Education:
the catalyst foran equitable &transformative G7
Recommendations from theCivil Society Education
Working GroupG7
France1 of 11

Biarritz
2019

Improving the Quality of Basic
Education in Least Developed
Countries to fight inequalities
The G7 countries have afundamental role to playin promoting education
as a central goal forachieving the other SDGs.
Education is a catalyst forsustainable development,
and supports thepromotion of genderequality, inclusive health,peaceful societies, climatechange action, and theprotection of children.
By leading the way on
free, inclusive, quality,
universal basic education,
the G7 leaders canguarantee the youngest,

most vulnerable and mostmarginalised girls andboys a better future. Butchange needs to happen
now.
This is a transformative
moment.
By prioritising resources
toward basic educationneeds, G7 leaders canincrease the focus on
quality, free, basic
education, and ensuresustainable investment for
years to come.

“Investing in education is the most cost-effective way to drive
economic development, improve skills and opportunities foryoung women and men, and unlock progress on all 17 Sustainable
Development Goals. Financing education is indeed the best
investment we can make.”- António Guterres, United Nations Secretary-General
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We welcome the G7’s education and development agenda and its
prioritisation of gender equality in education, as well as highlighting theimportance of technical and vocational education and training in subSaharan Africa countries to better ﬁght inequality.
However, to achieve SDG4 and to fulﬁl the international promise of
education for all without discrimination, the G7 countries must urgently
tackle the barriers to achieving inclusive, quality universal education. Thisshould happen through stronger political, technical and ﬁnancial support tobasic quality education, targeting the poorest, the most vulnerable, andthose living in countries affected by fragility and conﬂict.
We ask the G7 countries to address quality basic education in all Least
Developed Countries (LDCs), where education needs are the most acute.
This includes at least a year of pre-primary, and full primary and lower
secondary education.1
In line with SDG4 and the principle of leaving-no-one-behind we ask for thisgoal to be reﬂected in the ﬁnal G7 political declaration and for concrete
steps to be taken to increase the provision of quality, equitable, andinclusive basic education for all.
All states are obligated “to ensure access to and completion of quality
education for all children and youth to at least 12 years of free, publicly
funded, inclusive and equitable quality primary and secondary education”.2
As well as a basic human right, education is one of the strongest tools
to reduce inequality and boost economic growth.

The state of education today
While great progress has been made towards SDG4, too many children andyouth, especially adolescent girls, still face multiple and intersecting barriers
to accessing inclusive quality education and remaining in school,
particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. All these barriers are exacerbated by
conﬂict and crises.

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Intersecting obstacles to inclu vsive quality education include, but are not limited to:

Fig 1: DFID Girls Education Challenge (2018) Thematic Review Understanding and Addressing Educational Marginalisation:
Part 1: A new Conceptual Framework for educational marginalisation3Not enough children are going to school, and not enough are learning
while they are there. An estimated 274 million primary school children
worldwide are not learning the basic foundational skills necessary to leadproductive and healthy lives. 4
Sub-Saharan Africa has the greatest needs. Of the more than 72 million girls
and boys currently out of primary school, 50 percent are living in this region.
Inequality within these countries is also a chronic barrier, with only 65 of
the poorest children for every 100 of the richest going to primary school.
Across sub-Saharan Africa, only 64% of primary school teachers aretrained.5
Because of inaccessibility of quality education, around 130 million children ofprimary school age in Sub-Saharan Africa lack basic literacy andnumeracy. 6To achieve universal secondary school completion by 2030, all children shouldhave enrolled in primary school in 2018, yet the intake rate in low income
countries was 73% in 2016. 7
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According to UNESCO, current aid to education needs to be multiplied by 6 toachieve the targets of SDG 4. In 2016, aid to education represented only 7.6% of
total development aid compared with 10% in 2009, with only 24% of this aid being
allocated to basic education in sub-Saharan Africa. The share of humanitarian aid
allocated to education, was only 2.1% in 2017.8

G7 Donors Funding to Education, 2016
4.0%

Italy

4.7%

USA

5.0%

Japan

6.6%

Canada8.3%

Germany

8.9%

UK

11.2%

France0%

3%

6%

9%

12%

Fig 2: Education ODA as % of total ODA. OECD CRS (including scholarships) and imputed multilateralcontributions to the education sector (DAC secretariat estimates)9G7 Bilateral Education ODA to Basic Education, 201713.65%

FranceGermany

17.05%
32.95%

Japan

44.58%

Italy

58.96%

Canada61.82%

UK

78.46%

USA020406080

Fig 3: % of Total Bilateral Education ODA; Gross Disbursements in constant prices (OECD CRS)10

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In the Sahel region in particular, 3 million children still do not have access toprimary school, and only 3 out of 10 children acquire the minimum competencies
expected at the end of the primary level. Entrenched gender inequalities remain atthe secondary level.11G7 Bilateral Basic Education ODA to G5 Sahel, 2017
0.01%

UK

0.43%

GermanyUSA

1.02%

Canada

1.02%
2.05%

France

2.49%

Italy

2.55%

Japan
00.75

1.52.25

3Fig 4: % of total Bilateral Education ODA to G5 Sahel; Gross Disbursements in constant prices(OECD CRS)12The situation in the Sahel is exacerbated by a rapid demographic expansion andthe worsening security crisis in the region, with more than 2000 schools closed
due to violence in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger in the past two years13.

The UN Special Rapporteur on the right to education, Dr. Koumbou Boly Barry,
has expressed alarm at:“the persistent underfunding of public education and the rapid
growth of the involvement of private, in particular commercial,actors in education, which threaten the implementation of the right toeducation for all and Sustainable Development Goal 4”.14

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Recommendations
1. Ensuring quality basic education for all as a catalyst foreradicating inequalities in LDCs, with a focus on Sub-SaharanAfrica and the Sahel, must be a priority.
To that end, we ask the G7 countries to:1.1. Ensure that all children and youth have opportunities to complete
quality basic education for at least 12 years, to meet theirbasic learning needs. This includes for the G7 countries to prioritise
within their development aid policies the provision of at least 1 yearof pre-primary, primary and lower secondary education for every child,in accordance with SDG 4.2 and 4.1, the UNESCO definition of basic
education, and the G20’s Initiative for 15 Early Childhood Education.
1. 2 . Ensure that children and youth in crisis and conﬂict-affected
situations are in safe and protective learning environments. Thisrequires all G7 countries to adopt16 and support partner countries inendorsing and implementing the Safe Schools Declaration17 in conﬂict
affected areas to ensure the continuity of quality and inclusive education
service.
1. 3 . Ensure that all girls and boys complete free basic education by
2030. This includes supporting partner states to publicly regulate
private education providers and to support quality public
education system-strengthening. The G7 should take a leadingrole in spearheading the implementation of the Abidjan Principles18 on
the human rights obligations of States to provide public education andto regulate private involvement in education, as recommended by theUN Special Rapporteur on the right to education.19
1. 4 . Ensure an inclusive and gender transformative education toimprove learning outcomes and ensure socio-economic
empowerment of both boys and girls. This entails providing thenecessary technical and ﬁnancial support to partner states wishing to
implement a sectoral education plan that promotes, through formal
and non-formal education, inclusion of the most vulnerable (girls andfemale adolescents, people with disabilities, children and youth
affected by crises, refugees, children from marginalised socialgroups, rural and ethnic minorities) and gender equality. This also
includes community support strengthening for inclusive quality
education, considering the needs of the most marginalised.
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1.5. Promote the central role of teacher training and professional
development, which are essential for quality inclusive
education. This includes encouraging partner countries toprovide teachers, educators, and social and cultural workers withrecognized status, with decent working conditions and adequate andquality training and incentives.
amulti-sector
approachthatpromotes
1.6. Encourage
collaboration and coordination between and across sectors(e.g. ministries of health, social affairs, family, gender, education,
justice, etc.) as well as a multi-stakeholder approach (including
donors, governments, CSOs, communities, religious leaders andyouth led organisations, at local, national and international levels)
within the education sector and across relevant sectors. Donors
should strengthen and mobilize existing coordination mechanisms,
especially Local Education Groups (LEGs) and Education
Clusters.
Local,nationalandinternationalCSOs, especially youth led
organizations, should be better included, in all their diversity, inpolicy decision-making processes in order to ensure that
education policies are responsive to the diverse lived experiencesand education needs of children.

2. Invest more for delivering free, quality, inclusive
basic education for all in LDCs, reinforcing the focus
on Sub-Saharan Africa and the Sahel as the main priority.
To that end, we ask the G7 countries to:
2.1. Publicly commit in the G7 communique to meet the internationallyrecognised targets of 15% of total official development assistance(ODA) and at least 4%20 of humanitarian aid21 to the education
sector.22 Focus investment on sub-Saharan Africa and the Sahel(including via the Alliance Sahel) and target the most vulnerable andmarginalised children and youth. ODA data should be disaggregated toshow impact on marginalised communities and speciﬁc programmes
funded to redress exclusion. All investments should be should be gendersensitive, and screened via the OECD gender marker.23

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Meet the internationally recognised target of 50% of total education
ODA to basic education.24

2.3. Encourage national governments to invest 20% of domestic budgets
into their own education sector strategy plans, in line with
the internationally agreed target.25
2.4.

Meet the internationally recognised target of 10% of total education
ODA to Early Childhood Education,26 to narrow the gap in learningand development that currently exists between the richest and poorest
children when they arrive at Primary School.

2.5. Allocate at least 30% of education aid to multilateral funds (including
GPE and ECW) to ensure complementarity between bilateral andmultilateral aid mechanisms and the strengthening of the humanitarianand development nexus, which is essential to ensuring sustainable andquality education for crisis and conﬂict affected persons.
2.6.

Commit to the provision of free access to basic education andensure no ODA is directed to proﬁt-making or fee-charging schools
or companies. As recommended by the UN Special Rapporteur on theright to education27 and the European Union Parliament Resolution
2018/208128 “exclusively use [aid] to build and strengthen free, quality andinclusive public education systems, in consultation with the rights holders
concerned and in partnership with the recipient country”.

2.7.

Ensure all investments in education are predictable, multi-year andﬂexible.

2.8.

Ensure that national and international development and humanitarian
stakeholders have the capacity to efficiently manage and implement
aid to education.

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These Recommendations are endorsed by 58 Civil Society Organisations:

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Endnotes:••

By ‘least developed countries’ we refer to the UN CDP list of December 2018
UN Secretary General António Guterres quoted from Remarks on Financing the Future: Education ForAll,, September 2017

1 Aid to education reached an all-time high in 2016, GEM Report
2 UN CRPD Committee's General comment No. 4 on the right to inclusive education, page 12, November

25, 2016, which refers to the immediate obligation already enshrined in the UN Convention on Economic
Cultural and Social Rights.
3 Fig 1: Thematic Review : Understanding and Addressing Educational Marginalisation, UKaid, March 2018
4 Teaching and learning, GPE

5 World Teachers’ Day: Quality education requires well-trained teachers, UNESCO Institute forInformation Technologies in Education, October 2018
6 The State of the World’s Children, UNICEF, 2016
7 Global education monitoring report, 2019: Migration, displacement and education: building bridges,notwalls, p 122, UNESCO
8 Aid to education falls for the sixth consecutive year, UNESCO, June 2017
9 Fig 2: Donor Tracker, Education
10 Fig 3: This graph is based on OECD data, but on the basis of a calculation coinciding with UNESCO'sdefinition of basic education, as well as by the French Ministry of Europe and Foreign Affairs. The total
amount of basic education is calculated as follows: total aid to pre-primary and primary education, 50%of the aid allocated to secondary education, and 75% of aid to level unspecified education (whichincludes teacher training or the construction of infrastructure).
11 OECD, Sahel and West Africa Club, OECD
12 https://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?DataSetCode=CRS1
13 School closures in the Sahel double in the last two years due to growing insecurity – UNICEF, February
2019
14 Right to education: the implementation of the right to education and Sustainable Development Goal 4
in the context of the growth of private actors in education, HRC, June 201915 Aid to education reached an all-time high in 2016, GEM Report
16 Safe Schools Declaration Endorsements, GCPEA
17 Safe Schools Declaration
18 The Abidjan Principles
19 Right to education: the implementation of the right to education and Sustainable Development Goal 4
in the context of the growth of private actors in education, HRC, June 201920 Send My Friend to School, the UK coalition on global education, has asked the UK government tocommit at least 6% from its humanitarian budget to education in emergencies and protracted crises
21 In 2019, 10% of the European Union humanitarian budget will go to education in emergencies,
European Commission, January 201922 Financing matters: a toolkit on domestic financing for education,Global Campaign for Education,
September 2016
23 The DAC gender equality policy marker, OECD
24 Financing matters: a toolkit on domestic financing for education,Global Campaign for Education,
September 2016
25 Financing matters: a toolkit on domestic financing for education,Global Campaign for Education,
September 2016
26 Theirworld and UNICEF call for action now to get all children in pre-primary education, Theirworld,April 201927 Right to education: the implementation of the right to education and Sustainable Development Goal 4
in the context of the growth of private actors in education, HRC, June 201928 European Parliament resolution of 13 November 2018 on EU development assistance in the field ofeducation (2018/2081(INI)), European Parliament, November 2018
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