Financing Education / pdf - Unesco

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CHAPTER 4
Education for All Global Monitoring Report
Nine bilateral
donors put over
20% of their aid
in the form of
sector support
Not all donors have adopted the more
programmatic aid modalities equally. Again, the
data are approximate and depend on how donors
report aid, but the multilateral agencies appear
to have moved further than the bilateral donors
as a group: for the former, 38% of their education
aid in 2004–2005 was in the form of sector support,
compared to only 14% for the latter. Nevertheless,
nine bilateral donors put over 20% of their aid in
this form, and for Canada, Denmark, Finland,
Norway and Sweden the share was over 40%
(OECD-DAC, 2007c).
Some implications of the new aid modalities
for education
The move to more programme lending is not
simply a change in financing modalities. It is
part of a broader movement to improve the
harmonization and alignment of efforts between
donors and between governments and donors.
This does not occur automatically. The appropriate
conditions must exist within countries for it to
be possible to move away from a project focus
towards more programmatic support around
the sector-wide reforms called for in the Dakar
Framework for Action. While there is broad
support in principle among donors for the change
in focus, there are also differing interpretations
of the implications and of the desirable speed for
adopting the new modalities. Developing country
governments have shown similar differences in
viewpoint.
In 2005, the Global Campaign for Education
named the Swedish International Development
Cooperation Agency (Sida) the premier donor to
education in terms of supporting the countries
with the largest needs and using local plans and
systems as its starting point. An examination of
Sida’s experiences in shifting towards more
programmatic support for aid to basic education
is, therefore, particularly useful in highlighting
some of the challenges. Sida’s current annual
report describes the situation in each of the fifteen
countries it supports in basic education, in terms
of type of funding (project, sector programme, or
direct budget support), the degree of interaction
with other donors and the relationship with the
government, including its ability to meet the
requirements of a more programmatic approach
(Sida, 2007). Only in Bolivia, Honduras, Mali,
Mozambique, Rwanda and the United Republic
of Tanzania does Sida provide aid as sectoral
or general budget support. In Bangladesh and
Cambodia, specific activities within sector
programmes are supported. In the remaining
seven countries, support is still provided for
individual projects, though in some there are
discussions with other donors to improve
coordination and harmonization.
The strong involvement of governments in sector
programmes in the six countries receiving Sida
budget support is made clear, but in several of the
other countries there are said to be low levels of
government ‘ownership’ of donor-supported
activities and a severe lack of management and
planning capacity and accountability. In the Lao
People’s Democratic Republic, there are differing
views within government on the desirability of a
sector-wide approach. The lesson here is that even
when the donor agency is fully committed to
sector-wide programmes and is joined by likeminded
donors, this approach does not work
automatically – it still requires strong government
implementation capacity and support.
The Netherlands has also been at the forefront
of introducing changes in aid modalities. It has
used budget support and SWAps as the organizing
principle for bilateral aid since 1998, with
education as a priority sector (Riddell, 2007a). In
assessing whether countries are ready for such an
approach, the requirements are (a) an effective
poverty reduction strategy, which must translate
the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) into
national policies and allow for partnerships,
including with civil society; (b) effective policy
dialogue with the government on improving
governance and reducing poverty; and (c) a
results-based approach with clearly defined
progress indicators for institutional and policy
reforms. A recent evaluation of the changed focus
since 1998 concluded that:
the rapid adoption of a uniform approach in the
introduction of SWAps outstripped the capacity
of recipient-country ministries, and in most
countries the institutional infrastructure was
inadequate to meet such a drastic change;
in most cases, the expected increase in
ownership in the recipient countries did not
materialize;
in most sectors, the recipient governments have
great difficulty in effectively reaching the poor
(Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2006).
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