Chapter 2. Progress towards the EFA goals - Unesco

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0 1 0 CHAPTER 2 2 Education for All Global Monitoring Report Specific programmes targeting highly marginalized groups are likely to have higher average costs 55. Classroom construction costs include additional infrastructure required for an effective learning environment, such as furniture, latrines and water supply. Unit costs are based on an average of low- and high-cost construction scenarios in Theunynck (2009). Unit costs for lower secondary are assumed to be 25% higher. 56. The regional average also corresponds to average salary targets in national education plans for sub-Saharan Africa (Bennell, 2009a). 57. For the low-income countries included in the costing exercise that are not in sub-Saharan Africa, average teacher salaries are 2.5 times GDP per capita in primary school and 3.0 times in secondary. 58. The costs of reaching the marginalized are excluded when non-salary spending as a proportion of total recurrent cost is calculated. 59. The wide range of policy interventions needed to address marginalization are explored in detail in Chapter 3. For example, lowering teacher salaries may cut costs but lead to low morale, making it more difficult to recruit a workforce with sufficient skills and forcing teachers to supplement their pay with other work. Capital cost estimates raise another set of difficulties. By definition, achieving Education for All requires school infrastructure that is accessible to all children and of sufficient quality to ensure safety and provide an appropriate learning environment. Costs of classroom construction vary enormously. Reasonablepractice standards point to a cost of about US$13,500 per classroom, rising to US$17,000 for lower secondary school. 55 Classrooms obviously need to be built to accommodate children currently out of school. But the dilapidated state of the school infrastructure in many countries means there is also a need for extensive investment in rehabilitation. One recent survey suggests that 30% of classrooms in low-income sub-Saharan Africa need replacing (Theunynck, 2009). Conflict-affected countries face particularly pressing problems. To take one example, half of Liberia’s classrooms were destroyed or sustained major damage during the civil war (Liberia Ministry of Education, 2007b). The parameters set for this Report’s costing exercise are derived from international evidence on norms and current practice in key areas. They include the following: Teacher salaries. Individual countries have to address issues of efficiency, norms and standards for teachers in the light of national circumstances. The costing exercise does not prejudge the appropriate teacher salary level. Instead, it takes the current regional average for primary and lower secondary salaries in sub-Saharan Africa as a longterm target that all countries in the region will converge on. 56 For countries outside sub-Saharan Africa, the benchmark is lower (see Table 2.9). 57 Rules and norms. While there is some debate about optimal pupil/teacher ratios, here the bar is set at 40:1 for primary school, reflecting the target used in previous costing exercises. Effective teaching also requires access to stationery, textbooks and other learning equipment. Ensuring that one-third of the recurrent budget is directed towards non-salary costs (rising to 40% for lower secondary education) should enable most low-income countries to meet basic needs in this respect. 58 Wider capital costs. As well as covering the cost of future enrolment, budgets have to absorb the cost of replenishing infrastructure. A conservative estimate is that about a quarter of the classrooms in low-income countries need replacing, rising to half in conflict-affected countries. As with the other targets, it is assumed that all this replacement takes place by 2015. Cost of adult literacy programmes. In line with previous studies, the unit cost of adult literacy programmes is estimated at 8.9% of GDP per capita for countries in sub-Saharan Africa and 5.3% for all other countries (Van Ravens and Aggio, 2005, 2007). Reaching the marginalized Previous global cost estimates for education have assumed that the average cost of reaching out-of-school children is roughly equivalent to a national average benchmark. That assumption is misplaced. Specific programmes targeting highly marginalized groups including child labourers, the extreme poor, ethnic minorities, girls, children with disabilities, and locations such as remote rural areas and slums have to be financed. Moreover, extending education programmes to these groups and areas is likely to raise per capita spending requirements. Top-down estimates are a particularly blunt tool for assessing the financing required to reach the marginalized. Policy-makers need to consider the interlocking constraints that keep marginalized children out of school or that disrupt their participation and limit their learning achievements (see Chapter 3). Detailed poverty assessments and planning processes that draw on the evidence and perspectives provided by the marginalized themselves are critical to policy design. With this caveat in mind, international evidence yields some useful insights. Cash transfer programmes that provide social protection can play an important role in insulating vulnerable households from external shocks, enabling them to keep children in school. In some contexts, such programmes have played a particularly crucial role in allowing girls to enter and stay in school. Under the right circumstances, school feeding programmes can also provide strong incentives for children to attend school (as well as crucial health benefits). Effective programmes of this kind typically cost about 5% of GDP per capita (Bundy et al., 2009a; Fiszbein et al., 2009a) 59 . 124
PROGRESS TOWARDS THE EFA GOALS Estimating the cost of achieving Education for All International evidence on the incremental costs that might be associated with creating a highquality learning environment is more fragmented and inconsistent (Chanamuto, 2009). Getting teachers to schools in remote rural areas, slums and other marginalized environments requires incentives, but on what scale? Providing schooling to children whose lives have been blighted by poverty, hunger, stigmatization and low expectations is likely to require supplementary teaching and additional teaching materials, but there is no established benchmark for estimating the additional financing required. For the purposes of the costing exercise, three criteria are used to introduce equity-based finance: Assessing the size of the school age population requiring additional support. Drawing on a new statistical source – the Deprivation and Marginalization in Education (DME) data set introduced in Chapter 3 – the Report establishes, for each country, the share of the population aged 17 to 22 with fewer than four years in school. This is used as a proxy indicator for the proportion of the school age population that is marginalized and in need of additional incentives and school resources to participate in basic education. There are obvious limitations to this measure, including the fact that it captures past outcomes rather than the current situation. However, the four-year benchmark is a useful measurement of the scale of marginalization. Chapter 3 explores the use of this measure of marginalization in greater detail. Table 2.10: Costs of achieving Education for All in low-income countries US$ billions (constant 2007 prices) Current domestic resources (circa 2007) Cumulative cost (2008-2015) Average annual cost (2008-2015) Pre-primary Primary Providing incentives for marginalized children. The costing exercise includes financial provision for incentives aimed at marginalized groups. It assumes a cost per child of 5% of GDP per capita for primary school students and 7.5% for lower secondary school students. Creating an incremental financing coefficient. There are no ready-made standards that can be applied on a cross-country basis. For the purposes of the costing exercise, the cost parameter for reaching the marginalized is set at an increment of 33% above average recurrent costs. This is broadly consistent with the sparse evidence available on the cost of financing teacher incentives and other measures to bring good-quality education to marginalized children (Chen and Mulkeen, 2008; Mulkeen, 2009a). The global cost The aggregate costs that emerge from the analysis are anchored in national data for the forty-six low-income countries covered. 60 For each of the Education for All targets selected, the norms for education inputs are applied to the size of the population that has to be reached in each country. This makes it possible to identify the number of teachers, additional classrooms and teaching materials required. The cost parameters for these inputs are then applied, with adjustments for reaching the marginalized. Table 2.10 shows the resulting cost projections. To summarize: Cumulative costs over 2008–2015 for the basic education goals run to US$286 billion, or US$36 billion annually (in constant 2007 US$). Current spending on basic education is about Adult literacy* Basic education sub-total Lower secondary Total 0.8 11.1 – 11.9 4.7 16.6 60.4 220.4 5.1 285.9 120.2 406.1 7.5 27.5 0.6 35.7 15.0 50.7 The financing required to achieve the basic education goals is more than double current levels of spending Breakdown of costs between 2008-2015 (%) Teachers Classroom construction Programmes to reach the marginalized Other 39 40 – 40 36 39 41 27 – 30 30 30 – 14 – 11 12 11 20 20 – 20 22 21 Notes: Breakdown of costs for basic education subtotal relates only to pre-primary and universal primary education. Subtotals are based on non-rounded figures. * The estimated adult literacy costs for the low-income countries covered are about three times the costs estimated in the original study (see Van Ravens and Aggio, 2005). Source: EPDC and UNESCO (2009). 60. The base year is 2007 and estimates are based on the 2008–2015 period unless otherwise indicated. 125
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Chapter 2. Progress towards the EFA goals - Unesco

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