Literacy in schools - Donors drag their heels

One of the most significant levers for eradicating illiteracy is the worldwide drive to achieve universal primary education (UPE) by 2015. It was backed by some 180 countries, the United Nations and international aid organizations, and grassroots representatives at the World Education Forum in Dakar, Senegal in 2000. 

Developing countries pledged to draw up national action plans to achieve Education For All by 2002 and the international community pledged that no country that was serious about reform to achieve these goals would be thwarted by “lack of resources”.

World leaders meeting at last year’s G8 summit in Canada backed a Fast Track Initiative led by the World Bank to assess and support national action plans and draw in funds from donor governments for countries ready to carry out the reforms.

The process has galvanized up to two dozen countries to re-examine their education systems and gear up towards making primary education free.

The most spectacular development came when the new Kenyan president, Mwai Kibaki, abolished school fees in January and millions of extra children flooded into school.

By November 12, countries – Burkina Faso, Niger, Mauritania, Uganda, Ethiopia, Guinea, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guyana, Yemen and Tanzania – had finalized Education Action Plans and were waiting for donors to turn their pledges of support into cash.

These are relatively small- population countries in which 16m children do not attend school compared with an estimated 115.4m worldwide.

But aid officials from industrialized countries gathering at the first Donor Consortium on Education for All in Brussels in late November agreed to give only $400m to seven countries with four million out of school, instead of the $700m extra which the Global Campaign for Education - grouping NGOs and teachers unions - says is needed to fund the 12 countries’ reforms.

“It is a tiny amount of money and they haven’t worked out where it is going to come from,” said Oliver Buston, senior policy adviser to Oxfam, a leading NGO in the GCE.

This does not bode well for attempts to rally support for reforms in the five countries with the highest out-of-school populations - 50 million children between Bangladesh, Democratic Republic of Congo, India, Nigeria and Pakistan - as they will require massive hikes in aid to basic education.

In a briefing paper for the consortium, the Global Campaign said: “Too many countries are falling through the gaps because donors do not consider them to be politically strategic or because the donors that do support them do not focus on basic education.”

It also highlighted the serious lack of aid to basic education in Francophone Africa, an issue which France, the main donor engaged in those countries, could address.

It urged Germany to follow through on its commitment to support up to three Fast Track countries – Mozambique, which has increased education spending to 18 percent of its budget but needs an immediate $91m to launch its plan, Honduras and Guinea.

And it called on the United States to offer more help to Nicaragua, which despite a strong record on raising primary enrolment, especially among girls, can’t fund its plan without extra cash.

In all, the GCE is demanding that 18 countries ready to receive aid via the Fast Track Initiative be fully funded by June, and that a timetable be drawn up to extend funding to at least 30 countries including the big five.

The Dakar goal cannot be met, however, unless education also spreads in those countries that so far have not drawn up credible reform plans – whether due to weak government, the degrading of infrastructure by conflict, or corruption.

One solution suggested by the 2002 Education For All Global Monitoring Report, is to send in an international task force to work with governments to draw up action plans and monitor progress. Acceptance by the host government would be the condition for receiving extra funds under the Fast Tract Initiative.

The EFA report warned that 57 countries are unlikely to achieve universal primary education by 2015.

However, one significant development is the impact being made by coalitions of civil society groups in developing countries who are pressing their governments to make UPE a priority.

And a sign that the Dakar drive – from UN-led international meetings down to village parents committees - is gaining some momentum is the new respect given to education ministers in government Cabinets, especially in Africa.

“The big change is that political will is being generated at all levels,” said Oliver Buston.


*online at http://www.unesco.org/education/efa

Photo © UNESCO/Dominique Roger : Learning English at a primary school in Ethiopia's Debre Markos region.

 

Author(s)	Brendan O’Malley
Periodical Name	the new Courier No 2

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© 2003 - UNESCO