We all agree that every child should receive an education. But at current rates of change, it won’t be possible until 2111 (more than a century from now) that all children in sub-Saharan Africa will complete 10 years of school. And the poorest girls won’t get there a full 70 years after the richest boys.
If the world community rolls back or eliminates its support of these developing countries’ education systems, that trajectory will never change and might very well get worse. This is the argument I made during a debate at the Global Education and Skills Forum earlier this month.
The global focus on education has brought results
We already know that such aid can make a difference. In 2000, the Education for All initiative and the UN’s Millennium Development Goals prompted donor countries and developing countries alike to devote more resources to strengthening education systems in many of the poorest, least-developed countries across the world.
The result: the number of out-of-school children of primary and lower secondary school age decreased by almost 40% between 2000 and 2013 – from about 197 million to approximately 124 million.
But if 124 million children still have no access to primary or secondary education, and hundreds of millions more go to school but don’t really learn, there is still much more work ahead.
Education financing is largely covered by developing countries
UNESCO estimates that $39 billion more each year from the global community will provide a full course of schooling, including secondary, to all children by 2030 – an average of $1.18 per day for each child. Developing countries themselves will bear about 88% of this cost, leaving a gap of just 14 cents per day that only external sources – international development partners and philanthropies – can fill.
Many developing country governments are already increasing their domestic spending on education. Funding from the Global Partnership incentivizes partner developing country governments to gradually allocate up to 20% of national budgets for education.
On average, domestic financing for education as a share of GDP among GPE developing country partners rose 10% after they joined GPE.
External aid can play a catalytic role
I am not arguing that education, even in the poorest countries of the world, should be financed solely by external funds. That is not, over the long run, sustainable or transformative. But we know that most developing countries cannot close the gap with their own resources or the private sector alone.
Nor am I suggesting that all aid is well spent. Poor-quality aid rightly deserves a rough hearing. But let’s not make the mistake of tarring all aid with the same brush. Aid, when correctly applied, plays a catalytic role in transforming a country’s education system and improving the overall return on investment in education.
Harmonized and aligned approaches are key
As the Global Partnership has shown, harmonized, holistically allocated financing is far more effective than aid that focuses only on specific donor interests, disconnected from systemic interventions.
And that support must strengthen government leadership and accountability, which in turns produces comprehensive government-owned education plans, soundly collects and analyzes relevant education data and competently delivers education services – admittedly prosaic steps whose results are incremental, but nevertheless essential to a country’s educational progress.
Results-based financing helps. Partner countries receive from the Global Partnership 70% of their financing in support of a sustainable education sector plan. They receive the remaining 30% on the achievement of specific results in areas of quality, equity and efficiency.
External financing supports children living in conflict and crisis
Development aid is also critical to the many children who can’t get schooling because they are caught in the maelstrom of conflict and crisis, which are not only major barriers to education but also contribute to perpetuate the vicious cycle of poverty and violence. About 30% of all out-of-school children are living in conflict and crisis, and about 25% of children living such conditions are out of school.
Developing countries bear the greatest burden of providing for populations living in conflict and crisis, but they simply don’t have the wherewithal themselves to educate the children among them. Only about 2% of humanitarian assistance currently goes to education. So if we hope to rescue those children from a lifetime of shattered existence and opportunity, the world community must step up and help those countries educate their children.
Knowing that external aid for education in developing countries is indispensable, how can the world community possibly resolve to withhold it from them? Who among us has the courage to ask these less fortunate societies to wait until the next century to educate all their children? Who among us will be willing to deprive generations of children of the fundamental intellectual tools they need to survive and thrive? And who among us would wish a similar fate on our own countries and children?
Click here to view a video of the debate.