work with governments, private sector, development partners and other stakeholders to invest in people, strengthen markets, and deliver scalable, data-driven solutions that generate more and better jobs and improve lives. For more information, visit www.worldbank.org The People Vertical The World Bank Group is the largest provider of development finance and solutions for human development, working with low-, middle- and high-income countries to develop country-tailored solutions under the themes of education, health, social protection, jobs and gender. The People Vertical coordinates with other Verticals to ensure an integrated approach to development challenges and, through the World Bank Regional Units, delivers support to client countries. It is central to the World Bank Group's goals of ending extreme poverty on a livable planet. The Education and Skills Global Department Education is a human right, a powerful driver of development and one of the strongest instruments for reducing poverty and improving health, gender equality, peace and stability. The mission of the Education and Skills Global Department is to ensure that everyone can achieve their full potential through access to quality education and lifelong learning, supporting clients through financing, knowledge services and strategic partnerships. At country level the Department supports a systemic, equitable and inclusive approach across all levels of education, from early childhood and basic education to skills development and tertiary education, and across all contexts, from fragile settings to upper-middle-income economies. The Department forms part of the World Bank Group's Knowledge Bank and is organized in two global units, Policy and Regulations and Solutions and Impact, working as a single team under a Director. Together they deliver the WBG Education and Skills Implementation Plan (SkillUp), approved by the Board in July 2026, which is structured around six solution areas and a set of cross-cutting areas, of which education finance is one. The Knowledge Bank generates and curates the Bank's global knowledge on education and skills, develops the guidance and tools that task teams apply in country engagements, convenes communities of practice, supports capacity development, and manages strategic partnerships and umbrella trust funds. Education finance Countries face converging pressures on education budgets. Public debt is at record levels and some countries now spend more on debt service than on education, official development assistance to education is declining, and non-state financing and provision have expanded across all regions, so that a growing share of total education spending sits outside the government budget. At the same time, Public Finance Reviews have become the Bank's core diagnostic for engaging governments on public spending, and education financing questions increasingly arise within a fiscal conversation led by Ministries of Finance rather than in a standalone sector review. The World Bank Group has also placed private capital mobilization at the centre of its approach to development finance, recognizing that public and concessional resources alone cannot meet countries' financing needs. Private capital mobilized by the Group reached a record US$112 billion in FY26. The scope for private capital differs markedly across the education system. Basic education is a public good with high social returns and remains predominantly publicly financed; there, the priority is to use public resources efficiently and equitably, and to regulate and contract well where non-state providers already operate. In higher education, TVET and workforce skills, a larger share of the returns accrues to individuals and firms, which creates greater room for private financing through student finance, employer contributions, outcome-based instruments and public-private partnerships. Realistic expectations about where private capital can contribute, and on what terms, are therefore central to the Bank's education finance offer. The Department is establishing a WBG Education Finance Platform to strengthen the Bank's analytical offer in response. The Platform will translate the Bank's knowledge on education finance into practical tools, diagnostics and evidence that support Public Finance Reviews, country engagement, policy dialogue and operations, beginning with the revision of the Education Public Expenditure Review Guidelines for the Public Finance Review context and their application in country work. It will build a global education finance dataset, invest in the capacity of task teams to engage on fiscal issues, and extend over time from basic education to early childhood development and to higher education, TVET and skills development. The selected candidate will lead the Platform and serve as Global Lead for education finance for the Department. The position is based in Washington, DC and reports to the Manager, Education and Skills. Duties and Accountabilities The selected candidate will work across policy, knowledge, data and operational tasks. Responsibilities include, but are not limited to, the following. • Leadership of the education finance work program • Lead the WBG Education Finance Platform, including its work program, budget and trust fund resources. • Serve as Global Lead for education finance for the Department, providing intellectual and technical leadership and acting as the senior technical voice on education finance with internal and external partners. • Convene the education finance Community of Practice and support the network of regional focal points. • Build and maintain working relationships across the Bank Group, including with Macroeconomics, Trade and Investment on macro-fiscal analysis, domestic resource mobilization and the Public Finance Review framework; with Governance on public financial management and fiscal decentralization; with the Chief Economist for People in DEC on private provision and financing; and with Social Policy and IFC on higher education and skills. • Position the World Bank Group in the global dialogue on education finance, and represent the Department in internal and external forums. •Analytical guidance and tools • Lead the revision of the Education Public Expenditure Review Guidelines for the Public Finance Review context, delivered as a published report and maintained thereafter as a living document. • Develop the accompanying operational toolkit of analytical modules, data templates, benchmarking approaches, reform options and country examples, designed to integrate education into existing Public Finance Review and governance diagnostics rather than to replace them. • Ensure the guidance addresses fiscal sustainability, financing adequacy, spending efficiency and equity, public financial management, fiscal decentralization, and non-state and complementary financing, and that it is modular enough to support anything from a short education section within a broader Public Finance Review to a comprehensive education-focused review. • Extend the guidance beyond basic education to early childhood development financing, which runs through health and social protection as well as education budgets, and to the financing of higher education, TVET and industry-based training. • Develop guidance and tools on how public financing can be structured to leverage private capital in education and skills, including public-private partnerships, guarantees and risk-sharing, results- and outcome-based financing, student finance and employer co-financing. The guidance should be differentiated by sub-sector, grounded in a realistic assessment of where private financing is viable, and attentive to equity, and should be developed with IFC, MIGA and the WBG Guarantee Platform as relevant. • Lead and contribute to global, regional and country analytical work on education finance, including the completion and publication of outstanding analytical papers. • Country application, policy dialogue and operational support • Work with the regions to select countries from the existing Public Finance Review pipeline, and lead or co-lead the education component of Public Finance Reviews in selected countries. • Ensure analysis translates into action, linking diagnostic findings to recommendations in Public Finance Reviews, prior actions in Development Policy Operations, the design of Investment Project Financing and Program-for-Results operations, and inputs to Country Partnership Frameworks, Country Economic Updates and Country Growth and Jobs Reports. • Participate in Bank missions and engage in policy dialogue with Ministries of Finance, Ministries of Education, development partners and other stakeholders. • Provide technical support to regional and country teams on education finance within analytical and operational work, as determined in periodic work planning. • Data and analytics • Lead the consolidation of the dataset into a global dashboard hosted on Data360, improving the access, reliability and comparability of available data, and develop standardized country education financing profiles. • Lead the development of AI-enabled analytical tools that help teams assemble financing profiles, benchmark countries and prepare analytical inputs. • Agree definitions and data sources with partners inside and outside the Bank so that effort is not duplicated. • Capacity building and knowledge • Design and deliver a core curriculum on education finance in the Public Finance Review context, covering the fiscal framing, the language and calendar of Ministries of Finance, and how to position education within a whole-of-budget conversation. • Deliver training to task teams, including regional clinics run alongside live Public Finance Reviews, and produce short, accessible reference materials for operational use. • Lead regular reporting on the state of education finance, building on the Education Finance Watch series. • Ensure education finance knowledge products are curated and accessible through the Bank's knowledge platforms, and mentor staff across the Department and the regions in deepening their expertise. Indicative deliverables • Revised basic Education Public Expenditure Review Guidelines for the Public Finance Review context, published and maintained as a living document, with an accompanying operational toolkit. • Guidance extended to early childhood development and to higher education, TVET and industry-based training, and tested in country work. • A common data template in use from the first country application, consolidated over time into a global education finance dataset and dashboard on Data360, with standardized country financing profiles. • A training curriculum, a first cohort of task teams trained in the first year and the program running at scale across regions thereafter, supported by quick reference materials and regional focal points. • Regular reporting on the state of education finance, and the publication of outstanding analytical papers.