• Financing the MDGs

Financing the MDGs

IMF restrictions on recurrent government spending are working against the MDGs, and Education for All, this report argues. Through research with the governments of Malawi, Mozambique and Sierra Leone, this study shows that IMF-imposed macroeconomic policies and explicit caps on teachers’ wage bills have forced many poor countries to freeze or curtail teacher recruitment, and are a major factor behind the chronic and severe shortage of teachers.

The study finds that in none of the three case study countries was the Ministry of Education directly involved in setting the wage bill ceiling, and in setting the limits the IMF does not appear to have taken into account:

• the number of teachers needed to ensure quality education
• an analysis of rising enrolment rates in primary and secondary schools
• impacts on girls’ enrolment rates
• the impact of the ceilings on long-term development goals.

The report makes the following core recommendations:

• the IMF should stop attaching specific policy conditions to their lending and surveillance programmes
• any advice they give must provide a range of policy options to enable governments and other stakeholders – including parliaments and civil society – to make informed choices about macroeconomic policies, wage bills and the level of social spending
• governments should place education and development goals at the centre of their macro-economic planning. They should develop long-term and costed education plans detailing the actual need for teachers and resources for training in order to provide quality learning for all
• donors need to commit to close the annual US$15bn financing gap needed to achieve education for all with increased and predictable aid over the long term.
  

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