High-profile meetings in 2005 raised expectations that commitments to achieve the Millennium Development Goals would result in more aid for Education for All (EFA) programmes. But are donors ready to finally honour the EFA promises made in Dakar in 2000?

A chapter in UNESCO’s 2006 Global Monitoring Report reviews trends in aid to education.

Assistance to education has increased. However, education’s share of total Official Development Assistance (ODA) – three quarters of which is provided by donor countries and the rest through multilateral agencies – declined from 8.8 percent in 2002 to 7.4 percent in 2003. This was the lowest figure for a decade.

The World Bank is the leading multilateral agency supporting education and provides 40 percent of total basic education funding. The European Commission is also becoming an important provider.

There are major variations in the amount provided by donor states to education in general, and basic education in particular. While 35.7 percent of New Zealand’s total aid is allocated to education, education’s share of aid from the USA is 2.8 percent. While bilateral aid to basic education almost trebled between 1998 and 2003, it still accounted for less than two percent of total bilateral aid.

Adult literacy programmes typically receive only one percent of national education budgets, signaling a very low level of commitment. Donors and governments must work to increase this share in order to achieve the Dakar literacy goal and ensure literacy educators receive professional training and competitive salaries.

UNESCO regrets that:

• Sixty percent of bilateral commitments to education are still allocated to post-secondary education.
• Basic education’s share of total education aid only averages 28.3 percent.
• Disproportionate volumes of bilateral aid go to middle-income countries with relatively high primary enrolments.
• Literacy is not high on the agenda of most international agencies: few produce data on amounts spent on literacy programmes.
• The Fast Track Initiative – an important example of donors working together – has not yet achieved significant additional resources for EFA.

There are still difficulties in tracking how much education aid is promised and actually provided. It seems likely that in 2010 the annual total of basic education aid will be around US$3.3 billion. This is still far short of the US$7 billion a year estimated as necessary to achieve universal primary education (UPE) and gender parity alone – without accounting for the additional costs of much-needed adult literacy and early childhood education.

UNESCO calls on the international community to:

• double aid to basic education, even above the levels implied by G8 pledges made at Gleneagles in July 2005
• prioritise support for countries on the bottom of UNESCO’s Education Development Index, especially to assist governments unable to meet key recurrent costs – salaries, textbooks, learning material and day-to-day administrative expenses
• promote more equitable budget allocations to basic education and finance the recruitment and professional development of the new teachers without whom EFA cannot be achieved
• combine technical assistance funds and share learning.

Source(s):
‘International Commitments: Time to Act’, Education for All: Global Monitoring Report 2006, chapter four, by UNESCO, November 2005 Full document.

Funded by: Several bilateral donors and UNESCO

id21 Research Highlight: 3 March 2006

Further Information:
Nicholas Burnett, Director
EFA Global Monitoring Report Team
UNESCO
7, Place de Fontenoy
75352 Paris 07 SP
France

Tel: +33 1 45 68 17 06
Fax: +33 1 45 68 56 52
Contact the contributor: efareport@unesco.org

EFA Monitoring Report Team, UNESCO

Other related links:
'Some progress but Education for All can do better'

'Bringing the hardest to reach into the classroom'

'Education for all in conflict affected countries: an impossible goal?'

'Education for all by 2015: how aid can help'

'Is Sri Lanka on the road to Dakar?'