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HEADLINE: Global Education Plan Gains Backing; World Bank's Goal Is to Battle Poverty by Reducing Illiteracy in Poor Nations

BYLINE: Paul Blustein, Washington Post Staff Writer

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Global financial leaders gave broad backing yesterday to a World Bank plan aimed at ensuring that by 2015 all children in poor countries get at least a primary-school education.

The plan, called "Education for All," still lacks firm financial commitments from many major donors, most notably the United States. That is a source of concern to aid advocates who warned that the initiative would likely fail unless the Bush administration provides enthusiastic leadership in the form of a sizable contribution.

But at a news conference that capped weekend meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, World Bank President James D. Wolfensohn said he was "extremely heartened by the support" for the plan shown by members of a policy-setting committee that represented the bank's 183 member nations, including Treasury Secretary Paul H. O'Neill, who represented the United States. "What I hoped to get today on education. . . . I got," Wolfensohn said. "It was a whole-hearted endorsement." The British aid group Oxfam International hailed the plan as "a major breakthrough in the campaign to get every child in the world into school," while adding the admonition that rich nations must now back up their words with billions of dollars in funds.

About 125 million primary-school-age children in developing countries, the majority of them girls, do not attend school. Getting nearly all of those children to attend class and complete five years of primary education is widely regarded by development experts as one of the most achievable and important of the goals set two years ago by the world's governments for 2015. Reducing illiteracy among women generates benefits in poor societies, including improved child health and nutrition.

During the weekend meetings, the World Bank warned that 88 countries will fall considerably short of meeting the education goal, if they continue on their present course. The bank said that it will cost $ 2.5 billion to $ 5 billion annually to help the 47 poorest countries meet the goal, and the cost of achieving the goal in all developing countries is projected at perhaps triple that amount.

The big question facing the World Bank's plan is whether the United States and other wealthy countries will contribute substantial amounts of their aid dollars to a coordinated effort or channel more funds into their own programs, which often offer political benefits by, for example, allowing donors to claim credit for the building of particular schools and hospitals.

The World Bank plan is based on the idea that the poor countries, rather than the donors, should play the main role in devising blueprints for improving their education systems, and that any country with a sensible plan can count on receiving sufficient foreign assistance for it. Ten countries will be selected for "fast track" funding to demonstrate effective approaches for increasing enrollments.

Oxfam and some other aid advocates voiced worry yesterday that the Bush administration, despite its strong pro-education rhetoric and recent pledge to increase U.S. foreign aid, is chary of the multilateral approach involved in the World Bank plan. So far only a handful of nations, including Germany, the Netherlands and Norway, have offered funding for the plan.

Those concerns were eased somewhat in a statement O'Neill made to the World Bank's Development Committee. "We believe the World Bank and other donors should be prepared to significantly increase funding for basic education in those countries with strong policy and financial commitments to this sector," O'Neill said.

Phil Twyford, an Oxfam spokesman, said after the meeting that he was "really encouraged" by O'Neill's words, "but it's a matter of, 'Show me the money.' It's fine for the U.S. to say that other peoples' money can be used for this plan, but will the U.S. come through with its own funds?"

The next major hurdle for the plan looms when President Bush and other leaders of the Group of Seven major industrial nations meet in June in Alberta, Canada. The plan's advocates are hoping the G-7 will issue concrete financial commitments at the conference to eventually spend as much as $ 10 billion a year on the plan.

The agreement yesterday "has the potential to be a watershed event if the G-7 countries step up to the plate financially and coordinate their efforts," said Gene Sperling, a former top economic adviser in the Clinton administration who now directs the Forum on Universal Education at the Brookings Institution.

In other developments at yesterday's meetings, participants have not resolved a dispute between the United States and European nations over a Bush plan that would convert much of the World Bank's aid to poor countries to grants instead of loans. British Development Secretary Clare Short said, however, that the two sides have narrowed their differences significantly.

The dispute has aroused extraordinary rancor. Short has described the U.S. proposal as "crazy" because it might sap the World Bank's financial strength, and O'Neill has called Short's stance "stupid" because, he contends, it shows more concern for the bank's finances than the condition of the poor.



LOAD-DATE: April 22, 2002