Are the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of universal completion of primary education and ending gender inequality in education by 2015 achievable? What do parents, governments, donors and civil society have to do to build effective and equal education systems?

A report from the UN Millennium Project sets out findings from a two-year project of analysis and consultation to identify what is required to achieve equal enrolment of boys and girls and provide excluded groups with education.

Enormous challenges exist. On average, primary completion rates in low-income countries are only rising by 1.5 percent per year. In Africa only 51 percent of children (46 percent of girls) complete primary education. Figures in South Asia are 74 percent of all children and 63 percent of girls.

It is the poor who miss out on school. In West and Central Africa less than half of poor children complete even a single year in school. Income gaps increase gender inequality: in India for wealthy children the difference between boys and girls completing primary school is only 2.5 percent, whereas for poor children the gender gap is 24 percent.

Those who are particularly unlikely to attend or remain in school are children in rural areas, those from ethnic or linguistic minorities, those affected by armed conflict or children with disabilities. Of the hundred million children of primary age who are not in school, it is estimated that 40 percent have some form of disability.

Some very poor states are on course to meet the education MDGs. Key principles that have guided policymakers in this handful of countries are:

• being practical about reducing costs: using low-cost school construction methods, resisting pressure to reduce class sizes, employing teachers on contracts and shortening pre-service training
• emphasising student-centred teaching, using local languages in early primary years, designing quality curricula and books and giving teachers performance incentives
• allowing high-quality private education for the wealthier families and contracting out with private providers
• setting clear rules for allocation of resources across different regions and schools and monitoring performance to see where it needs strengthening
• developing condensed, accelerated programmes to get children who have dropped out back into education.

Providing quality education and targeted subsidies and incentives will not come cheap. At the moment only a third of education aid is allocated to basic education in sub-Saharan Africa. Even if these countries manage to double or triple their primary spending, achieving the MDGs will require an increase of five times the current level of external aid to basic education – around $1.2 billion per year.

Most developing countries need to increase access as well as improve quality. This requires strategies to:

• encourage children to attend school – by abolishing school fees, providing conditional cash transfers, using school feeding programmes to increase attendance and improving security and privacy for girls
• support mothers to gain literacy and a basic education, particularly where there are significant groups of uneducated minority women
• enhance secondary education so parents see value in getting their children to complete primary schooling
• reduce the current secondary level bias towards the wealthier children by providing scholarships based on needs, particularly for poorer girls
• improve accountability, parental engagement and teacher commitment through greater local control of schools
• agree targets and impact evaluations so that donors can engage constructively with national governments.

Policymakers must realise that if schools cannot offer an education that is valued, parents are unlikely to send their children. Solutions from the local level are key to turning around the world’s many failing education systems.

Source(s):
‘Toward universal primary education: investments, incentives and institutions’, Task Force on Education and Gender Equality, UN Millennium Project, by Nancy Birdsall, Amina Ibrahim and Ruth Levine, April 2005 Full document.
'On the Road to Universal Primary Education', Center for Global Development Brief by Ruth Levine and Nancy Birdsall, February 2005

Funded by: UN

id21 Research Highlight: 1 November 2005

Further Information:
Nancy Birdsall and Ruth Levine
Center for Global Development
1776, Massachusetts Avenue, NW
Washington DC 20036
USA

Tel: + 1 (202) 416-0700
Fax: +1 (202) 416-0750
Contact the contributor: nbirdsall@cgdev.org

Contact the contributor: rlevine@cgdev.org

Center for Global Development, USA

Task Force 3 (Education and Gender Equality)
UN Millennium Project
One United Nations Plaza
21st floor Rm. 2160
New York, N.Y. 10017
USA

Tel: +1 (212) 906 5735
Fax: +1 (212) 906 6349
Contact the contributor: tf3info@unmillenniumproject.org

UN Millennium Project

Other related links:
'Quality matters in education'

'Grim future for girls - primary school attendance in Sub-Saharan Africa'

'Aid, public expenditure and Millennium Development Goals: is collaboration possible?'

'Meeting education development goals: simply a question of money?'

'Private education is good for poor people in Africa and Asia'

'Progress to gender equality in education'