Financing Education / pdf - Unesco

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CHAPTER 4
Education for All Global Monitoring Report
France was
the largest
contributor to
the education
sector during
2004–2005,
committing
US$1.5 billion
a year
have seen their share decrease by about two
percentage points. This is the case for Ghana,
Malawi and Senegal. A positive trend in relation
to achievement of the EFA goals is that the share
of basic education in total aid to education in each
of the top ten recipient countries has increased,
averaging 76% in 2004–2005. In these countries,
the increase in aid to basic education has resulted
more from a higher priority given to this level than
from the global increase of aid to education.
The data presented so far do not show the
major year-on-year variations that occur in
aid commitments. For instance, very large
commitments for basic education were made
to several of the ten largest recipients in 2004,
including to some of the world’s most populous
countries. Bangladesh, for one, received
commitments of US$700 million for basic education
in 2004 and India received US$950 million (see
annex, Aid Table 4). This pattern was not repeated
in 2005.
Changing donor strategies for education
Donor strategies for education in general, and
for basic education, vary. As was highlighted in
Table 4.8, for all donors combined, the priority
given to education remained mostly stable over
1999–2005. However, individual donors behaved
differently, as Table 4.10 shows. Among multilateral
donors, IDA and the European Commission have
been the largest contributors to education. IDA’s
commitments amounted to an average of
US$1.4 billion annually in 2004 and 2005, which was
72% above the level in 1999. The reason was more
an increased level of total IDA aid than a higher
priority for education. European Commission
contributions averaged US$0.8 billion annually in
2004 and 2005. This was equal to only 8% of all
sector grants, a lower share than almost all other
multilateral and bilateral donors, and represented
a decrease in the share compared to 1999.
The importance accorded to education within total
aid varies among bilateral donors. France was the
largest contributor to the education sector during
2004–2005, committing US$1.5 billion a year, which
was 40% of its total aid to sectors. The next largest
donors were Japan, at US$1 billion, and the United
States, with US$670 million. These levels of aid
represent a relatively small share of their total aid.
Japan allocates only 12% of its sector aid to
education (up from just 5% in 1999), and the
United States less than 4%.
The distribution of aid across levels of education
is also crucial. Aid to basic education is divided
into early childhood education, primary education
and basic life skills for youths and adults,
including literacy. As previous Reports have
pointed out, within basic education, pre-primary
education receives low levels of aid. In 2004,
nineteen of the twenty-two donors responding
to a request for information reported allocating
to pre-primary less than 10% of the amount they
made available for the primary level, and a
majority allocated less than 2% (UNESCO, 2006a).
As a share of total aid to education, the majority
allocated less than 0.5%. Data on aid to literacy
programmes are also difficult to collect, but it
is clear that most donors have given them very
little priority (UNESCO, 2005a).
On average, multilateral donors allocated 53%
of their total aid to education to the basic level
in 2004–2005, compared with 43% for the bilateral
donors. However, the bilateral share did represent
an eight percentage point increase compared with
1999–2000. These averages hide wide variations.
IDA allocated 61% of its education aid to basic
education and the European Commission 46% in
2004–2005. The Fast Track Initiative Catalytic Fund
allocated all of its aid to basic education. Donors
had committed a total of US$570 million to the
fund by 2006 and pledged to commit a further
US$360 million by the end of 2007. As of the end
of June 2007, US$130 million had been disbursed
to eighteen countries.
Bilateral donors differ widely in how they view
basic education. Canada, Denmark, Finland,
Ireland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway,
the United Kingdom and the United States clearly
make basic education a top priority and allocate
more than half of their education aid to it. Other
donors allocate less than one-third of total
education aid to basic education. This group
includes France, Germany and Japan – countries
that subsidize large numbers of foreign students
in their universities and therefore allocate a large
part of their education aid to the post-secondary
level (Figure 4.13).
Finally, among some of the largest contributors to
education, there was a dramatic reduction in aid to
basic education in 2005. The United Kingdom and
IDA, in particular, decreased commitments for aid
to basic education by 70% and 80%, respectively
(see annex, Aid Table 2). The donors that reduced
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