Reaching the marginalized: EFA global monitoring report, 2010; 2010

001CHAPTER 42Education for All Global Monitoring ReportCommitmentlevels arestagnating andthe trendis highly erraticTranslating commitments into public spendingplans. Long-term development requirespredictable aid flows. Setting clear aid budgetplans is therefore a priority. Donors forced tomake deep budget adjustments as a result ofthe crisis should adopt the Irish and Swedishapproach of setting a course for recovery.Monitoring donor delivery more closely. Theaid pledge is a collective commitment. Somevariation in individual donor performance isinevitable. However, in the case of the 2005 aidpledges it is difficult to escape the conclusionthat free-riding has become a problem, withsome donors having to compensate for theweak commitment of others. More rigorousmonitoring and public reporting is required.Box 4.2: The G8’s disappointing Accountability ReportThe annual G8 summits have produced a steady stream of communiquésmaking impressive commitments on education. Recognition in recent yearsof the importance of tracking delivery on these commitments culminatedin the G8 Preliminary Accountability Report adopted at the 2009 summitin L’Aquila, Italy. Its contents fell far short of the required reportingstandards.The report claims to account for ‘the progress made towards the Educationfor All goals and the Fast Track Initiative’ (p. 16). In fact, it treats G8commitments to the FTI as the sole measure of performance. In contrastto health, where the G8 has adopted a global financing target aimed atachieving international development goals, there is no global educationtarget. The US$1.2 billion FTI replenishment estimate represents a smallfraction of the global basic education financing gap.To make matters worse, the accounting system for FTI support leavesmuch to be desired. The United Kingdom is the only G8 member to havebeen a major source of Fast Track finance. Successive summits havepledged to close the financing gap, with no effect on delivery. Theaccountability report obscures this failure by including aid for educationin countries receiving Fast Track support as aid to the initiative itself.Further such reports should take a new approach to benchmarkingin three areas:The G8 should adopt a credible figure for the global financing gap figurefor Education for All. This Report estimates that gap at US$16 billion.The summit should agree a ‘fair share’ framework stipulatingcommitments of individual G8 members to investment in basiceducation, based on global financing gaps.The accountability report should measure real FTI financialcommitments and G8 leaders should provide leadership in reformingand revitalizing the initiative.Recent trends in aid to educationAs governments look to the 2015 target date forachieving universal primary education and widergoals, prospects for accelerated progress willdepend in part on future aid flows. Sustained andpredictable increases in those flows can helpsupport more ambitious education strategies,supplementing the resources available to recruitteachers, construct classrooms and reach themarginalized. Aid delivered to education continuesto rise, but there is no evidence of a concerted driveto mobilize the additional resources needed toachieve universal primary education and othereducation goals. Looking ahead, there is a realdanger that reduced commitments to basiceducation will lead to lower levels of disbursementsover the next few years.The share of educationin overall aid has not changedAid priorities have shifted a great deal in recentyears, with the shares of overall aid devoted tovarious sectors rising, falling or staying the same.Education falls in the third category. The increasein support to education recorded since the Dakarforum in 2000 has been driven principally by theoverall increase in aid rather than redistributionfrom other sectors. In 2006–2007, educationaccounted for about 12% of all aid commitmentsto sectors, the same level as in 1999–2000. 7In contrast, health has been a big winner in aidallocations, with an increased share of sectoraid from 11% in 1999–2000 to 17% in 2006–2007.This reflects a surge of bilateral, multilateral andphilanthropic aid directed through global funds andnational programmes. 8 United Nations agencies,campaigners, governments and the private sectorhave succeeded in putting health at the centre ofthe international development agenda.Education financing has not suffered directly as aresult of the rising share of health in aid spending.With overall aid flows increasing, a fixed share stillimplies an increase in real resources. Moreover,investment in health generates important benefitsfor education. What matters in the end is whetheroverall aid flows and aid targets are commensuratewith the commitments donors made in 2000 at the7. Where a two-year period is indicated, figures have been calculatedon the basis of two-year averages, in order to smooth out volatility of aidcommitments.Source: Group of Eight (2009a).8. If education had risen at the same rate as health, direct aidcommitments to education would have been US$15.9 billion in2006-2007. The actual figure was US$10.7 billion.226