Towards Universal Primary Education: Investments, Incentives, and Institutions

The reality is that many countries will miss the 2005 Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of gender parity in primary education. What could improve the chance of meeting the 2015 Goals? This report from the Millennium Project Task Force on Education and Gender Equality offers a set of interventions that countries can choose from to help provide universal access to high-quality education. Recommendations to national education leaders include: using incentives to encourage children to go to school, such as introducing feeding programmes; eliminating school fees; increasing security and privacy for girls; creating or strengthening the national commitment to education; and improving accountability through more local level control. The report concludes that it is not just additional funding that is required to achieve these goals, but strong political leadership in both developing countries and rich donor countries.