Education financing in Nepal, like in many countries in the global South, is constrained by a heavy public debt burden. As governments are obligated to increase debt servicing, key sectors like education often suffer from underfunding.

Based on consultations with the National Campaign for Education Nepal (NCE Nepal) and their regional and global education and tax justice allies (the Tax and Education Alliance and ActionAid Nepal), the Accountability Research Center found that civil society is tackling these challenges by linking education budget monitoring to advocacy on tax justice and public debt relief.

This innovative approach, supported by GPE's Education Out Loud, is helping ensure that education receives the attention and funding it deserves.

Education advocacy and generating awareness on public debt servicing

Even though the public debt burden in global South countries continues to skew public spending in important sectors such as education, it is unusual for civil society organizations to incorporate debt burden and tax justice perspectives into their budget monitoring and advocacy work. But it can be done.

Our review of civil society’s role in education advocacy found that civil society organizations working on accountability in education use budget tracking and monitoring as one approach to improving national budget allocations and expenditure on education, or at least to protecting them.

Local partners of GPE’s fund for advocacy and social accountability, Education Out Loud, use multi-level tracking and analysis of national budgets as part of their approach to support promotion of rights inside school environments.

That means they are engaging different levels of government – local, sub-national and national – to monitor and track education financing.

They use this information in their education advocacy as well as in building capacity of their constituencies, such as local-level youth networks and provincial and national governments.

NCE is also using global frameworks developed by civil society, such as the 4S’s approach and the four R’s of tax, aimed at transforming education financing to monitor national progress.

NCE Nepal, with support from the Tax and Education Alliance and ActionAid Nepal, is engaged in the unusual yet necessary work of linking debt relief and tax justice advocacy to education sector specific work.

For example, with the help of global allies, NCE Nepal produces research and analysis on progress on SDG4.

They simultaneously use the analysis to engage multiple actors at local, sub-national and national levels, such as policy makers in the national ministry, provincial and local governments, for increased funding for key education services like teacher development, infrastructure development and education equity.

At the local level, NCE Nepal also uses a range of community engagement activities on budget processes before and after the education budget has been made public.

For example, NCE builds youth constituencies’ capacity to engage with local budget processes, supports their efforts to track education budgets and connects their analysis to gender, climate and disaster, and livelihood issues.

NCE Nepal monitors federal, provincial and local annual budgets to ascertain whether allocations align with national and international commitments.

At the provincial and local levels, NCE uses targeted campaigns to ensure respective governments make allocations for education in line with these commitments.

They also engage national level parliamentarians during budget sessions to share suggestion papers and are members of government constituted groups where they advise on budget plans and education policies.

NCE’s awareness generation on debt relief and national education policy includes analyzing the status of public debt and its effects on education financing and sharing knowledge on issues like progressive taxation, and innovative financing with local governments and other national civil society organizations.

They are also supporting local governments through advocacy on progressive domestic resource mobilization to improve the quality of education (especially for girls) and ensure that most education financing comes from national budgets.

This means they are going beyond local monitoring of education budgets to connect the dots between inadequate funds, debt servicing and national Sustainable Development Goals commitments.

By linking education advocacy with broader financial reforms, NCE is not only addressing immediate budget concerns but also challenging the systemic issues of debt and inequitable taxation.

This innovative approach offers a powerful example of how local CSOs can influence national conversations on fiscal justice, ensuring that education is adequately funded, even in challenging economic circumstances.

The author would like to thank the National Campaign for Education Nepal, ActionAid Nepal and the Global Tax and Education Alliance for their time. All errors of facts and interpretation remain those of the author alone.