GRIPS Development Forum
Policy Minutes

Policy Minutes No. 22
GRIPS Development Forum

January 2008

Seminar on Aid for Self-Reliance and Budget Support
for Educational Development

Session 1--- Should the recurrent expenditure in education be supported? --Session 2--- Endogenous educational policy-making and aid for self-reliance ---―――――― in Tokyo, Japan (October 18, 2007)

Foreword
The National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS) Development Forum organized aseminar on “Aid for Self-Reliance and Budget Support for Educational Development,” alongwith Japan NGO Network for Education (JNNE), Nagoya University, and the Foundation for
Advanced Studies on International Development (FASID), on 18th October 2007.
Today, the amount of financial aid to developing countries which are having difficulty inachieving global agendas, such as Education For All (EFA) and Millenium Development
Goals (MDGs), is increasing rapidly. There is no denial of the importance that the global
community gathers its wisdom and resources to guarantee the right of education to everybody
in the world. At the same time, there is a growing concern that the concentration of aid tothe certain priority areas in education may hamper the self-help and endogenous
policy-making and implementation by the governments of developing countries themselves.
Therefore, in this seminar, we discussed about “aid for self-reliance,” which is one of theprinciples of Japanese foreign assistance.
Active discussions took place, and we have greatly benefited from valuable remarks andpresentations by distinguished speakers and commentators; Those from Tanzania, Cambodia,
and Bangladesh have shared their countries’ perspectives and experiences. Senior British andJapanese aid practitioners have provided donor perspectives, building on their richexperiences in foreign assistance. The organizers sincerely appreciate their cooperation andvaluable inputs to the seminar.
This report summarizes the content of the presentations, issues raised by the commentators,
and seminar discussions, along with presentations slides. We hope that the seminar willcontribute to deepening discussions among recipient countries and donors on how to foster
endogenous policy-making and implementation for Education For All EFA.
The presentations from Session 2 were based on the findings of the two research projects
focusing on the recipient countries’ side rather than the donors’ side. The one was conductedby Nagoya University, which was named “Political economy of educational reform andcapacity development in Asia.” The other is entitled “The local meaning of educating all, andthe process of adopting EFA development goals in Kenya, Tanzania, and Ethiopia” by GRIPS,
which is compiled as a publication under the same title1. Both research works aimed at
finding processes and issues occurred that take place when developing countries adopt andcontextualize EFA development goals into local settings.

January 2008
GRIPS Development Forum

1“The local meaning of educating all, and the process of adopting EFA development goals in
Kenya, Tanzania, and Ethiopia”
Edited by Shoko Yamada with contribution from: Yacob Arsano, Eustella P. Bhalalusesa,
Fatuma N. Chege, Regina M. Karega, Ayalew Shibeshi (July 2007)
http://www.grips.ac.jp/forum-e/pdf_e03/EFA.pdf

About the speakers
Seminar on 18th October 2007
Session 1• Ms. Rasheda K. Choudhury: (a commentators of session 2)
Director of the Campaign for Popular Education (CAMPE),
Board Member of the Global Campaign for Education (GCE), Bangladesh•

Mr. Peter Colenso: (a commentator of session 2)
Head of Profession, Education, Human Development Group,
Policy and Research Division, DFID, UK

Session 2• Dr. Eustella Bhalalusesa:
Dean, Faculty of Education, University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania•

Dr. Keng Chansopheak:Deputy Director, Master of Development Studies Program, Royal University ofPhnom Penh, Cambodia•

Dr. Donald Holsinger:
Professor, Brigham Young University, USA
Former President of Comparative and International Education Society

About the commentators
Session 1• Mr. Yasushi Onishi:
Director for Development Issues, International Bureau, Ministry of Finance•

Mr. Takahiro Kano:
Senior Coordinator, Global Issues Cooperation Division, International Cooperation
Bureau, Ministry of Foreign Affairs•

Mr. Takafumi Miyake
Secretary General, Japan NGO Network for Education (JNNE)

Session 2• Dr. Yasushi Hirosato:
Senior Education Specialist, Social Sectors Division, Southeast Asia Department,
Asia Development Bank

About the moderators
Session 1• Mr. Takumo Yamada:
Advocacy Officer, OXFAM Japan
Session 2• Dr. Yuto Kitamura:
Associate Professor, Nagoya University•

Dr. Shoko Yamada:
Associate Professor, GRIPSGRIPS Development Forum Seminar
Aid for Self-Reliance and Budget Support for Educational Development

CONTENTS

Program･･････････････････････････････････････････････････････････････････････････････････････････････････････････････････

1

Executive Summary････････････････････････････････････････････････････････････････････････････････････････････････

3

Session 1 – Should the Recurrent Expenditure in Education be Supported?
Summary of Presentations････････････････････････････････････････････
Comments from the Panelists ････････････････････････････････････････

5
9Main Points Discussed (Open Discussion and Q & A Session)･･･････････････

12

Session 2 – Endogenous Educational Policy-Making and Aid for Self-Reliance
Summary of Presentations････････････････････････････････････････････

16

Comments from the Panelists･････････････････････････････････････････
Main Points Discussed (Open Discussion and Q & A Session)･･･････････････

20
22

ANNEXES････････････････････････････････････････････････････････････････････････････････････････････････････････････････

26

Annex 1: Presentation materials of Session 1 (PPTs)
1-1 Introduction by Dr. Shoko Yamada････････････････････････････
1-2 “Ensuring Education for All, Budget Support: Benefits &26

Challenges” by Ms. Rasheda K. Choudhury････････････････････
1-3 “DFID Initiative to Support Recurrent Expenditure in Education”
by Mr. Peter Colenso･･････････････････････････････････････
1-4 Comments by Mr. Takafumi Miyake･･･････････････････････････

27
32
35

Annex 2: Presentation materials of Session 2 (PPTs and Handouts)
2-1 “The Process of Adopting Education for All in Educational Policy
Making in Tanzania” by Dr. Eustella Bhalalusesa････････････････
36
2-2 “Education Policy Making and Implementation in the Aid Dependent
Country of Cambodia” by Dr. Keng Chansopheak････････････････ 40
2-3 “Improving the Distribution of Education for Self Reliance” (PPT)“Is the Distribution of Education in Vietnam a Significant Policy
Tool for Self Reliance? ” (Handout) by Dr. Donald Holsinger･････････ 45

Program

Seminar on Aid for Self-Reliance and Budget Support for
Educational Development
Organizers: National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS), Japan NGO
Network for Education (JNNE), Nagoya University, and Foundation for Advanced
Studies on International Development (FASID)



Date:

18th October 2007, 13:00-18:30

Venue:GRIPS, Tokyo

Program:

13:00-13:10

Opening by Dr. Shoko Yamada, GRIPS

13:10-15:10

Session 1 – Should the Recurrent Expenditure in Education be
Supported?
Moderator: Takumo Yamada, OXFAM Japan
Presentations
1. Ensuring education for all, budget support: benefits and challenges- Ms. Rasheda K. Choudhury, Director of the Campaign for Popular
Education (CAMPE), Bangladesh
2. DFID initiative to support recurrent expenditure in education- Mr. Peter Colenso, Head of Profession, Education, Human
Development Group, Policy and Research Division, DFID, UK
Comments
1. Mr. Yasushi Onishi, Director for Development Issues, International
Bureau, Ministry of Finance
2. Mr. Takahiro Kano, Senior Coordinator, Global Issues Cooperation
Division, International Cooperation Bureau, Ministry of Foreign Affairs
3. Mr. Takafumi Miyake, Secretary General, JNNE
Open discussion

15:10-15:30
15:30-18:30

Intermission
Session 2 – Endogenous Educational Policy-Making and Aid for
Self-Reliance1Moderators: Dr. Yuto Kitamura, Associate Professor, Nagoya University
Dr. Shoko Yamada, Associate Professor, GRIPS
Presentations
1. The Process of Adopting Education for All in Educational Policy Making
in Tanzania- Dr. Eustella Bhalalusesa, Dean, Faculty of Education, University of Dar
es Salaam, Tanzania
2. Education Policy Making and Implementation in the Aid Dependent
Country of Cambodia- Dr. Keng Chansopheak, Deputy Director, Master of Development
Studies Program, Royal University of Phnom Penh, Cambodia
3. Improving the Distribution of Education for Self Reliance- Dr. Donald Holsinger, Professor, Brigham Young University, USA
Comments
1. Dr. Yasushi Hirosato, Senior Education Specialist, Social Sectors Division
Southeast Asia Department, Asia Development Bank
2. Mr. Peter Colenso, Head of Profession, Education, Human Development
Group, Policy and Research Division, DFID, UK
3. Ms. Rasheda K. Choudhury, Director of the Campaign for Popular
Education (CAMPE), Bangladesh

2Executive Summary

Today, the amount of financial aid to developing countries which are having difficulty inachieving global agendas, such as EFA and MDGs, is increasing rapidly. There is nodenial of the importance that the global community gathers its wisdom and resources toguarantee the right of education to everybody in the world. At the same time, there is a
growing concern that the concentration of aid to the certain priority areas in education may
hamper the self-help and endogenous policy-making and implementation by thegovernments of developing countries themselves. Therefore, in this seminar, we discussed
about “aid for self-reliance,” which is one of the principles of Japanese foreign assistance.
Approximately sixty aid professionals, including ambassadors to Japan from Eritrea and
Rwanda, researchers, policymakers, practitioners, NGOs, consultants, and students,
participated in the seminar.
The seminar consisted of two sessions.
Session 1 “Should the Recurrent Expenditure in Education be Supported?” focused on
the issues concerning the budget support, which is increasing among donors supporting the
education sector, and to which the Japanese government has also decided to commit, via the
EFA-FTI catalytic fund. In most developing countries, 80 to 90 percent of national
education expenditure is for recurrent costs, including teachers’ salaries and textbooks cost.
Abolishing school fees has caused further burden on the recurrent budget of thesegovernments, which are already suffering from the shortage of resources. In response to thischallenge, some donors are shifting their financial aid which has been provided in the formof project support to the sectoral and general budgetary supports, because the funds
provided to national treasury will allow the governments to increase allocation to therecurrent budget at their own discretion. On the other hand, there are concerns about
external support to recurrent expenditure. Those concerns include the possibility that suchaid may increase the dependency of the assisted government to aid, exceed the capacity of
the government to absorb and utilize the externally generated funds, and have started
without clear strategy about when and how to terminate budgetary support (exit strategy).
Therefore, this session has discussed whether or not donors should provide support torecurrent expenditure in education, in addition to capital expenditure in this session.
In this session, an NGO representative from Bangladesh and a DFID senior staff madepresentations on the benefits and challenges of support to recurrent costs in education,
followed by comments from Japanese policy makers and a representative of NGOs. The
open discussion followed by comments focused on (i) rationale for the budgetary supportand its complementality with capacity development, (ii) exit strategy and risks of thebudgetary support, and (iii) strategies of apportioning donor resources among different
educational sub-sectors and countries.
Session 2 “Endogenous Educational Policy-Making and Aid for Self-Reliance”
discussed issues that developing countries face in their policy-making. In today’s global
society, developing countries cannot help but being affected by global society; they are to3

develop labor forces to achieve economic competitiveness of the country or to make efforts
to achieve global agendas represented by EFA and MDGs. On the other hand, each country
has its unique socio-economic conditions, educational demands, and education system
historically constructed, which have to be considered in making and implementing
education policies. Given these internal and external factors influencing policy choices,
participants discussed about how the governments of developing countries can secureself-reliance and sustainability in the planning and administration of education.
In this session, researchers from Tanzania, Cambodia, and USA made presentations on therealities and issues of education policy-making, based on which commentators andparticipants discussed about possibilities of aid for endogenous policy-making. Open
discussion touched upon issues such as: (i) relations between recipient countries and donors,(ii) social impact of free primary education and community financing, (iii) operational
priority given to primary education and issue of addressing all of the six Education For All(EFA) goals, and (iv) equity of educational opportunities and the implication of theeducation Gini coefficience and its usage for education policy analysis.

4Session 1
Should the Recurrent Expenditure in Education be Supported?
Summary of Presentations(1) Ms. Rasheda K. Choudhury (Director of the Campaign for Popular Education,
Bangladesh)“Ensuring Education for All, Budget Support: Benefits & Challenges”
Based on her rich experience working in the NGO sector, the speaker made the case fromthe grass-root perspective and introduced a story of community participation andfield-oriented and micro-level efforts. She referred to the case of a registered primaryschool built by young volunteers on their own, without budgetary or administrative support
from the government. Then, turning to the broader and macro level of educational
administration, the speaker pointed out the importance and difficulty of ensuring goodquality and equity of education, and efficient resource flow and political commitment,
whatever modality of external support was employed. The speaker explained the ways ofexternal resources flow into education sector of Bangladesh and raised questions on how totackle the issues and challenges of the budgetary support, referring to the case of the Second
Primary Education Development Program (PEDP-II), 2004-2009, which is the
sub-sector-wide program for primary education.
Although investment in education has been increasing so as to improve access to andquality of education, still, the amount needed has not been met, and access, quality andequity of education remain problems. The data of Gross Enrollment Racio and Net
Enrollment Racio are used broadly by the government. However, in south Asia, small
number in terms of percentage in non-enrollment actually means millions of children areout of school. Also, the completion rate and the number of people who complete withrequired competency remain low. Regardless of the large sum of aid inflow, either in theforms of budgetary and project support, in reality, the existing education system is creating,rather than decreasing, inequality among working children, between urban and rural areas,or because of other socio-economic factors such as ethnicity, physical disability and gender.
The speaker stressed that it is important to understand that there are multiple layers of
stumbling stones in developing countries to achieve equity in education and that theresource gap will continue unless the government recognizes the importance of efficient
resource flow and political commitment. It is not enough to merely allocate larger amountof resources to education sector, but the government need to make sure that the resources
truly reach and benefit the disadvantaged population, which also requires strong politicalwill.
As for the budgetary support, there are three dimensions of risks; (i) the country levelcommitment, such as political will, plans and strategies, (ii) the donor level commitment,such as efforts and demonstration of their pledges, and (iii) financing plan which needs tobe long term, predictable, responsive and flexible, but to ensure in-built mechanism of5

accountability and learning from lessons.
For the economic development of Bangladesh, external assistance has played a significant
role. The recent trend shows that the modality of aid which is increasing is project aid
instead of budgetary support. At the same time, the funds provided as grants has declined,
which has resulted in an increase of loans. While bilateral aid, among which Japan tops thelist of donors, has decreased, multilateral aid has grown. Under such circumstances, donor
coordination has an important bearing on the mobilization of economic assistance. The
more there are co-financed projects, the more implementation with the conditionalities andprocesses become complex than projects funded by a single source. This is why donor
coordination has become important.
The PEDP-II, multi donor projects and SWAP (sector-wide program) started from 2004,
declare its focus on improving the quality of primary education in documents. However,
how far the quality issues are addressed to the disadvantaged groups, including the poor, has
not been evident yet. Regarding the initial challenges of the budgetary or current
expenditures support, there are no appropriate regulatory frameworks: all the stakeholders,
particularly the government and public sector of all levels are sectionalized and not oriented
to the implementation of program; the ownership of the program is not at broadly-based;
and institutions are not prepared to implement the program and are still at the stage oflearning from the process. The complexity of the financial system of PEDP-II, such as
multiple sources of funds, complex procedure of fund disbursement and new procurement
guidelines, remains to be a problem that threw into confusion among civil society
organizations and consuming much time in delivering services etc.
There should be a mechanism for policy-makers and stakeholders of educational programs
to learn from lessons of their own country and others, particularly from mistakes made andchallenges faced. It is necessary to share enough and hard evidence of experiences andprogress of the aid provided through SWAP and in the form of budgetary support, especiallywhen it was aimed at covering the recurrent expenditure. As each country is unique insocial-political context, country-to-country analysis is necessary. The risk of donor
dependency should be also discussed based on country analysis. Providing resources is aquestion of political choice and not Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP). The speakerconcluded that GCE (Global Campaign for Education) is determined to promote two
principles as non-negotiable: education as human rights and basic education for all thecitizens. We have many stakeholders, and responsibility should be clearly understood byeach stakeholder. The question is not what to do but whether we are going to do that.
[See Annex 1-2 for PPT]6

(2) Mr. Peter Colenso (Head of Profession, Education, Human Development Group,
Policy and Research Division, DFID, UK)“DFID Initiative to Support Recurrent Expenditure in Education”
The speaker presented the UK’s financial aid and the viewpoint as a country which
promotes budgetary support. The speaker considered that the decision to provide budgetary
support should be made based on the consideration on not only if it is technically right orthere are needs of such form of assistance on the part of the recipient governments, but also
if it is feasible in the politico-economic context of the donor country itself. The presentation
touched upon 5 issues; (i) the instruments of financial aid by the UK, (ii) rationale and (iii)risks for financing recurrent expenditures, (iv) evidence on performance of the generalbudgetary support (GBS), and (v) priorities that global aid community should follow for
better aid and what the UK has done to improve its educational assistance.
UK delivers financial aid through different aid instruments with different approaches
according to country contexts. The budget support is a primary instrument for DFID in
supporting recurrent cost expenditure. DFID categorizes countries to support into threegroups: the fragile states affected by civil conflicts; low-income countries; and the
middle-income countries. These are categorized based on the level of capacity of
governance, management and utilization of public financial and other resources, politicalwill, and plans in managing finance and reducing poverty. DFID considers that low-income
countries are most suited for budgetary support.
In the case of last fiscal year (2006/07), 26% of DFID’s bilateral financial aid was provided
in the form of budgetary support.
Note: In the context of DFID, “Budget support” means grant aid provided directly to thegovernments through bilateral programs. “Grants” in Slide 4 (P.33) means grants to third
party organizations such as the UN agencies and NGOs. “Loans” are generally not directly
provided.
There are four rationales of the DFID’s financial aid which aims at increasing enrollment
and raising the quality of education. The speaker pointed out that capital aid would not raise
revenue of recipient governments to meet the most needed areas of finance such as teacher
salaries and the support of abolishing school fees. And project support tends to have narrowgeographic and thematic focus and, thus, lacks the capacity to systematically cover thewhole country. It also lacks sustainability as it is off-budget extra fund provided not as apart of government’s regular budget. Meanwhile, budgetary support will involve thewhole government structure, even those not directly involved in education, and discussion
among wide range of stakeholders will provide opportunities to negotiate and overcome thelimitations. Moreover, the project-based assistance tends to restrict the accountability
relationship to the one between the donor and the government. Budget support will enable
the government to grasp domestic resources and donor resources as a whole. It will also
strengthen the relationship between citizens and the government. On the other hand, there
are risks, both for the assisted and donor governments, caused by budgetary support. For theassisted governments, policy intrusion, absorptive capacity and aid dependency are themajor risks. Donor governments are concerned that fund leakage and corruption in the7process of fund distribution within the government structure of assisted country may reduce
the actual amount spent for the beneficiaries. It is also said that budgetary support makes
it difficult to demonstrate the impact of the aid and attribute it to specific interventions,which also leads to another concern of acquiring parliamentary and public support.
The speaker also explained the evidence and performance of budgetary support referring to
the Joint Evaluation of GBS provided by multiple donors in 7 countries from 1994 to 2004.
GBS had positive impacts in 5 of the 7 countries by leading to the better management ofgovernment resources and positive effects on other aid. The Net Enrolment Rates of some
GBS-recipient countries - Mozambique, Rwanda, Uganda and Vietnam – has increased,
which suggest that there could be some positive correlation between GBS and enrolment
rate.
At the G8 summit in 2005, G7 donor countries have pledged to increase aid volumes but not
all of them have been actualized. The speaker raised four priorities for aid reform if we areto meet the Education MDGs, which are; more in volume of aid, more allocation to low
income countries, more amount to basic education and the right kind of support topost-basic education, and more aligned and harmonized quality. According to theDevelopment Assistance Committee (DAC) data on aid to education provided by G7, theInternational Development Association (IDA), and EC countries, aid of some countries,
such as Japan, Germany, France, and EU, tend to go to middle income countries rather than
low income countries and, at the same time, to post-basic education rather than to basic
education. The speaker also pointed out that a large part of the aid for higher education isexpended for scholarships and other things that are considered not higher priorities.
Therefore, he advised that global aid to education was not well aligned with the goal of
meeting the Education MDGs or even the broader EFA Goals. Then, the speaker reported onwhat the UK is doing in its educational aid based on the rationales and issues discussed
earlier.
The speaker concluded that in order to achieve aid reform and improve the quality of aid,
consideration of the domestic political economy on the part of donor country is significant.
DFID believes that one of the major aid instruments is budgetary support. UK is fortunate
to have had supportive political environment, such as the legislative base for poverty
reduction by International Development Act (2001), Prime Minister’s support, cross-party
and parliamentary support, including the National Audit Office, and public support. To
sustain such potentially fragile consensus, DFID spends time and energy to achieve resultson the ground and communicate the results back home. To continue the effort toward
better educational aid, the international community should establish a broad and deep
coalition among donors, private sector, and NGOs for cross financing.
[See Annex 1-3 for PPT]

8

Comments from the Panelists(1) Mr. Yasushi Onishi (Director for Development Issues, International Bureau,
Ministry of Finance)
A major role of Ministry of Finance (MoF) in development aid is support throughmulti-lateral channels, or MDBs. The international schemes of financing aid to educationconsists of three categories: namely, (i) grants; (ii) loans to low income countries provided
through the International Development Association (IDA) without interests (so called ‘soft
loans’), to which Japan is a big contributor, followed by UK; and (iii) loans with interests
through MDBs such as the World Bank or Asian Development Bank.
Regarding grants, one of important schemes is the Fast Track Initiative (FTI), which wasestablished in 2002 to provide focused assistance to countries which are facing difficulty inachieving Universal Primary Education (UPE). The FTI has demonstrated good results sofar. However, in order to achieve the MDGs’ targets related to education, more has to be
done.
Regarding budgetary support to cover recurrent expenditure, the speaker considers it
definitely necessary on the ground that it will enable a government to pay teachers’ salaries
in timely and appropriate manners. The question is how to design an exit policy andstrategy so as to avoid continuous dependency of a government on external aid for recurrent
expenditure. With respect to an exit policy of budgetary support to cover recurrent
expenditure, there are not some orthodox best practices. So, it would be useful for us toshare the speaker’s view of Bangladesh’s experience in terms of an exit policy as well as
best practices, or if any, failure cases of the UK’s policy.
(2) Mr. Takehiro Kano (Senior Coordinator, Global Issues Cooperation Division,
International Cooperation Bureau, Ministry of Foreign Affairs)
Japan is hosting the TICAD IV and G8 summit in 2008. It is still not decided how muchweight will be placed on education in these conferences, but the effort is being made to put
it into the agenda, since there is a need to talk of this issue with G8 and global partners.
Regarding recurrent budget support and self-reliance, if the country is self-reliant, thecountry would not need aid at all. It is always necessary to consider the domestic capacity tostand up on its own, and it is risky for a country to be dependent on the aid. Even theamount of Japan’s ODA is not predictable, as even Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) staff
were surprised that the ODA budget has declined so sharply since 1999 - Japan had been thelargest ODA donor for a decade. The recipient countries cannot count on the aid and should
develop their own capacity. One of the keys to the success for present industrializedcountries was to generate their own resources and costs on education. Like the story of“spirits of 100 sacks of rice2” introduced by Mr. Koizumi at the G8 summit in 2002, Japan2

At the beginning of the Meiji period, the desperately impoverished Nagaoka fiefdom received one hundred sacksof rice as relief aid. One of the leaders of the clan, Torasaburo Kobayashi, counseled that if they just distributed the9has long been invested in education and it even invited external experts to learn advanced
knowledge in key areas at its own expense. To conclude, it is not of prime necessity to think
about modality of aid, budget support or project support. The more important thing is tothink about the best way to create results.
(3) Mr. Takafumi Miyake (Secretary General, Japan NGO Network for Education)
The speaker began by stating that this issue should not be considered as a dichotomy
between project support and budget support, and that we would agree that a modality mix isnecessary, depending on the recipient country context. Then, the question is how Japan can
provide support to recurrent costs in education - to which countries, with what aid programs,
and who should implement them.
Regarding which countries Japan should provide support to recurrent costs in education for,the speaker proposed that the FTI endorsement mechanism, namely the indicative
framework, can be utilized to select the countries, as, at present, this is the only set ofindicators that donor community has agreed to. There are two major concerns related to exit
strategies: (i) until which year we should provide support, and (ii) what will happen after
2015. He recommended Japan to take the lead to initiate the empirical study on this issue ofexit strategy, which would be a contribution to the donor community. The budgetary
support has risks of misuse of funds and corruption. In order to reduce or avoid such risks
and ensure transparency and accountability, civil society organizations (CSOs) are engaged
in monitoring and budget/aid money tracking. In fact, UK and Dutch governments are
funding CSOs’ national coalitions to promote EFA in developing countries.
For the second point that with what aid programs Japan should provide support to recurrent
costs, it is recommended to MoF and MoFA to expand budget or non-project type support
within grant aid programs, because 88% of Japan’s grant aid programs are project support,
and only 12% of this can be categorized as budget support. NGOs welcome the government
initiative to launch Grant Aid Poverty Reduction Strategy in 2007. However, from theviewpoint of Japanese taxpayers, the government should make it clear that Japan’s budget
support money is to be used for basic education and health. Then, sector wide support for
education and health would be an option for improving the Japanese aid modality before
jumping to the GBS.
As for the last point, who will be responsible for aid for recurrent costs in education, theimplementation of major aid schemes, Japanese yen loans, technical assistance and grant
aid, will be unified under Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) after ODA
institution reform in 2008, which is a chance for improving aid efficiency and effectiveness.
However, it is not clear how far JICA will have control over the usage of ODA money andwhether JICA will be given authority to make decision about grant aid provided in the formof budget support, in addition to project-type grant aid which is currently under JICA’srice to the fiefdom’s samurai and residents, the rice would be gone in a few days. Instead he proposed to use the rice
to secure funds to build a school, and thus to increase one hundred sacks of rice to thousands or tens of thousands ofsacks of rice in the future. The plan was carried out, and as a result, a steady stream of valuable human resources
was produced by the school. This foresight is called the “spirit of the one hundred sacks of rice” in Japan, and itemphasizes that investment in education is one of the most vital investments for nation-building.

10

control. JICA should be delegated more power to be able to be responsible for all aid
modalities, including budget support, which will increase complementality between
technical support for governmental capacity development and budgetary support.
[See Annex 1-4 for PPT]11

Main Points Discussed (Open Discussion and Q & A Session)
With the guidance of the moderator, the open discussion focused on the following threeissues: (i) rationale for budgetary support and complementarities with capacity development,(ii) exit strategy and risks of budgetary support, and (iii) sub-sectoral and country allocationof education aid.
(1) Rationale for budgetary support and complementarities with capacity development
One of the participants mentioned that it might be advisable to discuss the modality issue
looking at not only from positive aspect of the budgetary support, but also the other side of
the coin. While the OECD DAC report said that budgetary support is successful in raising
health and education spending, the World Bank report in 2006 said that support toinfrastructure in Africa has fallen dramatically during the last few decades and needs to besupported as well.
Another participant pointed out that the OECD DAC report examined the successful casesof the GBS, however, the other side of the coin is the challenges for the future. As to
increase public expenditure for the poor in the areas of health and education, in somecountries, it is difficult to observe of the GBS has any effect on increasing resource
allocation to specific areas within a sector like education. Because sub-sectoral allocationis under discretion of Ministry of Education, GBS does not have an exact instrument toassure that the desired amount is dedicated to a specific sub-sector. When recurrent cost
support is discussed, Japan should be very cautious. It would be better also to discuss thenegative implications of GBS.
When the modes of education support, from project support to the sector-wide approach orbudget support, is discussed, from the time of structural adjustment, the point of focus
always goes to the fact that success depends on institutional capacity and ownership of thegovernment. However, as Mr. Kano said, the results on the ground seem to be more
important. Particularly, in order to advance decentralization, local-level policy ownershipand community participation, it is necessary to know how that can be consistent with thecurrent trends on management at the macro level, how to ensure providing the same levelsof support both at the central and ground level, and how we can ensure consistency between
the technical input on the ground and the budgetary support. This is also the issue of thecomplementality of project support and budgetary support.
One of the participants stated that the common concerns of participants here seem to be theeffectiveness and risks of the budget support, the complementarities between the budget
support and capacity development (project support). The sector-wide approach is theholistic approach of strengthening education system of a country; namely, policy, financeand service delivery at the school level. To achieve this, money is important, but this is notall. At the school level, qualified teachers and the appropriate number of the textbooks andteaching materials are indispensable. In the case of Bangladesh, because of complex
bureaucracy and financial arrangement the Primary Education Development Program II

12

(PEDP-II) progressed very slowly. On the other hand, JICA has been supporting the“Teacher education program.” In cooperation with Bangladesh government, an institution
developed teacher guidelines and built an in-service teacher training system. Now, throughPEDP-II, the teachers’ guide developed under JICA-funded program will be printed anddistributed nationwide to all the schools in the framework of the PEDP-II.
As for complementarities, budget and adequate policy are both important, but we need tothink about service delivery at school level as well. In order to improve field-levelinterventions, some concrete measures are necessary. In this case, measures can be teachers’
guidelines and in-service teacher’s training. The question is how this complementality canstrengthen sector-wide achievement. We have not gotten an answer for the exit strategy oraid dependency yet. Another question is whether such matters should be solved within the
education sector only or beyond it. It is necessary to scrutinize this matter more in depth andin relation to specific needs in different country contexts.
(2) Exit strategy and risks of budgetary support
Ms. Choudhury stated four points regarding the exit strategy. First, as Mr. Miyake
mentioned, policy coherence is necessary for recipient countries to design an exit strategy.
Second, in the political context of ODA, the exit strategy or contents cannot be designed orvisualized if it is short-term (6-7 years) planning, but long-term contextualized planning isnecessary. Third, in designing the sector-wide program and budgetary support, it would bedesirable to include the components of institutional capacity building, which will help topush forward the exit strategy. The other important aspect is that, a governmental reform,
particularly a financial reform which aims at expanding the tax basis and enhancing
government financial capacity, can contribute to decrease dependency on aid and donor
support. As an example of other important efforts, the speaker touched on the role played by
CSOs in Bangladesh which started to voice the social responsibility of the private sector
companies to support education and the government is encouraging it with the first tax
rebate policy for the companies funding education. A long-term policy commitment will beneeded. Finally, she argued that these reforms also have some effect of reducing corruption.
Mr. Colenso responded to the questions about DFID’s good practice in budgetary supportand suggested cooperation with JICA. (i) It is possible for DFID and JICA to plan long-term
collaboration strategy using the same criteria to start budgetary support in a country where
project support has been implemented by both and will be continued in the long term. (ii)
The World Bank’s fiscal sustainability analysis which has served information for
decision-making about the Bank’s poverty reduction support credits and the grants can beused as a technical tool for the criteria. DFID is using it to see fiscal sustainability and otheraspects of the governments’ managerial capacity. (iii) An intervention like budgetary
support should be accompanied by complementary measures to support the recipient
governments in generating domestic revenues. In the case of Uganda, complementary TA(technical assistance) to the revenue authority has been implemented and the volume ofdomestic revenues has dramatically increased. (iv) The most important long-term exit
strategy is economic growth. DFID currently provides budgetary support to Vietnam andIndia but will end them in the near future, when these countries become middle-income

13countries, as the country’s growth will make their public finance sustainable. DFID made a
new ministerial team on the issue of budgetary support and gives emphasis on long-term
strategy. But it is necessary to work with the international community and not only DFID.
A participant from the floor raised the issue of the conditions for a donor country to start thebudgetary or sector-wide approach. For budgetary support to be effective, it is necessary toconsider the organizational structure and staffing. EFA-GMR (Global Monitoring Report)
2007 and other documents have alarmed that staff in charge of education have decreased in
DFID and some other donor organizations which provide budgetary support and support to
SWAP. In such a situation, when they commit to budgetary support and SWAP, these donororganizations have to coordinate and implement with line ministries and ministry of
Finance of developing countries with fewer staff. If it is always the case, for the new JICA,
reform of the organizational structure and staff profiles would be the issue to be dealt with.
Another participant from the floor pointed out that since the Dakar Declaration, some of therisks of budgetary support have become realities and no longer risks. What are the DFID’s
preventive measures to, in particular, policy intrusion, absorptive capacity, and leakage or
corruption?
Ms. Choudhury responded to the questions referring to the case of Bangladesh. Although
the PEDP-II, which JICA also supported, has seemed to made extensive impact, it is still
difficult to determine the impact of budgetary support, as it is still new. It can be said thatthe levels of local ownership and community participation have been raised. However, it is
not certain if there is an impact on the whole hierarchical, centralized institution of
educational administration in Bangladesh, as the challenges of the institutional orientation
toward implementing PEDP-II had been mentioned in the presentation. What is significant
is that, at the local level, and even in the very poor areas, demand for education has beencreated. That is something which even India has not achieved. The government has
enforced policy to promote girls’ education and made necessary institutional arrangement
for that. On the other hand, the quality of education issues has not yet been attended welland the data of the PEDP-II and EMIS show high dropout rates. After PEDP-II, access,equity and quality are hoped to be improved.
Mr. Colenso explained that the UK agrees on conditions and measures for budgetary
support with the government it will provide aid. Major ones are commitment to poverty
reduction, commitment to international human rights and other international conventions,and the strengthening of public financial management mechanisms against corruption. Oncethe conditions are met, dialogue with the government to launch an aid program will bestarted. As for implementation and the partner government’s ability to handle it, several
stages of dialogue are made, at the sector and national levels. As for the staffing of donors,
the division of labor among the donor countries should be carried out. For instance, not all
the donors sit for the sectoral meetings and some represent other donors. If someorganizations do not have enough financial or human resources, such as sector advisor, andif it is required, they should be provided by others.
Regarding the risks to budget support, UK has a policy on conditionalities, which shows14how DFID uses the conditions, and clearly is not in the position of imposing any policy. It
always gives priority to negotiation at the national level. Concerning the absorptive capacity,
CSOs have been provided support by DFID for broader engagement in the policy and aid
management process of the country level and regions. As for corruption, based on theconditions DFID agrees on with the assisted government as mentioned, there is a routine
monitoring procedure in budgetary support operation using the World Bank assessment
tools, and there is a no-tolerance attitude to corruption.
(3) Sub-sectoral and country allocation of education aid
A participant raised an issue regarding Slide 11 and 12 of Mr. Colenso’s presentation (P34),
which emphasized the importance of support to the low income countries and basic
education. According to him, there is an increasing consensus in the international
community that the shift to secondary and higher levels of education is necessary today inorder to achieve the global goals, as without an comprehensive approach to upgrate theentire education system, efforts would stop short and fail to sustain. Therefore, it is not
immediately wrong not focusing on basic education, but the attention to it should be
adequately given in the reform process as a whole. But for the sake of knowing the purposesof donor countries to provide aid money, namely, whether to invest in short-term economic
development or to ensuring equitable access to education, the charts provided by Mr.
Colenso will be more useful.
Mr. Kano stated that it can be said that the two charts might indicate a link between theperformance of the recipient countries and the emphasis on the post-primary education.
When people are more educated, they become more sensitive to education. If you need
good teachers to basic and primary education, they are to be better trained. Thus, theinvestment in higher education can be the results of public awareness and preparedness ofthe government to commit to post-primary education.

15

16

Session 2
Endogenous Educational Policy-Making and Aid for
Self-Reliance
Summary of Presentations(1) Dr. Eustella Bhalalusesa (Dean, Faculty of Education, University of Dar es Salaam,
Tanzania)“The Process of Adopting Education for All in Educational Policy Making in
Tanzania”
The speaker shared research findings on conceptualization of EFA, priority areas of EFA
goals, and integration and adoption processes of EFA in Tanzania. The main researchmethodology was in-depth interviews to key stakeholders of EFA, including policy makers,
aid officials, teachers and civil society organizations advocates. The research found that
“Education for All” is conceived as (i) inclusive education that must be made available toall specific groups including minority groups, girls, senior citizens and the disabled. (ii) a
human right, (iii) basic education, particularly primary schooling, and (iv) lifelong learning,at a conceptual level in Tanzania.
The research also found that the degree of knowledge on EFA six goals varies depending on
the positions of interviewees. However, in general, operational priority is given to primaryeducation and gender equity among EFA six goals, and other aspects such as Early
Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) and adult education remain marginalized. Thismight be one of the reasons why Tanzania does not have any policy document on ECCE.
The less priority given to adult literacy and ECCE can be attributed to two reasons. One is alack of political will, which is often contrasted with circumstances in the 1970s, when oneof the major contributing factors to great achievements in the eradication of illiteracy madeat that time was the strong political will within government and political leaders. The
second reason would be the position of development partners such as the World Bank. The
Bank’s emphasis is the universalization of primary schooling, which implicitly has greater
say in determining priority of the government.
For Tanzania, EFA goals were not new, except for goals on quality of education and social
and life skills. For example, in 1978, the National Education Act No.25 was passed in an
attempt to consolidate universal primary education, which requires compulsory primaryschool attendance of every child aged 7-13. At the present time, on the surface, all of the six
EFA goals have been integrated into education policy such as Education Training Policy,
Education Sector Development Programme and PRSP. The study identified two factors for
integration and adoption. The first one is the global movement toward EFA, to which
Tanzania conforms as a member of the global community. The second factor is financial
dependency on donors. As a rule, developing partners take part in meetings and they can

17influence decisions.
Finally, the speaker concluded that three notable issues have emerged from the study: (i)lack of policy continuity in the history of education development caused by drastic changesof regime, (ii) human and structural complications in the process of decision-making, and(iii) difficulty of conceptualizing EFA and its effect on prioritization and translation ofpolicies into practice. The speaker also recommended that Tanzanian government ensuresthat resources are equally distributed to encompass all segments of the population and all
six EFA goals.
[See Annex 2-1 for PPT]18

(2) Dr. Keng Chansopheak (Deputy Director, Masters of Development Studies
Program, Royal University of Phnom Penh, Cambodia)“Education Policy Making and Implementation in the Aid Dependent Country of
Cambodia”
The speaker started with her own experience of being reliant on a scholarship from Japanfor completing her Ph.D. in Japan, and now being independent and able to contribute to thedevelopment of her nation, suggesting that being reliant itself for some years is not bad.
However, countries such as Cambodia became more and more dependent and reliant on
external aid instead of being self-reliant, even though almost two decades have passed since
the end of the civil war. For example, 50 percent of operational costs of the Cambodian
government are from external aid. She argued that aid ineffectiveness stems from not onlylack of absorptive capacity of recipient countries but also from domination and influence bydonor agencies over recipient countries, which results in the failure for local knowledge to
grow.
Cambodia has four education plans: (i) National EFA Plan (10 years long-term), (ii)
Education Strategic Plan (5 years medium term), (iii) Education Sector Support Program(annually reviewed short-term), and (iv) Priority Action Programs (implementation
measures of plans). These plans focus on primary education with abolishing school fees andproviding operational budgets to schools, which, in her view, undermined the community
initiatives and involvement in school management.
The speaker presented data on the impact of these policies on access and efficiency. Bothgross and net enrolment rates improved after implementation of the new free primaryeducation policy. However, survival rate remains at 65 percent, and repetition and dropout
rate have not dropped, indicating that new policies have not improved the efficiency of
primary education.
Based on the research findings, the speaker presented two reasons for inefficiency. First, thequality issue is not addressed. Actual learning time of children, particularly in rural areas, isonly two hours due to teachers’ unpunctuality, absenteeism and carelessness, in spite of thefact that official instructional hours are four hours a day. Second, school management
reform measures require too much change in too short time. School principals andeducation officers have to comply with a complicated and unfamiliar management system,
which imposes a heavy workload on them.
Lastly, the speaker concluded that these issues could be attributed to centralized andtop-down policy making and lack of dialogue with local implementers, including theDistrict Office of Education, school principals, teachers and parents. She reiterated that
local people and local knowledge should be appreciated and employed in the policy-making
processes rather than relying on technical assistance from donors in order to foster
self-reliance and to mitigate aid dependency.
[See Annex 2-2 for PPT]

19

(3) Dr. Donald Holsinger (Professor, Brigham Young University, USA)
“Improving the Distribution of Education for Self Reliance”
The speaker first explained the concept of Gini coefficients, a distributional statistic that is
usually used to measure inequality in income, but unfortunately almost never used tomeasure inequality in education, neither by donor agencies and governments nor also by
academics. He recommended that the education Gini coefficient should be used to analyze
education policies affecting the distribution of opportunities including new investments
meant to expand coverage in education. The Lorenze Curve is used to present the Gini
coefficient graphically. The Lorenz Curve has two axes of which the y-axis shows the
cumulative proportion of educational attainment instead of total income as in the case of theLorenze Curve depicting inequality of income. The higher the education Gini coefficient,the more education is unequally distributed. The education Gini coefficient of Japan is 0.25,
which is slightly worse than Vietnam’s Gini of 0.24, whereas the education Gini coefficientof Cambodia is 0.51, which reflect the fact that 35% of population has no education, alingering consequence of the massive genocide of the Pol Pot era, one of the world’s worst
cases of systematic destruction of human capital.
The speaker argued that the reason for the high performance in economic growth andpoverty reduction in Vietnam is because an investment in education and education policy
have combined to result in a relatively equal distribution of education. In other words,
investments in education have failed in many cases around the world to produce planned
economic growth because the distribution of human capital was unequal. He also argued
that exclusive reliance on enrollment rates as a measure of quantitative expansion or systemcoverage has desensitized planners to the issue of inequality and its deleterious effects on
growth.
Furthermore, past research shows a weak relation between public spending on educationand outcomes, such as student learning performance, due to two reasons. The first is thatpublic resources often end up subsidizing education for the wealthy group. The second isthat the conventional view on the expansion of education has masked the issue of the
distribution of education.
Finally, the speaker stressed that planners and policy makers need to look at internalvariation in the distribution of education within the country. His study in Vietnam using datafrom the latest national census in 1999 revealed the fact that the education Gini coefficientvaries from province to province, indicating that there exists inequality among provinces
and ethnic groups even though the mean value of the education Gini coefficient of Vietnam
is very low compared to other developing countries. He also showed convincing evidence
that low learning achievement scores are systematically found in provinces with moreunequal distributions of education attainment. He concluded that education policy should
ensure not only access to education but also equal distribution of education investment at
sub-unit levels, which lead to economic growth and self-reliance.
[See Annex 2-3 for PPT and Handout]20

Comments from Panelists
The moderator highlighted issues raised by presentations. First, how can we solve the gap
between central level and local level in the process of policy formulation andimplementation? Second, how can we ensure the quality of education? Third, how can we
ensure equal distribution of education investment within a country? Fourthly, how do welook at the linkage between education services and academic performance of students?
Lastly, what are the policy implications to be extracted from presentations?
(1) Dr. Yasushi Hirosato (Senior Education Specialist, Social Sectors Division,Southeast Asia Department, Asia Development Bank)
Dr. Hirosato started with explaining the motivation for initiating the research on political
economy and capacity development in Asia while he was with Nagoya University (from2004 to August 2007). When he used to engage in education sector operations, he saw lotsof cases whereby donors took over the role of recipient countries. For example, policy
documents were prepared by foreign consultants in the name of technical assistance, rather
than by the government people. This made him believe the necessity of capacity
development of local experts who can engineer education reform by themselves throughpolicy analysis, planning, management, delivery, monitoring and evaluation, in order words,
the necessity of “indigenizing” education reform capacity.
In Cambodia, the education sector program support using the sector-wide approach has
been implemented, which resulted in reforms at national and provincial levels. However, as
illustrated by Dr. Chansopheak’s presentation, reforms do not seem to reach at school levels.
He stressed that the goal of education reform is not to promote the sector-wide approach
itself or donor coordination and harmonization, but to realize sustainable improvement oflearning and teaching environments with acceptable quality. Coherent and consistentcapacity development efforts at the school levels are of critical importance in ensuring
education reform and solving issues at school levels.
He requested one correction in the presentation by Dr. Holsinger, mentioning that theeducation Gini coefficient was actually used by ADB in a lower secondary education
development project in Vietnam to identify the target areas for the project’s component ofequitable access to lower secondary education. He also raised two questions: (1) what willbe the results of estimating the education Gini coefficient if we use data from lower
secondary education in Vietnam?; and (2) would any measures to mitigate the pressure of
exams and increasing private tutoring be examined?
(2) Mr. Peter Colenso (Head of Profession, Education, Human Development Group,
Policy and Research Division, DFID, UK)
Mr. Colenso raised a question to Dr. Holsinger that equal investment in education requires
higher unit costs for those hard to reach, which might be problematic from a public policy
point of view. Might government be reluctant to invest in education for the populations

21

which incur higher costs?
Regarding the issue of influence by donors through technical assistance and aid money, heargued that we need to trust national capacity and staff, but in the short term we have toaccept the influence of expatriates. He added that we need to ensure a high level of policy
dialogue for policy making and reform, which is the part of the compact in providing
budgetary support.
He agreed that EFA agenda is distorted, emphasizing access to primary schooling rather
than other levels of education. However, if we compare the level of investment with thelevel of education, we see the opposite phenomena. On example is that Rwanda spends 93
times more on university than primary education in terms of unit costs although it has a lotof problems at the level of primary education. He also commented that part of the reasonsfor emphasis on access rather than quality is that improving access is potentially easierthrough abolishing user fees and targeted investment than improving quality, which requires
long-term processes.
Lastly, he raised the risk of replicating the western education system, which might
mismatch the economic and social needs of the recipient countries, particularly topost-colonial countries through aid programs by donors, which requires fundamental
restructuring of the management of education assistance.
(3) Ms. Rasheda K. Choudhury (Director of the Campaign for Popular Education,
Bangladesh)
The speaker shared the results of a recent survey by the Education Watch group in
Bangladesh which shows that improvement in primary education significantly contributed
to an increase in the level of adult literacy, indicating that primary education is important.
She also emphasized that education services should be equally distributed to all segments ofthe population.
In terms of the quality of education, she argued that we need to look at not only teachers,
but also other factors, including curriculum, textbooks, learning environment, monitoring,
management and governance. The survey results of Education Watch group shows that only
2 percent of grade 5 students acquire basic competences expected at their grade. The survey
also suggests that the issue of the quality divide is emerging in Bangladesh, meaning thatthose who can afford to pay for better quality schools learn more than the poor. We have aquality gap not only between rural and urban areas, but also within urban communities. The
education Gini coefficient is important for civil society organizations to analyze how and towhom money is going to. She also emphasized that we should not rely on the national level
aggregated data and should take a careful look at the reality on the ground.

22

Main Points Discussed (Open Discussion and Q and A session)
The discussion focused on the following four issues: (i) priority on primary education
among six EFA goals, (ii) the relationship between recipient governments and donors, (iii)the concept of the education Gini coefficient and its relations with economic growth, and(iv) free primary education and community participation.
(1) Priority on primary education among six EFA goals
In response to Dr. Bhalalusesa’s finding in Tanzania that priority is given to primaryeducation rather than addressing six EFA goals or other levels of education, particularly
secondary education, Dr. Holsinger argued that the popularized study on the rate of return toeducation by George Psacharopoulos, a Greek economist at the World Bank, had beenhighly influential on the World Bank policy for education lending, which, in turn, also
influenced other donors’ education assistance policy. The Psacharopoulos’ studies showedthat the rate of return to investment in primary education was higher than that of any otherlevels of education, which led to the Bank’s policy not to invest in any other levels of
education for many years. However, this policy created an enormous unmet demand forsecondary education, for which donors are now scrambling to catch up.
The Ambassador of Rwanda to Japan, who used to be a president of National University of
Rwanda, shared the situation in Rwanda where only 18 percent of primary graduates areable to proceed to secondary schools due to lack of resources for secondary education, eventhough the gross enrollment rate for primary education is 95 percent. This is partly due tothe donors’ focus on primary education. He also emphasized the importance of higher
education in Rwanda to develop professionals such as lawyers, doctors and teachers, as thecountry experienced a tragic massacre that resulted in the loss of human capital.
Dr. Bhalalusesa reiterated that we need to have a holistic view of the education sector.
Priority on primary education provides pressure on secondary education, which requires anincrease in the number of teachers of secondary schools, leading to the demands on teacher
training colleges.
(2) The relationship between recipient governments and donors
The Ambassador of Eritrea to Japan reflected on the colonial times of Africa and proposedthat education assistance should take strategic partnership between donor countries andAfrican countries into account, which promotes private sector development andinternational trade. For example, in the past, Japanese assistance to Asian countries
promoted strategic business partnership, which contributed to economic growth in theregion.
The Ambassador of Rwanda to Japan argued that governments should have the capacity to
own the processes of policy-making and implementation, which is the challenge of his
government as well. He also suggested that the capacity of local governments is important23

in the education sector because they can fill the gap between policy and practice at theschool and community levels.
Dr. Chansopheak gave an example from Cambodia that young professionals who studied
abroad are making efforts to compete with international consultants, even though it is noteasy to win the competition. They meet regularly to discuss the development of Cambodia,
including the issue of international assistance. It is a new trend that young professionals
themselves are aware of ownership of the country. The other positive sign to show thenational ownership is that a national strategic plan of Cambodia mentions the reduction oftechnical assistance.
Dr. Hirosato added that in order to address this issue, we also need to discuss how tostrengthen links among national government, local government, communities, and schools
in a sustainable manner. He stated that Dr. Chansopheak’s diagram in her presentation
showing the relationship among these stakeholders would be helpful for the purpose ofidentifying the way to reduce coordination or transaction cost of interactions among
stakeholders.
(3) The concept of the education Gini coefficient and its relations with economic
growthParticipants showed lots of interest in applying the education Gini coefficient for the
analysis of Vietnam presented by Dr. Holsinger. A participant argued that the education Gini
coefficient is a stock concept, whereas the income Gini coefficient is a flow concept,
because asking the question to senior adults about the years of schooling implies the paststock of human capital of the respondents. Therefore, the rapid increase in the enrollment
rate of higher education after 2000 is not captured by the education Gini coefficient due tothe stock feature of the concept. He also argued that ensuring equality in higher education is
not necessary because not everyone needs to go to university. This also implies that eventhough the education Gini coefficient of Vietnam is almost the same as Japan, the meaningof the coefficient is quite different. He proposed that future research is needed to find out
why the education Gini coefficient is small in Hanoi, a northern city, whereas it is large in
Ho Chi Minh, a southern city, even though the income level of Ho Chin Min is higher thanHanoi.
Dr. Holsinger responded that one difference between the income Gini coefficient and theeducation Gini coefficient is that there is no upper limit in income, while there is an upper
limit in the number of years of education,. The implication of this fact is the need to monitor
periodically changes in the distribution of education which can occur quite quickly,
especially with massive infusion of funds brought on by EFA and other “fast track”
initiatives of major donor agencies. In the U.S. and Canada, a significant proportion of total
population has already received higher education, which results in stability of the American
education Gini coefficient. However, the Vietnamese education Gini coefficient haschanged quickly, so we need to continue to look at it.
Mr. Yamada of OXFAM Japan pointed out that we also needed to consider and deal with24

other factors affecting economic growth, such as international trade and investment regimes,
in order to be able to explain why in some cases equal distribution of education investment
did not result in actual economic growth as expected. Dr. Holsinger referred to the humancapital theory that education makes labor more productive in all sectors. Farmers with basic
literacy and numeracy produce more kilos of rice per hector than farmers without them.
This positive correlation between human capital and economic growth has been proved over
and over by economists, with no exceptions.
(4) Free primary education and community participation
Another participant agreed with Dr. Chansopheak in that free primary education would
sacrifice the tradition of community financing and participation at school levels not only in
Cambodia, but also in other countries, while recognizing that free primary education is ahuman right as stipulated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. He asked Mr.
Colenso for DFIF’s view on this.
Mr. Colenso responded that there were lots of internal debates on the DFID position on user
fees for primary health services, but not so much debate was there on formulating policy on
free primary education. He stressed that DFID’s policy paper on free primary education is a
powerful political statement, while he admits that there may be counter examples. He addedthat implementing free primary education is much more complex and difficult to manage
than it appears on the surface. If we abolish fees overnight, the education system will
collapse. Therefore, donors need to support the government to prepare the sequences of
implementing free primary education.
Mr. Yamada of OXFAM Japan argued that there is a risk of idealizing community financing
as a panacea for bottom-up approach, because there are cases where only those who canafford to pay have a say about how the school should be run, which he considered as a formof inequality that should not influence primary education. Instead, he reiterated theimportance of free primary education as the state’s responsibility to guarantee its citizens’
basic human rights, and proposed a different kind of bottom-up approach, in which people
and communities are not only empowered enough to understand policy papers written by
the elites, but also to actively identify and express their own needs and hold theirgovernments to account for the quality of education. From this perspective, he proposed aredefinition of the concept of community participation, from one achieved through financial
contribution to one achieved through participation in school management.
Dr. Chansopheak responded that even though it is true that some local people who could
contribute to the school influenced schools before, nobody could influence schools now
because they do not finance schools after introduction of the free primary education policy.
Dr. Bhalalusesa stated that even though we abolished school fees in Tanzania, we cannot
say that Tanzania has achieved free primary education, because parents and households still
have to pay for textbooks, pens and so on. In urban areas, some better-off parents pay for
private tutoring, which results in the increased gap in student achievement between the richand the poor.

25Ms. Choudhury agreed with Dr. Bhalalusesa in that education is not free even under the free
primary education policy. A recent study on the financing of primary and secondary
education in Bangladesh found that communities, particularly parents, contribute more than
the government does. The community contributes to the school in hiring more teachers andbuying supplementary materials. She added that what we have to ensure is community
participation in decision-making processes, rather than community financing. She argued
that basic education is a human right, so it has to be free, but at the same time, we need toencourage, mobilize and allow the local community to participate.
Dr. Holsinger stated that Americans find it difficult to distinguish between public educationand community education, although privately funded education is clearly understood. In the
U.S., communities had been, from the beginning, granted the right to establish school
districts with taxing authority. Hence the schools of these communities were both public(i.e., financed from tax revenues) and community based. Political movements elsewhere to
decentralize education funding and decision making are irrelevant to the U.S. case because
the U.S. was never centralized and hence cannot decentralize. However, decentralization
might be difficult for other countries. Indonesia is trying to radically decentralize its
education system, which is a great experiment because no country that big in size has everattempted to do so.

26

ANNEXES
Annex 1-1
Dr. Yamada’s PPT
Slide 1

Slide 2

Dilemmas we face toward achieving
educational development

Slide 2

Seminar on Aid for SelfReliance and Budget
Support for Educational
Development

1. Do global agendas and national
priorities always match?
 Potential fields of conflict in prioritization:
 Universal primary education for school-aged
children - Inclusive education (adult literacy,
special education, mobile school, etc.)
 Quality vs. quantity
 Tertiary and Technical Vocational vs.
Primary Education (Trickle-down or Bottomup)

October 18, 2007
GRIPS, JNNE, Nagoya
University, and FASID

Slide 3Slide 4

Questions
2. Will everything mentioned in thepolicy be implemented?

Does budget support promote
effective and self-reliant
educational development?

 Lack of resources (control over resource) Lack of implementation capacity
 Lack of operational programmes
 Lack of leadership/commitment

What is needed to foster
endogenous policy-making andimplementation?

3. Do all stakeholders participate indecision-making equally?
 “Partnership” among government, donors, civilsociety organization, etc.
 Aid dependence?

Slide 5International goals in the field of
education“Education for All”

1. Expansion of Early
Childhood Care
2. Universal free compulsory
primary education by 2015
3. Expanded access to adulteducation
4. 50% improvement of adultliteracy rate by 2015
5. Eliminating genderdisparities by 2005
6. Improvement of quality ofeducation

Millennium
Development
Goals (MDGs) on
education
1. Universal primaryeducation
2. Gender equity

27

Annex 1-2
Ms. Choudhury’s PPT
Slide 1

Slide 2ENSURING EDUCATION FOR ALL
BUDGET SUPPORT: BENEFITS & CHALLENGES

ENSURING EDUCATION FOR ALL
BUDGET SUPPORT: BENEFITS & CHALLENGESPresented by:Rasheda K. Choudhury
Director
Campaign For Popular Education (CAMPE)
Dhaka, Bangladesh
October 2007

Greetings from CAMPE, Bangladesh
The Global Dream (to be achieved by 2015):
 Early Childhood Care and Development
 Universal Primary Completion
 Education, Skill and Livelihood for young adults
 Literacy Skills for adults
 Gender Equality
 Basic Education of good quality for All
2

1

Slide 3Slide 4

We have crossed halfway through 2015, but yet,

Despite massive economic growth, impressive
communication technologies and incredible scientificdevelopments, the existence of more than 800 million
adult illiterates remains as the “ Scandal of the Country”.
 Quality Education remains a far away dream andeducation, instead of being an “equalizer”, isincreasingly becoming an “instrument of inequality”
because of the “ Quality divide” and “ Commodificationof Education”.
Millions of infants are deprived of early childhood carelet alone education
 More than 100 million children out of schools, mostly inSouth Asia and Sub Saharan Africa ( at the current rateof progress, at least 75 countries will miss the goal of
UPC) Millions of young adults/adolescents are not getting
space or scope for meaningful participation neither in
education or skill training nor in productive sectors of
economy.


4

3

Slide 5



Slide 6

An additional US$ 10-12 billion per year, needed tobring each and every child to school, is yet to beensured by the Global Community who has
continuously been failing to deliver on their promises!!



Against the backdrop of such a global scenario wehave gathered here to discuss whether “ recurrent
expenditure in education be supported?” Well, there
are three dimensions of this issue:


5

28

Developing countries not only need solid political will,
viable national plans and pragmatic strategies toachieve EFA but they also require adequate andtimely flow of resources to make it happen.

6

Annex 1-2
Ms. Choudhury’s PPT
Slide 7

Slide 8

Donor countries have to demonstrate that theirpromises are not “rhetoric but a reality” by making
conscious effort to reach the 0.7% of ODA.
Any financing plan should not only be long term,
predictable, responsive and flexible but should also
ensure two way accountability mechanisms andinbuilt processes for learning from lessons.

All of us know that support to recurrent expenditure
Allows more flexibility with overall budgetary
management in the hands of the recipient
governments providing them with room to maneuveras and when required Increases
allocative efficiency and lowers
transaction costs
 Improves democratic accountability.
 Increases predictability of resources.


Now, the million dollar question is, “can the support
to recurrent expenditure address all the 3
dimensional challenges mentioned before?”

8

7

Slide 9Slide 10

Increases local ownership by creating space for local
and national institutions to work together.
 Creates scope for policy dialogue between recipient
government and donors
 Provides the basis and rationale for donor alignmentand harmonisation & The recipient country does not have to spend its
energy on managing the funds from here and there
which, in turn, allows it to focus on result basedinterventions.

However, support to recurrent expenditure may facechallenges like
 Donor countries may dominate the development
agenda and public spending options
 The
national education budget may reflect
government priorities , but may not necessarily be
pro-poor Therecipient government may not have theabsorption capacity and the pressure to utilize thefunds may tend to promote corruption.

9

Slide 11

10

Slide 12Flow of External Resources
The Case of Bangladesh: An Overview

Governments may prefer to spend more on the“hardware”( e. g. infrastructure ) for making thespending easily visible rather than on “software”(e.g. teacher training, curriculum development etc.)
the result of which may be visible only aftersometime.
 Recipient countries may become too dependent on
aid and may loose interest to pursue a“ sustainability plan”.


11

29

External assistance is considered a significant factor in
the economic development of Bangladesh in order tobridge the gap between savings and investments andbalance of payment.
 Up to June 30, 2006 a total of about US$53.93 billion of
external assistance was committed. Of the total amount,
11.82 percent was food aid, 20.53 percent wascommodity aid and 67.65 percent was project aid.
12

Annex 1-2
Ms. Choudhury’s PPT
Slide 13

Slide 14Over the years significant changes have taken place inthe total aid package to the country. The share of grants
is declining gradually. Bilateral aid, which was 75.4
percent in the total aid in 1973/78, has decreased to43.8 percent in 2004/5. Multilateral aid, on the other
hand, has grown from 24.6 percent to almost 56.2
percent over the same period.

The decreasing volume of grants has resulted in thelarger proportion of loans in the total aid package. The
share of grants which was 89.0 percent in 1971/73
declined to 53.2 percent in 1979/80, 55.4 percent in
1984/85 and 31.9 percent in 2005/2006. Furthermore,
the flow of food aid and commodity aid showed adeclining trend while project aid has increased
sharply.

13

Slide 15



14

Slide 16

Among the bilateral donors, Japan tops the list in termsof cumulative disbursement followed by USA and
Canada. International Development Association (IDA,
the soft lending window of the World Bank) is thelargest amongst the multilateral development
institutions followed by the Asian Development BankCoordination with the development partners has animportant bearing on the mobilization of economic
assistance. It is secured through a variety of means
such as holding frequent dialogues with thedevelopment partners and inter-ministerial consultations
on a regular basis.

15

Slide 17



16

Slide 18

Project having co-financiers are usually more complex,
and demand greater attention than those which arefinanced from a single source. Sometimes, rigid
conditionalities create difficulties in the speedy
implementation of projects or utilization of economic
assistance.

Second Primary Education Development
Program (PEDP-II), 2004-2009

The first ever (sub) sector-wide Program approach(SWAP) in the education sector of Bangladesh
A Case Study
17

30

18

Annex 1-2
Ms. Choudhury’s PPT
Slide 19

Slide 20PROGRAM FEATURES AND STRATEGIESKEY OBJECTIVES

Focus is quality of primary education for all children in
Bangladesh The Government is in the driver’s seat 8 development partners pooled their fund and 3
development partners are `parallel’ financiers Being implemented by the line divisions of the
Department of Primary Education
 Implementation period of 6 (six) years from 2004 to2009


Slide 18

Increase primary school access, participation andcompletion in accordance with the Government’s“Education For All” (EFA), Poverty Reduction Strategy,
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and otherpolicy commitments.
 Improve the quality of student learning and achievement
outcomes to Primary School Quality Levels (PSQL)
standard.


19

Slide 21

20

Slide 22

PEDP-II Financing Plan

Initial Challenges of PEDP II

Total Cost (US $ 1815 Million)
GOB:
63.9 %ADB:
5.5%
IDA, WB
:
8.3%
DFID
:
8.3%
EC
:
5.5%
NORAD
:
2.2%
SIDA
:
1.6%
CIDA
:
1.1%
JICA
:
0.2%
UNICEF:
0.7%

Transition from Project Approach to Program
Approach:
Lack of appropriate regulatory frameworks
Orientation of all stakeholders with the new concept ofprogram approach Preparing the institutions for program implementation.


21

Slide 23

22

Slide 24

Initial Challenges of PEDP II

Initial Challenges of PEDP II

Complexity of financial system of PEDP II

Complexity of financial system of PEDP II
Complex fund flow mechanism
TAX and VAT-100% GOB
 Direct funding by DPs for ICB procurement Special arrangements for parallel financiersMultiple sources of fund: Government of Bangladesh Bi-lateral grant IDA credit
 ADB loan
 UNICEF parallel fund JICA parallel fund




23

31

24

Annex 1-2
Ms. Choudhury’s PPT
Slide 25

Slide 26

Initial Challenges of PEDP II
Coping with new and varied procurement GuidelinesThree different procurement guidelines: Public Procurement Regulation 2003 of GOB
 World Bank procurement guidelines ADB procurement guidelines

However, lessons from countries like Uganda,
Afghanistan and Bangladesh, as documented bysome donors like DFID and the Dutch government,
have demonstrated that
 A careful, unbiased, objective analysis of the country
situation particularly focusing on socio-politicalscenario and institutional strengths and weaknesses
is necessary before initiating budget support

25

Slide 27

26

Slide 28

An environment of mutual understanding and trust
should be created for getting maximum benefit out of
the collaboration
 Operational tools( e. g. MOU) must reflect aframework of mutual obligations and must allow for
two way accountability mechanisms
 Processes and mechanisms must be in place toallow enough scope for learning from lessons,particularly from mistakes made/challenges facedThe benefit of budget support/support to recurrent
expenditure may be visible only after a long time.
Inbuilt monitoring mechanisms are necessary to
maximize the benefits.

Are we, the Global community, thedonors and the recipient governments,
ready to do that?
Otherwise, the EFA goals may remain on
elusive dream.

27

Slide 29

28

Slide 30

References:

THANK YOU





29

32

Flow of External Resources in to Bangladesh (as of 30 June
2006), Economic Relations Division, Ministry of Finance,
Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh, Dhaka 23
April 2007
The Millennium Development Goals Report 2007, United Nations,
New York, 2007.
Bangladesh Economic Outlook, Vol.-1 No-1 September 2007
published by SHAMUNNAY, edited by Atiur Rahman
Second Primary Education Development Program (PEDP-II),
Directorate of Primary Education, September 200730

Annex 1-3
Mr. Colenso’s PPT
Slide 1

Slide 2

Structure of the presentation
1. How the UK delivers financial aid‘Should recurrent expenditurein education be supported?’

2. Rationale for financing recurrentcosts
3. Risks
4. Evidence on peformancePeter Colenso
Head of Profession, Education
UK Department for International Development (DFID)

5. The bigger picture on aid reform

GRIPS, Tokyo, 18th October 2007

Page 2

Slide 3Slide 4
Different instruments for different contexts

1. How the UK delivers financial aid

Budge t support if possible (p lus TA and grants)

Can support
recurrent costs(e.g. ARTF), but
mostly projects• using different instruments &Inm

S o d ia
ut , Ch h
Af in
ric a,
a

V ie
tn a

F
Fr ragag ileilesst ta teates sPage 3Slide 5an

Greater use of UN andcivil society, including
humanitarian aid

a

n,
DR
C,

d
Ugan

Su
da

Tanzania,
Mozambique

Low-income countries withplans to reducepoverty
Low-income
countries
with
Poverty Reduction Strategiesl i stpa a nNe fghA

approaches in different country
contexts• DFID’s use of budget support

Some budget
support andother financial
aid (e.g. India)

In
il,
az
Br

M
id
Mc dleoidu -indco nlter- com
un iensc et r om
ie
s e

sia
ne
do

Mostly influencing
domestic policies andinternational footprint

Page 4

Slide 6

DFID’s use of budget support

2. Rationale• to finance the costs that most need• £551m provided in budget

financing (e.g. teacher salaries;
supporting abolition of user fees)• support to the budget enables a dialogue
on inter- and intra-sectoral budget
allocation & execution, leading to
improved allocative and operational
efficiency• institutional strengthening• domestic accountability

support to 16 countries in
2006/07• over half of our financial aid and
26% of total bilateralexpenditure• 56% GBS; 44% SBS; in somecountries both GBS & SBS (e.g.
Ghana, Vietnam)
Page 533

Page 6

Annex 1-3
Mr. Colenso’s PPT
Slide 7

Slide 83. Risks

4. Evidence on peformance• ‘Joint Evaluation of GBS’ found that GBS:
• is effective, efficient way to deliver aid & had• Partner governments• policy intrusion• absorptive capacity• aid dependency

significant impact in 5 of the 7 countries• increased expenditure on the poor, including

more health & education services;• made aid more predictable & better alignedwith govt priorities & systems;• Donor governments• leakage / corruption• demonstrating and attributing impact• parliamentary and public support• empowered public bodies to strengthen

policy development and policy coherence;• helped ensure public expenditure was more

efficiently delivered and public financial
management systems were strengthened,meaning all govt resources are better
managed; and positive effects on other aid• Impact (e.g. Tanzania: 25% more teachers over
5 yrs, 3m more children enrolled)

Page 7

Slide 9Page 8Slide 10Net Enrolment Rates(GBSEvaluationcountries)

5. The bigger picture on aid reform• 4 priorities for aid reform100• volume: more aid

90• allocation: more to low income

NER %countries, including to fragile states

Mozambique

80• composition: more to basic education;

Rwanda70

the right kind of support for post-basic
education• quality: more aligned and harmonised
e.g. more budget support & recurrent
cost financing, more pooling, more
PBAs; longer term; less tied aid

Uganda60

Vietnam50
40• aid is 1 instrument in development

1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004
Page 9Slide 11

Page 10Slide 12100%

Proportion of Education ODA to Post
Secondary (%)

Proportion of Education ODA to MICs
(%)

100%

80%
Japan

France60%

EC
Germany

United States

40%
Canada
Italy
IDA

20%
United Kingdom

FranceGermany
80%

60%

40%

EC
EC
20%

0%

20%

40%

60%

80%

100%

20%

United States
UK

Canada

Italy
0%
0%

0%

Japan

IDA
40%

60%

80%

100%

Proportion of Education ODA to Basic (% )Proportion of Education ODA to LICs (%)

G7 / IDA / EC aid to education by income group (2003-2005 average)(Source: DAC)
Page 1134

G7 / IDA / EC aid to education by level (2003-2005 average)
DAC)(Source:
Page 12Annex 1-3
Mr. Colenso’s PPT
Slide 13

Slide 14
Where good practice and goodpolitics meet

What the UK is doing• volume: 0.7% ODA/GNI trajectory;• DFID believes in providing more and longer-term aid, flexibly delivered, and targeted
where it will impact the poorest

second largest donor; US$15 billion toeducation over 10 yrs to 2015
• allocation: at least 90% total bilateral
aid to LICs
• composition: 84% of education aid tobasic education (2003-05); more
sector-wide financing• quality: 28% of total aid as budget
support in 2006/07; 52% of total aid
delivered through programme-based
approaches; aid untied since 2001

• legislative base for poverty reduction• Prime Minister support• cross-party and parliamentary support(including National Audit Office)• UK public support (?)• need to deliver and communicate results, tosustain this potentially fragile consensus• need a broad and deep coalition to deliver

Page 13

35

Page 14Annex 1-4
Mr. Miyake’s PPT
Slide 1

Slide 2How can Japan support recurrent
cost in education?

1. Which countries?
Utilize FTI mechanism• Criteria of FTI endorsement

Which countries?
What programs?
Who?
Takafumi Miyake
Japan NGO Network for Education（JNNE)– a poverty reduction strategy or equivalent, and– a sound education sector plan with indicative
framework, endorsed by in-country donors• 32 countries endorsed• Exit strategy: Study needed• Support to CSOs engagement in monitoring
and budget/aid money tracking.
1

2

Slide 3Slide 4

2. With what aid programs?

FTI Indicative Framework

Expand budget support type grant aid
and earmark them to basic education
Grant Aid budget in FY 2007
Modality Name of t he Schemes

Project
SupportBudgetSupportGrant Aid for General Project s which include school
construction, Emergency Grant Aid, Food Aid, Grant Aidfor Grassroot s Human Security Projects, etc.
Grant Aid for Conflict Prevention and Peace
Building(BY12.8), Grant Aid for Sector Programs(BY5),
Grant Aid for Poverty Reduct ion Strategy (BYO.6)

Total

3

FY2007budget in
Billion
Yen

Share
in
Grant
Aid

143.6

88%

20.0

12%

163.6

4

Source: FTI Secretariat (2007)

Slide 5Slide 6

3. Who?
Lastly,Streamline grant aid delivery mechanism,
more power to JICA

• “Classrooms do not teach. Teachers do.”
• UNESCO estimates that by 2015, 18
million new teachers will be needed
globally –4 million in Africa alone.

Source: Japan's Official Development Assistance White Paper 2006, MOFA

To strengthen complementarily among project,technical cooperation and budget support, all the
grant aid programs including budget support typeaid should be planned and implemented by new
5
JICA.

6

36

100

Annex 2-1
Dr. Bhalalusesa’s PPT
Slide 1

Slide 2

THE PROCESS OF ADOPTING EDUCATIONFOR ALL (EFA) IN EDUCATIONAL POLICYMAKING IN TANZANIA
18th October, 2007

Prof E.P Bhalalusesa
University of Dar es Salaam
Tanzania

Slide 3Slide 4Introduction

EMERGING THEMES

Background to the study
A comparative study of three countries
1. Tanzania
2. Kenya
3. Ethiopia
In collaboration with:
National Graduate Institute for Policy
Studies (GRIPS Japan)

 1. Conceptualisation of Education For
All: Definitional issues

No universal or standardized
definition of the term existed. EFA
is variously conceived as:
 inclusive education that must be
made available to all specific groups a right

Slide 5Slide 62.Knowledge of EFA goals:

Conceptualisation of EFA Cont.

Who knows what and why?

 basic education: narrowly taken tomean primary education and/or
basic literacy skills for adults
 an education fundamental to one’s
life that more or less resembles
lifelong learning

The degree of knowledge varied
depending on the position
Not all of the six goals receive equal
attention
Priority is on primary education

37Annex 2-1
Dr. Bhalalusesa’s PPT
Slide 7

Slide 8

EFA goals: Where is the priority
Cont.

3.EFA goals: Where is thepriority and Why? Cont.3.
Contributing reasons:Consciously and/or unconsciously
Lack of strong political will?
Conflict of interest/power?
(“Who pays the piper also calls thetune”).

The aspect of gender equity isalso being effectively brought
to the fore
Other aspects like earlychildhood care and adulteducation are mentioned but
remain marginalised

Slide 9Slide 10
EFA goals: Old wine in newbottles?

4. EFA goals: Are they new?
 EFA goals were not new (justre-affirmed) except
 the specific articulated conceptof EFA and collective global
effort to fight ignorance Goal on quality ed. and social
and life skills

Examples of efforts before 1990
Plans to fight ignorance justafter independence
Adult literacy campaign in 1970
UPE in 1974
The 1978 National Education Act
No. 25 to consolidate UPE
efforts.

Slide 11

Slide 12

5. Integration and adoption of
EFA goals

6. What influences adoption
and integration?

At surface level EFA goals have been
integrated into educational policies
 Education and Training Policy (ETP)
1995

Factors:
 The global movement.
Tanzania is part of the world logical that it conforms to global
movements
 Financial/donor dependency
Developing partners take part inmeetings and influence decisions

 Tanzania Development Vision 2025
which accords high priority to
education.
 The Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper(PRSP) MKUKUTA
 The Primary Education Development

38

Annex 2-1
Dr. Bhalalusesa’s PPT
Slide 13

Slide 14

Conclusion: What big picture
can we draw?
1.

Conclusion cont.

Education For All is not
something entirely new in
Tanzania.
Although, the concept is associatedwith the 1990 Jomtien Conference andthe later 2000 Dakar Framework For
Action, the mission of achieving
education for all has long existed

Slide 15

Therefore, the current global
movement is indeed a renewalof these early initiatives

Slide 16

Conclusion cont.

Conclusion Cont.

 Regardless of this, threenotable issues have also
emerged:2.Human and structuralcomplications in the process ofdecision-making
The practice of EFA is not valuefree, natural concept, but rather aconstruction through struggle forand conflict of power/interest

1. Lack of policy continuity in thehistory of education development
which necessitated changes togovernment policy and/or shifts
in emphasis.

Slide 17

Slide 18

Conclusion Cont.

Conclusion Cont.
3.Difficulty of conceptualizing
EFA and its effect onprioritization and translationof policies into practice.

What is the way
Forward?
 It is recommended that to achieve EFA
goals, Tanzania has to ensure that
resources are equally distributed toencompass ALL segments of the
population. Otherwise, educating all
will remain to be a vision than reality ifother segments of the population areleft on the periphery.

39Annex 2-1
Dr. Bhalalusesa’s PPT
Slide 19

THANK YOU FOR YOURATTENTION

40

Annex 2-2
Dr. Chansopheak’s PPT
Slide 1

Education Policy Making and
Implementation in the Aid
Dependent Country of Cambodia

Keng Chansopheak, Ph.D.
Royal University of Phnom Penh

Slide 2

Policy Papers
 National EFA Plan
 ESP
 ESSP
 PAP
 Features: Focus on primary education; Feeabolition, provision of operational budget toschools41

Annex 2-2
Dr. Chansopheak’s PPT
Slide 3

Impact: On Access to Primary Education
Figure 5.1: Gross Enrolment Rates from 1996/97 to 2004/05 byGeographical Settings
140.
120.

Per cent

100.
80.
60.
40.
20.
0.
1996/97

1997/98

Urban

1998/99

1999/00

Rural

2000/01

2001/02

Remote2002/03

2003/04

2004/05

National

Slide 4

Figure 5.2: Net Enrolment Rates from 1996/07 to
2004/05 by Geographical Settings

100
90
80

Per cent

70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
1996/97 1997/98 1998/99 1999/00 2000/01 2001/02 2002/03 2003/04 2004/05

Urban

Rural

42

RemoteNational

Annex 2-2
Dr. Chansopheak’s PPT
Slide 5Figure 5.3 Gross and Net Enrolment Rate from 1996/7 to
2004/05 by Gender

140

120

Per cent

100

80

60

40

20

0

1996/97

1997/98

1998/99

Male-GER

1999/00

2000/01

2001/02

Female-GER

2002/03

2003/04

Male-NER

2004/05

Female-NER

Slide 6On Efficiency of Primary Education
Figure 5.4 Grade 5 Survival Rate from 1996/7 to 2004/05 by
Urban/rural/remote settings

80
70

Per c ent

60
50
40
30
20
10
0
1996/97

1997/98

1998/99Urban

43

1999/00

Rural

2000/01

2001/02

Remote2002/03

National

2003/04

Annex 2-2
Dr. Chansopheak’s PPT
Slide 7

Figure 5.4 Grade 5 Survival Rate from 1996-7 to 2003-04 by
Gender80
70

Per cent

60
50
40
30
20
10
0
1996/97

1997/98

1998/99

1999/00

Male

2000/01

Female2001/02

2002/03

National

Slide 8Figure 5.6: Repetition and Dropout Rate 1996/97 to 2003/04

28
24

Pe r c ent

20
16
12
8
4
0
1996/97

1997/98

1998/99

1999/00

R e p itio n

44

2000/01

2001/02

D ro p o u t

2002/03

2003/04

2003/04

Annex 2-2
Dr. Chansopheak’s PPT
Slide 9Problems in Reform Implementation
Real quality issue is not addressed (Teachers)









Too much too soon (school management)








Instructional hours lost to teachers’ unpunctuality, extended holiday,
seasonal absence, teachers’ carelessness,
Little innovation in teaching
Low remuneration for teachers
Low teachers’ commitment to change
Lack of motivation
Low commitment to professionalism
Complicated and unfamiliar financial management system
Heavy workload
Lack of attention to teaching and learning
Lack of Ownership, Schools continue to perceive PAP as foreign aid
programs

Rigid guidelines

Unable to hold schools accountable (Community)

Lack of capacity to understand the government policy
Culture of “teachers are always right”

Slide 10

Why???
Top-down policy making

Lack of dialogue with local implementers (DOEs, Principals,
Teachers, Parents)
Ignoring local knowledge, not encouraging innovation

P oliti ci ans

Donors (TA)Technocra ts

Schools /Tch

Comm unity, P arents, Students

45Annex 2-3
Dr. Holsinger’s Handout
Slide 1

Improving the Distribution of
Education for Self Reliance
Dr. Donald Holsinger
Professor Emeritus
BYU
October 18, 2007

Slide 2The main asset of
most poor people istheir knowledge andskills.
skills. This we callhuman capital.
Investing in the humancapital of the poor isan effective way tohelp them and reducepoverty.

Slide 3For economic growth to havean impact on poverty theprincipal asset, humancapital, needs to be
distributed equally
To be sustained,
development must be
equitable and inclusive.

46

Annex 2-3
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Slide 4We believe that
inadequate attention
has been given to the
distributive effect ofpublic investments in
education.

Slide 5

Research shows a weak relation between
public spending on education andoutcomes such as student learning or
mastery of the curriculum. (Filmer(Filmer andPritchett 1999)

Slide 6

Public resources
subsidize education forthe comparatively
wealthy.
2. The way we havelooked at thequantitative expansionof education has
masked the distributionof education.
1.

47

Annex 2-3
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Slide 71.

Public resources subsidize education
for the wealthy.

Slide 8••Vietnamese demand higher
quality education and arewilling to pay for it.
Money begins to pour into
physical capital—
capital—e.g. theconstruction of new universities
and schools in urban centers.
This works against primary andlower secondary education of
the poor in rural areas.

Slide 9Enter the education Gini—
Gini—a superior
measure of quantitative coverage.
Gini coefficients are familiar measures ofincome inequality.
Within a given population, Gini coefficients
indicate the distribution of a particularcharacteristic.
Gini coefficients vary from 0 (total equality) to
1 (total inequality).

48

Annex 2-3
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Slide 10Gini coefficients can be understoodgraphically by reference to the Lorenz
curve.
The Lorenz curve displays a diagonal
representing perfect equality.
The closer the curve is to the diagonal, themore equally the characteristic is distributedin the population. The further the curve fromthe diagonal, the larger the inequality in the
population.

Slide 11

The Gini coefficient is the area between
the curve and the diagonal as apercentage of the triangular area below
the diagonal.
 1  9 a −1
E gini =  ∑ ∑ xa za − zb xb µ  a =1 b =1

The higher the Gini, the more unequal the
distribution.

Slide 12

Acknowledged as the best distributive measureof education.
Makes explicit both absolute coverage and the
distribution.
Is negatively correlated with mean years ofschooling at -.84
Does not tell us where (at what education level)
inequality is located.
Does not tell us about the quality of education.

49

Annex 2-3
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Slide 13

The total number of years of education in
the labor force and the equality of
distribution of education in the labor force
are highly related, but not identical.
Although the education Gini coefficient
may be used for children of school age webelieve it is most appropriate as ameasure of the quality of the labor force.

Slide 14

Investments in education havefailed in many cases to produce
planned economic growth
because the distribution ofhuman capital was unequal.
Exclusive reliance onenrollment rates as a measureof quantitative expansion orsystem coverage has
desensitized planners to theissue of inequality.

Slide 15

The education Gini coefficient is a useful
tool for examining the distribution of
education in the labor force (or in studentstudentage populations).

50

Annex 2-3
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Slide 16

Public policy foreducation shouldmake use of theeducation Gini forplanning and progressevaluation purposes.

Slide 17

Viet Nam

Gini Coefficient
16 - 18
19 - 21
22 - 24
25 - 27
28 +Slide 18

The Distribution of Education inSoutheast Asia and GDP per capita.
Country Name

Mean Years
Schooling

Gini Coefficient

GDP per capita

Cambodia*1

3.29

0.51

253

Hong Kong

8.86

0.32

23095.38

Indonesia
Japan

4.6
8.98

0.41
0.25

979.8643817.87

Korea

10.04

0.22

12174.05

Malaysia

6

0.42

4540.67

Philippines

6.93

0.33

1132.93

Singapore

5.64

0.44

26294.36

Thailand
Viet Nam*2

5.48
7.34

0.39
0.24

2720.76
211.18

Mean

6.716

0.353

11522.01

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Annex 2-3
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Slide 19

Lorenz curve and Gini coefficient
The Cumulative Proportion of Attainment

The Line of Absolute Equality

The Area
Between theLine of Absolute
Equality and theLorenz CurveA
B

The Lorenz Curve
The Cumulative Proportion of the Population

Slide 20

Comparing Viet Nam andCambodia Lorenz curves
Cumulative Percentage of Education Attainment

100

80

60

40

Line of Equality
20

0
0

20

40

60

80

100

Viet Nam(0.24)
Cambodia(0.51)

Cumulative Percentage of the Population

Slide 21

Education Inequality andAcademic Achievement


What impact do efforts to achieve an
equal distribution of primary school
completion rates have on student
learning?
This question has rarely been asked
and never satisfactorily answered.

52Annex 2-3
Dr. Holsinger’s Handout
Slide 22

Evidence from Viet Nam

Viet Nam presents an unusual opportunity
to examine the relationship between
education inequality and student learning.
Data for the education Gini were
calculated by Holsinger and students
Achievement data came from a WorldBank supported study of fifth grade mathand science achievement.

Slide 23

Theoretical Considerations


If by a theory we mean, for every X,
if Y, then Z, we would have for every
Vietnamese fifth grade student, if
s/he lives is a province with an equal
distribution of education, thenher/his score will be higher.
There is very little analytical work insupport of this proposition.

Slide 24

A moderately strong relationship
The simple bibi-variate correlation is
r=r=-.54
 It has a negative sign because of theway inequality is measured ( “0” isequal and “1” is unequal) The correlation of -.54 means that
Vietnamese provinces with highequality also have students whoachieve higher exam scores.


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Annex 2-3
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Slide 25Compare this correlation to the
Human Development Index (HDI)The Human Development Index (HDI) is acomparative measure of life expectancy,
expectancy,
literacy,
literacy, education,
education, and standards of living
for countries worldwide. It is a standard
means of measuring wellwell-being,
being, especiallychild welfare.
welfare.
 A rival or alternative explanation is thatprovinces with high education equality arealso high on the broader HDI and that thisfact, not equality of the distribution of
education attainment, is behind therelationship with learning achievment.
achievment.


Slide 26

Education Gini and 5th grade
achievement
controlling for HDI level
Variable

Combinedscore

EducationGini

HDI rank
province

Math
score

Reading
score

Combined Reading andMath Benchmark

1

-.54

-.46

1

.92

Education Gini (inequality
score)

-.54

1

.40

-.54

-.62

Human Development Index
provincial score

-.46

.40

1

-.46

-.48

Math Independent Benchark

1

-.54

-.46

1

.92

Reading Independent
Benchmark

.92

-.62

-.48

.92

1

Slide 27

Equality Promotes Learning
The results for Viet Nam arepromising but we need to comparethem to other countries.
 Equality of the distribution of
education appears to be related to
student achievement but the reasonsfor that relationship are still unclear.


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Annex 2-3
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Slide 28

Equality and Social Justice
Traditionally we have argued that
equal access to education
opportunity is an inherent good.
 The demands of social justice, as adevelopment objective, require
efforts to equalize completion rates
at the basic education level.
 Completion rates are much superior
to enrolloment ratios.


Slide 29

Education Gini
But even primary school completion
rates are averages at the country orprovincial levels.
 All statistical measures of central
tendency have an inherent weakness
in that they cover or hide variation.
 The education Gini exposes variationin the distribution and should beroutinely used to measure progressin education.
55

Annex 2-3
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Is the Distribution of Education in Vietnam a Significant
Policy Tool for Self Reliance?3
Donald B. Holsinger

4

October 18, 2007

Abstract
Vietnam’s economy over the past decade grew at one of the highest rates in the world. The
broadly based nature of this growth sent tumbling by over 20 percentage points the proportionof the population falling under an internationally comparable poverty line. Yet this growth has
also generated increases in income inequality which, by some measures, threaten to give
Vietnam one of the most unequal income distributions (highest income Gini coefficients) inSoutheast Asia within 10 years. Paradoxically the growth experienced the Vietnamese
economy may have been caused, in large measure, by its relatively equal distribution of
education attainment at the time of its economic transition from central planning to a market
economy (with socialist characteristics). This paper examines the dynamic interconnections
between growth and education attainment inequality. It argues that the remarkable levels of
education equality achieved at the time of reunification may not be sustainable and that
increasing levels of income inequality may jeopardize Vietnam’s efforts to reduce poverty, byundermining pro-poor policies in the short to medium term. Finally the paper presents new
evidence that education inequality perversely affects learning achievement and, ultimately,
human capital formation. Efforts by Japanese (development donors and development
agencies) to build and sustain in low income countries a network of high quality schools that
equalize education attainment (low education Gini coefficients) levels is a sound policy forassuring self-reliance.

3

Paper presented by invitation of Nagoya University at the Seminar on Aid for Self-Reliance and Budget Support
for Educational Development sponsored by the National Graduate institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS), Japan NGO
Network for Education (JNNE) and Nagoya University, Tokyo, Japan, October 18, 2007.
4
Professor Holsinger was Senior Education Specialist at the World Bank for 13 years and is recently emeritus at
Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. He was president of the Comparative and International Education
Society in 2003/04. His presidential address for CIES, Inequality in the Public Provision of Education was
published in the Comparative Education Review. Contact Professor Holsinger at 1262 E. 2300 N.; Provo, Utah
84604; USA or email at donholsinger@gmail.com.

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Annex 2-3
Dr. Holsinger’s Handout
Is the Distribution of Education in Vietnam a Significant
Policy Tool for Self Reliance?
Donald B. Holsinger

Introduction
After seemingly interminable decades lost to war and later isolation and economic
mismanagement, the closing decade of the 20th century was, in development terms, perhaps
the greatest in its history. Vietnam enjoyed an average rate of economic growth of 7.6 percent
over the decade, placing it among the fastest growing countries in the world, alongside its
neighbor China. Less remarked upon is the burst of poverty reduction Vietnam experienced
over this period, one that would, if sustained a further 10 or 15 years, move it from the ranks ofthe poorest populations in the world to one with negligible levels of absolute poverty. In part
because of these numbers, and the textbook fashion in which the Vietnamese economy
responded to market-oriented reforms, the World Bank has described Vietnam as a casestudy of the promise of economic integration or `globalization' for poor countries.5
Today, however, a growing number of observers at the multi-lateral and regional developmentbanks are worried about another phenomenon—one too common in the era of unbridledcapitalism and globalization—income inequality. Before turning to the question of education
equality in Vietnam and its effects over this same period, I will take a few minutes to analyze
recent evidence from Vietnam on the distribution of wealth, that is, per capita income.
Inequality of wealth appears to be growing in Vietnam and this may have far reachingrepercussions for self reliance in that nation.
The increasing geographical concentration of poverty is striking, with the Northern Uplands,
Mekong Delta and North Central Coast regions holding over 67 percent of Vietnam's poor in
1998, from 55 percent in 1993.6 While in the aggregate, Vietnamese income/expenditure
inequality is still moderate by international standards, a focal point of contention is the pace atwhich income inequality has been growing. Two recent estimates made from theaforementioned VLSS for 1993 to19987, and another appearing in the UNDP-sponsoredCountry Human Development Report reach significantly different conclusions. The VNLSS
data showed Vietnam's income Gini coefficient to have increased only marginally, while theUNDP-backed study reports a large increase, from 35.6 to 40.7. It is this latter estimate that is
striking. If true, it suggests Vietnamese inequality is growing at one of the fastest rates
recorded in the world in recent years, and has reached the same level as China much faster,and at a much lower income level.8
Poverty in Vietnam
Poverty in Vietnam is arguably the most momentous socioeconomic issue facing that country
over the medium-term, for a number of reasons. First, however defined, the sheer number of
5World Bank, Globalization, growth and poverty: building an inclusive world economy. New York: Oxford
University Press and the World Bank.
6
World Bank (1999). Vietnam: preparing for take-off? Hanoi. World Bank.
7

The Viet Nam Living Standards Survey is a publication of the Government Statistics Office.

8

For details and data presentation see National Center for Social Sciences and Humanities (NCSSH), 2001,
National human development report 2001: doi moi and human development in Vietnam, Hanoi: The Political
Publishing House.

57

Annex 2-3
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people living in poverty is still high in Vietnam. Approximately one-third of the population, orsome 25 million people, fall below the international poverty line. Thus, how Vietnam deals with
the question of poverty and inequality will define the type of society it will become. Will it beable to emulate the long-term relative success of the East Asian “tigers” in generating broadly
based affluence and reducing poverty? Or will Vietnam ultimately resemble countries like thePhilippines or Sri Lanka, which, despite better-than-average social indicators in some areas,
have lost the momentum of growth and poverty reduction. A worst case scenario in which
Vietnam drifts towards some unstable combination of accelerating inequality, low economic
growth and institutional dysfunction should not be ignored.
Income inequality, poverty and economic growth
Although there is disagreement among macroeconomists about the relationship between
inequality and poverty reduction, a few general conclusions appear to be accepted by almost
everyone and are offered here by way of review for our subsequent discussion of education
for self-reliance.
•

There is a necessary relationship between growth and poverty reduction. Even critics
of development theory acknowledge the role of economic growth in sustainable
poverty reduction.

•“High quality” growth is necessary to maximize poverty reduction. Economic growth,demystified, is merely the average income per person this year compared to last year.
But average income masks the distributional characteristics. If growth is achieved onlyin certain sectors of the economy or in certain regions of the geography (for example
urban wage sector) many people are left out of the benefits of growth.

•

No necessary relationship between growth and inequality. Studies of this relationshiphave found inequality to slightly rise with greater rates of economic growth in somecountries whereas in others inequality fell. But even if growth could always beachieved through policies resulting in inequality, there is certainly a political and moral
question of whether it is good to achieve growth that way. Brazil and Mexico, forexample, have made good progress toward growth but still have very high levels of
inequality of income and, of course, many very poor citizens.

The case of China reveals the complex interplay of the three variables: growth, inequality andpoverty reduction. It plays an important role in interpreting the Vietnamese experience, since itdoes not obviously fall into the East Asian `miracle' or `Latin American' categories. The poor
have benefited greatly from Chinese growth over the previous 20 years, with poverty
estimated to have fallen by over 50 percent between 1981 and 1995, regardless of thepoverty line used. But China has experienced a high degree of inequality generation, as
measured, for instance, by a Gini coefficient which increased from 28.8 in 1981 to 38.8 overthe same period.9
The scope of Vietnam's doi moi (`renovation') reforms stretching over the past 15 years is
striking. Vietnam's economy has grown and very quickly whereas many, if not most, otherformer command-and-control economies have stagnated. Of 28 transition economies from
Albania to Uzbekistan had negative growth rates of GDP in 1992, for instance. But China andVietnam were the `stars', with sustained growth rates over 7 percent through much of the
1990s. Even the comparison with China is sobering. Unlike China, Vietnam began its reforms
in macroeconomic crisis; it also began its most far-reaching reforms nearly a decade later
9

The Gini coefficient is calculated in such a way that “zero” represents perfect equality and “one” is indicative ofperfect inequality

58Annex 2-3
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than China.
What were the conditions from which Vietnam began this economic ascent? Following
reunification of the country in 1975, the North pressed ahead with its model of a top-heavy,
centralized economy, which had been consolidated in the North for some decades. An attempt
was made to collectivize agriculture in the South where it was fiercely resisted and generally
unsuccessful. Private trading of any kind was banned, as the service sector was viewed as
non-productive. The results of this experiment were dire. Per capita growth was negative
throughout the late 1970s, including in the state-owned heavy industrial sector, which wasintended to be the leading engine of growth. By 1979 call for reform were heard. By the 1990’s
Vietnam was set for several decades of strong economic growth.
Education, Growth and Development in Vietnam
But the usual recounting of the relationship between income inequality and economic growth,which I have just reviewed albeit briefly, largely ignores Vietnam’s unusual investment ineducation and the equality with which investments were made across all provinces of thecountry.
Vietnam does not closely resemble any of its Asian neighbors when comparing its relative
wealth to its education and other human development indicators to those of its neighbors. The
World Bank places Vietnam 157 out of 207 countries in terms of GNP per individual. But when
examining the position of Vietnam simultaneously on wealth and human development (seeFigure 1 below), it is somewhat puzzling to see that whereas it is close to the bottom of the
distribution in terms of wealth per capita, it is located in the top third in relation to the HDI10
index, just a little below the average for medium income countries.

Figure 1:

HDI score and GDP per capita ($PPP)

Source UNDP (2001)11

10

The Human Development Index or HDI is a composite indicator that is heavily weighted toward literacy andeducation attainment. It is useful for broad, cross-country comparisons even though it yields little specificinformation about each country. The HDI was first used in the United Nations Development Program’s 1990
Human Development Report.
11
United Nations Development Program (UNDP). Human Development Report 2001: making technologies work59Annex 2-3
Dr. Holsinger’s Handout
Typically macroeconomists have concluded that Vietnam’s rapid growth in the post Doi Moi
years generated rapid reductions in poverty; the period between 1993 and 1998 saw a 20.8
percent decline in the head-count index of poverty. Vietnam's poverty reduction experience
over the 1990s was among the fastest ever recorded. All provinces and most sub-populations(such as ethnic minorities) have seen absolute incomes rise and well-being increase. Thesesame economists will also draw attention to the fact that key social indicators such as life
expectancy, infant mortality, and literacy have almost uniformly improved during the transition.
What is often not mentioned is that most of the uniqueness of Vietnam’s relatively good social
indicators given its income level was evident prior to the doi moi reforms, not as a direct resultof them. Overall, education coverage as well as other social service delivery networks were
well entrenched at the time of the transition. Not only did education and other social services
not decline during the economic transition from central planning to markets, but rather havestabilized and marginally improved, particularly since the mid-1990s. Given appalling declines
in income distribution and social services seen in some transition contexts (e.g., Russia), thatis no small achievement. But what I want to emphasize here is that the human capital context,
especially the relatively equal distribution of education, was already in place and, in my mind,
contributed to the economic growth picture. There are, of course, education disparities,
particularly in relation to ethnic minorities. Low HDI provinces are also those with large sharesof ethnic minorities. Such disparities in human capital also reinforce economic inequalities.
Inequality of Education Attainment and Development
Development, when measured exclusively in terms of economic growth, has not been
advanced by investments in schooling to the degree anticipated. Following a period in which
the accumulation of physical capital was regarded as the only productive asset, developing
countries, eager to improve their growth prospects, invested increasing percentages ofgovernment expenditures in schooling with expectations of amassing an educated andproductive labor force earning higher wages and stimulating economic growth. But it has notturned out this way for many countries. 12 It is now clear that education at all levels
contributes to economic growth but cannot alone generate it. There is also considerable
evidence that the mere accumulation of seat time in school does not mean that human capitalis increased.
But there has emerged a third challenge to the assumed economic benefits of investments in
education. This is not so much a challenge as a warning that when education is unequallydistributed in a society, economic growth almost never occurs and human talent iswasted—that is, a poor country’s most valuable asset remains unproductive.
Education Inequality in Vietnam
Education inequality is and has been low in Vietnam for a several decades. A probably
outcome of the socialist ideology, Vietnam has paid close attention to the needs of its female,ethnic minority and rural populations, the usual culprits when accounting for high levels of
inequality in the distribution of education attainment.
Not only has Vietnam steadily increased overall amounts and budget share to education at
the primary and secondary levels but it has perhaps the highest level of equality in thefor human development. New York: Oxford University Press.
12

Lant Prtchett, Where Has All the Education Gone? World Bank Policy ResearchWorking Paper 1581, March 1996.
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distribution of education attainment in the developing world. Like other socialist-orientatedsocieties, Vietnam has attempted to provide an equal distribution of education attainment andsucceeded to a remarkable degree. Nonetheless, substantial variation exists within the
country.
The decade of the nineties saw a substantial push toward universal coverage at the primarylevel. That this has been achieved attests to the tenacity of government and the common
thirst for education. It also reflects the unwavering support of the World Bank for primary-levelschooling principally on the basis that primary schooling is a public good with high private andsocial rates of return.
The figures for enrollment change for the period 1994 to 2000 are presented in Table 2. I
use 1994 as the base comparison because of the World Bank’s foundational study on
education finance of that year.

Table 1.

Secondary Enrollment Changes between 1994 and 2000

Year
1994
2000
GrowthPercentchangeLower Secondary
3,679,104
5,918,049
2,239,049
60.8

Upper Secondary
727,435
2,194,933
1,467,498
201.7

Source: Ministry of Education and Training

As in other developing countries, lower secondary education in Vietnam increasingly has
become aligned with primary schooling in a continuous cycle of compulsory or basic schooling.
In part owing to its alignment with primary schooling, enrollments at the LS level have risen
remarkably. With a 61 percent increase since 1994, I can conclude with some finality that
Vietnam is on its way toward achieving universal basic education that includes lower
secondary in that definition.
But it is at the upper secondary level where the most surprising change occurred. Dramatic
would certainly not be an overstated description of a 202 percent increase in enrollments injust six years. Indeed this may the most spectacular increase in secondary enrollments inmodern history. As has been said elsewhere, at its level of GDP per capita, Vietnam’s levels ofschool enrollment are high.
Whereas upper secondary school GERs are lagging behind progress at this level elsewhere(except in sub-Saharan Africa), the lower secondary expansion has been impressive. In thenext decade enrollment increases at this level should bring Vietnam to parity with othercountries of East and Southeast Asia. Clearly Vietnam is doing well in terms of student
enrollments at all levels. When considering its GDP rank (101 of 161) among all nations
according to UNDP statistics, the enrollment performance of Vietnam is nothing short ofphenomenal.
Enrollment trends in poor and rich provinces
In a system so thoroughly dominated by the state sector it is legitimate to ask whether or notgovernment spending is equitable or even pro-poor. Were a larger share of schools owned or
operated by the private sector, as is increasingly the case in many developing countries, wemight expect to see wealthier provinces pull substantially ahead in their ability to enroll
students. But this is not the case in Vietnam except at the upper secondary (US) level andthe growing spread between rich and poor provinces is very slight indeed.

61Annex 2-3
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For our look at enrollment trends by income levels, I divided the 61 provinces into four groups
of approximately similar levels of GDP per capita. I then plotted gross enrollment rates(GER) for each quartile at each year between 1994 and 2000. The results, presented in
Figure 2, show a rather unanticipated convergence of lower secondary (LS) enrollment rates
between the poorest quartile and the richest quartile. Indeed, at the present time there isalmost no difference between the rich and poor provinces—a noteworthy accomplishment.

Figure 2.

Enrollment Trends between Rich and Poor Provinces,
1994 to 2000.

Gross enrollment rate

90
80
70

GER at USE of the poorest
provinces

60
50

GER at USE of the richest
provinces

40

GER at LSE of the poorest
provinces

30

GER at LSE of the richest
provinces20
100
1994-95

1995-96

1996-97

1997-98

1998-99

1999-00

2000-01

School year
Source: MOET data, author calculations

Distribution of education attainment as a policy tool
Despite widely and justifiably acknowledged success of Vietnam, the quantitative expansionof education has obscured the question of the equal distribution of education attainment
among and within the 61 provinces. Considerable variation exists among the sixty one
provinces in terms of geography, economic performance, average wealth, the socioeconomic
status of individuals, and the proportion and concentration of ethnic and religious minorities.
The education attainment for ethnic minorities is substantially lower than that of the ethnic
majority. Additionally, the difference in education attainment between these groups is due to‘the fact that the minorities live in less productive areas, with difficult terrain, poor
infrastructure, and lower accessibility to the market economy.13

13

Belanger, D., and J. Liu. 2004. Social Policy Reforms and Daughters' Schooling in Vietnam. International
Journal of Educational Development 24 : 23-38., p.18

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Knowledge of the actual distribution of education attainment is important for several reasons.
First, the equitable distribution of education attainment is itself an important education policy
objective for the government of Vietnam. Second, despite the laudable effort to extend fullaccess equitably to all children, there is still a long way to go; the absence of reliable
information on the distribution of education in Vietnam is therefore significant. Third, therecent effort to move toward a ‘market-oriented socialist economy’ has made the distributionof education attainment and the quality of education in the labor force an item of paramountimportance.14 Fourth, with the increase in both the privatization and de-regulation of theeconomic system, the national government has begun to shift the locus of education decision
making authority to the provincial and district levels of government. Provincial governments
have inherited the principal burden from the education decentralization movement with bothincreased responsibility and influence. Provinces are held accountable for policies andprograms that target minorities and other underserved populations in their respective districts
and communes.
Table 2. Provincial education attainment data for the labor force

Province Name

Total Labor Force Population

Mean

An Giang
Ba Ria-Vung Tau
Bac Giang
Bac Kan
Bac Lieu
Bac Ninh
Ben TreBinh Dinh
Binh Duong
Binh Phuoc
Binh Thuan
Ca MauCan ThoCao Bang
Da Nang City
Dak lakDong Nai
Dong Thap
Gia Lai
Ha Giang
Ha NamHa Noi CityHa TayHa TinhHai Duong
Hai Phong City
Ho Chi Minh City
Hoa Binh
Hung Yen
Khanh Hoa
Kien Giang
Kon Tum
Lai Chau
Lam Dong

1184075
4774039079881493324344565793618372198881464707953555285700216677361110058
2330024136299001241203838922323414424218608509006159972214876667565301069035
10790793323950458055681682611511
838986434456175147545851

5.47
7.30
7.53
7.21
5.78
7.83
6.16
6.91
7.06
6.71
6.24
5.75
6.12
7.45
8.35
7.30
7.29
5.89
7.07
6.00
7.91
9.32
8.06
8.06
8.21
8.55
8.03
7.45
8.20
7.25
5.69
5.78
6.40
7.61

14

Years

Gini Coefficient
0.30
0.25
0.19
0.22
0.29
0.18
0.28
0.24
0.26
0.25
0.28
0.27
0.28
0.25
0.22
0.23
0.25
0.29
0.25
0.31
0.17
0.17
0.19
0.17
0.16
0.17
0.23
0.23
0.17
0.25
0.29
0.28
0.28
0.23

The economic performance of market economies is highly influenced by the distribution of education in thelabor force.

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Annex 2-3
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Lang Son
Lao CaiLong AnNam Dinh
Nghe An
Ninh Binh
Ninh Thuan
Phu ThoPhu Yen
Quang Binh
Quang Nam
Quang Ngai
Quang Ninh
Quang Tri
Soc Trang
Son LaTay Ninh
Thai Binh
Thai Nyugen
Thanh Hoa
Thua Thien-Hue
Tien Giang
Tra Vinh
Tuyen Quang
Vinh Long
Vinh PhucYen Bai

Mean
Standard Deviation
Range
Vietnam

4021842258988275631210485164984855037724673079364145207845441782494568359561781430968467288536020147083112162716548062060376
550531102463854461838167465013867430035443645194762

7.02
6.86
6.30
8.03
8.04
8.10
6.46
8.12
6.74
7.91
7.00
7.03
8.34
7.56
5.57
6.36
6.15
8.16
8.11
7.88
6.84
6.41
5.77
7.29
6.41
7.90
7.44

0.24
0.27
0.27
0.17
0.19
0.18
0.28
0.19
0.26
0.19
0.25
0.25
0.20
0.22
0.28
0.27
0.29
0.16
0.19
0.19
0.27
0.27
0.29
0.22
0.28
0.19
0.23

7.34

0.23
0.04
0.15
0.24

Source: Vietnam Housing and Population Census 1999; Author’s calculations.
Data represent individuals with 15 or more years of age for the year 1999.

Initial findings from Table 2 indicate several important descriptive features. First, the education
Gini coefficient of Vietnam is 0.23. This coefficient represents the distribution of education
attainment in the labor force. A Gini coefficient of 0.23 is considered relatively equal. Regionalcountries with similar Gini coefficients as Vietnam are the Republic of Korea with 0.22, Japan
with 0.25, and New Zealand with 0.25. Second, turning to the provincial level analysis, theprovince of Vietnam with the most unequal distribution of education attainment is Ha Giang
with a Gini coefficient of 0.31. This coefficient is still considered reasonably equal. Regionalcountries with similar Gini coefficients equivalent to that of Ha Giang province are Hong Kong
with 0.32 and the Philippines with 0.33.15 Third, the province with the most equal distributionof education attainment is Thai Binh with a Gini coefficient of 0.16. This coefficient is
considered exceptionally equal. No regional countries have a Gini coefficient as low as Thai
Binh province. However, countries with similar Gini coefficients as Thai Binh province are
Canada with 0.16, USA with 0.14, and Poland with 0.14.
While the analysis is at this juncture largely descriptive, two important trends are visible withrespect to the level or unit of analysis. The first trend is that higher or aggregated levels of
15

Education Ginis for this section are from: Measuring Education Inequality: Gini Coefficients of Education, Vinod
Thomas, World Bank Brazil, Wang Yan, World Bank Institute and Xibo Fan, JP Morgan Chase, January 2001,
World Bank Policy Research Working Paper no. 2525.

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analysis obscure the inequality of education attainment that becomes visible at disaggregatedlevels of analysis. This is evident through analysis of the increasing range of Gini coefficientsat disaggregated levels. In addition, the differences between the national level and thecommunal level mean and maximum Gini coefficients are 0.11 and 0.21. Figure 3 provides aneffective portrayal of the increase in education attainment inequality with the Lorenz curves for
Vietnam, Ha Giang province, Dong Van district, and Ho Quang Phin. The difference between
Vietnam and Ho Quang Phin commune in terms of education attainment is 17 percent; Ho
Quang Phin commune is substantially more unequal than Vietnam as a whole.
Figure 3. Lorenz curves and Gini coefficients for Vietnam, Ha Giang Province, Dong
Van District, and Ho Quang Phin Commune

100

Cumulative Percentage of Educational Attainment

80

60

40

20

0
0

20

40

60

Cumulative Percentage of the Population
Source: Vietnam Housing and Population Census 1999; Author’s calculations.
Data represents individuals with 15 or more years of age for the year 1999.
• Vietnam (0.24)• Ha Giang Province (0.31)• Dong Van District (0.39)• Ho Quang Phin Commune (0.44)

65

80

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Education inequality in the quest for growth
Poor countries have invested massively in education with the expectation of a population withhigher mean education attainment levels, higher earnings, and stimulated economic growth.
Yet in several instances economic growth has not materialized at the envisaged rate probably
because education attainment was not distributed equitably within the population. As a result,some developing countries, having followed the conventional human capital policy advice,
were left with a skewed distribution of education attainment and slow economic growth.
According to Thomas,16 a skewed distribution of education attainment has a deleterious effecton economic growth.
A common finding among those countries experiencing slow economic growth due to an
unequal distribution of education attainment is that an elite minority has captured a majority
share of public expenditures for schooling. As a result, this population, usually consisting of
high-income, urban, or dominant tribal or religious groups, has benefited more than others. In
addition, poor countries with slow economic growth have often invested disproportionately intertiary education. Higher education investments typically display lower economic returns thanresult from investments at the primary and secondary levels. A pattern of public spending,which provides large amounts of support to a narrow group of beneficiaries rather than broadequality of opportunity at a basic level, does not constitute a prudent use of scarce publicresources.
Typically, when a minority proportion of the population has the majority share of education
attainment, this same minority proportion of the population also has the majority share ofincome. Inequities in education attainment and income inequality are positively correlated.
The inequality of education attainment reinforces income disparities. Similarly, the way inwhich education is distributed will have a profound impact on the distribution of income andthe nature of growth. Education attainment inequality generates income inequality, andincome inequality impedes economic growth. Equalizing the distribution of education
attainment and income produces a larger and more diversified population participating in theeconomy with access to a larger share of the total wealth of the country. Mass participation in
education is requisite for economic growth, at least of the sustainable variety. In my view,
economic development of the self reliant sort occurs via equitable investment in education,and educational expansion coverage should include an equal distribution of education
attainment in order to contribute to economic development.
Inequality and human capital formation
A persistent but heretofore unanswered question in the study of education inequality pertains
to its relationship with student learning. What impact, if any, do costly efforts to achieve an
equal distribution of primary school completion rates have on student learning as measured
by standardized achievement tests? This is a question that, up to now, has not beensatisfactorily answered due primarily to data limitations. Achievement data, of course, arecommonplace in this era of preoccupation with human capital formation through schooling.
But similar measures of education attainment equality (or, conversely, inequality) do not exist
for most countries; at least not at the sub-national level.17
This investigation drew on standardized achievement test data from Vietnam disaggregated16

Vinod Thomas, Director of the World Bank Institute, when his book, The Quality of Growth, was published in
2000. This book, particularly Chapter 4 on education, was a rich source of inspiration for this author’s work.
17
Inequality in education attainment means variation among members of a population in the number of years offormal schooling completed. While such estimates, called education Gini coefficients, exist at the national level (forwhole countries) they do not exist at the level of individual provinces. Vietnam is an exception.

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by provinces. It is a correlational analysis and therefore some caution must be observed in
drawing causal relationships. The education Gini coefficients are based on work done under
my guidance by several graduate students at Brigham Young University. The national testscores based on a national sample of Vietnamese primary school students has not been
available until recently. But rarely if ever do such tests purport to be representative of theentire school age population. In many country cases only a small fraction of school children
attend school thus casting considerable doubt on the meaning of a comparison between ameasure of the distribution of education attainment based on an entire age group and a testscore based on a subset of a national age cohort.
Vietnam represents an exceptional opportunity to examine the relationship between inequalityof education attainment and overall student achievement. This opportunity is the result of the
publication of the World Bank supported Reading and Mathematics Assessment Study(December, 2004) that reports fifth grade achievement test scores for robust representative
samples of Vietnamese schools.18 The resulting data permit generalization at the provincial
level. At about the same time Holsinger published education Gini coefficients for Vietnam
covering all sixty one provinces, thus setting the stage for a rare look at the inter relationshipbetween the two largely independent characteristics of schooling. We are now able to provide
preliminary estimates of the possible effect size and direction of influence between these twovariables.
The correlation matrix below presents correlations between a number of variables of interest.
We will pay particular attention here to the Combined Reading and Math Benchmark thatshows a moderate to strong and significant relationship to the education Gini of r=-.54. Thereis little room for doubt that the more equal the distribution of education attainment in a
Vietnamese province the higher are the average fifth grade test scores on this carefully
constructed examination of math and reading. The Education Gini coefficient is slightly
higher than is the Human Development Index relationship to test score performance (r=.4).
Table 3:

Correlation between Education Gini and Achievement Scores

Variable
Combined Reading andMath Benchmark
EducationGini(inequality score)
Human
Development
Index provincial score
Math
Independent
Benchark
Reading Independent
Benchmark

Combined Education HDI rank
score
Gini
province
1
-.54
-.46

Math
score
1

Reading
score
.92

-.54

1

.40

-.54

-.62

-.46

.40

1

-.46

-.48

1

-.54

-.46

1

.92

.92

-.62

-.48

.92

1

Notes on variable coding: Education Gini index is calculated such that “0” is perfect equality and “1” is total
inequality so the higher the score, the more inequality. This produces a negative correlation of .54 with the
combined math and reading assessment score. The interpretation is that the more inequality exists in the
distribution of education in a province, the lower is the fifth grade learning achievement score. The relationship isslightly stronger (-.62) for reading than for mathematics (-.54).

This same relationship can be visualized graphically in the following figure. Here we havedivided the provinces of Viet Nam into three groups, each represented by one bar of the graph.
18

Vietnam: Reading and Mathematics Assessment Study, three volumes, The World Bank, August 200467

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The first bar represents the twenty provinces with the most equal distribution of education
attainment, the second bar represents the provinces with education attainment roughly in the
middle of the distribution and the final bar represents provinces with the most unequalattainment. Inside each bar is a little box that contains the mean combined math and readingscore for fifth grade students in the same provinces. As can be clearly seen as the inequalityof attainment increases the average student achievement score decreases. The results could
not be clearer.
Table 4:Student learning achievement scores by provincial inequality

Mean Combined Reading & Math Benchmark

100.0

80.0

60.0

86.16

40.0

79.09
69.53

20.0

0.0
Most equal attainment
distribution

Middle of provincial
attainment distribution

Least equal attainment
distribution

Ed Gini in thirds

Alternative explanations for the observed relationship
Critics might claim that the relationship between attainment inequality and student learningachievement is spurious. Some scholars who are skeptical of our findings argue that thereason behind the highly significant correlations is because in Vietnam the provinces withmore equal distributions of number of years of schooling completed are also the sameprovinces with vastly improved socioeconomic conditions. They maintain that it is these
conditions rather than equality or inequality that causes the variability in achievement scores.
This is a reasonable hypothesis and should be carefully examined. However our initial efforts
to control for a wide range of positive social contextual variables (summarized here by theHDI) did not confirm this suspicion. This fact can be clearly seen in the table below and in the68Annex 2-3
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partial correlation coefficient19 between the Education Gini and the Combined Achievementscore controlling for HDI of r=-.44, still significant at the .001 level.
In the table below, the provincial Combined Fifth Grade Reading and Math test score ispresented in the right hand column. Each row represents one level of the provincial HDI score.
The top row is contains the achievement scores for provinces at the highest (best) level of HDI.
We took this one additional step by breaking down the provinces showing the highest HDIscores into two parts: first, on the top line are the provinces with the highest HDI score andalso above average equality. The next line or row also has the provinces with high average
HDI scores but less equal education Gini coefficients.
Table 5:Controlling for the HDI level

HDI Level

Education Inequality 5th Grade Combined
IndexAchievement Mean

HighestThird
MiddleThird
LowestThird

More equalLess equal
More equalLess equal
More equalLess equal

88.8
76.6
83.5
69.8
83.1
63.5

Conclusions
While more study using advanced statistical methods needs to be conducted, our preliminary
investigation of the relationship between attainment inequality and student academic or
learning achievement presents what we believe to be convincing results: inequality is bad of
student learning.

Summary and recommendations
The inequality in the distribution of education in numerous countries is staggering. If people’sabilities are normally distributed across income levels, such skewed distribution of education
would seem to represent some of the largest welfare losses to society. Awareness ofeducation attainment inequality at all levels of system administration has significant education
policy relevance for self reliance in Vietnam as elsewhere in the developing world. As national,
provincial and district education authorities attempt to formulate education policies targeted atmarginalized and underserved groups, it should prove helpful to identify specific locations
according to the size of their respective education Gini coefficients. By establishing baseline
inequality measures, governments at all levels will be able to demonstrate empirically the19

A partial correlation coefficient is a variant of the simple two variable or bi-variate statistic. It introduces a third
variable as a control. The interpretation is the relationship between two variables controlling for or eliminating theinfluence of a third variable.

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progress their education policies and investments have produced Effective education policies,
where the measure of effect is economic growth, will be aided by the systematic use of theeducation Gini coefficient, a powerful tool to measure the current status of and improvementsin the quality of the Vietnamese or any other country’s labor force.
Education investments that improve the distribution of education attainment in the labor force
will in all likelihood be a major factor in Vietnam’s regional competitiveness in the future, as
economic development generally depends on more than increasing education expenditures
or on decentralization. The contention that education spending of governments is biased
toward the rich is hardly a novel idea. There is also a large literature providing ample evidence
that such bias is ultimately a political decision. A political bias in favor of factors contributing toincome inequality is frequently masked as meritocratic especially where access to
successive levels of schooling is determined through high stakes examinations. In the past
two decades the rise of equity as an explicit objective of development assistance to education
has become a ubiquitous feature. In practice, however, the policy focus has been on parity of
subgroups within populations, most particularly gender and ethnicity. But the distribution of
education attainment or education learning achievement has rarely been measured, in part
because there was little understanding of the use of the Gini coefficient as an indicator that
could be used to examine this dimension. My contention is that the systematic inclusion of theeducation Gini coefficient as a standard policy instrument will help focus attention clearly andmore precisely on one of the largest remaining problems in the public provision of education
among the poor of the world.
We should all care about the unequal distribution of education because its causes andconsequences are detrimental to human well being and to economic self reliance. Poor
children who leave school prematurely become unproductive, dissatisfied adults. Highly
unequal distributions of education are associated with low per capita wealth and perpetual
dependence on external aid.
So what can be done? Concentrating public spending on primary and lower secondary
education improves the chances that the poor will benefit, and hence will improve the
distribution of education in a country. But experience has shown that efforts to target the poorin this way have not made much difference to the distribution as measured by the education
Gini coefficient. There are several reasons for this.
For many years the World Bank signaled its strong preference for financing education
investments for quality enhancement and enrollment expansion at the level of the primaryschool. At the same time it aggressively discouraged projects related to secondary education.
Many client countries, benefiting from the Bank’s primary education-only policy, redirected
their own resources toward secondary education and erected barriers to entry at that level inthe form of high stakes entrance examinations.
The unanticipated result has been that relatively wealthy households increase the probability
that their children will succeed in this examination by hiring tutors. Underpaid school teachers
are happy to offer their services as after-hours tutors. Thus, a parallel private system operates
in such a way as to ensure that at each successive level of schooling the children ofcomparatively wealthy households capture the education spending of the government. The
same pernicious arrangement may exist in the transition between lower and upper secondaryand between secondary and tertiary levels.
Vietnam’s approach is worth considering. It has attempted and largely succeeded in providing
schooling through lower secondary to all children equally. It has invested heavily in provinces
that are disadvantaged, mountainous or populated by non-Vietnamese speaking minorities.
The government of Vietnam has for many years explicitly encouraged the education of girls
and is one of the few countries at its income per capita level that has equal enrollments

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between boys and girls. Vietnam has concentrated government expenditure on primary andlower secondary, and has expanded upper secondary through the use of school fees. By
concentrating spending at lower levels, it has achieved a remarkable level of equality. But
Vietnam has not been able to eliminate the examination and its ubiquitous partner, private
tutoring. Further reduction of the education Gini may be difficult to achieve for that reason.

71