BRIEFLY: 200 million children denied their right to early childhood care and education

To mark Education for All Global Action Week, the Global Campaign for Education is launching a report today that considers early childhood care and education – the focus of the week – from the point of view of human rights.

The report, Rights from the start, argues that early childhood care and education is commonly misunderstood as merely a tool to increase human capital and economic development. This can overshadow the right every person has to care and education in their early years – a right that is currently denied to 200 million children. As we point out in the policy paper we released for Global Action Week, most children still do not go to pre-school, and the children who miss out are those who need it the most.

The report from the Global Campaign for Education calls on governments to commit to care and education for all young children, without discrimination, ensuring that teachers are trained and supported and that investment is increased. It also calls on donor governments to honour their commitments to support countries to achieve Education for All.

How pre-school can transform children’s chances

Young children are ready to learn, but their early experiences are crucial in facilitating their learning. As we explain in our new policy paper on early childhood care and education, there is striking evidence that extending pre-school access to the poorest and most vulnerable children can boost their education and livelihood opportunities later in life. In our second blog post for Education for All Global Action Week (April 22-28), we look at some of that evidence.

The more time children spend in pre-school, the better their performance in primary school. Recent evidence based on the 2009 PISA survey shows that in 58 of 65 countries, 15-year-old students who had attended at least a year of pre-primary school outperformed students who had not, even after accounting for socio-economic background.

Detailed evidence based on long-term studies from high income countries shows that pre-school contributes to school readiness and later academic achievement through the development of non-cognitive skills, such as attention, effort, initiative and behaviour, as well as cognitive skills in reading and mathematics. There is now a growing body of evaluations from developing countries highlighting the benefits of pre-schooling.

The benefits of pre-school for non-cognitive skills are demonstrated by a study in Argentina. As well as having higher test scores, third graders who had one year of public pre-primary school in an urban area showed improved attention, effort, class participation and discipline. In rural Gansu, Shaanxi and Henan, China, 4- and 5-year-olds who had attended pre-primary education scored 20% higher on a school readiness scale than those who had not.

Children who need pre-school most are missing out

By Pauline Rose, director of the Education for All Global Monitoring Report

Young children who are marginalized by poverty or other factors stand to benefit most from early childhood care and education – but across the world, they are the ones who have least access to it. Offering disadvantaged children better health care, nutrition and pre-schooling is one of the most urgent priorities on the Education for All agenda – and the focus of this year’s Education for All Global Action Week, from April 22 to April 28.

In time for Global Action Week, the EFA Global Monitoring Report team has released a new policy paper that focuses on ways of making sure that all children get a chance to attend pre-school. The majority of the world’s young children are excluded from pre-school – and those who do attend are disproportionately from wealthy, urban families.

In 2009, the latest year for which figures are available, 157 million children were enrolled in pre-primary education programmes. This is an increase of 40% since 1999 – but the gross enrolment ratio is still only 46%. In other words, more than half of the world’s children don’t get a chance to improve the linguistic, cognitive and social skills that are the foundations for lifelong learning. (In a second blog post for Global Action Week, we’ll look at some striking evidence that equitable access to high quality pre-schooling markedly improves young children’s readiness to succeed in primary school.)

A large proportion of children excluded from pre-school are from poor and/or rural families. A look at pre-school enrolment in three countries – illustrated by new data analysis by the GMR team for the 2012 Report presented in the tree diagrams here – shows how much those patterns of disadvantage can vary.

Pre-school participation varies significantly within countries

Percentage of children aged 36 to 59 months who are attending pre-primary education, by characteristic

Education as a way out of exploitation

A new video and an accompanying article released by UNICEF about education in northern Benin turn the spotlight on child labour, child trafficking and other factors that rob children of their right to education.

As we will discuss in our forthcoming 2012 Education for All Global Monitoring Report on youth, skills and work, children who are trapped into exploitative labour from an early age are unlikely to escape low-paid and insecure work as they get older. Getting children out of work and into classrooms is therefore a key way for these children to escape poverty.

The video tells the story of Kabirou Sayo from Djougou in Benin who, at the age of 12, was tricked into travelling to Nigeria, where he was obliged to work. Child trafficking and labour are among the reasons some children do not attend school in Benin – a country that had 79,000 out-of-school children in 2009, according to the UNESCO Institute of Statistics.

In 2008 (the latest year for which figures are available) there were 215 million child workers in the world  – 20% more than in 2004, according to the ILO. Of these, 53% were in hazardous work. Even if some child labourers manage to combine work and school, they often achieve poorly compared to their peers who are not in work – even after taking other factors like school and household characteristics into account, as we found in the 2010 EFA Global Monitoring Report, Reaching the marginalized.

It’s official: the global recession has severely hit aid budgets

By Elise Legault, research officer, Education for All Global Monitoring Report

The OECD has just released foreign aid figures for 2011, and they show that for the first time since 1997, official development assistance (ODA) has decreased in real terms – by 3% compared with 2010. This drop is a clear result of the financial crisis, but because aid budgets tend to react to changes in the economic context with a time lag, 2011 is the first year where we can plainly see the effect.

Sixteen of the 23 members of the OCED’s Development Assistance Committee (DAC) reduced their aid, some of them drastically. Under severe budget pressure, Spain, which had become an important donor in the past decade, made cuts of over 30%. Japan cut its aid by 10%. Other key donors such as Canada, Norway and France also made cuts, albeit more modest. In the case of France, the drop is most likely due to the change of status of the island of Mayotte into a department in 2011, which now makes it ineligible to receive aid. In 2010, Mayotte had received the equivalent of over US$600 million, 7% of all French ODA.

On the other hand Australia, Germany, Sweden and Switzerland managed to continue increasing their aid budgets despite the crisis. The United States and the United Kingdom made negligible cuts, but in the latter’s case this was following a large increase in 2010.

What does this mean for education? Aid figures per sector for 2011 will not be released until later in the year, but the decrease in overall aid suggests education will suffer. There is no indication that the sector will receive a larger share of total aid, and we already know that the World Bank, the most important donor to basic education, massively decreased its support after a boost in 2009 and 2010. Its disbursements are expected to grow again in 2012 however.

C’est officiel: la crise a sévèrement affecté l’aide au développement

Par Elise Legault, chargée de recherche, Rapport mondial de suivi sur l’Éducation pour tous

Les données pour l’aide publique au développement (APD) pour l’année 2011 viennent tout juste d’être publiées par l’OCDE, et pour la première fois depuis 1997, l’aide étrangère a diminué en termes réels —de 3% par rapport à 2010. Cette baisse est une conséquence directe de la crise financière, mais puisque les budgets d’aide ont tendance à réagir lentement aux changements économiques, 2011 est la première année pour laquelle nous pouvons réellement en observer l’impact. 16 des 23 donateurs membres du Comité d’aide au développement (CAD) de l’OCDE ont réduit leur aide, certains de manière drastique.

À la suite de sévères pressions budgétaires, l’Espagne, qui était devenue un donateur important durant la dernière décennie, a effectué des coupures de plus de 30%. Le Japon a diminué son aide de 10%. D’autres importants bailleurs comme le Canada, la Norvège et la France ont aussi coupé, mais plus modestement. Dans le cas de la France, la réduction est probablement due au changement de statut de l’île de Mayotte, qui est devenue un département d’outre-mer en 2011, et qui ne peut donc plus être classée comme récipiendaire. En 2010, Mayotte a reçu plus the $600 millions, 7% de toute l’APD française.

D’un autre côté l’Australie, l’Allemagne, la Suède et la Suisse continuent d’augmenter leur aide malgré la crise. Les États-Unis et le Royaume-Uni ont effectué des coupes minimes, mais dans le dernier cas à la suite d’importantes augmentations en 2010.

Qu’est-ce que cela signifie pour l’éducation? Les données de l’aide par secteur pour l’année 2011 ne seront pas publiées avant la fin de l’année, mais la baisse générale indique que l’éducation risque de souffrir.  Aucun signe ne suggère que le secteur recevra une plus grande part de l’aide totale, et nous savons déjà que la Banque mondiale, le plus important donateur d’aide à l’éducation de base, a grandement réduit son soutien après une augmentation en 2009 et 2010. Par contre les déboursements devraient ré-augmenter en 2012.

How education leads to better health

In 2008, 1.8 million children’s lives could have been saved if all mothers had secondary education, according to the 2011 Education for All Global Monitoring Report. That’s just one of the many health benefits of maternal education that we have underlined in EFA Global Monitoring Reports. To mark World Health Day, April 7, here are some others that we have highlighted in blog posts, infographics and reports:

Educated mothers know more about HIV. As we highlighted on World AIDS Day 2011, about 1,000 children are infected with HIV every day, almost all of them during their mother’s pregnancy, during childbirth or when they are being breastfed. These infections could be avoided if mothers knew more about how HIV is transmitted. In fact, women with post-primary education are five times more likely than illiterate women to be educated about HIV and AIDS.

Maternal education increases antenatal care. Women with education are far more likely to immunize their children and seek antenatal care. As our Education Counts booklet pointed out, in Indonesia child vaccination rates are 19% when mothers have no education. This increases to 60% when mothers have at least a secondary school education.

Où va l’aide française à l’éducation? À la France, en grande partie

Par Elise Legault, chargée de recherche, Rapport mondial de suivi sur l’Éducation pour tous

L’aide internationale devrait être destinée aux pays étrangers. Pourtant il existe plusieurs zones grises quant à ce qui peut être considéré comme de l’aide, et quels pays peuvent être classés comme récipiendaires. Par exemple, un coup d’œil aux données de l’aide à l’éducation suggère que la France est un très bon élève: le plus important donateur bilatéral d’aide à l’éducation, déboursant $1.9 milliards en 2009 (l’année la plus récente pour laquelle des données sont disponibles). Toutefois, seulement le quart de cette somme se rend aux pays en voie de développement. Le reste ne quitte pas les frontières de la France, ou bénéficie directement à des citoyens français.

De telles pratiques devraient être scrutées ce mercredi à Paris lors d’une discussion sur l’aide française où sera présente Melinda Gates, co-présidente de la Fondation Bill et Melinda Gates. Le panel aura lieu à l’École des hautes études en sciences sociales et a été organisé par l’organisation non-gouvernementale ONE, en collaboration avec le site web Huffington Post et l’Institut du développement durable et des relations internationales.

Seulement un quart de l’aide française à l’éducation est dépensée pour les systèmes éducatifs des pays en voie de développement.

Au Rapport mondial de suivi sur l’Éducation pour tous, nous notons depuis plusieurs années que la majorité de l’aide à l’éducation postsecondaire venant de la France, de l’Allemagne et d’autres plus petits donateurs comme l’Autriche et le Portugal va aux « coûts imputés des étudiants étrangers ». Ce sont les dépenses encourues quand des étudiants venant de pays en voie de développement étudient dans des établissements de pays donateurs. Comme le montre la figure ici, en 2009 la moitié de l’aide française à l’éducation a de cette façon été dirigée vers des institutions françaises d’enseignement supérieur.

De plus, une bonne partie de la moitié restante est envoyée à deux « collectivités d’outre-mer » françaises, un statut particulier entre le département d’outre-mer (donc faisant partie officiellement de la France) et un territoire indépendant. L’île de Mayotte dans l’océan Indien est devenue un département français en 2011, et dans les années précédant ce changement de statut, la France a investi des millions dans son système éducatif.

Where is French aid to education going? To France, mostly

By Elise Legault, research officer, Education for All Global Monitoring Report

Foreign aid is supposed to go to foreign countries. But there are many grey areas in terms of what can be counted as aid, and who can be classified as a recipient. Figures on total aid to education, for example, suggest France is a top performer: it was the largest bilateral donor to education in 2009 (the latest year for which data are available) with $1.9 billion disbursed. But only a quarter of this sum goes to developing countries. The rest essentially stays in France, or directly benefits French citizens.

Such practices should come under scrutiny on Wednesday at a panel discussion in Paris on French aid, featuring Melinda Gates, co-president of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The panel debate at the social science college EHESS (École des hautes études en sciences sociales) has been convened by the advocacy network ONE in collaboration with the news website the Huffington Post and the French think tank IDDRI.

Only a quarter of French aid to education is spent on developing countries' education systems.

For several years in the Education for All Global Monitoring Report we have highlighted the fact that the majority of aid to post-secondary education from France, Germany and smaller donors such as Austria or Portugal goes to “imputed student costs,” or the cost of educating developing-country students in institutions in donor countries. As the figure here shows, in 2009 half of all French aid to education was channelled to French higher education institutions that way.

Of the remaining half, a good chunk goes to two French “overseas collectivities,” a unique status between an overseas department (officially part of France) and an independent territory. Mayotte, an island in the Indian Ocean, became an overseas French department in 2011, and in the years running up to this change of status, France poured millions into its education system.

BRIEFLY: Attacks in Nigeria leave thousands without schools

One common impact of conflict on education – which we noted in the 2011 Education for all Global Monitoring Report – is the tendency for armed groups to attack schools. Since the beginning of this year, the Islamist group Boko Haram has burned down at least 12 schools in northern Nigeria, according to a recent report by Human Rights Watch, leaving several thousand children without access to education. Schools are often targeted as symbols of state authority – especially when insurgents oppose the type of education promoted by governments, as is the case with Boko Haram, whose name means “Western learning is forbidden.”

Schools may be easy targets, but rebel groups who attack them now run the risk of being “named and shamed” by the United Nations (a measure that has proved to be effective in deterring other practices, such as recruiting child soldiers). In line with one of the major recommendations of the 2011 Education for All Global Monitoring Report, the UN Security Council last year adopted Resolution 1998, which recognizes attacks on schools as grave violations of human rights and adds them to the crimes for which government forces and armed militias can be named in the UN Secretary-General’s annual report on children and armed conflict.