In a matter of days the international community will come together in Copenhagen, Denmark for the first replenishment of the Global Partnership for Education.
Some ten years earlier donors had met in Amsterdam where they created the Partnership’s predecessor, the Education For All Fast Track Initiative or EFA FTI.
Their aim was to harmonize donor efforts in support of developing country governments that had credible plans to deliver education. Whilst the FTI has played a useful role, it along with the international community as a whole has fallen short of its promise of securing the right to education for the world’s children.
In short, progress in giving the world’s out of school children a quality basic education has been far too slow and on present trends the majority of the 67 million children who are still out of school today are unlikely to be in education in 2015.
At the same time we have had some significant successes. A number of the world’s poorest countries have demonstrated that universal primary schooling and the wider education goals set for 2015 are attainable.
But with only four years to go, we urgently need a renewed effort in support of education and the Global Partnership for Education will be central to generating that momentum.
In recent years there have been significant reforms and in the past few months what was the Fast Track Initiative has been reinvigorated.
The first full meeting of the new Partnership, in Copenhagen in November 2011, must be the moment for change – for serious commitments to secure the funding of the Partnership, to close the broader global fund gap for education, to improve the quality of aid to education and to accelerate the process of reform.
The future of funding to the Partnership itself looks promising. Coalitions of civil society organizations in donor countries have been busy making the case for doors to support the partnership and in a growing number of places their efforts are paying off.
In the United Kingdom, where I am based, at a breakfast with members of parliament last week, one of our development ministers backed the Partnership and indicated the UK will be a significant contributor.
This is excellent news, as is the fact that a growing number of countries are likely to join the UK in supporting the Partnership.
But funding the partnership itself is only a small element of what’s required to deliver education to the 67 million children who are still out of school.
For a start the overall education funding gap – of some $19 billion per year – needs to close. But it’s not just the amount of funding that’s critical to progress but the quality and effectiveness of the aid that’s provided to education which needs to improve too.
Civil society organizations around the world have consequently identified ten principles that we believe are at the heart of more efficient and effective aid to education. They are:
- Pay a fair share for basic education.
- Unite aid and ensure technical assistance is country-led.
- Harmonize aid behind government plans.
- Use the most aligned aid modalities.
- Deliver predictable aid to basic education and focus on teachers.
- Ensure country ownership and civil society engagement.
- Focus on Education For All and on education rights.
- Address strategic issues in domestic financing of education.
- Deliver on promises.
- Build a true Global Partnership for Education.
It’s an ambitious agenda, but it’s central to achieving the education related Millennium Development and Education for All Goals.
In fact it’s central to achieving all the development goals, because we know that education directly influences a family’s health, well being and income.
That is why the replenishment of the Global Partnership for Education is so important and why these principles should be at the heart of a reinvigorated Partnership: because transforming aid to education can help transform the world.