Multilateral agencies should renew their commitment to basic education

The international community, and multilateral agencies in particular, have vast potential to mobilize financial resources to help fill the $26 billion annual funding gap for education, according to a new paper. Here Pauline Rose, director of the EFA Global Monitoring Report, and Liesbet Steer, Fellow, Center for Universal Education, Brookings Institution outline the findings.

The support of multilateral agencies for basic education is slowing compared with other sectors and bilateral donors. Unless multilateral aid is increased, there is a danger that growing support to new areas such as skills development will squeeze the scarce resources for basic education even further, to the detriment of the most disadvantaged.

These findings emerge from new analysis of the contributions of the six most important multilateral donors to education, carried out jointly by the Brookings Institution and the Education for All Global Monitoring Report, and released as a paper timed to inform the Learning for All meetings taking place this week at the United Nations General Assembly.

Our joint paper looks at five of the largest multilateral agencies in terms of total financing for education: the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the African Development Bank (AfDB), the European Union institutions, the World Bank and UNICEF. The contribution of the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) – the fifth-largest donor to education – is also analysed.

New partnerships are needed to improve learning worldwide

What do children and young people need to learn? And how can we measure what they have learned? For the last 18 months, the Learning Metrics Task Force has put these questions to experts and agencies worldwide. Tomorrow it presents its recommendations, as Albert Motivans and Rebecca Winthrop explain.

The Learning Metrics Task Force – jointly run by the UNESCO Institute of Statistics and the Center for Universal Education at the Brookings Institution – has completed a far-reaching consultative process to build consensus on what learning outcomes all children and youth need and how they can be measured. Tomorrow the task force launches its recommendations in New York, in conjunction with the first anniversary of the United Nations secretary-general’s Global Education First Initiative.

One of the seven task force recommendations is to mobilize partners to provide countries with technical, institutional and political support to strengthen their assessment systems, improve learning outcomes and decrease disparities in learning achievement. While almost all countries measure learning in some way, all struggle with getting reliable data on learning and using that data to inform practice.

The United States is a clear example of a wealthy country with a robust testing system that has faced unintended consequences in using assessment data effectively to improve education quality.  For example, the national No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 tied student assessments to school funding and closures.  A 2006 analysis of learning outcomes found that several states demonstrating annual improvement in state-level tests actually showed declines in learning on a nationally comparable assessment, implying that states lowered their standards in order to retain federal funding.

Education gives girls dignity

Speech, by Mariam Khalique, teacher of Pakistani school girl Malala Yousafzai, at an  event in New York for the release of the Education For All Global Monitoring Report’s new analysis, Education Transforms.

Mariam giving her speech at the EFA Report event in New York. Photo: Rick Bajornas

“Bismillah! In the name of ALLAH, the most merciful, the most beneficent. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls – I feel honoured to be here today to be able to share my experiences with you.

Before sharing with you my story and experiences, I want to introduce myself. My name is Mariam Khalique and I have been teaching at the Khushal School and College in the Swat Valley in Pakistan for over 11 years. During my time at the school I was Malala Yousafzai’s teacher for many years. Where I come from, most of the people don’t know the value of education. This is the situation even though as you have heard from new UNESCO research that education can save lives.

It’s shocking when we stand here and talk about the importance of girls education here today because this is a basic right, which so many still do not have. Ideally, we are not supposed to ask for this right from somewhere else. Education is a basic human right and we are meant to have it already! It is like one breathes, eats and drinks. I fully agree with the UNESCO research, which shows that education transforms lives. It transforms men and women’s lives alike… I have seen it with my own eyes.

The fact that education transforms lives and this transformation is seen as unacceptable for many in Pakistan and the rest of the world who want to keep girls’ dependant, enslaved and socially paralysed in one name or other. The people who want to keep the status quo for their vested interest always oppose girls’ education because it moves societies and changes the world and they are afraid of change.

New data launched today: Education Transforms Lives

Today, one week before world leaders meet at the UN General Assembly, we have released new analysis confirming that education lights every stage of the journey to a better life, especially for the poor and the most vulnerable. Education’s unique power to act as a catalyst for wider development goals can only be fully realised, however, if it is equitable. That means making special efforts to ensure that all children and young people – regardless of their family income, where they live, their gender, their ethnicity, whether they are disabled – can benefit equally from its transformative power.

Education empowers girls and young women, in particular, by increasing their chances of getting jobs, staying healthy and participating fully in society – and it boosts their children’s chances of leading healthy lives.

To unlock the wider benefits of education, all children need the chance to complete not only primary school but also lower secondary school. And access to schooling is not enough on its own: education needs to be of good quality so that children actually learn.

Given education’s transformative power, it needs to be a central part of any post-2015 global development framework. Use this new analysis and share it with your networks. Sign our campaign action, and together let’s raise the message that ‘Education Transforms’ lives.

Our new evidence underlines education’s unique transformative power

Next week we will release new analysis showing how education transforms lives. Presented as a booklet with infographics by Information is Beautiful, the analysis will demonstrate education’s unrivalled power to boost wider development goals. In two weeks’ time, the shape of the world’s new development goals will be discussed at the UN General Assembly. We hope the development community will share and discuss our new analysis – and use it to make sure education gets the place it deserves in new goals post-2015.

To launch our new infographics, we are holding an event in a primary school in New York. Mariam Khalique, teacher of the Pakistani schoolgirl and education activist Malala Yousafzai, will be talking about our new findings to a class of children, civil society, media and UN leaders, including the Director General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, the Executive Director of UNICEF, Anthony Lake, and the UN Secretary-General’s advisor for post-2015 planning, Amina Mohammed. As a teacher in Pakistan, the country with the second-highest number of out-of-school children in the world, Mariam Khalique has many pertinent stories and experiences of education’s impact. We will show a video from the event once it is over so everyone can hear her stories..

We hope the UN leaders present at the event will help catapult upwards the message that ‘education transforms’ to those making the decisions at the General Assembly the following week.

Spotlight on Nigeria’s education crisis

Education in Nigeria is in crisis: 10.5 million children are out of school, more than in any other country, and over half of adults in the country are illiterate, a legacy of decades of poor education. In response, the United Nations Special Envoy for Global Education, Gordon Brown, attended an education summit yesterday in Abuja, Nigeria, together with President Goodluck Jonathan, state governors and the education commissioners of all 36 states.

The UN Special Envoy and the policy makers were joined by major education partners such as USAID, Qatar’s Educate a Child, the Global Partnership for Education, and the Global Business Coalition for Education. They were expected to announce significant new financial support for education and discuss how it could be used to build more schools, recruit and train more teachers, and implement new technology.

A similar trip by the UN Special Envoy in July helped put the education emergency in Pakistan in the spotlight. Nigeria fares worse in almost all respects than Pakistan, as was shown in our recent policy paper, released with the UNESCO Institute for Statistics. Over one in six of the world’s out-of-school children live in Nigeria. In addition, the situation has deteriorated in recent years. There were 3.6 million more children out of school in 2010 than in 2000. We hope that the education summit makes concrete plans not only to get all of those children into school, but also to make sure it happens by regularly monitoring progress, building on President Goodluck Jonathan’s proposal for a new census in 2014 to help track education progress. Assessing who is getting into school and who is being left behind is vital in order to know which policies need to be prioritized.

Savings groups can help reduce the financial barriers to education

By Stuart Cameron, Consultant, Oxford Policy Management, and Karen Moore, Economic Security Adviser, Plan UK

Savings groups are a low-risk form of microfinance used in many countries by Plan and other international NGOs. Do they help families keep their children in school? Stuart Cameron, and Karen Moore, both formerly of the EFA GMR team tell us in this blog that they do, at least in some contexts, by protecting children’s education from the harmful effects of official and unofficial school fees.

Despite the introduction of free primary education in many developing countries, households continue to have to pay for education, to cover the costs of unofficial fees, school uniforms, and books, for example, as described in the 2012 Education for All Global Monitoring Report (pp69-79). Particularly at higher levels of school and for poor communities still dependent on subsistence farming, these costs are a barrier to learning. Could access to better, village-level facilities for saving and borrowing money help lower these financial barriers?

Savings groups – a low-risk form of microfinance based on members’ own savings, often known as Village Savings and Loans Associations – are a key strategy employed by Plan to enhance household economic security. Savings groups are an effective way to foster a savings habit, smooth household income, and build household financial assets. These groups meet periodically (usually weekly), require members to contribute savings, allow members to take loans with interest, and ‘share out’ the accumulated savings and interest to members at the end of a cycle (usually annual). Plan International has facilitated savings groups since 2003, reaching about 850,000 people – around 82% of them women – in 25 countries.

Share your views on the Global Education First Initiative

The EFA Global Monitoring Report team has been asked to conduct a review of the Global Education First Initiative (GEFI) in its first year of action.

GEFI is a five-year initiative led by the United Nations Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon. It gathers a broad spectrum of world leaders and advocates who all aspire to use the transformative power of education to build a better future for all. This support of the UN Secretary-General for education is a testament to its enduring importance in sustainable global development. It is also a much-needed reaction to the urgent needs of the 250 million children who are not learning the basics whether in school or not.

Since 2002, the EFA Global Monitoring Report has been an authoritative reference that aims to inform, influence and sustain genuine commitment towards Education for All. The independent report team, based at UNESCO, will carry out an initial review of the main actions and impact accomplished by GEFI in its first year. On the basis of our findings, we will also offer concrete recommendations to strengthen GEFI’s activities in the coming years in ways that are translated into improvement in education for children.

To help with our assessment, we have created a simple survey to gauge the general level of awareness and opinions towards GEFI. All are welcome to share their views and recommendations to help with our review and to inform GEFI’s ongoing work. The survey is also available in French and in Spanish. We look forward to receiving your responses.

We believe education transforms lives. Do you?

With just a few weeks to go before world leaders gather at the United Nations General Assembly, the EFA Global Monitoring Report team is launching a new website, ‘Education Transforms’, containing infographics showing education’s pivotal role in achieving progress across different areas of development – whether poverty eradication, health, environmental sustainability, or women’s empowerment. Join us in using this evidence to call on world leaders to ensure education’s central place in the global development framework after 2015 by completing the online call for action.

Education is a powerful transformative tool, but only when policy makers recognize this and act upon it will we achieve genuine change. Even though education has been voted as the top priority by the public in the My World Survey, it is going to take a lot more to capture the full attention of the world leaders.

Education and Sanitation – In Ethiopia, 6.8 million people gained access to improved sanitation from 1990 to 2006. This was partly the result of having educated communities about the links between sanitation and health, and of implementing new, affordable technologies.

On the 19th September – the week before the UN General Assembly where new development goals will be discussed – our Education Transforms website will be updated with new infographics designed by Information is Beautiful, which will present fresh evidence of education’s indispensable and far-reaching role in supporting wider development goals. These infographics will be presented in a booklet that will be launched at an event in New York on that day, pre-releasing analysis from the forthcoming EFA Global Monitoring Report 2013/14.

In Pakistan, government inertia is education’s greatest enemy

Malala Yousafzai has drawn global attention to the Taliban’s attacks on education. But education in Pakistan may have an even worse enemy: the government itself. Kevin Watkins, former director of the Education for All Global Monitoring Report and now director of the Overseas Development Institute, says Pakistan’s failure to tax the wealthy elite is directly linked to its failure to spend enough on education.

Malala Yousafzai, the 16-year-old Pakistani schoolgirl who was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman for the “crime” of going to school, gave a speech to the United Nations Youth Assembly last week that was a defiant, inspiring and passionate defence of the right to education. “Let us pick up our books and our pens,” she said. “They are our most powerful weapons. One child, one teacher, one book and one pen can change the world.”

Instead of silencing a critic, the Taliban have created an icon and a global champion for girls’ education. With 31 million girls still out of school, we need one. Malala’s speech was a challenge to the Western governments who applauded her speech but have been cutting back on aid for education. But it was an even starker challenge to Pakistan’s political elite. Successive governments have failed to address an education crisis that is locking millions of children into poverty, and the country into a future of economic stagnation, mass unemployment and political instability.

The attack on Malala galvanized moderate opinion in Pakistan. Then President Asif Ali Zardari condemned the Taliban’s actions as ‘an attack on education’ and civilization. Nawaz Sharif, opposition leader at the time of the shooting and now prime minister, proudly declared Malala ‘the daughter of the nation’. In a tragicomic episode, even the Taliban has made a half-hearted effort at an apology for the shooting.

Malala’s shooting was one episode in a brutal war of attrition. Having ordered the closure of all girls’ schools in the Swat Valley, a local Taliban commander was outraged by Malala’s public condemnation of his three-pronged approach to enforcement of the edict: blowing up schools, murdering teachers and intimidating children.