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

0120ANNEXEducation for All Global Monitoring ReportUnallocated aid: some contributions are not susceptibleto allocation by sector and are reported as non-sectorallocable aid. Examples are aid for general developmentpurposes (direct budget support), balance-of-paymentssupport, action relating to debt (including debt relief)and emergency assistance.Basic education: the definition of basic educationvaries by agency. The DAC defines it as coveringprimary education, basic life skills for youth and adults,and early childhood education.Education, level unspecified: the aid to educationreported in the DAC database includes basic, secondaryand post-secondary education, and ‘education, levelunspecified’. This subcategory covers aid related toany activity that cannot be attributed solely to thedevelopment of a single level of education.Technical cooperation (sometimes referred to astechnical assistance): according to the DAC Directives,technical cooperation is the provision of know-how inthe form of personnel, training, research and associatedcosts. It includes (a) grants to nationals of aid recipientcountries receiving education or training at home orabroad; and (b) payments to consultants, advisers andsimilar personnel as well as teachers and administratorsserving in recipient countries (including the cost ofassociated equipment). Where such assistance is relatedspecifically to a capital project, it is included with projectand programme expenditure, and is not separatelyreported as technical cooperation. The aid activitiesreported in this category vary by donor, as interpretationsof the definition are broad.Debt relief: this includes debt forgiveness, i.e. theextinction of a loan by agreement between the creditor(donor) and the debtor (aid recipient), and other actionon debt, including debt swaps, buy-backs and refinancing.In the DAC database, debt forgiveness is reported as agrant. It raises gross ODA but not necessarily net ODA(see below).Commitments and disbursements: a commitment isa firm obligation by a donor, expressed in writing andbacked by the necessary funds, to provide specifiedassistance to a country or multilateral organization.The amount specified is recorded as a commitment.Disbursement is the release of funds to, or purchaseof goods or services for, a recipient; in other words,the amount spent. Disbursements record the actualinternational transfer of financial resources or of goodsor services valued by the donor. As the aid committedin a given year can be disbursed later, sometimesover several years, the annual aid figures based oncommitments differ from those based on disbursements.Gross and net disbursements: gross disbursements arethe total aid extended. Net disbursements are the totalaid extended minus amounts of loan principal repaidby recipients or cancelled through debt forgiveness.Current and constant prices: aid figures in the DACdatabase are expressed in US$. When other currenciesare converted into dollars at the exchange ratesprevailing at the time, the resulting amounts are atcurrent prices and exchange rates. When comparing aidfigures between different years, adjustment is requiredto compensate for inflation and changes in exchangerates. Such adjustments result in aid being expressedin constant dollars, i.e. in dollars fixed at the value theyheld in a given reference year, including their externalvalue in terms of other currencies. Thus, amounts ofaid for any year and in any currency expressed in 2007constant dollars reflect the value of that aid in terms ofthe purchasing power of dollars in 2007. In this Report,most aid data are presented in 2007 constant dollars.The indices used for adjusting currencies and years(called deflators) are derived from Table 36 of thestatistical annex of the 2009 DAC Annual Report(OECD-DAC, 2009e). In previous editions of the EFAGlobal Monitoring Report, amounts of aid were basedon the constant prices of different years (the 2007Report used 2003 constant prices), so amounts for agiven country for a given year in these editions differ fromthe amounts presented in this Report for the same year.For more detailed and precise definitions of terms usedin the DAC database, see the DAC Directives, available atwww.oecd.org/dac/stats/dac/directives.Source: OECD-DAC (2009d).430