Financing Education / pdf - Unesco

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PROGRESS IN FINANCING EDUCATION FOR ALL Contribution of external aid to EFA since Dakar The United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DFID) has expressed similar reservations in its response to the Paris Declaration (DFID, 2005). Nevertheless, between 2001 and 2006 it extended programme support to poverty reduction programmes to over twenty countries. Countries receiving sectoral budget support for education have included Ethiopia, Ghana, India, Nepal, Rwanda, Viet Nam and Zambia. Key constraints to further aligning aid with government programmes were seen to be a lack of government ownership of the agreed performance assessment framework and insufficient capacity within line ministries. Despite these criticisms, both the Netherlands and British assessments concluded that the problems did not justify returning to earlier types of project aid that preceded the sector-wide approach, though DFID did argue for a mix of aid instruments. In contrast to the experiences of the donors described above, the United States, while a signatory to the Paris Declaration, has moved more slowly towards a sector-wide approach and budget support for education (except in Iraq, Afghanistan and Egypt), and has often funded and implemented projects in parallel with other ongoing, multidonorsupported operations. This reticence results partly from a desire to work with stakeholders beyond governments and partly from the view that alignment is not synonymous with budget support. It has been suggested that, in addition, results of sectoral programme assistance in the 1990s were viewed as disappointing (Riddell, 2007a). Among the multilateral donors, the European Commission has systematically been a strong advocate of the new modalities. An overall evaluation of general budget support concluded that ‘the EC's conditionalities have not been comprehensively harmonized with national goals and objectives’ but that ‘the transition to performance-based conditionality is most evident in the education sector’ (Schmidt, 2006). The principles of alignment between governments and donors, and harmonization among donors, are at the centre of the EFA Fast Track Initiative, with its emphasis on endorsement of an education sector plan by donor staff working in the country. As of August 2007, thirty-two countries had had their plans endorsed. The EFA Global Monitoring Report has reported on the FTI every year since 2002. In the past year, work has progressed on improving communications at all levels in order to ensure more inclusive participation and input from all parties. In-country processes such as plan appraisal and endorsement, overall donor coordination and harmonization, and plan monitoring are being strengthened. The task teams established by the FTI indicate that donors have identified some additional priorities: the need for capacity development guidelines to be included within the plan appraisal/endorsement guidelines; fragile states and the need to develop a framework allowing them interim support as they prepare plans for endorsement; HIV/AIDS and the mainstreaming of these issues into FTI processes; and, most recently, the quality of schooling and learning. A recent analysis of the quality of sector plans is generally positive, apart from the areas of data clarity and provisions for monitoring capacity (FTI Secretariat, 2007). It recommends that the FTI should continue to make clear to both governments and local donor staff that processes of sector plan development and endorsement do not automatically lead to allocations from the Catalytic Fund, but rather are part of good practice in general with regard to all sources of aid. Overall, the actions of many donors suggest that while they support taking a sector-wide approach, they do not as yet see it as a panacea for the existing limitations on aid effectiveness. The approach is not simple to adopt. To make the harmonization and alignment agenda work, aid recipient countries must be fully involved and willing to develop new capacities. Yet, for a variety of reasons, sometimes including the belief that the new modalities are not in their best interest, they often do not meet these requirements. The new aid modalities for education in the United Republic of Tanzania and Bangladesh have been assessed by using existing evaluations and opinions of donor staff and others working in these countries (Riddell, 2007b) . Though by no means representative of all countries in which donors have offered programme support, it does nonetheless provide a diversity of experience to put alongside those of donor agency head offices. The United Republic of Tanzania has been widely portrayed as being at the forefront in implementing the new aid modalities effectively. It was receiving considerable sectoral and general budget support and monitoring the behaviour of donors long before this became part of the commitments in the Paris Donors do not as yet see sectorwide approaches as a panacea for limitations on aid effectiveness 167
2 0 Education for All Global Monitoring Report 0 8 CHAPTER 4 In 2004, the United Republic of Tanzania had 110 externally supported education projects Declaration. Around 50% of all of aid to Tanzania is in the form of direct budget support provided by fourteen donors. An Education Sector Development Plan was prepared in 2000 and a primary education SWAp was implemented and supported by several donors between 2001 and 2005. A secondary education programme began in 2004. An evaluation of the funding arrangements for the primary programme concluded that in spite of the very substantial complications of handling separate flows of funds governed by different regulations, the overall transaction costs for the government had been reduced (Balagun, 2005). However, despite this movement towards harmonization and alignment, in 2004 the country still hosted 110 externally supported education projects averaging under US$1 million (World Bank, 2006b). Reviews of general budget support have generally been positive and pointed to the major expansion of both education and health expenditure (Lawson et al., 2005). They have also reflected the positive views of both the upper levels of government and donors regarding the new approaches. Besides the expectation that the new aid modalities will lead to improved results through greater country ownership and accountability, donors have also hoped for more, and more effective, policy dialogue. On the ground, however, in-country donor staff and others indicate that the dialogue between government and donors in the education sector remains insubstantial. It is hard to know whether this results from inability of the donor community to respond to Tanzanian-led policy discussions or from reluctance on the part of government representatives, but it is clear that more effective engagement is needed. Similar views have been expressed about poor dialogue in the education sector in Ethiopia, another country having found favour with donors and projected as a success in adopting the new aid modalities (Yizengaw, 2006). Five years from now in countries such as these, the application of the new modalities may be viewed as having supported the necessary expansion of the education system but as having been less successful in encouraging the search for solutions to the difficult issues of quality, sustainability and adaptability. Bangladesh is a very different case from the United Republic of Tanzania in terms of the new modalities. Budget support is around 17% of total foreign assistance and several donors are attempting to align their support around the poverty reduction strategy. The World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, DFID and the Japanese aid agency JICA have adopted a joint results framework. However, the realities of weak governance and public financial management mean that while many donors are moving towards more programme aid, they are doing so in ways that mitigate risk and often involve complicated funding flows. In the education sector a SWAp covering formal primary education has been developed, while non-formal education is supported by some of the same donors but in a separate arrangement. In addition, there is a large donor-supported project aimed at reaching out-of-school children. Evaluations of the first Primary Education Development Programme (PEDP), which was planned as an umbrella programme of twentyseven discrete projects supported by ten donors, suggest that outcomes were limited and that government-donor coordination was poor. A second PEDP running from 2003 to 2009 is supported through a pooled fund (though with multiple bank accounts) contributed to by the Asian Development Bank, IDA, the European Commission and the Canadian, Netherlands, Norwegian and Swedish governments, together with separate financing from Australia, Japan and UNICEF. Donors have signed a code of conduct and those outside the pooled fund are committed to minimizing duplication of documentation and demands on government counterparts’ time. Yet issues remain. A working party of donors was formed in 2006 in response to perceived problems of coordination and consultation (Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 2006). In-country aid agency staff suggest that the aims of the Paris Declaration have been addressed only at a high level of government and have not percolated down through the ministries. There is no monitoring of donors, as occurs in the United Republic of Tanzania, nor is there any government-led management or coordination of capacity development efforts in spite of the prevalence of these programmes. Staff also contend that the notion of a SWAp in primary education was basically thrust upon the government by donors, resulting in continuing tendencies to ‘projectize’ the programme and allow various funding modalities. Finally, as with the Tanzanian and Ethiopian experiences, there appears to be little substantive policy dialogue in areas such as education quality. 168
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