Can aid meet Education for All goals?

Aid flows are rising, but the Education for All (EFA) goals cannot be met from current disbursements and domestic resources. US$11 billion of external support per year – three times the current level – is needed if early childhood and adult literacy programmes are to expand and all children are to complete primary school by 2015.

The 2007 EFA Global Monitoring Report ‘Strongfoundations: early childhood care and education’, prepared by an independent teamand published by UNESCO, reviews trends in education aid and warns that time isrunning out to meet the EFA goals set in 2000 in Dakar. Despite continuedprogress at the primary level, including for girls, too many children are stillnot in school, drop out early or do not reach minimal learning standards.

Aid commitments directly to the education sector in developing countriesexpanded between 2000 and 2004, from US$4.6 billion to US$8.5 billion – anincrease of 85 percent. Education’s share of all sector aid to least developedcountries rose from 12.7 percent in 2000 to 17.3 percent in 2004.

However, half of all bilateral donors allocate at least half of theireducation aid to middle-income developing countries and almost half allocateless than one-quarter directly to basic education. Early childhood care andeducation (ECCE) is not a donor priority: half of education aid providersallocate ECCE less than two per cent of the aid they give to primary education.

A third of those children who enrol in grade one in sub-SaharanAfrica (SSA) do not complete primary school. In 2004 of 77 million primaryschool aged children out of school, half were in SSA. Africa has a chronic shortage of qualifiedand motivated teachers and far too few women teachers to attract girls toschool and retain them.

Literacy targets have not been achieved. Onein five adults lack minimum literacy skills. Women comprise two thirds of theestimated 781 million illiterate adults. On current trends, by 2015 the globalnumber of adult illiterates will have dropped by only 100 million.

The EFA Global Monitoring Report notes that:

• In many countries schoolfees remain a major obstacle to the enrolment and continued participation ofpoor students in primary school.
• Teacher absenteeism is oftena serious problem.
• Low numbers of secondaryplaces slow the achievement of universal primary education because they reducethe incentive to complete primary schooling.
• While there are now 94 girlsin primary school for every 100 boys, progress towards gender parity intertiary education remains slow: stereotypes persist in learning materials and toomany teachers still have differing expectations of male and female students.

It calls for:

• donor activities to be betteraligned with national education programmes
• governments of low-income countriesto give greater priority to education in their discussions with donors, and toallocate education a greater share of the savings from debt relief
• shorter pre-service teacher trainingwith more on-the-job practice and professional development, and incentives forteachers to work in remote and rural areas
• tackling exclusion throughthe abolition of school fees, income support for rural households dependent onchild labour, more mother tongue teaching and offering education opportunitiesfor disabled children and those affected by HIV/AIDS and conflict.