Educating out of Poverty? A Synthesis Report on Ghana, India ... - DfID

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Chapter 3: <strong>Poverty</strong>, Skills and Development Summary and Core Issues Chapter 3: <strong>Poverty</strong>, Skills and Development • Addressing poverty has become central to developing country policies. Understanding the nature, meaning and incidence <strong>of</strong> poverty in a given country context is vital to ensuring that strategies are targeted at the poor. • <strong>Poverty</strong> is multidimensional, and popular perceptions <strong>of</strong> poverty extend well beyond income to access to services and opportunities. • National development policies appear to be focused more on economic development than poverty reduction; specifically pro-poor strategies are not self-evident within these policies. • <strong>Poverty</strong> strategies have led to a stronger focus on basic education, but national governments are emphasising tertiary education to support wider socio-economic development. This has led to some tension between national governments and donor agencies. • There is a disconnect between the integrated approach evident in policies such as the <strong>Poverty</strong> Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) and Education Sector Support Projects (ESSPs) – an approach strongly supported by the international donor agencies – and actual investments (and funding) which tend to focus on particular sub-sectors. • The implementation <strong>of</strong> a coherent sector strategy which takes account <strong>of</strong> the entire sector may therefore suffer from a narrow focus on particular sub-sectors, such as basic education or tertiary education. At the heart <strong>of</strong> current international development discourse, as captured in the MDGs, lies the worldwide consensus on the need to combat poverty. As we saw in the previous chapter, there is a complex series <strong>of</strong> potential interactions between education, skills and poverty reduction. The next three chapters draw <strong>out</strong> some <strong>of</strong> the core evidence from our six country studies to develop our arguments ab<strong>out</strong> the importance <strong>of</strong> the enabling environment to ensuring that education and training do have an impact upon poverty. This chapter addresses three main issues. Firstly, we consider how poverty and poverty reduction are perceived within the different contexts <strong>of</strong> our sample countries; and how education and skills are perceived in relation to poverty. This illustrates how understandings <strong>of</strong> poverty encompass much more than income poverty, but extend to quality <strong>of</strong> life and access to social services and opportunities. It also shows that poverty is understood in different ways across countries. Secondly, we explore the relationship between education and skills and poverty within national policy environments, in particular considering the interface between policies for poverty reduction and for economic development. Thirdly, this chapter assesses the role <strong>of</strong> external donor agencies in national policy, highlighting differences in the emphasis laid by national governments and by donor agencies upon sub-sectors <strong>of</strong> education and training. From this we can see that despite the international focus on basic education, both governments and donor agencies appear to be taking a more holistic approach. However, in practice, while holistic policies may be in place, particular sub-sectors <strong>of</strong> education and training receive more attention than others in practice. On the donor side, this tends to be basic education, but national governments appear to be placing greater emphasis on secondary and tertiary education. DFID 27
<strong>Educating</strong> <strong>out</strong> <strong>of</strong> <strong>Poverty</strong>? A <strong>Synthesis</strong> <strong>Report</strong> on Ghana, India, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania and S<strong>out</strong>h Africa 3.1 <strong>Poverty</strong> and the poor in the national contexts Understanding the nature and incidence <strong>of</strong> poverty in national contexts provides a key basis for assessing the relationship between education, skills and poverty. An initial task within the country studies was to explore poverty within each setting. Within international development literature and policy we see two major trends with regard to defining and measuring the concept <strong>of</strong> poverty. On the one hand there is a reasonable consensus (at least among policy-makers and development agencies) on the importance <strong>of</strong> a multidimensional understanding <strong>of</strong> poverty that recognises the complex inter-relations between social and physiological aspects (see Shaffer, 1998; Thin, 1999; World, Bank 2000). Elaborate systems have been established which seek to capture these multiple dimensions, such as the Human Development Index and the Human <strong>Poverty</strong> Index (UNDP, 2005a). On the other hand, in policy and practice there is a tendency to categorise poverty simplistically in terms <strong>of</strong> the minimum income required to satisfy basic needs (food, accommodation, services), i.e. income poverty. This is <strong>of</strong>ten reduced to measuring the population living on less than $1 or $2 a day. While this measurement may indirectly take into account various aspects <strong>of</strong> poverty, it can become a simplistic label which obscures interesting nuances in how poverty is perceived in different countries. For example, the Indian government defines poverty on the basis <strong>of</strong> consumption expenditure, based on a regular National Sample Survey to establish expenditure required to purchase a basket <strong>of</strong> goods to satisfy minimum calories required. This basket <strong>of</strong> goods includes food, fuel and light, housing, clothing, footwear and miscellaneous items. In Ghana, poverty is defined as “an unacceptable physiological and social deprivation” (GoG, 2003a: 3), recognized as “multi-dimensional with complex interactive and causal relationships between the dimensions” (ibid.) In Rwanda, a participatory poverty assessment (PPA) established an elaborate system for categorising poverty which was <strong>out</strong>lined in the <strong>Poverty</strong> Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) (see Box 3.1). Yet, elsewhere in national policy, much more simplistic categories are used; it is more common in statistical analyses to divide the population into three categories <strong>of</strong> ‘very poor’ (or ‘extremely poor’), ‘poor’ and ‘not poor’ (GoR, 2002a: 18), categories which are closely equated with expenditure and consumption patterns and which follow international conventions <strong>of</strong> establishing a food and an overall poverty line based on the cost <strong>of</strong> purchasing a basket <strong>of</strong> foods, satisfying reasonable calorie and protein requirements as well as providing non-food items as in the case <strong>of</strong> India above. 28 DFID
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