Today, 224 million school-aged children are caught in crises and need quality education. This includes 72 million children who aren’t in school at all. Despite commitments to prioritizing support to education in crises, many donors are reducing their funding to the education sector that continues to suffer from chronic underfunding and a lack of prioritization.

The EiE Hub’s paper identifies key insights to address the chronic funding gap for education, including persistent challenges but also opportunities.

Persistent challenges

Humanitarian funding for education decreased in 2023 to US$1.12 billion - a 4% decrease from the year before.

For the first time in more than a decade, this marked an interruption to a long trend of yearly increases. This 4% drop was less than that of overall humanitarian funding, which fell by 18% in 2023, but still had a meaningful impact to education—a sector persistently underfunded compared to others.

Countries where children’s education is at greatest risk are also where education sectors are the most underfunded.

In 2023, 11 countries identified by Save the Children’s Risk to Education Index as having ‘extreme’ or ‘high’ risks to education were among the places where the education sector was also most critically underfunded.

Education requirements in the UN’s global humanitarian appeal also fell to $1.7 billion in 2024—a decrease of 26% from the year before—as part of a ‘boundary setting’ exercise led by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in the Global Humanitarian Overview. The education sector was more affected than others, even though its proportion of funding increased to 5.1% in 2023.

Opportunities to address the funding gap

Development aid to the education sector in countries affected by fragility and crisis has increased in recent years, with the proportion of official development assistance in these contexts rising from 6.4% in 2017 to 7.2% in 2022. This highlights a need for more approaches to education funding and programming that highlight interdependencies across sectors and coordination between humanitarian and development actors.

Noting that political support and policy commitments are fundamental to securing funding for education in emergencies, education funds such as GPE and Education Cannot Wait (ECW) are critical. Not only do they serve as catalysts for more funding, but they can also bridge the gap between humanitarian and development assistance through coordination at the global and country level.

GPE is a dedicated development fund and partnership for education in lower-income countries. In 2023, 40% of GPE partner countries were affected by fragility or conflict. ECW is a humanitarian global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises that derived 53.7% of its funding from development sources in 2023.

It’s complex to separate 'humanitarian' from 'development' needs and resources in many situations, especially in countries struggling to build more effective, equitable education systems that are also affected by fragility and crisis. But to children in schools, there is no separation—only a question of whether there’s a safe school to go to with trained teachers and appropriate pedagogical support today, tomorrow and in the future.

The bridge between development and humanitarian aid needs to be built from both ends.

This is why close coordination between GPE and ECW is so important to support education in crisis—coordination that’s embedded in the practices of the two funds to align education partners through financing mechanisms and demonstrated in partner countries like Afghanistan and South Sudan.

Climate finance and education

There’s significant untapped potential for education actors to access climate finance to build resilient and climate-smart education systems in countries affected by crises.

The BRACE initiative, launched in 2023 at COP28 by GPE, the Green Climate Fund and Save the Children, aims to enhance climate resilience in communities through the education sector. Starting with $70 million allocated in Cambodia, South Sudan and Tonga, the initiative will fund actions like building safer, more climate-adaptive schools following the Comprehensive School Safety Framework.

GPE is also working with Save the Children, UNESCO and the UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP) to promote mainstreaming climate change adaptation and environmental sustainability into education sector budgets through its technical assistance initiative for climate-smart education systems focused on strengthening education ministry capacity and cross-sectoral coordination on policy and programming for the climate and environment.

Climate finance mechanisms should commit a fair share of funding to education as it can lead to investing in a higher return for climate action and building resilient and climate-smart education systems that benefit all children impacted by crises.

We must all help prioritize education in crisis

With key donors’ humanitarian funding under strain, in 2024 it is critical to ensure continued financial support for the education of children and youth affected by crisis and displacement.

Maintaining momentum of the last decade, donors and stakeholders for education in emergencies need to build on the opportunities outlined in the EiE Hub’s paper that include continued and increased financial support to existing global education funds, greater coordination between humanitarian and development funding and recognizing the potential of climate financing for the education sector.

To finance education in crisis, efforts from all partners are needed to make sure scarce resources are efficiently used and targeted to where the needs are greatest.

Read the paper

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