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Time To
Put Money Where Your Mouth Is, NGOs Tell Govts in
Mexico
By Marwaan Macan-Markar
Inter Press Service
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 MEXICO CITY, Apr 25 (IPS World Desk) - Forget
empty rhetoric; focus on the bottom line. That, in essence, is
what an international coalition of education activists have
called for on the eve of the World Education Forum, in
Senegal, on Apr. 26.. |
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What is more, the Global Campaign for
Education (GCE), which heads this coalition, has already
released a set of nine demands, five of which deal with the
financial issues it has in mind. They clamour for, among
others, a commitment by governments to publicly guarantee
''their part of the necessary resources for basic
education''. |
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According to the GCE, such a financial
commitment, requiring an increase in the proportion of the
gross national product (GNP) allocated to basic education,
cannot be ignored if the Dakar gathering is to achieve its
objective of basic education all over the world by
2015. |
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''National strategies should include
costed and practical steps to address the need to bring
high-quality teaching skills and active learning to every
public school,'' it added in a statement directed to national
education leaders from 180 countries due to attend the
three-day conference in Dakar. |
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To do otherwise will result in the Forum
''delivering nothing,'' says Oxfam, a London-based NGO partner
of the GCE. |
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According to Kevin Watkins, a senior
policy advisor at Oxfam, ''The point of the meeting is not
just to talk, but to come up with practical ways of achieving
education for all.'' |
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What Oxfam wants to avoid is a repetition
of the scenario that followed the World Conference on
Education for All in Jomtien, Thailand, 10 years ago. At that
meeting, 155 countries pledged to provide all children with
good quality basic education by 2000. |
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However, as Oxfam revealed in February this
year, governments ''shamefully failed to deliver on the
commitments they made 10 years ago.'' And a study done by it
on the current state of education compelled it to conclude,
''We're a long way off meeting the
targets.'' |
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Early this month, the GCE spelled out the
financial package it had in mind when it launched the Global
Action Plan for Education. It estimated that 8 billion dollars
will have to be invested annually for 10 years in the
developing world to ensure children receive quality education
for the first eight years in school.'' |
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Governments in the developing countries,
it added, will have to raise half of this amount through
''increased resource mobilisation and the redistribution of
wasteful public spending, such as military
expenditure.''. |
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For that, the GCE expects at least six
percent of a country's GNP to be set aside annually for
education. Such a figure has been based on the recommendations
made by the International Commission on Education for the
Twenty-first Century (also known as the Delors
Commission). |
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The rest of the funding, declares GCE's
plan, will have to flow from the international community.
Increased development assistance, in its view, will have to
make a substantial contribution. |
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According to its calculations, ''allocating
eight percent of aid budgets to basic education would mobilise
an additional 3 billion dollars. Currently the share of OECD
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) aid
budgets allocated to basic education is only around two
percent of the total.'' |
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For Sheldon Shaeffer, who heads the
education section at the United Nations Children's Fund
(UNICEF), the GCE's expectations from developing countries is
a ''reasonable'' one. |
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''As a general guideline,'' he says, ''six
percent is widely regarded as a reasonable proportion for
allocation to the whole education sector.'' |
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He adds, however, that the figure is ''a
crude measure'', since it does not reflect the level of the
GNP, nor how that expenditure ''is spread across the education
sector''. |
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Over the last 10 years, the manner in which
Third World governments have invested in education has varied
from region to region.. |
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Cuba and Costa Rica, for instance, have
been setting aside 6 percent of their GNP annually for
education, as against Brazil, which has been spending in the
neighbourhood of 4.8 percent. But three other countries in
Latin America, El Salvador, Guatemala and Peru, have averaged
less than 2.5 percent.. |
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In Asia, on the other hand, funding
ranges from the People's Democratic Republic of Lao, which has
allocated as little as 0.5 percent, as against a country like
Bangladesh, which has come close to investing 6
percent. |
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According to Shaeffer, South Africa has
consistently spent more than 6 percent of its GNP on
education. By contrast, Cote d'Ivoire has come close to 4.5
percent. |
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Still, UNICEF believes that for all
countries there is a strong case for advocating an increase in
funds for education, since there are a number of governments
that are ''spending less than 2 percent of GNP on (basic)
education.''. |
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And the consequence of that is evident by the
number of adults and children who have had no formal
education. UNICEF offers one illustration: Nearly a billion
people entered the 21st century ''unable to read a book or
sign their names much less operate a computer or understand a
simple application form.'' |
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And the consequence of that is evident by
the number of adults and children who have had no formal
education. UNICEF offers one illustration: Nearly a billion
people entered the 21st century ''unable to read a book or
sign their names much less operate a computer or understand a
simple application form.'' |
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Of that number, close to 880 million were
illiterate adults, two-thirds of whom were women, and the rest
were illiterate children, 60 percent of whom were
girls. |
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Oxfam provides more: In Vietnam, 68 percent of families living
in poverty are headed by someone with no education; in Peru,
about two-thirds of extremely poor families are headed by
someone with no education. |
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And in Zambia, rural women with no education are twice as
likely to be living in extreme poverty as those who have
benefited from eight and 12 years of education. .
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Only through clear commitments, asserts the GCE, can
governments transform such a story of failure. What matters,
in its view, is the bottom line linking finance to the
policies needed to deliver on the promise of education for
all.
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This
article is free of copyright restrictions and can be
reproduced provided that Inter Press Service is
credited. |
