Total aid flows to education have declined at the beginning of the present decade. The current level of US$1.5 billion of support to basic education is still far short of the roughly US$7 billion per year required to meet the universal primary education (UPE) and gender goals. How should governments and the international community translate their commitments into real resources?

UNESCO’s Education for All Global Monitoring Team assesses how well governments are extending educational rights to all their citizens, looks for evidence of improved performance in levels of aid flows to basic education and suggests how to strengthen post-Dakar co-ordination mechanisms. It looks at changes needed in the existing structure of international institutions working in education.

In order to measure overall progress towards EFA, the Report Team has developed the Education for all Development Index. EDI’s wide range of variables increases understanding of the interrelation of public spending on education, income levels, aid flows, national debt and good governance.

Evidence is produced that:

• Economic growth only has a positive impact on EDI if institutions are transparent and efficient.
• The per capita value of total aid flows has a greater impact on EDI when countries are democratic.
• The negative impact of school fees on EDI is worse in authoritarian states.
• There is no reason for complacency in countries where NERs are relatively high (85 and over) – context specific solutions are required to meet the needs of those who are difficult to reach, because of gender, geography, language, ethnicity, orphanhood, poverty and conflict.
• After a century of compulsory education, industrialised nations are still failing to meet the specific learning needs of 10 to 20% of their population.

With regard to the decline in aid flows to education, the EFA Report notes that there are wide disparities (France provides 23% of its aid to education and the USA a mere 3%). South and West Asia have one third of the world’s out-of-school children but receive less than a tenth of global aid to education.

The Fast-Track Initiative (FTI) launched with World Bank support in June 2002 to achieve UPE by 2015 is already at a critical juncture. Agencies are unwilling to commit significant funds. Agreement is urgently needed on whether FTI is to be in the mainstream of aid to education and how the EFA High Level Group chaired by UNESCO can harmonise FTI's impact with existing initiatives to boost investment in basic education.

The EFA Report warns that:

• Targets and indicators should not become ends in themselves.
• Without attention to good governance, education-specific policy tools are likely to fall well short of their goals.
• It is not enough to simply legislate the right to free education – states require mechanisms to enforce the rights of every child to an education of good quality.
• A complete picture of global education financing cannot be obtained until all donors and UN agencies report aid activities to the OECD countries using the same format and definitions.
• Gender analysis must be incorporated into Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers.
• International education actors must be more willing to coordinate their actions and adopt joint strategies for action.

Source(s):
‘EFA Global Monitoring Report 2003’, UNESCO Chapter five, November 2003 Full document.
Chapter six Full document.

Funded by: Jointly by UNESCO and bilateral agencies

id21 Research Highlight: 20 May 2004

Further Information:
Ulrika Peppler Barry
EFA Global Monitoring Report Team
c/o UNESCO
7, place de Fontenoy
75352 Paris 07 SP
France

Tel: +33 1 45 68 21 28
Fax: +33 1 45 68 56 27
Contact the contributor: efareport@unesco.org

UNESCO

Other related links:
'Far from the front line: how likely is universal primary completion by 2015?'

'Is Sri Lanka on the road to Dakar?'

'Two years after Dakar: on the road to EFA?'

'Poor return on investment? Why are literacy programmes failing to reach the poor?'

'Class struggles: the challenges of achieving schooling for all' Insights Education #2

See id21's links to other sites on acheivement and schooling for all

'Basic education at a distance – new strategies for achieving Education For All'