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Africa: Global Fund for Education
AfricaFocus Bulletin
Sep 21, 2009 (090921)
(Reposted from sources cited below)
Editor's Note
"A Global Fund for Education holds the key to delivering on the
world's commitment to education for all by 2015. Evolving current
mechanisms into a more independent, inclusive, and accountable
institution can catalyze the resources and performance needed to
achieve universal education. [Because of the strong effects of
education on other development goals] this would make a major
contribution to reducing global poverty, empowering women, and
promoting economic growth in low-income countries around the
world." - Center for Universal Education
A year ago, at the annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative,
Presidential candidate Barack Obama pledged to establish a $2
billion Global Fund for Education so that every child around the
world can go to school. Noting that President Obama will again
address the Clinton Global Initiative this week, before appearances
at the United Nations and at the G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh, David
Gartner of the Center for Universal Education
(http://www.brookings.edu/universal-education.aspx) urges the
president to reaffirm his commitment and fill in the details.
Whether or not President Obama manages to add global education to
his top priorities while also addressing other pressing demands
such as the global economy, climate change, global health, and war
in Afghanistan, is uncertain. But the call for a new global fund
for education, on the model of the Global Fund to fight AIDS, TB,
and Malaria, is increasingly seen in policy circles as the only
plausible way to avoid letting education promises fall victim to
the economic downturn.
Few doubt the value of expanding education. The World Bank,
a former proponent of school fees that helped devastate African
education in the 1980s and 1990s, has joined in a program called
"The School Fee Abolition Initiative," Obama's top economic
adviser, Lawrence Summers, has noted that "educating girls yields
a higher rate of return than any other investment available in the
developing world," But as on global health and climate change, a
wide consensus on need is by no means a guarantee that the United
States and other rich countries will make the necessary
commitments.
This AfricaFocus Bulletin includes a recent policy brief from the
Center for Universal Education, and excerpts from a World Bank /
UNICEF book-length report on "Abolishing School Fees in Africa:
Lessons from Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, and Mozambique."
For previous AfricaFocus Bulletins on education-related issues, see
http://www.africafocus.org/educexp.php
For updates on issues related to education policy in Africa, see
the website of the Association for the Development of Education in
Africa (http://www.adeanet.org). The UN Girls' Education Initiative
(http://www.ungei.org) also has news updates, as well as background
information at the country level. And UNESCO publishes an annual
Education for All Global Monitoring Report (http://www.unesco.org/en/efareport), as well as news, background
reports, and country profiles..
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Book Announcement
Tom Shachtman's Airlift to America, released this month
(http://www.africafocus.org/books/isbn.php?0312570759) recounts the
early 1960s African American Student Foundation project to bring
some 800 students from East Africa to attend university. The book,
subtitled "How Barack Obama, Sr. , John F. Kennedy, Tom Mboya, and
800 East African Students Changed Their World and Ours," argues
that the Kennedy family's decision to support the airlift when it
was first rejected by the Eisenhower administration was quite
likely one of the factors leading to higher African American
turnout for Kennedy in the 1960 election. The book is based on the
archives of the Foundation, preserved by its director Cora Weiss
(see also the short essay "Peter and Cora Weiss: "The Atmosphere of
African Liberation": at http://www.noeasyvictories.org/select/13_weiss.php).
++++++++++++++++++++++end editor's note+++++++++++++++++++++++
A Global Fund for Education: Achieving Education for All
David Gartner, Co-Director, Center for Universal Education
The Brookings Institution
Brookings Policy Brief Series | # 169 | August 2009
http://www.brookings.edu/papers/2009/08_education_gartner.aspx
In order to realize the world's commitment to ensuring education
for all by 2015, important innovations and reforms will be needed
in the governance and financing of global education. In 2008,
Presidential Candidate Barack Obama committed to making sure that
every child has the chance to learn by creating a Global Fund for
Education. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has recently called
for a new architecture of global cooperation that requires
institutions to "combine the efficiency and capacity for action
with inclusiveness." A new Global Fund for Education should be an
independent and inclusive multi-stakeholder institution that builds
upon existing institutions and supports country-driven solutions.
It must be capable of mobilizing the approximately $7 billion
annually still needed to achieve education for all, while holding
all stakeholders accountable for achieving results with these
resources.
None of these objectives will be achieved without a major
rethinking of the global education architecture and an evolution of
current mechanisms for financing education. More than 75 million
children remain out of primary school, and only 53 of the 171
countries with available data have achieved gender parity in
primary and secondary education. Achieving these two Millennium
Development Goals, and the broader Education for All Goals set out
by 164 countries, will require more capable international
institutions. A Global Fund for Education that links funding to
performance, that ensures a greater share of resources reach
schools and that coordinates the efforts of diverse stakeholders is
essential to putting these goals within reach.
In order to realize President Obama's vision for creating a Global
Fund for Education, significant leadership by the United States on
global education will be needed in the coming year. A clear
commitment by the United States to leverage the contributions of
other nations and work together to support country-driven
strategies through a Global Fund for Education could catalyze
unprecedented international energy around achieving education for
all.
Learning from Existing and Innovative Mechanisms
The Global Fund for Education should reflect an evolution of the
successful elements of existing multilateral mechanisms. Seven
years ago, the Fast Track Initiative (FTI) was launched as the
primary financing vehicle for achieving education for all. Working
with key donors and international institutions, the FTI was
supposed to mobilize the resources needed to close the massive
education-financing gap. Housed within the World Bank, the FTI has
not yet been able to build a strong public brand, engage the
support of a number of leading donors or mobilize adequate
resources from major donor countries.
The FTI has not been capable of generating resources on a scale
consistent with its founding vision of achieving universal
education for all. Although the FTI initially focused on expanding
bilateral investments in education, in 2003 it created a
multilateral Catalytic Fund to mobilize additional resources with
an early focus on countries without major bilateral donors. In
2006, the FTI's multilateral Catalytic Fund represented
approximately 2% of aid commitments to basic education. Although
the number of countries contributing to the Catalytic Fund has
increased in recent years, many of the biggest donors are still not
participating, and just three countries accounted for over 70% of
total pledges in 2008. As a result, the FTI faces a shortfall of
$1.2 billion for the coming year, which is more than all the money
it has received from donors in the last six years. Although many
countries endorsed by the FTI have experienced increases in
bilateral basic education funding, their share of overall
assistance focused on basic education has not increased, a fact
that makes it hard to rule out the possibility that overall aid
trends were largely responsible for that growth.
The FTI has recently undertaken a set of internal governance
reforms designed to improve its performance, but these changes
alone are unlikely to overcome some of the structural challenges it
still faces. Without independent capacity for action, more
inclusive governance, greater attention to conflict-affected
countries and stronger accountability for results the FTI will not
be able to mobilize sufficient resources or deliver the results
that it was set up to achieve. At the same time, the FTI's model of
requiring and supporting the development of comprehensive national
education strategies and seeking to align donor funding around
these strategies should be incorporated in any evolution to a
Global Fund for Education. Similarly, the FTI's ambition of
aligning bilateral flows along with multilateral funding remains an
important objective to ensure that all types of donor funding are
being fully leveraged.
A Global Fund for Education should also draw on the successful
experience of other innovative global development financing
mechanisms. Among the most successful of these new institutions is
the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria (GFATM).
Since its inception, the GFATM has generated commitments of over
$20 billion and is now the leading source of external financing for
tuberculosis and malaria. One of the keys to the GFATM's success in
resource mobilization has been the strong engagement of both civil
society and developing countries as full partners with donors in
its governance. Civil society representatives and developing
countries have equal standing in decision-making at the global
level within the GFATM. As a result, civil society stakeholders
have been at the center of the largely successful drive for
resource mobilization for the Fund and partner countries are more
invested in its success.
Toward a Global Fund for Education
The core mission of the Global Fund for Education should be to
mobilize the financing needed to achieve universal quality
education. Linking successful early learning with meaningful
opportunities for secondary education, the Global Fund for
Education should maintain a focus on achieving universal quality
basic education for all while also supporting early childhood
learning and secondary schooling as part of a comprehensive
approach to education. The GFE should be guided by a set of core
principles, focused on key objectives, and reflect an evolution of
existing mechanisms:
1. Independent Capacity for Action
Independence from any other international institution will be
essential to establish the public profile necessary to succeed in
this resource mobilization challenge. The independence of the
Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has been a key
to its success, while the lack of independence of the FTI has been
a primary obstacle to its ability to mobilize sufficient resources.
An independent Global Fund for Education should still leverage the
expertise and commitment of other international institutions, such
as UNESCO, UNICEF and the World Bank. Technical experts from these
institutions can play an important role in supporting countries
both in the development of national strategies and in the effective
implementation of these strategies.
2. Inclusive Governance
Inclusive governance will be critical to building a
multi-stakeholder constituency that is committed to mobilizing
resources. Developing countries, civil society and donor countries
should be equal partners in a system in which there is equal
representation and the support of each constituency is necessary
for major decisions. Such a requirement in the governance structure
of the GFE will not only strengthen the internal decision-making
process by subjecting it to the scrutiny of diverse perspectives
but will also provide external legitimacy and increase the
effectiveness of its implementation efforts. Without such
inclusiveness, the Global Fund for Education will not be able to
succeed in either mobilizing donors to make education a top
priority nor in ensuring that these resources are being well-spent
in partner countries.
3. Country-Driven Solutions
Developing countries should set the agenda for the best approach
for themselves through the development of comprehensive national
education strategies. The Global Fund for Education should build on
the FTI's ambition of aligning donor investments around
comprehensive national education plans that reflect country-driven
solutions. In order to ensure that strategies are truly national
not simply government plans the Global Fund for Education should
mandate that civil society and other non-governmental stakeholders
are full partners in the development of these strategies at the
national level. Just as inclusive participation at the global level
supports effective resource mobilization, ensuring full
participation at the national-level supports effective
implementation by diverse stakeholders.
4. Accountability for Results
Accountability must be central to the design of the Global Fund for
Education. Systems to ensure financial accountability and that
money actually reaches the school level and helps students learn
are essential to the effectiveness of the Fund. Performance-based
disbursement, which connects continued funding with demonstrated
results, is the best way to create incentives for recipient
countries to deliver on promised results. In addition, key
indicators including gains in enrollment, gender equity and student
learning outcomes should be included among performance measures.
Utilizing improved measures for assessing student learning will be
critical to improving completion rates and maximizing the
development gains from education. In order to ensure some
reasonable predictability of financing, countries that show strong
performance should be eligible for extensions of funding over
significant periods.
5. Focus on Low-Income and Conflict-Affected States
Given the inevitable limits on the resources of the Global Fund for
Education, it is important to establish an allocation principle for
distributing funding. First, the eligibility for funding should be
limited to low-income countries, or those countries that are
eligible for funding under the World Bank's IDA window. Second,
there should be special attention to the challenges of states
currently experiencing or emerging from conflict and mechanisms to
ensure support for education in these states. Third, the GFE should
prioritize those countries categorized as least-developed and that
have the most limited national resources. Finally, funding should
generally be linked to the level of effort by national governments
in supporting education.
6. Leverage and Align Donor Resources
The Global Fund for Education holds enormous promise for mobilizing
funding from a diverse array of donors. Just as the Global Fund to
Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria has leveraged a two-to-one
match of U.S. resources from the rest of the world, the Global Fund
for Education could similarly leverage global resources for
education. In order to ensure adequate incentives for countries to
contribute their fair share, donor board seats should be allocated
and adjusted with reference to donor contributions. In addition,
there should be a regularized replenishment process built into the
initial design that is linked to the overall resource needs for
universal education and that encourages long-term commitments by
donors. The GFE should also be committed to providing multiple
channels for donor assistance, both bilateral and multilateral, as
long as these funds are truly aligned with national strategies.
While there is a clear need to expand multilateral financing for
education far beyond what has been possible to date, it is also
important that ongoing bilateral commitments are much better
integrated with the objectives of national education strategies.
A Global Fund for Education holds the key to delivering on the
world's commitment to education for all by 2015. Evolving current
mechanisms into a more independent, inclusive, and accountable
institution can catalyze the resources and performance needed to
achieve universal education. Since education is one of the most
leveraged of all development investments, establishing a Global
Fund for Education would make a major contribution to reducing
global poverty, empowering women, and promoting economic growth in
low-income countries around the world.
Abolishing School Fees in Africa
Lessons from Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, and Mozambique
The World Bank in collaboration with the United Nations Children's
Fund (UNICEF), 2009
250 page book. Available as pdf download at
http://www.unicef.org/publications/index_49325.html
Foreword
In the mid-1990s, often with the support of development agencies
and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), governments began to
champion the elimination of user fees in primary education. Among
the first countries to move in this direction were Malawi and
Uganda. It was at this point that the second hard lesson became
apparent. If poor children were the most vulnerable to the
imposition of fees and the existence of other economic barriers,
they could also, ironically, be the most vulnerable to unplanned or
under-planned attempts to remove these barriers. Early efforts to
remove fees showed the enormous power of such measures to increase
enrollments, but they also showed how quickly the promise of these
initiatives could be lost. Quality was compromised by dramatic
increases in class size and a loss of school-level funding, far too
frequently leaving the children of the poor no better off than
before.
These experiences showed that as important as school fee
elimination could be to facilitate the right to education and to
universalize primary education, it must be carefully planned and
widely negotiated if it is to make a positive and sustainable
impact on school access and learning outcomes. In short, school fee
abolition and similar measures to remove the economic barriers to
schooling, such as conditional cash transfers, are unlikely to
succeed unless they are part of a sustainable national education
plan to ensure that the children they are targeting complete a good
quality primary education. This requires careful planning and
implementation as well as major public investments. Most
development agencies and NGOs agree with countries that the
provision of additional teachers and materials will help to ensure
that any surge in school enrollment does not weaken the quality of
education or further disadvantage vulnerable populations. Also,
long-term predictable financing a key focus of the Education for
All Fast Track Initiative is regarded by all development partners
as necessary to enable schools to replace lost income from
abolished fees.
...
Chapter 1
The School Fee Abolition Initiative (SFAI) seeks to accelerate
progress toward quality education for all children by supporting
policies that remove cost barriers, preventing parents from
enrolling and maintaining their children at school. As explained
further in the preface to this book, SFAI was launched by the
United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) and the World Bank in 2005
as an instrument to ensure that existing Education for All (EFA)
commitments were met. ...
In many countries, recent efforts to reduce or abolish school fees
are, in fact, second attempts. The first efforts were initiated
many decades earlier but were abandoned or reversed under pressure
of economic crises. In Ghana, for instance, primary school fees
were first abolished in 1961; while in Kenya and Tanzania, fee
abolition policies were introduced in 1974. These policies had a
significant impact on enrollment and resulted in rapid gains toward
the goal of universal primary education (UPE). Over time, however,
the policies were largely abandoned, and many of the early gains
reversed.
Many countries have reintroduced fee abolition policies during the
past decade as part of the renewed international effort to achieve
UPE by 2015. Many more countries may be expected to follow suit in
the years to come. Since these countries confront many similar
challenges in preparing for and implementing fee abolition, it is
important to understand the lessons of past experience. To this
end, the SFAI workshop organized in Nairobi April 5 7, 2006, aimed
to harness the experience of six African countries (Ethiopia,
Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, and Tanzania) that have
introduced school fee abolition policies in recent years. ,,,
The increase in total primary school enrollment in the five case
study countries in the year following fee abolition was 12 percent
in Mozambique, 14 percent in Ghana, 18 percent in Kenya, 23 percent
in Ethiopia, and 51 percent in Malawi. The increase in grade 1
enrollment far exceeded the total increase for all grades. Similar
increases in enrollment in the year following fee abolition have
occurred in many other countries; for example, Cameroon, 26 percent
in total primary enrollment (59 percent in grade 1); Lesotho, 11
percent in total enrollment (75 percent in grade 1); Tanzania, 23
percent in total enrollment (43 percent in grade 1); and Uganda, 68
percent in total enrollment. This clearly demonstrates the
importance of fee abolition and cost considerations in determining
whether parents will be able to enroll and maintain their children
at school. However, past experience also shows that such gains have
been difficult to maintain through economic crises.
...
Many of the African countries that made strong progress toward
universal primary education during the 1960s and 1970s did so after
they abolished school fees, including three of the six countries
participating at the 2006 Nairobi SFAI Workshop (Ghana, Kenya, and
Tanzania). However, in all three cases the gains from the earlier
fee abolition policy were undermined by lack of financial
sustainability.
...
All five case studies raise questions about the impact of fee
abolition on the quality of education, both because the revenues
from fees typically provided for learning materials and because
resources must be shared among more pupils to cater to the
enrollment surge. This results in crowded classrooms and increased
pupil-teacher ratios (PTRs). Low quality was a serious concern
before fee abolition and, without a funded strategy to address
quality issues, the situation has often been more serious after the
removal of fees.15 While the case studies differ in many aspects,
the question of quality features in all of them.
AfricaFocus Bulletin is an independent electronic publication
providing reposted commentary and analysis on African issues, with
a particular focus on U.S. and international policies. AfricaFocus
Bulletin is edited by William Minter.
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