NORRAG
NEWS
52
AUGUST2015

REFLECTIONSON THE WORLDEDUCATION
FORUM
AND
FINANCINGEDUCATION &SKILLS:NEW AND OLD
MODALITIES:NEW AND OLD
PARTNERSNORRAG
NEWS
52
AUGUST
2015

Editorial Address for this Special Issue:
Kenneth King, Saltoun Hall, Pencaitland,
Scotland, EH34 5DS, UK
Email: Kenneth.King@ed.ac.uk
The invaluable support to the Editor by Robert
Palmer is very warmly acknowledged.
Email: rpalmer00@gmail.com
Secretariat Address:
Michel Carton, Executive Director
Graduate Institute of International andDevelopment Studies (IHEID),
Post Box 136, Rue Rothschild 20, 1211 Geneva
21, Switzerland.
Email: michel.carton@graduateinstitute.chNORRAG News is supported by the Open Society Foundations (OSF), whilst the Coordination of NORRAG,
as well as the translation of NORRAG News into French and Spanish is supported by the Swiss Development Cooperation (SDC). The translation of NORRAG News into Arabic is made possible thanks to the support of the Ministry of Higher Education of the Sultanate of Oman. None of these, of course, is responsible
for the content of NORRAG News.

Free on website: www.norrag.org from August 2015

What is NORRAG?
NORRAG is an internationally recognised, multi-stakeholder network which has been seeking to
inform, challenge and inﬂuence international education and training policies and cooperation foralmost 30 years.
Through networking and other forms of cooperation and institutional partnerships, it aims inparticular to:•

stimulate and disseminate timely, concise, critical analysis and act as an incubator for new
ideas

•

broker knowledge at the interface between research, policy and practice

NORRAG’s current programme focuses on the following themes:•

Education and training policies in the post-2015 and beyond agenda•

Global governance of education and training and the politics of data•

Conﬂict, violence, education and training•

International perspectives on technical and vocational education and training (TVET)
policies and practice in the global SouthFor more information, please visit: www.norrag.org

What is NORRAG News?
NORRAG News is a digital newsletter that is produced twice a year. Each issue has a large numberof short, sharp articles, focusing on policy implications of research ﬁndings and/or on the practical
implications of new policies on international education and training formulated by development
agencies, foundations and NGOs. The niche of NORRAG has been to identify a number of ‘red
threads’ running through the complexity of the debates and the current aid and cooperation
discourse, and to dedicate special issues of NORRAG News to the critical analysis of these themes.
Some issues of NORRAG News have been translated into French and Spanish, as well as into
Chinese and Arabic from 2014 onwards.

Other ways to engage with NORRAG:•NORRAG NEWSBite http://norrag.wordpress.com/
NORRAG’s Blog about international education, training and development aid and policy.

•

Follow NORRAG on Twitter - @NORRAG_NEWS•

Follow NORRAG on facebook - @NORRAGNORRAG News 52
Reﬂections On The World Education ForumAnd
Financing Education & Skills
New And Old Modalities: New And Old Partners

This issue of NORRAG News (NN) – NN52 – reﬂects critically on the World Education Forum (WEF), just held
in Incheon, South Korea during 18-22 May 2015.
It also looks at the place of education and skills ﬁnancing against the backdrop of the world’s next development
agenda from September 2015 and the 3rd International Conference on Financing for Development (FFD)
which was held on 13th-16th July 2015 in Addis Ababa.
Though much of what is happening in education and skills ﬁnancing is arguably not directly linked to thepost-2015 agenda, the diﬀerent routes towards post-2015 all have implications for ﬁnance, and especiallyoﬃcial development assistance (ODA) ﬁnancing. Thus the national and regional Education for All (EFA)
assessments which came together in the World Education Forum in Incheon Korea (May 2015), a year after
the Muscat Agreement, all have ﬁnancing dimensions. Incheon’s ambitious Goal and draft Targets also havevery serious implications for ﬁnancing.
The EFA Global Monitoring Report 2015: Education for All: Achievements and Challenges 2000-2015,
contained a key chapter on aid and ﬁnancing; it analysed the ﬁnancial resources available to education,
taking into account the roles of governments, international development institutions, households and theprivate sector.
The Open Working Group’s (OWG) Report (July 2014) and the UN Secretary General’s Post-2015 Synthesis
Report (December 2014) have both underlined the importance of ODA ﬁnancing targets and national
ﬁnancing commitments. The post-2015 intergovernmental negotiations January-July 2015 also addressed
the ﬁnancing dimension of the post-2015 agenda, even as they waited for the outcome of the Financing forDevelopment Conference in mid-July.
Beyond these diﬀerent routes towards post-2015, there are ﬁnancial challenges more generally for resource
mobilization for education. These include demands upon ODA for DAC donors, as well as new targets for the
Global Partnership for Education, and other initiatives such as the Global Education First Initiative. There
have also been renewed concerns about the priority of domestic ﬁnancing for education. Emerging non-DAC
donors, including the BRICS countries, will be under pressure to relate to any new ﬁnancing agreements
post-2015. So too will private philanthropic foundations.
Apart from these, and from the continued priority focus on the funding of education as a global public good,
it is crucial to look critically at the world of private education, including the mixes of the public and theprivate in shadow education environments, as well as the so-called low-fee private school regimes, and the
no-fee school provision by non-government and civil society organizations. The extent to which the private
sector and private ﬁrms are part of the solution to education ﬁnance needs to be carefully interrogated.
This includes the interest several bilateral donors have in relating much more closely with the private sector.
It is also necessary to examine what has happened to the apparently promising world of innovative ﬁnancing
for education. Which of the many creative schemes are actually delivering ﬁnance for education, and what
others have the realistic potential to do so?
There is also a need to review the particular challenges of the ﬁnancing of education in conﬂict, post-conﬂict
and emergency situations.

Running through the review of various ﬁnancing modalities and mechanisms, we need to highlight speciﬁc
ﬁnancing approaches which are more suited to some sub-sectors of education and skill, than to others.
Again, there are particular schemes related to life-long learning, technical and vocational education andtraining (TVET) ﬁnancing and even early childhood education ﬁnancing.
A ﬁnal, but key concern, in this issue of NN relates to the way diﬀerent types of ﬁnancial resources foreducation are allocated. Development partner concerns with resource allocation and monitoring of
education have produced a series of schemes which have promised a good deal, from Cash on Delivery
to Results-based Financing for education, and skills development funds. Running through all of these is
the concern with value for money (See NN 47). But, perhaps even more importantly, there is the need forfurther analysis of the way that domestic resources for education are actually allocated; how eﬃciently andequitably are these managed, now that these have become a central priority of ﬁnancing for development?

Foreword
Kenneth King, University of Edinburgh & NORRAG
Email: Kenneth.King@ed.ac.uk

This issue of NORRAG News comes after two
major conferences on education, the World Forumon Education (WEF) in Incheon on 19-22 May 2015
in South Korea and the Oslo Education Summitof 6-7 July 2015, and just after the Financing forDevelopment (FFD) conference in Addis Ababa on
13-16 July 2015.
NORRAG was fortunate to have been selected,
jointly with the Campaign for Popular Education(CAMPE), to present in one of the side events inthe WEF. The title was ‘The global governanceof the SDG Education Goal and its Targets’. The
speakers in the NORRAG side event were Rasheda
Choudhury (CAMPE), Manzoor Ahmed (BRAC
University), Valérie Liechti (Swiss Development
Cooperation), and Michel Carton (NORRAG). There
was a lively debate, but time was terribly short.
NORRAG also organized, on the morning after theWEF, a reﬂection and an exchange on Incheon withcolleagues from diﬀerent South Korean academic
and policy organisations. Several of these havecontributed to the ﬁrst section of NN52.
Because of the importance of this last really major
education policy meeting before the SDG summit
in September in New York, we have given it somespecial attention in the ﬁrst section of NN52.
Since the draft Education SDG and its associatedTargets have consumed so much engagement by
multiple actors over the past three years, we have,as with Jomtien and Dakar, given the actual text of
the Incheon Declaration a good deal of attention.
NORRAG was also present in the Financing forDevelopment (FFD) Conference last month,and because of the meeting’s central focus on
ﬁnancing, we had decided it would be useful if thisissue of NN was principally on the ﬁnancing of
education and skills. The bulk of NN52, therefore,
is concerned with many diﬀerent dimensions ofeducation and skills ﬁnancing.
Shortly before the September SDG summit in
New York, there is the major UKFIET Conferencein Oxford on ‘Learning for Sustainable Futures:
8

NORRAGNEWS 52

Making the Connections’. Though NORRAG is notorganizing a whole section of the conference thistime, there are many papers being presented
by NORRAG members, and as usual there is a
NORRAG Open Meeting on the second evening of
the conference (16th September), after dinner.
NORRAG will also organise an open meeting toreview what will have been ﬁnally agreed in New
York as the SDG Education Goal and its Education
Targets. Most likely this will be in February 2016,
several months after the post-2015 dust has
settled, and countries, institutions, both public
and private, and individuals are considering
the implications of the world’s newly agreed
development agenda – up to 2030.
We hope to see many NORRAG members in Oxford
in September.
Kenneth King, Saltoun Hall, Pencaitland, Scotland,UK, 7th August 2015

REFLECTIONS ON THE WORLD EDUCATION FORUM AND FINANCING EDUCATION & SKILLS: NEW AND OLD MODALITIES: NEW AND OLD PARTNERS

910

NORRAGNEWS 52

CONTENTS
PART 1EDITORIAL AND OVERVIEWS.................................................................................17
The World Education Forum (WEF) at Incheon, South Korea: What Reﬂections, Memories,
Legacy?.........................................................................................................................................18
Kenneth King, University of Edinburgh & NORRAG
Reﬂections on 27 Years of Education for All (EFA).....................................................................21
Sheldon Shaeﬀer, Consultant, Bangkok, formerly UNESCO
The World Education Forum 2015: What exactly happened to the global Education Goal andTargets?.......................................................................................................................................23
Kenneth King, NORRAG and University of Edinburgh
Targets versus text – Why is one valued more than the other?................................................26
Kenneth King, University of Edinburgh & NORRAGCOMMENTS ON THE WORLD EDUCATION FORUM................................................31
Building consensus towards an indicator framework to monitor education
beyond 2015.................................................................................................................................32
Albert Motivans, UNESCO Institute for Statistics, Montreal
Reconciling and Re-connecting the Global and the National.....................................................34
Manzoor Ahmed, BRAC University and Campaign for Popular Education (CAMPE), Dhaka
Impressions about Incheon..........................................................................................................36
Alexey Dodsworth Magnavita, Ministry of Education, Brasilia
Creative Global Citizenship Education (GCED) for Sustainable Development in the 21stCentury.........................................................................................................................................37
Kim Young-Gil, UNAI, (United Nations Academic Impact), South Korea; Hahn Choong-Hee, United
Nations, New York; Chang Soon-Heung, Handong Global University, Pohang, South Korea
The World Education Forum with Unﬁnished Task to Find the Real Meaning of Global
Citizenship Education in the Post-2015 Era...............................................................................39
Su Yeon Park, Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), Seongnam, South Korea
Incheon and after: Prospects for adult learning.........................................................................40
Alan Tuckett, International Council of Adult Education, & University of Wolverhampton

Promoting Korean Experience in the Absence of International Narratives on Educational
Development...............................................................................................................................41
Byoung–gyu Gong, Korean Research Institute of Vocational Education and Training (KRIVET),
Seoul
And Sadly Leaving Incheon Behind.............................................................................................43
Bong Gun Chung, GSIS, Seoul National University
Challenges for Costing and Financing the Post-2015 Education Agenda................................44
Yoshida Kazuhiro, Hiroshima University

PART 2EDITORIAL ............................................................................................................47
FINANCING EDUCATION AND SKILLS: NEW AND OLD MODALITIES:NEW AND OLD PARTNERS...........................................................................................................48
Kenneth King, University of Edinburgh & NORRAGGLOBAL RESOURCE MOBILISATION FOR EDUCATION & SKILLS........................55
In Search of Sustainable Financing for Technical and Vocational Skills
Development...............................................................................................................................56
Robert Palmer, Independent education and skills consultant, aﬃliated to NORRAG and Universityof Nottingham
Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2015 – Money Matters.........................................59
Aaron Benavot,Global Monitoring Report team, UNESCO, Paris
Why the World Needs a Global Fund for Education....................................................................62
Chandrika Bahadur and Guido Schmidt-Traub, Sustainable Development Solutions Network,
Paris and New Delhi
Financing the Massive Education Catch-Up Needed in Sub-Saharan Africa............................65
Birger Fredriksen, Consultant Washington, formerly World Bank
Cost Eﬀective Strategies for Improving Latin American Education.........................................67
Ernesto and Paulina Schiefelbein, Alberto Hurtado University, Santiago
Dutch Aid, Trade and the SDGs...................................................................................................69
Ad Boeren, Netherlands Organization for International Cooperation in Higher Education(NUFFIC), The Hague
How 4% was Achieved: the Process of Realizing Education as the Priority.............................71
LI Wei, ZHAO Jing, The Open University of China, Beijing

National Policy on Education: Issues in Financing of Higher Education...................................73
Jandhyala B G Tilak, National University of Educational Planning and Administration, New Delhi
The Funding of Higher Education through an Export Industry.................................................75
Richard James, University of Melbourne
The Power of Tax: The Case of Education....................................................................................77
David Archer, ActionAid, London

THE CHALLENGE OF THE PRIVATE, NON-STATE AND INNOVATIVEFINANCING ROUTES .............................................................................................81
Financing the Post-2015 Agenda: the Scope for Social Impact Investments...........................82
Homi Kharas, Brookings, Washington, DC
Transnational Venture Capital and the Rise of ‘Low-Fee’ Private Schools: The Case of Pearson
and Omega Schools in Ghana......................................................................................................84
Curtis Riep, University of Alberta
Low-Fee Private Schools in Peru................................................................................................86
María Balarin, Group for the Analysis of Development (GRADE), Lima
Non-State Funding of Education – a Case Study from Ethiopia...............................................88
Timothy Kinahan, Helen’s Bay, Northern Ireland
Much ado about Nigerian Private Schools – a Case for PPP?....................................................89
Modupe Adefeso-Olateju, The Education Partnership Centre, Lagos, Nigeria
Funding Education as a Key Public Good....................................................................................91
Kishore Singh, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education, Geneva
Impact Bonds for Early Childhood Development in Low and Middle Income
Countries.....................................................................................................................................93
Emily Gustafsson-Wright, Center for Universal Education, Brookings Institution, Washington
Enabling the Promise of Innovative Financing for Education...................................................95
Aleesha Taylor, Open Society Foundations, New YorkFinancing Education and Skills: Emerging Models of Private Financing for Higher
Education....................................................................................................................................97
Devang Vussonji, Dalberg, Global Development Advisors, Johannesburg
The Implications of Changing Private Rates of Return to Schooling......................................100
Harry Anthony Patrinos, World Bank, Washington

NGOs as Donors to Education: What Role Might They Play in the SDG Agenda?...................102
Susy Ndaruhutse and Ruth Naylor, CfBT Education Trust, UK
Mind the Gap: Assessing the Philanthropic ‘Buzz’ in Global Education.................................104
Prachi Srivastava, School of International Development and Global Studies, University of Ottawa

FINANCING EDUCATION IN CONFLICT AND EMERGENCIES...............................107
Results Based Financing for Eﬀective Resource Allocation in Education Systems in Fragile
Regions......................................................................................................................................108
Piet Vroeg and Alinda Bosch , Cordaid, The Hague
Education and Skills Development Financing in Occupied Palestinian Territories (oPt).......110
Randa Hilal, Consultant, Ramallah
The Cost of ‘Boko’ and Alternative Education Options in Northern Nigeria ...........................112
Hannah Hoechner, Free University of Brussels

INNOVATIONS AND LESSONS FROM TVET AND
MICROENTERPRISE.............................................................................................115
Skills Levy Failing to Drive Changes in Occupational Training in South Africa.......................116
Stephanie Allais, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
The Financing of Vocational Training in Africa: Conclusions and Lessons Learned................118
Richard Walther, ADEA, Paris
Financing and the Informal Sector.............................................................................................119
Jacques Charmes, Institute of Research for Development (IRD), Centre for Studies on Population
and Development (CEPED), University Paris-Descartes
Austrian Private Business as Partners in VET Provision in Developing Countries.................121
Margarita Langthaler, Austrian Foundation for Development Research (ÖFSE), Vienna

EDUCATION COOPERATION FROM THE EMERGING DONORS............................123
Engaging Arab Donors in Financing Global Education.............................................................124
Maysa Jalbout, Brookings, Abu Dhabi, UAE
BRICS Education Expenditure...................................................................................................126
Mamphokhu Khuluvhe, Department of Higher Education and Training, South Africa
Sustainable Funding for the GCC Education System...............................................................129
Hana M Ameen, Ministry of Higher Education, Sultanate of Oman

China’s Development Financing for Developing Countries.......................................................131
Meibo Huang, Xiamen University, China
Trends of China’s Aid to African Education...............................................................................133
Wan Xiu-lan, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua
Mapping the Landscape of Financial Resources of China’s Aid to Education and Human
Resource Development.............................................................................................................136
Liu Jing, Nagoya University, JapanNORRAG’S NEWS.................................................................................................139
Learning for Sustainable Futures: Making the Connections, 13th UKFIET International
Conference on Education and Development, 15-17 September 2015.
An Update..................................................................................................................................140
Terra Sprague,Convenor, Bristol University

16

NORRAGNEWS 52

PART 1EDITORIAL AND
OVERVIEWS

17

EDITORIAL
The World Education Forum (WEF) at Incheon, South Korea:
What Reﬂections, Memories, Legacy?¹
Kenneth King, University of Edinburgh & NORRAG
Email: Kenneth.King@ed.ac.uk

It’s now more than two months since Incheon,
and it’s perhaps appropriate to consider what isthe enduring legacy from this huge investment oftime, thought and resources, especially by South
Korea but also UNESCO.
Another way of answering the question is
to consider what the informed international
education community still recall from Jomtien, 25
years ago, or from Dakar 15 years back.
Arguably, they are likely to recall one or two of
the six dimensions for suggested national targetsetting from Jomtien, and they will certainly
remember that there were six Education for All(EFA) Goals in Dakar. Why? Because targets
appear, in policy circles, to be more memorable,
more relevant, and more crucial than mere text.
There were in fact also ten Articles in the Jomtien
Declaration, very compellingly crafted, but few
will remember these. There is an occasional very
powerful sentence which may be recalled by someearly childhood professionals, such as ‘Learning
begins at birth’ (part of Article 5), or a phrase suchas ‘meeting basic learning needs’ or ‘an expanded
vision of basic education’. But that will be all.
From Dakar’s three-page Framework for Action,
apart from some of focus of the six EFA Goals, if
not their exact phrasing, there are perhaps one
or two memorable phrases or sentences that canbe recalled such as: ‘We aﬃrm that no countries
seriously committed to education for all will bethwarted in their achievement of this goal by a lackof resources.’ (Dakar FFA, paragraph 10)
In connection with this grand pledge, the Global
Monitoring Report (GMR) 2015 comments that
‘The pledge made at Dakar…has been one of thebiggest failures of the EFA period. Donors failed
to live up to their promises’ (Summary, GMR 2015:
45).

18

NORRAGNEWS 52

But what will be recalled from the three pagesof the Incheon Declaration after two months,
one year, ten, ﬁfteen or twenty-ﬁve years?
The sustainable development goal (SDG) 4 wasin the Incheon Declaration, but this was alreadyknown from the Open Working Group (OWG)
process and from the Muscat Agreement. Hereit is: ‘…the proposed SDG 4 “Ensure inclusive
and equitable quality education and promote
life-long learning opportunities for all” and its
corresponding targets’ (paragraph 5).
However, none of these corresponding targets
were actually included in the Incheon Declaration.
We shall come back in a moment to explain why.
But what else is memorable from the Incheon
Declaration?
Any memorable lines in the 3-page text of the
Declaration?
For me, two of the most powerful sentences are
the following:
No education target should beconsidered met unless met by all
We therefore commit to making
the necessary changes in education
policies and focusing our eﬀorts on
the most disadvantaged, especiallythose with disabilities, to ensure thatno one is left behind (Paragraph 7).
These sentences are in fact two sides of the samecoin. Of course they sound familiar precisely
because we have heard them before. Many of
us may have read Save the Children’s Brieﬁng:
Leaving No One Behind (2014)². And ‘no one is left
behind’ is used no less than six times in the Report
1 This introductory comment appeared as a blog on NORRAG
Newsbite: https://norrag.wordpress.com/
2 http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/resources/online-library/leaving-no-one-behindof the High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons on
the Post-2015 Development Agenda (HLP, 2013).
Indeed both the faces in Incheon’s paragraph 7 arealso used very similarly in this paragraph about
the Twelve Illustrative Goals and their associatedTargets from the HLP Report:

The only sub-themes that are emphasized in boldin the Incheon Declaration are access, inclusionand equity, gender equality, quality, and lifelong
learning opportunities. Each of these has aparagraph of its own. The ambitions of Incheon are
captured in these few, key paragraphs.

The indicators that track them should
be disaggregated to ensure no one
is left behind and targets should only
be considered ‘achieved’ if they aremet for all relevant income and social groups. (HLP, Executive Summary)However, beyond commitments to basic
education at Jomtien and to the six EFA Goals
of Dakar, Incheon wants to ‘ensure the provisionof 12 years of free, publicly funded, equitable
quality primary and secondary education’. Thesesix adjectives in front of ‘education’ are quite
a mouthful. But the ﬁrst 9 years are also to be‘compulsory’. This is a big requirement, when it isrecalled from the GMR 2015 that only 27 countries
made lower secondary compulsory since 2000.
And in Sub-Saharan Africa lower/upper secondary
enrolment stands at 50%/32% respectively. The
underlining of FREE is important, but readers
should note from the 2015 GMR that ‘despite feefree public primary schooling being enshrined inlaw in 135 countries, 110 still continue to chargesome sort of fee’ (p.260).

One of the reasons that these two Incheon
sentences are so important is because of what issaid in the Preamble of the Incheon Declaration,
after aﬃrming the spirit of Dakar and thesubsequent important commitment to education:
however, we recognize with great
concern that we are far from having
reached education for all. (paragraph 2)
There are only two main headings after thePreamble. The ﬁrst is Toward 2030: A new vision
for education. And the second is Implementing ourcommon agenda.
But can we put our ﬁngers on what is new about
the new vision for education at Incheon? Here, forexample, is the pledge in the last few lines of the
Declaration:
Building on the legacy of Jomtienand Dakar, this Incheon Declaration
is an historic commitment by all of
us to transform lives through a new
vision for education, with bold andinnovative actions, to reach our ambitious goal by 2030. (paragraph 20)
Searching in the text for what is new about
this vision, we ﬁnd that this new agenda – thisnew vision – claims to be ‘transformative’,‘holistic’, ‘ambitious’, ‘aspirational’, ‘universal’ and‘humanistic’. In addition to these claims, paragraphﬁve aﬃrms that education is a human right, abasis for other rights; it is ‘essential for peace,tolerance, human fulﬁlment and sustainable
development’. It is also a ‘key to full employment
and poverty eradication’. These huge claims about
the potential of education are not entirely new; thelarge literature asserting that ‘’Education for All’is Development’ and that ‘Education transforms
lives’ has been reviewed exhaustively before (Seethe GMR 2002 and the GMR 2013/4).

The biggest pledge of all?
The single biggest oﬀer in Incheon comes in theparagraph about lifelong learning. Here it is: ‘We
commit to promoting quality lifelong learning
opportunities for all, in all settings and at all levelsof education.’ (paragraph 10). Three uses of ‘all’in one sentence! This is very good news for adulteducators, as the paragraph covers formal, nonformal and even informal education (See Tuckettin NN52).
Oh, and what about the cost??
The section on ‘a new vision for education’ hasnothing about cost. That comes later in the section
called ‘Implementing our common agenda’. One
paragraph (14) recognizes that the ambitions ofIncheon cannot be realized ‘without a signiﬁcant
and well-targeted increase in ﬁnancing’. It thenurges adherence to the benchmarks of 15-20% of
public expenditure and 4-6% of GDP for education.
A second and longer paragraph (15) calls upona whole slew of countries and of modalities--developed countries, traditional and emerging
donors, middle income countries and international
ﬁnancing mechanisms -- to increase funding to
education. It then urges the members of DAC who

REFLECTIONS ON THE WORLD EDUCATION FORUM AND FINANCING EDUCATION & SKILLS: NEW AND OLD MODALITIES: NEW AND OLD PARTNERS

19

have not yet reached 0.7% of GNP for ODA ‘to makeadditional concrete eﬀorts towards the target’[only ﬁve countries had reached this goal by 2013;
and Korea, USA and Japan were at 0.13%; 0.19%;
and 0.23% respectively]. Interestingly, there areno speciﬁc ﬁnancing suggestions made for the
emerging donors and middle-income countries.
And there are no indications of the large ﬁnancing
gaps which have been discussed by the GMR 2015,
and which were reproduced in the Incheon draft
Framework for Action. Hence the ambitions andvisions of Incheon need some serious costing,both internationally and nationally.

Korean War to the present. To be debating a newand transformative vision for global education ina country that attributed such a great deal of its
success to education and TVET investment was aprivilege. In a book made available by the Korean
Educational Development Institute (KEDI) for theWEF, Dynamic education for individual and national
development: the case of the Republic of Korea,
there are three key elements of this success.
Signiﬁcantly, the ﬁrst of these is Government’s
Strong Leadership and the second and third
were Competent teachers and High emphasis on
education and zeal for education (KEDI, 2015: 2126).

Why were there no targets in the Incheon
Declaration?

Though it is now two months since Incheon, there
is still a legacy to be carefully examined, and,unlike the host countries of Jomtien (Thailand) in1990 and Dakar (Senegal) 2000 about which welearnt very little, we do have a rich insight into
South Korea.

Given what we said at the beginning about targets
being more attractive than text, how are we toexplain the fact that, unlike Jomtien and Dakar, theIncheon Declaration has no targets?
The reason is simple: that the SDGs and theircorresponding targets are currently under review
by the UN’s Intergovernmental Negotiations in
New York. There was available from this process
at the time of Incheon a set of revised targets,
including four of the Education ones. The NGO
Forum in Incheon readily took these proposed
revisions on board in its own Incheon Declaration(NGO, 2015). But it would have been premature
for the plenary conference in Incheon either to
conﬁrm the existing targets or to accept therevised ones being debated in New York. Withina few weeks, the UN intergovernmental process
might have reached a diﬀerent conclusion. Then
UNESCO and the Incheon Declaration would be
suddenly out of step with the UN process leading
thru from New York in June, to the Financing forDevelopment conference in Addis in July, and on to
the ﬁnal summit in the September in New York.
However, it is still useful to examine what the textof Incheon Declaration has actually taken from thetargets in the Incheon Draft Framework for Action.
This is dealt with in some detail later in NORRAG
News 52 (See King ‘Targets vs Text’ in NN52)
Another legacy: a better insight into South
Korea
Doubtless, for many participants the legacy ofIncheon was a better understanding of Korea’s
extraordinary transformation from the end of the20

NORRAGNEWS 52

But we now turn to consider Incheon within someof the essential history of the EFA movement(Shaeﬀer; King in NN52), and to the comparison of
Incheon Targets with Incheon Text.

References
See page 29 below.

Reﬂections on 27 Years of Education for All (EFA)
Sheldon Shaeﬀer, Consultant, Bangkok, formerly UNESCO
Email: s_shaeﬀer@hotmail.com

Key words: Jomtien, Dakar, Incheon, Education forAll, UNESCO
Summary: The 27 years of Education for All present a fascinating mixture of signiﬁcant progressand stubborn stagnation, passionate idealism
and political machinations, and lofty rhetoric andbroken promises. While originally a stand-alone
global initiative and then a parallel framework often in competition to the Millennium Development
Goals in education, the vision of EFA now has
the opportunity to be fully integrated into theeven more ambitious agenda of the Sustainable
Development Goals.

The Education for All (EFA) process actually began
in 1988 when the preparatory team for the Jomtien
conference, comprised of representatives of the
major convenors (UNICEF, UNESCO, the World
Bank, and UNDP) was established in New Yorkat UNICEF (which was actually the originator of
the EFA idea) in New York. As the representativeof one of the 20+ partners supporting EFA, theInternational Development Research Centre
in Ottawa, I became a member of the Jomtien
Steering Committee and later, in Jomtien, of the
Drafting Committee. An extensive backgrounddocument of 120 pages was prepared and drafts of
the Declaration and Framework were sometimes
hotly debated ﬁrst in the larger Steering
Committee (e.g., does learning begin when children
enter primary school or at birth) and then in theﬁnal Drafting Committee – enough so, as I recall,that there was very little, if any, debate on the
texts at the time of their ﬁnal endorsement by
plenary. The Jomtien Conference, as the ﬁrst in the
EFA movement, was marked by both collegiality
and collaboration among the major actors (e.g.,
UNESCO did not dominate the process) andexcitement at launching a promising new visionand movement for education.
The EFA follow-up and monitoring process,assigned to UNESCO, was largely limited

to encouraging countries to establish EFA
Committees and national action plans; thesewere more tracked and counted than actively
promoted and monitored, and the UNESCO-based
mid-decade assessment written for the Amman
conference in 1996, was widely criticised as too
little and too late (See NN19: Education for All –for Whom?). UNESCO continued its mandate tocoordinate the EFA movement but with the lessactive involvement of the other partners. Partly
as a result, preparations for the Dakar Conference
were considerably less detailed and collaborativeat least at the global level, despite the fact thatmany countries took seriously the assessmentof progress since Jomtien. More of the ﬁnal
Declaration therefore had to be prepared at theConference itself, there was more public debate
about the goals (with an “expanded commentary”
only prepared some weeks after Dakar andnever oﬃcially endorsed by governments), andthe major actors (Koichiro Matsuura, a recently
elected and somewhat insecure Director Generalof UNESCO and Carol Bellamy, the experienced
and persuasive Executive Director of UNICEF)
clearly not in synch. The Dakar Conference,
however, did lead to two important outcomes – astronger commitment by donors to fund credible
national EFA plans and the establishment ofwhat, two years later, became a well-funded andprofessionally-staﬀed Global Monitoring Report,a systematic and comprehensive attempt tomonitor progress towards the EFA goals andannually comment on outstanding issues related
to education. It also led to a renewed commitment
of UNICEF to strengthen its education programmethroughout the world by establishing over 100
education oﬃcer posts around the world (posts
which the Acting ADG for Education in UNESCO,
Jacques Hallak, thought should be transferred to
UNESCO!).
The process leading to Incheon was much
more complex than that for the two previous
conferences. On the one hand, there was more
serious buy-in to the process by co-convenors
with UNESCO such as UNICEF and the World

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Bank. In addition, the NGO community, reduced tothe margins in Dakar before they literally forced
their way into the deliberations, was an oﬃcial
and welcome part of the Incheon process with a
1-1/2 day pre-conference Forum which brought
together some 250 NGOs and produced a strong
statement – e.g., for donor ﬁnancing benchmarks
and the universalization of the targets (theyshould be achieved by “all” rather than by “x%) andagainst the privatization of education – whoseinﬂuence on the ﬁnal Declaration is as yet unclear.
And new actors – the Global Partnership for
Education, OECD, Education Above All of Qatar,
the government of South Korea – became active
participants in the EFA movement.
Most complex, of course, was the relationshipbetween the lengthy and labour-intensive
UNESCO/UNICEF-led EFA process, leading to theMuscat Agreement of May, 2014, and the United
Nations-led process of developing a new set of
Sustainable Development Goals through the OpenWorking Group. This relationship is discussed
elsewhere in this issue of NN52; suﬃce it to
say that UNESCO, in the lead-up to the Incheon
Conference, was pressured by both the UN andsome important Member States to adopt thedraft SDG education goal and targets, rather thanthose of Muscat, as its own. These were therefore
inserted into the draft Framework for Action (thetitle of which does not include EFA), which can only
be endorsed once the ﬁnal SDGs are determined,
and, with somewhat diﬀerent wording, into the
Incheon Declaration which was approved by the
Conference participants. To what extent the ﬁnal
FFA, which is meant to be endorsed at a proposed
high-level conference in conjunction with UNESCO’s
General Conference in November 2015, is seen –and advertised – as a “branded” EFA framework
within the SDGs or perhaps even one which goesbeyond, or encourages individual governments
to go beyond, the SDGs remains to be seen.

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The World Education Forum 2015:
What exactly happened to the global Education
Goal and Targets?
Kenneth King, NORRAG and University of Edinburgh
Email: Kenneth.King@ed.ac.uk

Key words: National percentages, universal
targets, Jomtien, Dakar, Muscat, Open Working
Group
Summary: Some essential history of the global
target-setting process helps position the Incheon
Declaration and its draft targets against a background of the essential milestones.

The 1500 participants who were in Incheon in
May 2015 in South Korea for the World Forumon Education (WEF) found two key drafts intheir conference packs – the Draft Declaration:
Education 2030: Towards inclusive and equitable
quality education and lifelong learning for all(3 pages, 23 April 2015; hereafter DD); and the
Framework for Action: Education 2030: Towards
inclusive and equitable quality education andlifelong learning for all (Draft) [23 April 2015, 26
pages; hereafter FFA].
The participants also got a full programme which
conﬁdently anticipated on page one that the WEF
would lead to ‘agreement in principle on a comprehensive Framework for Action and the adoption ofa Declaration’ (Programme p. 1). The Programmealso carried the following title for its ﬁnal Plenary
Session IV: ‘Education 2030: Agreement on the
Framework for Action and adoption of the ﬁnal
Declaration’ (Programme p.15). It can be seen that
there was a diﬀerence anticipated on the treatment of the Declaration and the FFA.
When the ﬁnal Plenary Session arrived, participants received just the revised Draft Incheon
Declaration (3 pages) but no revised FFA. So
the Plenary duly adopted the Draft Incheon
Declaration. There was no attempt to provide arevised FFA. However, the Plenary was actuallyasked if it had any comments on the FFA, and there
were none; so it could be said to have been agreed
in principle. See further below.

How did the Incheon process diﬀer from theJomtien and Dakar education summits?
25 years earlier than Incheon, the World Conferenceon Education for All (WCEFA) in Jomtien in March
1990 managed to secure agreement from 1500
participants, 155 governments and 150 NGOs tothe World Declaration on Education for All andFramework for Action to Meet Basic Learning
Needs (UNESCO, 1990). The two documents were
21 pages long (Declaration 10; Framework 11), andearlier drafts of both had been reviewed in nine
regional consultations in the six months prior to
Jomtien (See NN 7). WCEFA did discuss and agree
Goals and Targets but it prefaced its six suggested
targets with the following key sentence: ‘Countries
may wish to set their own targets for the 1990sin terms of the following proposed dimensions’(Framework, para. 8, emphasis added).
In Dakar in April 2000, The Dakar Framework
for Action was actually the main document
adopted by the World Education Forum. This
Framework actually included the six Education
for All (EFA) Goals, but there were just three
pages (21 paragraphs) agreed during the ﬁnal dayof the Forum. There was, later on, an Expanded
commentary on the Dakar Framework for
Action (of 23 pages) developed by the Drafting
Committee.
In other words, Jomtien secured the Conference’s
agreement on its six suggested dimensions fornational target setting; and Dakar got the Forum’s
agreement on its six EFA Goals. The ﬁnal Incheon
Declaration did not seek to get formal agreementon its Overarching Education Goal or its seventargets and three means of implementation, sincethese were in the FFA and not in the ﬁnal Incheon
Declaration formally adopted by the Forum.
An Incheon Declaration without targets – does itmatter? Some target history
When so much eﬀort over the last three years hasgone into target setting and target negotiation in

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anticipation of the September 2015 Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs) and their targets, it
may be disappointing not to have had targets
explicitly conﬁrmed in Incheon as in Jomtien and
Dakar. A little bit of education target history may
help to explain this absence of formally agreed
Incheon targets.

seven targets, just two were to be set in national
percentages, - skills for employment and adultliteracy/numeracy. Did this imply some lower
status for skills development and adult literacy??

The High Level Panel (HLP 2013) was one of the ﬁrst
in the ﬁeld of goal- and target-setting, in May 2013.
It had a total of 12 Illustrative Goals, one of thesebeing in Education: ‘Provide quality educationand lifelong learning’. The HLP suggested that the
all the Goals should be universal, but that mosttargets should be set nationally, e.g. –‘increase by
x% the proportion of children able to access andcomplete pre-primary education’. A few targets
would however be global, setting a common
and measurable standard to be monitored in all
countries, e.g. ‘Ensure every child regardless ofcircumstance, has access to lower secondary
education…’ (HLP, 2013: 30). The HLP had just four
education targets, covering pre-primary, primary,lower secondary and skills for work. No less than
three of these included percentages to be set
nationally.

Many of the more informed Incheon participants
would have noticed that the Draft Framework for
Action which they received in their packs on arrivalin Incheon included the OWG goal and its targets
and not the Muscat ones. The text used by Incheon
for the Goal and Targets was in fact identical to
the OWG. UNESCO presumably decided to use
the OWG version as it was perceived to be closer
to the UN’s post-2015 process. They did not wanta repeat of the two tracks from 2000, with the six
EFA Goals on the one hand and the two education
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) on theother (see Shaeﬀer NN52).

The global thematic consultation on education in
the post-2015 development agenda (March 2013)
resulted in a thoughtful report which conﬁrmed
an overarching goal – but no targets were agreed.
The goal was short and sharp: ‘Equitable, Quality
Education and Lifelong Learning for All’ (UNESCOUNICEF, 2013: 38).
The Muscat Agreement in May 2014
By the end of the Global Education for All Meetingin Oman in May 2014, there was a single overarching
Education goal, almost identical to the one justmentioned, and no less than seven targets. Muscat
had added to the four HLP targets adult literacy/
numeracy; teacher quality; global citizenshipeducation (GCED)/education for sustainable
development (ESD); and minimum ﬁnancing
targets. Following the example set by the HLP, noless than three of the targets had percentages tobe set nationally (UNESCO, 2014).
The UN’s Open Working Group (OWG) for
Sustainable Development Goals decided in July
2014 to propose 17 universal goals rather than 12 of
the HLP. It had no fewer than 169 targets. In respectof Education, it had seven targets and three meansof implementation (qualiﬁed teachers; facilities;
and scholarships for developing countries). Of the24

NORRAGNEWS 52

The Incheon Framework for Action preferred the
OWG to the Muscat version of targets

The NGO challenge to the national percentages’
approach to education targets
On the ﬁrst day and a half of the week of the formal
opening of the WEF on 20th May, some 250 NGOs
held their own Forum in Incheon, and duly cameup with their own 2015 NGO Forum Declaration.
One of the most intriguing parts of this reﬂected
the coincidence that the WEF was taking placein the very week that the Intergovernmental
Negotiations on the Post-2015 Development
Agenda1 in New York were discussing several
targets that had been revised from the earlier
OWG version. These revised target proposals2
include no less than four from the existing OWG
Education Targets (4.4; 4.6; 4b; and 4c). For
example, the original target 4.4 would change
from ‘By 2030, increase by [x] per cent the numberof youth and adults who have relevant skills’ to‘By 2030, ensure that all youth and adults haverelevant skills’ (UN, 2015a: 3, emphasis in theoriginal). The rationale for such a proposed change
was stated to be ‘to ensure the highest possiblelevel of ambition’ (ibid).
Signiﬁcantly, in Incheon, these revised target
statements were discussed by the very large NGO
Forum on the ﬁrst day of WEF, and the Forum

1 https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/post2015
2 http://www.un.org/pga/wp-content/uploads/
sites/3/2015/05/070515_intergovernmental-negotiations-post-2015-dev-agenda.pdf

members decided unanimously3 to recommend
to the WEF the adoption of all the Revised
Education Targets from the New York process. In
the 2015 NGO Forum Declaration, distributed to
all participants in WEF, it was aﬃrmed that ‘Wesupport the recommendation of the co-facilitatorsin the New York Intergovernmental Negotiations
that where x% is used in the adult literacy, skills
and teacher targets, they should be replaced by“all”’(NGO Forum, 2015: 2).
The New York proposal on education targets versus the Incheon FFA
By 2nd June 2015, the Co-Facilitators of theintergovernmental negotiations on the post-2015
process in New York were able to attach a zerodraft of the outcome document for the UN summit
in September in New York. The draft text still had
the same version of the goal and targets that werein the Incheon FFA, including the education ones
with some national percentages. But in one of theannexes, the much more ambitious education goals
were laid out, without any national percentages.
The Co-facilitators wrote in their introduction
to the zero draft that: ‘The ﬁrst of these annexes
is our paper proposing revisions to 21 of the 169
targets which we strongly recommend to member
states’ (UN, 2015`; 2).
Instead of the targets talking of increases of x%,
the proposed text talked of all youth and adults, or
all learners, or all teachers.
The politics of target-setting by UNESCO at
Incheon and by the United Nations

Declaration actually diﬀer from the (OWG) education targets set out in the Framework?
The Incheon Declaration didn’t include any targets
for reasons just discussed. But, arguably, the actual
text of the Declaration went further than theseven targets and three means of implementationthat were in the Framework for Action (Draft).
See the next article for a detailed account of thediﬀerences between the targets in the FFA Draft
and the text of the Incheon Declaration.
We argue that there are several examples ofwhere the Incheon Declaration has actually gone
beyond the language of the speciﬁc education
targets contained in the FFA. Of course the text
surrounding the targets often covered more than
was captured in the speciﬁc target statements.
But surely we now have an intriguing situation. The
FFA and its education targets were not formally
adopted in Incheon in order not to get out of stepwith the wider UN process. But the actual textof the Incheon Declaration was adopted and it isalready substantially diﬀerent from the UN’s OWG
version of the education targets.
However, we live in a world where the language ofTargets is more powerful than mere Text. So thekey issue remains what will happen to the Incheon
Targets in the FFA, given the ongoing processes in
New York?

References
See page 29 below.

Presumably one reason why UNESCO and theIncheon process did not want publicly to aﬃrm
the education targets in the draft Framework for
Action or openly to debate the revised targets
proposed by the NGO Forum Declaration was
precisely that they would be almost immediately
out of step with the UN process if the latter were
to decide on adopting the proposed revision to thetargets. In fact the intergovernmental negotiations
adopted the revised proposals for education in its
draft of 1st August 2015, ‘Transforming our world:the 2030 agenda for sustainable development’,
Finalised text for adoption (1 August)’.4
So how did the ﬁnal text of the Incheon
3 http://www.globaleducationmagazine.com/2015_ﬁnal_ngo_
declaration.pdf
4 https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/7891TRANSFORMING%20OUR%20WORLD.pdf
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Targets versus text – Why is one valued more than the other?
Kenneth King, University of Edinburgh & NORRAG
Email: Kenneth.King@ed.ac.uk

There is something absurd about our
preoccupation with targets as opposed to text.
It is interesting therefore that it was possible toadopt a piece of text in Incheon, but that it was notpossible formally to adopt the education targets
that were in the Framework for Action.
In the case of the World Conference on Education
for All (WCEFA) in Jomtien, the only element thatsome people can recall after 25 years is the six
targets – even though they were not even intended
to be global targets – but just dimensions fornational target-setting.
By contrast, most people cannot recall anyof the 10 Articles of the World Declaration on
Education for All at WCEFA. Yet they are extremely well-crafted and very powerful. For those, forexample, who think that Jomtien and Dakar were
only about access and not about quality, and thatthat is why the word ‘quality’ appears 14 times injust 3.5 pages in the Incheon Declaration, and 60
times in the 26 pages of the FFA, they should readthe Jomtien Declaration again, and not least thisarticle on learning:
Article 4: Focusing on Learning.
Whether or not expanded educational
opportunities will translate into meaningful development - for an individual
or for society - depends ultimately on whether people actually learn
as a result of those opportunities, i.
e., whether they incorporate usefulknowledge, reasoning ability, skills,
and values. The focus of basic education must, therefore, be on actual learning acquisition and outcome, rather than
exclusively upon enrolment, continued
participation in organized programmes
and completion of certiﬁcation requirements. Active and participatory
approaches are particularly valuable inassuring learning acquisition and allowing learners to reach their fullest poten-

26

NORRAGNEWS 52

tial. It is, therefore, necessary to deﬁneacceptable levels of learning acquisition
for educational programmes and to improve and apply systems of assessing
learning achievement. (Declaration,
WCEFA, 1990: 5. Emphasis in the original)
How do the education targets of the Incheon
draft Framework for Action(FFA) compare withthe text of the Incheon Declaration?
Before we look in more detail at the seven targets
and three means of implementation in the FFA,
there is a crucial prefatory comment in the
Framework about global versus national targets.
It reads as follows;
They [the Targets] spell out a global
level of ambition that should encourage countries to strive for accelerated progress. Countries are expected
to translate these into achievable national targets based on their educational priorities, national development
strategies and plans, the way in which
their education systems are organized,
their institutional capacity and theavailability of funding (FFA, 2015: 6).
Given that much of the debate about the Education
Targets has been concerned with whether toremove the percentages that were meant toencourage national target-setting, it seems
strange that this preface should reinforce this, andyet that there should be four targets that still havepercentages attached to them.
Following up on our working assumption thatfor many organisations it is the actual targets
that are the key dimension while the descriptive
text surrounding them is less critical, we can now
nevertheless examine the seven FFA targets,and see to what extent their substance has been
captured in the text of the Incheon Declaration,
which has already been formally adopted. We shalltake these in the same order as they appear in thedraft Framework.

The Framework for Action education Targets

Article 26).

Target 4.1 was ‘By 2030, ensure that all girls andboys complete free, equitable and quality primaryand secondary education leading to relevant
and eﬀective learning outcomes’ (emphasis
added). This was more than adequately coveredin Paragraph 6 of the Incheon Declaration. The
latter spoke of ensuring ‘the provision of 12 yearsof free, publicly funded, equitable quality primaryand secondary education, of which at least nine
years are compulsory, leading to relevant learning
outcomes’. This is quite an awkward mouthfulwith its six adjectives in a row, but it actually goes
further than the bare text of Target 4.1 in the
Framework for Action.

Target 4.4 read: ‘By 2030, increase by x% thenumber of youth and adults who have relevant
skills, including technical and vocational skills, foremployment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship’.
This key language about skills for employment,
jobs and entrepreneurship is not reproduced in theﬁnal Declaration at all. Many other kinds of skills
are mentioned, such as foundational skills, many
soft skills and social skills; even the very unhelpful
term, ‘life skills’, is included (Paragraphs 9 and 10).
But skills for employment have disappeared. It isof course also surprising that Target 4.3 should
talk of ‘ensuring equal access for all’ to ‘technical, vocational and tertiary’ but that 4.4 should
only be about ‘increasing by x%’. Are these twoTargets in contradiction with each other? And why
are there two Targets on technical and vocational
education and training, anyway?

Target 4.2 on ensuring ‘that all boys and girls haveaccess to quality early childhood development,
care and pre-primary education so that they are
ready for primary education’ was also covered
by Paragraph 6 of the Incheon Declaration, butarguably the coverage was both more generous
and also less strong in the Declaration than in
the Framework. The Declaration only talked of
encouraging the provision of at least one yearof free and compulsory quality pre-primaryeducation, and added that all children have accessto quality early childhood development, careand education (emphases added). Many earlychildhood educators hope that the FFA wording
will be retained.
Target 4.3 of the FFA talked of ensuring ‘equal
access for all women and men to aﬀordable quality
technical, vocational and tertiary education,
including university. By contrast Paragraph 10 of
the Incheon Declaration only talked of ‘equitable
and increased access to quality technical andvocation education and training (TVET) and higher
education and research (emphasis added). It is
not immediately clear why increased access toresearch is added here in the Declaration. But theapparently weaker Declaration wording on justincreased access to TVET, higher education andresearch follows immediately after a sentence
apparently covering opportunities for all: ‘We
commit to promoting quality lifelong learning
opportunities for all, in all settings and at all levelsof education’. It is of course diﬃcult to know what
‘equal access for all’ and ‘increased access’ actually
might translate into in reality. The Universal
Declaration on Human Rights had also used
the language of higher education being ‘equallyaccessible to all’ but had importantly qualiﬁed
this by adding ‘on the basis of merit’ (UDHR, 1948,

It is curious that the language about technicaland vocational skills is not so explicit in theﬁnal Declaration. Particularly so, since there
had been a note in the Framework for Action
arguing that Targets 4.3 and 4.4 are discussed
together since they are ‘closely related and referto the acquisition of technical and work-related
knowledge and skills’ (emphasis added). It is also
extremely unusual for TVET to be coupled withhigher education. In fact this linkage derives from
the Muscat Agreement which connected TVET
with upper secondary and with tertiary educationand training.
Target 4.5 sought to cover the elimination ofgender disparities as well as ensuring equal accessto ‘all levels of education and vocational training
for the vulnerable’. These concerns are powerfully
covered by Paragraphs 7 and 8 which underline
gender equality in achieving the right to education
for all. Inclusion and equity focus on addressing
all forms of exclusion and marginalization.
Surprisingly, the very strong pledge in Paragraph
7 that ‘No education target should be considered
met unless met by all’ and about ensuring that ‘noone is left behind’ goes along with removing thecommitment in FFA to ensuring ‘equal access to
all levels of education and vocational training forthe vulnerable’. In the FFA this had been the third
mention of vocational training in three diﬀerent
targets. Now it was gone.
Target 4.6 aimed to ‘ensure that all youth and at
least x% of adults, both men and women, achieve
literacy and numeracy’ (emphasis added). It can

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be seen that this was not a pledge to provide
universal adult literacy and numeracy. But in thiscase, the Incheon Declaration went substantiallyfurther than the Target language. Paragraph 10
read: ‘We further commit to ensuring that all youth
and adults, especially girls and women, achieve
relevant and recognized functional literacy andnumeracy proﬁciency levels and acquire life skills,
and that they are provided with adult learning,education and training opportunities’(emphasis
added). Even if ‘life skills’ had proved to be a highly
problematic concept when it was included in Dakar
EFA Goal 3, it is very important that the Declarationtext underlined not merely adult literacy but ‘adultlearning, education and training’.
Target 4.7 had a huge catch-all ambition – to ‘ensurethat all learners acquire the knowledge and skills
required for sustainable development, including
among others through education for sustainable
development and sustainable lifestyles’ and awhole lot more such as a culture of peace andnon-violence, human rights, cultural diversity,and global citizenship. Most of these hoped-for
aspirations from education are no longer to befound in the Declaration; the only survivors are
education for sustainable development (ESD) andglobal citizenship education (Paragraph 9). Severalof the other items are found in the Declaration,
but they are no longer seen as part of theeducation curriculum. The Universal Declarationof Human Rights captured some of this curricular
ambition rather more economically than Target
4.7: ‘It (education) shall promote understanding,tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial
or religious groups’ (Article 26).
Apart from the seven Targets in the FFA there
were three Means of Implementation, covering
appropriate learning environments, scholarships,
and qualiﬁed teachers.
Target 4a: In respect of learning environments
where the Target language had been of building
and upgrading eﬀective facilities for all, there isa general assurance in the Declaration (Paragraph9) that education will take place ‘within wellresourced, eﬃcient and eﬀectively governed
systems’.
Target 4b: This argued for a percentage increase inscholarships for developing countries ‘to enroll inhigher education, including vocational training, ICT,
technical engineering and scientiﬁc programmes
in developed countries and other developing
countries’. Where exactly this scholarship target

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NORRAGNEWS 52

came from is still not clear, but it was not from theMuscat Agreement. It was possibly from one of
the BRICS countries which have large scholarshipprogrammes. But intriguingly this is the only oneof the FFA targets that doesn’t get picked up by
the Declaration. However, it was one of the fourtargets which the Intergovernmental Negotiations
sought to change. Instead of the percentage, theproposal read ‘substantially increase support forscholarships available to developing countries’(UN, 2015b: 33).
Target 4c: This particular Target was one of thosearguing only for a percentage improvement:‘increase by x% the supply of qualiﬁed teachers,
including through international cooperation
for teacher training in developing countries,
especially LDCs and SIDS’ (emphasis added). The
Target was in fact a watering down of what had
been in the Muscat Agreement: ‘all governments
ensure that all learners are taught by qualiﬁed,
professionally-trained, motivated and wellsupported teachers’ (Muscat Agreement, Target
6). In reaction to Target 4c, the Declaration had
only a single powerful reference to teachers:‘We will ensure that teachers and educators are
empowered, adequately recruited, well-trained,
professionally qualiﬁed, motivated and supported
within well-resourced, eﬃcient and eﬀectively
governed systems’ (Paragraph 9). This was ofcourse a hugely ambitious pledge, and not least ina world where so many teachers lack good salaries
and hence motivation.
Targets vs Text: The Incheon Framework vs the
Incheon Declaration.
Some Preliminary Conclusions
1. The FFA Target wording is diﬀerent fromthe Incheon Text. Sometimes, the Text is more
ambitious than the Targets; sometimes less. So
there is no very clear alignment of the Declaration
Text with the FFA Target wording.
2. It can be assumed that many UN Member States
will prefer to stick with the Targets rather thanwith the Text of the Declaration.
3. However, the largest recommendation brought
to the attention of the Incheon Drafting Committee
was probably the suggestion of dropping thepercentages which were present in no less thanfour of the FFA Targets. This came from theIntergovernmental Negotiations on post-2015

in New York, and from the Incheon NGO Forum,
supporting the line from the Intergovernmental
Negotiations. This proposal has an obvious,
universalizing appeal.
4. But it would have been very problematic todebate this proposed change to four Targets in
Incheon. Given that UNESCO wanted its Goal andTargets to be part of the same process as the UN,
it was stymied in Incheon. It could not formally
propose the conﬁrmation of the existing FFA
Targets as it knew these were up for debate andpossible change, either in the very week of Incheon,or in future Intergovernmental Negotiations on
the development agenda. Nor could it propose,
like the NGO Forum, the adoption of the revised
targets. What would happen if these revised
targets were not conﬁrmed by the next meeting of
the Intergovernmental Negotiations? Hence theno-comment and no-debate outcome as far as the
FFA Targets in Incheon were concerned.
5. It could of course be possible that there aresome countries that don’t want to open up thedebate on any of the 21 Targets, including thefour Education ones, because they may see that
if these are revised then any of the other 148
Targets could be debated anew. This would thenmean that the whole process which appeared tobe complete with the OWG outcome back in July
2014 would have to be restarted. Many countries
may not want to entertain a restart, a whole year
after the OWG provided its outcome document inJuly 2014.

UNESCO, 2014. The Muscat Agreement: 2014 GEM
ﬁnal statement, Global Education for All meeting,
UNESCO, Muscat, Oman, 12-14 May 2014.
UNESCO, 2015. Framework for Action: Education
2030: Towards inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong learning for all (Draft) [23 April2015], Incheon, South Korea.
UNESCO-UNICEF, 2013. Making education a priority in the post-2015 development agenda. Reportof the global thematic consultation on the post2015 development agenda. UNESCO/UNICEF,
New York.
UN, 2014. Introduction to the proposal of the OpenWorking Group for Sustainable Development
Goals, 19th July 2014, United Nations, New York.
UN, 2015a. Revised targets document, 7th May
2015, Intergovernmental negotiations on the post2015 development agenda, United Nations, New
York.
UN, 2015b. Zero draft of the outcome document
for the UN Summit to adopt the Post-2015 development agenda. Intergovernmental Negotiations,
2nd June 2015, United Nations, New York.
WCEFA, 1990. World declaration on education forall. Jomtien, 1990.

References
High Level Panel (HLP), 2013. A new global partnership: Eradicate poverty and transform economies
through sustainable development. United Nations,
New York.
NGO Forum, 2015. 2015 NGO Forum Declaration:
Towards the right to inclusive quality public education and lifelong learning beyond 2015, 19th May
2015, Incheon, South Korea.
NORRAG News 7. World Conference on Education
for All and World Literacy Year, accessible at www.
norrag.org.
UDHR. Universal Declaration of Human Rights
1948 Article 26, see http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/index.shtml.

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COMMENTS ON THE
WORLD EDUCATION
FORUM

31

Building consensus towards an indicator framework tomonitor education beyond 2015
Albert Motivans, UNESCO Institute for Statistics, Montreal
Email: a.motivans@unesco.org

Key words: Post-2015 education, Sustainable
Development Goals, Statistics, Indicators, World
Education Forum
Summary: As the Sustainable Development
Goals and targets move towards adoption at the
UN in September, this article looks at how arecountries are taking the lead with UIS and otherpartners in deﬁning the indicator framework thatwill be used to monitor education progress from2015.

A proposal for thematic indicators presented at
the World Education ForumAt the World Education Forum (WEF) recently held
in Incheon, Korea, the global education community
came together to discuss goals and targets in the
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) as well
as a framework to monitor the education targets
beyond 2015. They focused on an initial proposal1,
which includes a broad set of 42 indicators,
developed by the Technical Advisory Group on
Post-2015 indicators (TAG), which is chairedby the UNESCO Institute for Statistics andincludes experts from international agencies. This
proposal, which was based on results from a public
consultation involving Member States and a wide
range of education stakeholders, was presented
in the draft Framework for Action2 as well as in
the more detailed TAG paper, an oﬃcial WEF
document which is available in four languages.
At the Forum, there was rich discussion on the
proposed set of indicators and wider issues, suchas: support for countries to build the technicalcapacity required to collect and use key measures;
greater eﬀorts needed to capture the breadth of
the targets, especially in areas such as education

quality and equity as well areas which may falloutside of formal education (e.g., early childhood,skills and knowledge of youth and adults, etc.); andthe need to minimize the potential unintended
consequences of prioritising a small set of global
indicators as part of UN processes.
Proposed global education Indicators rated
highly by national statistical oﬃces
The work to develop thematic indicators also
feeds into a broader UN process to deﬁne a small
set of global indicators for the targets of the 17
SDGs (total of 100-120 indicators). In March, atechnical report3 by the UN Statistical Commission(UNSC) reviewed recommendations submitted
by international agencies for global indicators,
which included a subset of education indicators
which drew on the TAG recommendations.
Representatives of national statistical oﬃces
then assessed them based on feasibility,
suitability, and relevance.
National statisticians gave the proposed education
indicators high scores, ranking them third best
after indicators for health and energy targets.
Sixty seven per cent of education indicators
received the top grade in at least one of the threecriteria. Nevertheless some of the proposed
indicators were considered to be too ambitious
for global monitoring. It seems reasonable toexpect that alternative indicators may be needed
as consultations and eﬀorts continue to develop
more robust indicators over the next three to ﬁve
years.
A country-led process – the Inter-Agency andExpert Group on SDG indicators
The UNSC assessment and list of global indicators
were recently submitted to the Inter-Agency and

1 http://www.uis.unesco.org/Education/Documents/tag-proposed-thematic-indicators-post2015-education-agenda.pdf
2 http://www.uis.unesco.org/Education/Documents/wefframework-for-action.pdf

32

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3 https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/6754Technical%20report%20of%20the%20
UNSC%20Bureau%20%28ﬁnal%29.pdf

Expert Group on Sustainable Development Goal
Indicators (IAEG-SDGs), which was establishedby the UN Statistical Commission to develop a
proposal for a global indicator framework for theentire post-2015 development agenda. This groupis composed of experts from 28 Member States,
elected by and representing diﬀerent regions of
the world. International and regional agencies
are not members, but rather observers to thegroup. There is a separate High Level Group (HLG),
consisting of 15-20 diﬀerent Member States fromthe IAEG which will provide strategic leadershipfor the SDG implementation process with regard
to monitoring and reporting as well as eﬀorts
to foster capacity-building, partnership andcoordination. The terms of reference for the HLG4and the IAEG5 are available online.
The ﬁrst meeting of the IAEG-SDGs took placefrom 1-2 June in New York, where the Philippines
and Italy were elected as Co-Chairs. Most of themeeting was devoted to procedural matters andthe sharing of information on current regional
activities related to the selection of post-2015
indicators. After reviewing the UNSC’s technicalreport on priority indicators, the delegates
decided that the ﬁrst step should be to develop
a conceptual framework for sustainable
development to allow for the systematic mappingof goals and targets and ultimately the selectionof global indicators. National statistical oﬃces
felt this was a necessary and feasible next step
despite the pressure to submit the proposal for
global indicators by the end of November 2015. In
the meeting, the group proposed to create twowork streams open to all members: the ﬁrst to
develop the theoretical statistical frameworkand the second to explore inter-linkages between
targets and goals. If this proposal is accepted,
the group is expected to work on both streams
from June to September and will also draw on thetechnical expertise of international and regional
agencies as well as academic, research and civilsociety experts, when appropriate. The group will
convene a meeting in October in order to ﬁnalise
its proposal for the global indicator framework.

Where do we go from here?
The track for thematic indicators has been laidout in the draft Framework for Action which will
be further developed to produce a ﬁnal documentthat will be submitted for adoption at a Ministerial
meeting to be held at UNESCO in November 2015.
In order to build consensus and further reﬁnethe existing indicator framework, the TechnicalAdvisory Group will be extended to include representatives from Member States (two technicalexperts on education statistics from each of ﬁve
regions) that are also members of the IAEG-SDG
or HLG, described above, and technical experts
from civil society organizations in addition to thecurrent members from international agencies. The
framework will be further aligned, if needed, as aresult of changes to global indicators introduced
through UN processes.
The track for global indicators started with theﬁrst IAEG-SDGs meeting. The IAEG will develop a
proposal by November 2015 for submission to the
UN Statistical Commission which meets in March2016. The UNSC will review the proposal and makeits recommendation at a political level which is not
yet deﬁned, but could be the ECOSOC meeting inJuly or the UN General Assembly in September
2016.
The role of the UNESCO Institute for Statistics
will be to maintain its observer status in the
IAEG-SDGs while convening two meetings of theextended TAG between June and November 2015.
The UIS will continue to serve as an essential
bridge between the thematic and global streams
of work. In addition to the indicators for education,
which cut across a number of SDG targets, theUIS is also leading eﬀorts to deﬁne indicators in
relation to other areas of the UNESCO mandate,namely science and technology in addition to
culture and communication.

4 http://unstats.un.org/ﬁles/HLG%20-%20Terms%20
of%20Reference%20%28April%202015%29.pdf
5 http://unstats.un.org/ﬁles/IAEG-SDGs%20-%20
Terms%20of%20Reference%20%28April%202015%29.
pdf

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Reconciling and Re-connecting the Global and the National
Manzoor Ahmed, BRAC University andCampaign for Popular Education (CAMPE), Dhaka
Email: amahmed40@yahoo.com

Key words: Education 2030 Agenda and Targets
that Fit, Skills and Literacy within Lifelong
Learning, Global and National Agenda andCommon Moral Imperatives.
Summary: Global ambitions and human solidarity
can be translated into achievable results bynational and local action and commitment, which
can be inspired by, and in turn strengthen, a global
vision and common moral imperatives

The Education 2030 Goal and its Targets,
discussed in WEF in Incheon, 19-21 May 2015, but
still in draft until UNESCO General Conferencein November 2015, were seen to be universally
relevant, to both North and South. This is theone overarching education goal out of perhaps 17
global development goals (still under negotiation
at UN, to be given ﬁnal shape in September at asummit of countries) for SDG 2030, with no lessan ambition than protecting human survival andpromoting prosperity and dignity for all within
planetary limits.
In the context of the continuing rich world-poor
world gap in education, some argue a gap of 100
years, in terms of mean years of schooling of
their adult populations, what do common goals
and targets actually mean? Isn’t the paramountchallenge what can be done to leapfrog into the
future not waiting another 100 or even 50 years?
Should we be principally concerned about making
the Goal and Targets appear to be seen as oneworld proposals, or rather ﬁnd ways to unite as
the people of one-world and enable all countries
to progress rapidly in their diverse contexts?
The Education Goal and its Targets can be common
only at a general level of abstraction, given theimportance of contexts and the broad gap justnoted. Then surely the targets have to be adaptedand contextualized to ﬁt each country to makethem implementable? This is of course why theframers of the Muscat Agreement (in May 2014)34

NORRAGNEWS 52

and the Open Working Group (OWG) at the United
Nations in July 2014 had indicated several of theTargets as ‘x%’, to be decided nationally.
These percentages may be removed, as strongly
urged by the NGO and civil society lobby at Incheonin order to raise the global bar for all countries. But
this does not eliminate the need for each country
to assess its situation and decide what trajectoryof progress each can set.
Another concern is that the damage done by the
careless formulation of Goal 3, and the adoption ofa narrow and conventional view of literacy in Goal
4 in Dakar EFA 2015 Framework remain to be fully
appreciated. Remember the fuzzy use of ‘life skills’
rather than a clearer statement about essential
skills for life and work and remember also how
adult literacy was isolated and separated fromskills development and lifelong learning, with a notunpredictable result in literacy achievements. The
lesson has not been learned and history seemed tobe repeating itself in Incheon.
The target statement about ‘equal access for all
women and men to aﬀordable quality technical,
vocational and tertiary education, including
university’ (Target 4.3) is apparently contradictedby the next target statement pledging to‘increase by x% the number of youth and adults
who have relevant skills, including technical andvocational skills, for employment, decent jobs andentrepreneurship’ (Target 4.4).
Then the literacy for youth and adults is presented
as an isolated endeavor in Target 4.6, notrecognizing the essential links with skills or the
lifelong learning processes – the very same mistake
made in setting EFA 2015 goals and strategies in
Dakar with lamentable consequences.
It would be unfortunate to be weighed down
for the next 15 years with the lingering holdoverfrom Dakar of vague targets and obfuscation inthese critical areas. There is a job cut out for the
UNESCO Institute for Lifelong Learning (UIL) in
Hamburg and all concerned about lifelong learning

in making these targets and related indicators
clearer and more practical, undoing the damage
done by the Dakar Framework.
We also need to be attentive and try to understandbetter and clarify the tensions between theuniversal and the national and local in the wider
framing of all the education targets at WEF.
Education 2030, and for that matter SDG 2030, will
not be an international treaty, with compliance andenforcement provision and legal language in it. In
fact, the draft framework fails to mention education
governance issues and education ﬁnancing issues
in the proposed seven targets and the three meansof implementation. These two crucial concerns
are included as an add-on in a separate section
as “modalities of implementation” but not madepart of the three proposed commitments under“means of implementation.” Only obfuscation in
diplomatic parlance can separate modalities of
implementation and means of implementation.
The negotiators and drafters of the Education
2030 Framework do need to capture clearly themoral obligation and the ethical imperatives todeliver on what we have failed to deliver fullythese last ﬁfteen years. Only a sense of moral andethical obligation can unite people from all partsof the world to engage in meaningful action. The
Framework should aim to inspire all countries toadopt meaningful, aﬀordable but aspirational
ambitions. It should spell out as much as possible
the guidelines for actions needed in countries andfor the international community in the next ﬁfteen
years to fulﬁll these ambitions. The success of
the Education 2030 agenda will depend to a large
extent on how the peoples of the world and the civilsociety, in rich and poor countries alike, mobilise
themselves and their governments.

References
High Level Panel (HLP), 2013. A new global partnership: Eradicate poverty and transform economies
through sustainable development. United Nations,
New York.
NGO, 2015. 2015 NGO Forum Declaration. (5 pages,
distributed at Incheon).

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Impressions about Incheon
Alexey Dodsworth Magnavita, Ministry of Education, Brasilia
Email: alexeymagnavita@mec.gov.br

Key words: cooperation; WEF; Brazil; education;
human rights.
Summary: Brazilian educational system prioritizes happiness and self-realization.

In Incheon, what caught the attention was thatso many people referred to education as an
instrument for economic development. However,
we should consider education as a fundamental
human right. Education itself exists for pleasureand happiness, highlighting the sense of love of
wisdom that is the prerogative of every good
philosophy. Economic development is totally
welcome, of course, but it should be seen as a(good) collateral eﬀect. The “telos”, the “ultimategoal” is, or it should be, at least, happiness.
Having said that, indices such as PISA shouldn’t beinterpreted as the only parameters that matter,but it should be accompanied by an index ofhappiness. Interestingly, James Heckman (Nobel
in Economics – 2000) has emphasized his criticism
concerning an educational model limited to a merescore in mathematics and grammatical knowledge.
In fact, it makes no sense to consider that a country
is well developed educationally only because of its
excellent ratings in mathematics, if at the sametime the suicide rate among adolescents in the
country is immense and if this stems from a culture
in which you press the youth beyond healthy limits.
Obviously, Brazil needs to improve its ranking
in PISA, though by no means should it do so bycopying methodologies of countries whose
cultural backgrounds are quite diﬀerent fromours. Note that even the well-positioned countries
in PISA admit the need to reform their educationalmodels in order to encourage more creativity,
freedom of thought and pleasure in the learning
process.
Another point that should strike us as relevant
is the perception that there are many modelsof cooperation among countries, and some of36

NORRAGNEWS 52

these go far beyond mere ﬁnancial interests. The
fundamentals of the Brazilian social programs,
which are successful in the ﬁght against hunger
and poverty, have been made available by our
Minister of Education, Renato Janine Ribeiro,
to any countries that want to reproduce themaccording to their own needs. Interested parties
can contact us via e-mail:brazilianexperience@mec.gov.br
Finally, opportunities like those provided by
Incheon have just one signiﬁcant downside: theimmense lapse of time between our meetings.
Considering the importance of the issue, ﬁfteen
years is too long a time between the World
Education Forum in Dakar and the next one in
Incheon.

[Global Citizenship Education (GCED) is just oneof many items included in the seven targets ofthe Education SDG. The following two pieces
illustrate just how challenging it could be todevelop appropriate indicators to take account of
the ambitions of GCED. Editor]

Creative Global Citizenship Education (GCED) for Sustainable
Development in the 21st Century
Kim Young-Gil, UNAI, (United Nations Academic Impact), South Korea;
Hahn Choong-Hee, United Nations, New York;
Chang Soon-Heung, Handong Global University, Pohang, South Korea
Email: ygilkim9@gmail.com
Key words: Global issues; global curriculum;
inter-disciplinarity;
individual
engagement;
contextualization
Summary: The case for a truly global citizenshipeducation is laid out in all its cognitive and noncognitive dimensions. As an element within oneof the targets in the draft education SDG it can beseen that making GCED a reality will indeed be an
ambitious undertaking.
The world in the 21st century faces the global
issues of climate environmental change, newgreen clean energies, poverty, water, youth
unemployment, accompanied with a profoundcrisis of values, moral hazard, conﬂict, violence,
intolerance, extremism. Global Citizenship
Education (GCED) claims to change people,
communities, and nations if it is well embeddedin the global education system. The global issues
and challenges require global solutions through a
new creative GCED, ensuring all learners acquire
the knowledge and skills needed to promotesustainable development, promotion of a cultureof peace and non-violence, appreciation of cultural
diversity and culture’s contribution to sustainable
development. GCED requires new innovativeeducational contents, transformative pedagogy,
and actual practice worldwide. For actualizationof the GCED, a new global citizenship educational
curriculum encompassing not only innovative
cognitive elements of creativity, problem solving,
critical thinking, analytical reasoning but also
non-cognitive components of universal values
and morality, honesty and integrity, responsibility,
should be developed. It’s a tall order.
To address these global issues facing the world,the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon launched
the UN Academic Impact (UNAI) in November 2010,
followed by the fostering of global citizenshipin the Global Education First Initiative (GEFI)
established in September 2012. Moreover, he also
launched the Sustainable Development Solutions
Network (SDSN) in August 2012, which aimed toﬁnd practical technological solutions to the many

global challenges of sustainable development.
In the 21st century, students must be encouraged
to explore “new knowledge with no answers asyet” and be helped to acquire abilities to thinkcritically and to solve problems creatively. The
new challenge facing higher education is to impart
broad knowledge that transcends the barriers ofacademic disciplines. The academic departments
in universities have traditionally been establishedalong the dividing lines of academic ﬁelds. But, theproblems and challenges in the real world do notoccur along the lines of predetermined academic
disciplines. To educate the future global leaders in
the 21st century, higher education must emphasizeinterdisciplinary and trans-disciplinary trainingthat networks among various academic ﬁelds.
A new creative GCED should be introduced andimplemented for resolving the interconnectedchallenge of the global community in the 21st
century. Actually, global citizenship educationmust start from individual to communal, tonational, and then expand to a global basis.
However, without the global mindset and followup actions of global citizenship on an individual
basis, true global citizenship education cannot be
accomplished worldwide. To change and transformthe world, we ourselves as educators and leaders
must implement global citizenship education ﬁrst.
Each individual should be an actor of GCED andmust demonstrate examples of GCED.
Global citizens must be educated to be responsible
for all he or she says, does and writes; honest anddiligent in his or her academic and social life; willingto live together locally and globally; willing to help
and sacriﬁce for others. Global citizens mustrestore impaired moral and ethical values; andlearn how to coexist among human beings as wellas with natural environment harmoniously, andmust prevent climate change and desertiﬁcation
to save the earth. The global partnership between
worldwide higher educational institutions andUN global educational initiatives should befurther expanded to alleviate the knowledge gap

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between developing and developed countries,
and to improve the equitable quality of education,
especially in developing countries.
Another important task is the development of
the curriculum for global citizenship education.
Furthermore, we have to take into account anappropriate contextualization for each country
in applying the curriculum. Finding maximum, notminimum, common denominators is necessary
and the universal values like human dignityand democracy should not be compromised. In
developing the curriculum, the participation of
all sectors and stakeholders including public
and private sector, civil society, NGOs, andyouth should be encouraged, not in silos, given
the interdisciplinary nature of this issue. Global
citizenship education should also embrace all
related initiatives like Global Education First
Initiative, United Nations Academic Impact,
Alliance of Civilizations, and Community of
Democracies so as to foster synergies andcomplementarity.
In conclusion, we have to demonstrate andeducate for global citizenship, which is sensitive tohuman dignity, tolerance, and mutual respect andunderstanding. Education has a rare opportunity
to contribute to the international peace andsecurity by providing fundamental solutions to
the issues like intolerance, terrorism, and violent
extremism we are now facing. – I did say it was atall order!

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The World Education Forum with Unﬁnished Task to Find theReal Meaning of Global Citizenship Education in the Post2015 Era
Su Yeon Park, Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA),
Seongnam, South Korea
Email: suyeon@koica.go.kr
Key words: The 2015 World Education Forum;
Global Citizenship Education; Sustainable
Development Goals.
Summary: Although it is a big achievement that
Global Citizenship Education (GCED) gained a
spotlight in the 2015 World Education Forum(WEF), we have long way to go to understand andshare the real meaning and role of GCED in the
post-2015 era. In many ways, unlike the previous
two education fora in 1990 and 2000 that cameout with global goals and frameworks, the 2015
WEF came out principally with a Declaration.

Overall review on the 2015 World Education
Forum (WEF)
The 2015 World Education Forum (WEF) ﬁnishedon May 21st 2015 and adopted the Incheon
Declaration. The 2015 WEF was very diﬀerent
from two other fora which were held in Jomtien
in 1990 and in Dakar in 2000. While the other two
forums could be very independent only focusing on
education, the 2015 WEF cannot be independent
from the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),
which will be agreed upon at the UN General
Assembly in September 2015. People had been
curious whether we would have three separate
global goals in 2015, the Post-2015 Development
Agenda, Sustainable Development Goals and the
Post-EFA Goals. At the end of 2014 with the UN
Secretary General (UNSG)’s Synthesis Report on
the Post-2015 Agenda, it became clear that the
Post-2015 Development Agenda (so-called PostMDGs) was merged to SDGs. And now when the2015 WEF is ended, we also noticed that the PostEFA Goals will be also merged to SDGs. Therefore,
it seems likely that the task to set global education
goals has not ended with the 2015 WEF, but rather
it actually starts from now.

Regarding the issue of Global Citizenship
Education (GCED)The advent of Global Citizenship Education(GCED) is one of the most interesting things in the2015 WEF. Most of other issues including lifelong
learning, secondary education, TVET, literacy andnumeracy had been covered in the previous fora
and global education targets. However, GCED
oﬀered a whole new agenda, and it gained special
attention during the WEF with various meetings
and a special exhibition targeting on GCED. The
Korean government, especially, made GCED partof its own agenda and proclaimed that Korea
would support it. ‘Global Citizenship’ has become
a global issue since 2012 when the UNSG Ban Kimoon set up three priorities of Global Education
First Initiative (GEFI), which are 1) access 2) quality
and 3) global citizenship.
The Korean government and other supporters of
GCED had a great job making it as one of the mostsalient agendas in the 2015 WEF. However, I believethat though GCED gained lots of attention, it did
not get the right attention. More often, it has been
considered as simply a new agenda, an agenda
from the Korean government, or one of the various
education agendas. GCED is pivotal for achieving
SDGs. But, arguably, the success or failure of the
new global goals depends on GCED. The SDGs
cannot be achieved without transformation of
our economic system, our way of thinking, ourattitudes and value systems. If the whole world
simply follows the previous growth model, the socalled industrialization model, the eco-system of
the globe will be devastated very soon. Withoutchanging the current value system based on human
greed, SDGs will simply bring forward the date
for the end of the earth. Therefore, GCED is not
merely a new education agenda or one of various
agendas, but rather it is the single most important
agenda not only in the education sector but also
in the development sector. In that sense, I think
GCED should gain more attention and concern
among both education and development sectors.

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Incheon and after: Prospects for adult learning
Alan Tuckett, International Council of Adult Education, & University ofWolverhampton
Email: alan.tuckett@gmail.com

Key words: Adults, global targets, ﬁnancial risks
Summary: Adult learners’ needs were wellrecognised at the World Education Forum, but
adult educators must be alive to the serious risks
that gains won there will be lost before the SDG
process is over.

Four years ago, as the debates about what should
follow Education for All in 2015 began, most adulteducators had low expectations. The experienceof EFA was that the grand promises of halving
adult literacy by 2015 were accompanied by atbest modest actions. The Rio Plus 20 conferenceon sustainability, which proposed SDGs for post2015 had just two modest mentions of education
beyond school, conﬁrming their pessimism. Yet atIncheon, in Korea in May they could take delight inthe strength and breadth of the commitment tolifelong learning adopted in the inter-ministerial
declaration. The hard work of advocacy in theintervening years, at Dakar, Muscat, Santiago, andNew York, and in the consistent commitment of
the Consultative Conference of NGOs supporting
EFA, produced a welcome overall education goal
(SDG4) for 2015-2030, endorsed by the UN’s OpenWorking Group and conﬁrmed in Korea: ‘Ensuring
equitable and inclusive quality education andpromoting lifelong learning opportunities for all’.
Even better, the text of the declaration was
unequivocal in saying that ‘no education target
should be considered met unless met by all’. The
lifelong learning commitment was to ensure ‘thatall youth and adults, especially girls and women,
achieve relevant and recognized functional literacy
and numeracy proﬁciency levels and acquire
life skills’ as well as further adult education andtraining opportunities for life and work.’
Why then have the celebrations of adult educators
been muted following such a positive outcome?
First, because some days before Incheon saw the
publication of the zero draft for the Financing forDevelopment conference in Addis Ababa in July40

NORRAGNEWS 52

this year. Its recommendation on future funding
through the Global Partnership for Education
omitted adult learning and education altogether.
Whilst the Incheon declaration called on Addis tofund the whole of the SDG4, it will be critical toexpand the narrow commitment proposed to theﬁnance ministers.
Second, Incheon did not debate the Framework
for Action that has been drafted for the new
educational goal. That will only be endorsed,
following the adoption of the SDGs in New York in
September, at the UNESCO General Assembly in
November, and clearly there remains work to do
to ensure that the generosity of commitment in
the overall declaration is translated into inclusive
and stretching targets for adult learning andeducation.
Third, there is still major work to be done to create
indicators to match the declaration’s intent andwhich are capable of measuring progress on
the targets. Yet most of the proposed available
indicators relate to formal schooling, and we do nothave a great history of developing new and robust
indicators for work with adults. If the spirit andinclusiveness of the Incheon declaration do survivethese hurdles we shall of course be delighted. It
will make a welcome contrast to the failure of will
and resourcing that led to such modest progressfor adults post-2000. But assuming the hurdles
are all overcome, a new phase of advocacy andmonitoring work awaits adult educators – inensuring that global agreements are matched by
local practice. That, too, will be a challenge.
Despite the risks, this is a moment to celebrate
the generosity of vision of the Incheon agreement,
and to assert that rights-based Sustainable
Development Goals can only be achieved throughthe active learning of adults – in understanding,adapting and shaping the changes needed toachieve them.

Promoting Korean Experience in the Absence ofInternational Narratives on Educational Development
Byoung–gyu Gong, Korean Research Institute of Vocational Education
and Training (KRIVET), Seoul
Email: westlife612@naver.com

Key words: Korean educational development experience, the World Education Forum 2015, voicesfrom the Global South
Summary: The Korean educational development
history was the only story presented to the world
audiences in this Incheon Forum, but still not
many other insightful stories were shared by the
Global South. Now, the world community needs torecognize that the Global South is ready to learn
not by looking at others, but by looking back forthemselves.

Beyond numbers and targets: Where is ourstory?
Now the Incheon party is over. There were someworries on this world event, pointing out, forexample, the absence of emerging donors, ofstrong leadership, and of speciﬁc action lines.
My own view, however, is that the most notableabsence was caused by ‘a void of narratives’ inthe world educational development discourse.
Here, I argue that the narrative is a discourse
structure presenting a qualitative storyline
which can be written through historical andprocedural perspectives, thus allowing us to look
into detailed contexts of development beyond
the numbers. It seems to be critical to establish
narrative structures in educational development
because a trace of the past we followed has more
complicated stories behind it which cannot be
simply tailored by the numbers, and labeled as
failures or successes.
Instead of such a narrative, the World Education
Forum was ﬁlled with a discourse on numbers,
targets, and indicators, which were essential
components to draw a clear picture of the coming
future. The statistical evidence was presented in
speciﬁc numbers so that we could easily recognize
our current status after more than a decade since
the Dakar Forum; as we all know, the world did
not achieve its set targets. In contrast, it wasdiﬃcult to ﬁnd speeches and sessions includinginteresting narratives to attract the audiences,which could have informed of us about ‘how’ we got
to the current state for the last decade or more,
and what lessons we might have learned fromour past experiences with some cases of successand failure. This atmosphere led the Incheonaudiences to have a lack of any historical sense,
while just pushing them ahead to set the targets
for the future and urging an immediate action to
draw more funding.
Of course, in this situation, it was quite natural
to see that there were not many voices from the
Global South. There were many representatives
from the developing countries, of course, but
admittedly they were rather represented by the
numbers they collected, than by their voices andtheir stories to share. As a result, we lost a chance
to argue against the numbers and to share thelessons from the real practices in the Global South.
No one was interested in the history and cases of
the international educational development in thedeveloping countries beyond setting the targets.
That is why I call this forum a ‘void of international
narratives on educational development’.
Korean educational development story: The
only narrative to be sold in Incheon
However, there was only one exception; it was the
Korean educational development story, gloriﬁed
in front of the international audiences. This was
the only one narrative that had survived and was
actively promoted as a transferable case. The
Korean educational development story was fullypackaged with a solid narrative structure to bepromoted and sold to the other international
audiences. Then, what made the Koreans lookback while the others looking ahead? Why was the
Korean educational history highlighted, while we
did not hear other voices of the Global South?
Actually, it was not the ﬁrst time for Korea topromote its own educational development story
in world education arena. In 2012, a group of about
60 Koreans got on to the ﬂight to Ouagadougou in

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order to attend the ADEA Triennale. The Korean
government and research institutions held special
sessions for introducing Korean educational
development history. This included a thoroughreview of Korean educational development history
in various educational sectors such as science andengineering, TVET, lifelong learning and general
education. It was a good start of showing thepresence of Korea in international educational
development arena - at least I thought so, though
there were concerns over the real impact of thispromotion. Also, it was all that Korea could do
for the international educational development
community as Korea was at the stage of justforming its academic interest in this area.
After three years, in 2015, the Korean educational
research agencies and government have
expanded their budgets for international
educational development. The number of staﬀ
and institutional supports have been increased.
I found, however, that the academic trend of
Korea has not been much changed comparing
with the condition of three years ago. The Korean
institutions seemed to be busy promoting theirown developmental experience as a success story
with evidence of high scores in PISA and rapid
economic development. Though this promotional
activity had its own value as there were somedemands from member countries which wanted
to know the Korean ‘recipe’ of educational
success, it should have been noticed by the
Korean experts that Incheon should have been
more a time to contemplate ways of bridging theNorth and South with harmonizing eﬀorts beyond
promotional activities. Also, the promotional
activities eclipsed a serious issue of discussing
how Korean experience can be transferred to thecontext of global South and a critical challenge ofestablishing a real narrative of Korean educational
development experience.
Learning from our own experiences in the global
South
The world should recognize that the global South is
now ready to learn not only from the success casesof the other developed countries such as Korea,
but also from their own educational development
history and ﬁeld practices by looking back. I
assume that narratives which describe a ﬁeld
practice and an historical development still have apower in a global education development arena as
they indicates how we succeeded or failed in our
grand journey. People may want money, targets

42

NORRAGNEWS 52

and a way of collecting calculable data, but still
they may want some stories unheard which enable
them to draw more speciﬁc lessons in setting a
new direction. Nevertheless, does UNESCO havestories to share? Does it have a system to collect
stories from the South? At least, I think, thisglobal campaign may not be sustainable withouta narrative mechanism of recognizing the realvalue of the ‘process’ and the ‘practice’ that was
experienced in the developing countries during
the last decade. The world community needs torecognize that there are many more stories to be
told and many unheard voices in the pre-Incheonera.

And Sadly Leaving Incheon Behind
Bong Gun Chung, GSIS, Seoul National University
Email: bchung1108@daum.net

Key words: World Education Forum 2015, UNSDG,
post-2015 education goals
Summary: After ﬁfteen years since Dakar, atIncheon Korea, UNESCO seemed to have provenits weakened leadership, resources, and inﬂuencein leading the global endeavor for education development by relying on the UNSDGs.

The catch phrase of the World Education Forum2015 was “Toward inclusive and equitable quality
education and lifelong learning for all”. This isvirtually the same as the SDG goal 4 “Ensure
inclusive and equitable quality education andpromote lifelong learning opportunities for all.” As
UNESCO’s Assistant Director General, Tang Qian,
presented it at the outset in Incheon, UNESCO is ina close collaboration with the UN. Unlike Jomtienand Dakar when the UN was not so ready to comeout with goal-targeting in education, in Incheon
the UN, through the initiative of the Open Working
Group (OWG), has in fact, inﬂuenced UNESCO
in setting the education agenda and targets forpost-2015. Considering its withering capacities
and resources, UNESCO is lucky enough to havethe UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon, a Korean,
who has been quite enthusiastic in promoting theimportance of education. Even more, UNESCO
successfully persuaded the Korean government(in fact they readily accepted the suggestion) tohost the expensive event of a global gathering, 15
years after Dakar in the very critical and symbolic
year of 2015. Once the logistics for the global event
were secured by Korea’s commitment, UNESCO
did not have to do so much relating to the seventargets and three means of implementation, since
they had already agreed to take over those of the
OWG which had been under preparation by the UN
as a part of their SDGs.

pages of declarations, frameworks for action,and extended commentaries, but the spirit andimplementation of these were later eclipsed as
the power and inﬂuence of the MDGs of the UN
ascended. Having witnessed the delicate and realpolitik rivalry between the EFA agenda and the
MDGs, UNESCO seems to have decided to pickup the low hanging fruit without painfully trying
to reach the high hanging ones. Why not piggyback on the education goal and targets of the
UN’s OWG, as the UN, a strong and dependable
champion of education, was rushing toward thegoals and targets a step ahead of them? Even, themissing discussions of the Framework for Action
at Incheon seemed to be rather a deliberate choiceof UNESCO to let them (the UN) row the boat. It
must have been a typo that the program booklet
of Incheon included any mention of the Framework
for Action, as there were almost no detailed public
discussions about it during the days of the WEF.
No one explained why. Rather, UNESCO asked
us to wait for the FFA until Addis Ababa and New
York will be over. So UNESCO got what theywanted at Incheon, a decorative Declaration fullof familiar education ambitions that have beenraised a good deal during the past decades. On theother hand, the Korean government also got what
they wanted at Incheon, the notion of GCED as a
new agenda item, the advertisement of Korean
education development, and Korea’s international
image of “great giver” for any summit meetings.
So, both UNESCO and the Korean government had
win-win games, while the global education issues,
problems, and solution failures remain business as
usual.

As such the three pages of the Incheon Declarationindeed reveal UNESCO’s comfortable position
in meeting its post-2015 responsibilities. In
retrospect, Jomtien and Dakar produced thick

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Challenges for Costing and Financing the Post-2015
Education Agenda
Yoshida Kazuhiro, Hiroshima University
Email: yoshidak@hiroshima-u.ac.jp

Key words: Post-2015 Education Agenda, costs
and ﬁnance
Summary: A conventional method will not be
eﬀective for estimating costs of educating themarginalized children and of achieving learning
outcomes, and for targets whose deﬁnition
itself is not clear. Similarly, who should pay foreducation, both as a human right and a driver for
development, how to involve the private sector
more systematically for service delivery andﬁnance, how the results-based ﬁnancing can becompatible with the new agenda, all pose diﬃcult
ﬁnancing challenges.

note touches on issues of costing and ﬁnancing
the post-2015 education agenda that arise fromthe common ground of the two tracks.
Costing
In March 2015, the EFA GMR team issued a policy
paper (no. 18) that estimates the cost of achieving
the new education targets by 2030. It claims thatan annual ﬁnancing gap over 2015-2030 will be
US$22 billion to achieve quality universal preprimary, primary and lower secondary education
in low and lower middle income countries. This iscertainly the result of plausible exercises on thisline, despite diﬃculties. I will mention just a few of
the issues.

Background
The World Education Forum held in May 2015
discussed and agreed on the direction of the
post-2015 education as the Incheon Declaration.
The process leading up to Incheon has not beenstraightforward. This partly comes from a more
open and consultative nature of the process,inviting diverse stakeholders in the discussion.
In this sense, it has been a sound and worthwhile
endeavor. But it also comes from the dual tracks of
discussions. One of them took place mainly at the
EFA Steering Committee (EFA-SC) and culminatedin what is called the Muscat Agreement thatwas endorsed by the participants of Global EFA
Meeting held in Muscat, Oman in May 2014. Anothertrack of discussion took place mainly under theOpen Working Group (OWG). They produced aproposal on the Sustainable Development Goals
that holistically covers the entire post 2015
development agenda, including the educationrelated set of targets. The education community
represented at EFA-SC tried its best to have
one goal, one set of targets and one strategy
for implementation for the post-2015 education
agenda. It has largely been successful, but some
important departures still exist between the
two tracks. Eﬀorts to close the gap will continue
during and after the Incheon Forum. This short44

NORRAGNEWS 52

First is the nature of problems that children face.
Conventionally, the planning of EFA used a unit
cost approach, based on the known informationon the developmental and operational costsof certain subsectors. It was useful to grasp arough estimate of necessary costs to expand theeducation system. Children who currently are outof the school system have at least one and often
multiple reasons – poverty, distance, language,social and cultural barriers, security concerns,
etc. – which appear in more acute ways for theremaining most marginalized segment of children.
Second is the issue of what to cost out: input,
process and outcomes. The education goal toward2030 emphasizes learning and its outcomes.
Despite a rich stock of studies on schooleﬀectiveness and education production functions,this author does not know how to convert theentire scope of a system that assures quality
learning into costing.
Third, and even more challenging, is conceptual
ambiguity of some of the targets. This includes,
to begin with, how to deﬁne being ready forprimary school, learning outcomes, proﬁciency
in literacy and numeracy, skills for decent work,and the contents of education for sustainable
development and global citizenship.

Financing
How to ﬁnance the post-2015 education agenda
is clearly a critical issue. Political commitment
without ﬁnancial backing does not work, as history
shows. But the question of who should bear thecosts of education and how is not at all simple toanswer with a unanimous voice. There is an issue
here between education as a human right andeducation that has private and social returns,
mixed with the terms “free and compulsory”
as used in various conventions versus parental
willingness to pay for quality (private) educationin reality, even for primary education. The private
sector players, including the service providers,
CSR, and foundations are already very active
and participate in strategy-making and ﬁnancing.
This happens in the actual context of not really so
predictable donor ﬁnance for education.
All this will stimulate the discussion of whether
and what numerical targets on education ﬁnancing
should be agreed on. Moreover, getting ﬁrm wordsof political commitment on government spending
on education, or donor allocation for education
will trigger serious inter-sectoral competition forresources.
On another footing, the manner of ﬁnancing that isincreasingly used in the international cooperation,i.e. results-based ﬁnancing, has a strong eﬀect
on the way government plans, implements andproduce results in the education sector. Selectionof indicators to go with the global goal and targetsof the post-2015 education agenda will also comein to inﬂuence the discussions at the country level,
including ﬁnancing.

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46

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PART 2EDITORIAL

47

EDITORIAL
FINANCING EDUCATION AND SKILLS:NEW AND OLD MODALITIES: NEW AND OLD PARTNERS
Kenneth King, University of Edinburgh & NORRAG
Email: Kenneth.King@ed.ac.uk

Education in the Financing for Development(FFD) Conference, 13-16 July 2015, Addis Ababa
In the approximately 200 side events attached to
the FFD in Addis, education and skills development
were not that visible. There were said to be over
6,000 participants in the conference, but very few
of these had education as their principal focus.
Perhaps because of the sequence of events fromthe WEF in Korea in May, to the Oslo Education
Summit in early July, to Addis in mid-July, there
was one side event sponsored by Korea, Norway,
Ethiopia and UNESCO, focusing on The Investment
Case for Education. A second key side event
involving education was one jointly supported by
the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, TB and Malaria,
the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) and
UNAIDS on Financing Health and Education. Thiswas one of the few events to be promoting two
distinct sectors in one panel. But that was about
the extent of education events in Addis.
Apart from the Ethiopian Minister of Education,
there were few other Education Ministers.
This is entirely understandable. As a ﬁnancing
conference, Finance Ministers were omnipresent.
And the issues and debates in the side events, thecorridors and the plenary sessions were about‘tax reform’, ‘domestic resource mobilisation’,‘blended ﬁnance’, ‘multi-stakeholder partnerships’,‘from billions to trillions’, ‘Islamic ﬁnance’, and ofcourse ‘development cooperation’. A whole libraryof materials could have been collected on these
topics at the side events. By contrast, there werelean pickings on education. Just the EFA GMR’s
Policy Paper 18 on Pricing the right to education; acouple of promotional ﬂyers from GPE on ‘Quality
education for all children’ and ‘Key results’; thetwo-pager ‘Oslo Declaration’ from the Education
Summit; and the 20 paragraphs of the Incheon
Declaration: Education 2030 in six languages.
The last few lines of the Oslo Summit, a week
before the FFD, had some text that ‘insists’ theFFD ‘commits to a scaling up of investments and48

NORRAGNEWS 52

international cooperation for education’ (Oslo,
2015: 2). This did not happen. But Oslo did set up a‘Commission on the ﬁnancing of global education
opportunities. to report before the UNGA on post2015 in September 2016.
However, the ﬁnal version of the Outcome
document of the Third International Conference
on Financing for Development (also called theAddis Ababa Action Agenda [AAAA]) did containquite a range of material relating to education,
skills, capacity development, human resource
development, and science, technology, engineeringand maths (STEM).
We shall just note the way that education and skills
are in fact handled in the Outcome document even
if there is no reference to the seven education
targets linked to Incheon’s draft Framework for
Action. There is a sense in which the Addis text is
less school-based than Incheon.
Early on in the document (para.7), in the Section
on ‘A Global Framework’, there is a powerful claim
about the investment impact of education onsustainable development, and on the importance of
supporting countries facing particular challenges.
The ‘rights of all children’ are to be protected andno child is to be left behind.
In the same section (para. 16), in a key paragraphon productive employment and decent work
for all, there is the ﬁrst mention of skills, inconnection with supporting credit for small andmicro-enterprises. There is to be ‘adequate skills
development training for all, especially for youth
and entrepreneurs’.
Intriguingly, the ﬁrst full paragraph (78) on
formal education comes in the Section on‘International Development Cooperation’, whichrather inappropriately suggests that education
is closely connected to oﬃcial development
assistance (ODA). The text ﬁrst re-aﬃrms the link
between quality education and the achievement

of sustainable development. It then emphasizes
the crucial importance of reaching those children
living in great poverty, children with special needs,
migrant and refugee children, and those in conﬂict
situations. Third, its most general aﬃrmationis the intention to scale up ‘investments andinternational cooperation’ to ‘allow all children
to complete free, equitable, inclusive and quality
early childhood, primary and secondary education’.
This language is directly reminiscent of Incheon;
and there is even, like Incheon, the reference to astrengthened role for the Global Partnership for
Education. The paragraph ends with a sentenceabout upgrading education facilities, andincreasing the percentage of qualiﬁed teachers,‘including through international cooperation’.
Clearly, there is a strong perception in the Outcome
document that global education provision is linked
to ODA.
Apart from a brief reference to the importancefor international migration of the recognition’of foreign qualiﬁcations, education andskills’ (para. 111), there is a crucially importantacknowledgement of education and skills in the
key Section on ‘Science, technology, innovationand capacity building’ (para. 119). This time, thelanguage is rather diﬀerent from that of Incheon.
Now, science, technology, engineering and maths
education (STEM), TVET, and tertiary education areseen to be crucial elements in science, technology
and innovation strategies. The Outcome document
does aﬃrm the role of increased scholarships fordeveloping countries, but it goes beyond Incheon
in its proposal to strengthen tertiary education
systems, and ‘increase access to online educationin areas related to sustainable development’.
Addis goes further than Incheon in a powerfulparagraph (115) in the same Section about the vitalrole of ‘capacity development’ being ‘integral toachieving the post-2015 development agenda’. This
paragraph does not mention education or skills,
but is centrally concerned with the role of countrydriven capacity development, strengthening
institutional capacity and human resource
development.
Addis also goes further than Incheon in encouraging
technology transfer between foreign companies
and local enterprises, including the transfer ofknowledge and skills (para.117). But it underlines,
in addition, the key role of ‘traditional knowledge,
innovations and practices of indigenous peoples
and local communities’ and the rights of people
to maintain, control, protect and develop theirtraditional knowledge and culture.
Four points may be made about the educationcommitments in this Outcome document of
FFD. First, despite the key priority of domestic
resource mobilization in the document (and in
the conference), it is only through scaling up‘investments and international cooperation’,including through strengthening the GPE, that themain pledge about education at diﬀerent levels ismade. Second, though the draft covers, however
brieﬂy, most of the target items from the Incheon
Framework for Action, it contains no reference toadult literacy, numeracy or adult education, andthere is no mention of global citizenship education(GCED), or education for sustainable development(ESD). Third, the commitment to STEM and TVET
comes in a section of the document concernedwith science, technology, innovation and capacity
building which is quite separate from the earlier
commitment to education, under international
development cooperation. Lastly, and mostimportantly, the Addis Ababa Outcome document
covered most if not all of the 17 SDGs but treatedthem according to its own priorities, and without
feeling the need to reproduce the text of thegoals and targets of the SDGs. It thus avoided
the situation faced by the World Education Forum
where it could not eﬀectively discuss or evenagree the Education Targets as these might belater changed by the UN processes leading up to
the UNGA summit in September.
A ﬁnal, ﬁnal point. We can’t usefully contrast the
Incheon Declaration with the Outcome documentof the FFD. The former is entirely concernedwith a single sector, Education, and it deals quite
eﬀectively with many of the arguments for anambitious investment in education. But it does
so in just three pages. The Addis Ababa Action
Agenda (Outcome document) covers the whole
spectrum of the global governance and ﬁnancing ofdevelopment in 38 pages. Its mandate is to review
at the highest level all the dimensions of ﬁnance,
trade and aid, not to mention tax, debt, science,technology and innovation. It does however pay
serious attention to the role of education, skills
and knowledge as we have tried to show above.
Financing for Education and Skills
Before we leave the AAAA (Outcome document),
and look at the main concern of this issue of NN52
(Financing for education and skills), we should notethat the AAAA makes no reference to percentages

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to be determined nationally in setting targets. It
is however intriguing that though education andhealth are brieﬂy referred to as ‘essential public
services’, it is in the section termed ‘International
development cooperation’ that education receives
its main mention (78), with a strong link to GPE.
This puts education, along with health, in the same
key section that deals with oﬃcial development
assistance (ODA), where developed countries,
including all EU member states, are encouraged‘to step up eﬀorts to increase their ODA and to
make additional concrete eﬀorts towards the
ODA targets’(51). This positioning of course may
encourage a view that the education targets are
somehow linked to international aid, as we havealready noted.
Education: Global and Domestic Obligations,public and private
Four of the seven key ‘Action Areas’ of the AAAA
are concerned with a) domestic public resources,b) domestic and international private business andﬁnance, and c) international development cooperation., and d) Science, technology, innovation andcapacity building. These may prove useful for covering some of the main concerns analysed in NN52.

Jeﬀrey Sachs) to suggest that only a Global Fundfor Education, building on the GPE – as has already happened in health - will provide suﬃcientleverage for the funding required (see Bahadur/
Schmidt-Traub). Interestingly, however, the notionof a Global Fund for Education didn’t get into the
Incheon Declaration, even though the GPE did geta mention as ‘part of a future global coordination
mechanism’. The GPE does also get a mention in
the AAAA, but just as one example of ‘scaling-up
and strengthening initiatives’, and not as the obvious target for any proposed Global Fund for
Education.
The centrality of domestic resource mobilization
While these large funding gaps have often been
seen in terms of their implications for ODA, thecrucial importance of tax to GDP ratios at thecountry level has begun to be underlined. Arguably,
to debate the funding gaps without due attention
to domestic resource requirements is completely
one-sided. It is welcome therefore to have the tax
to GDP ratios discussed so ﬁrmly in Archer (NN52),
and to note that ‘Domestic public resources’ andall the associated tax matters is the ﬁrst of the
AAAA’s Action Areas, even if tax to GDP ratios are
not speciﬁcally mentioned (AAAA, paras 20-31).

Global ﬁnancing gaps and ODA
Just as we noticed the iconic ﬁgure of 250 million
children and young people not acquiring basic
skills in NN50 on The global politics of teaching
and learning, so now the parallel ﬁgures are about
the annual ﬁnancing gaps of US$ 22 billion, US$
36 billion, US$ 38 billion, and US$ 39 billion (seeBenavot; Bahadur/Schmidt-Traub; and Jalbout inNN52). These calculations sometimes cover some46 low and lower middle income countries, sometimes 82; and they diﬀer depending on whether
they cover early childhood, primary and lower
secondary, or extend to upper secondary (seealso Steer and Smith, Financing education, 2015).
Few if any of the calculations try to cover fully
the complexities of supporting ESD and GCED,
to mention just two of the many additions in the
Incheon targets to the Six EFA Dakar goals (seeYoshida NN52). The debate, on the side of Incheon,
about whether all the targets are to be universal
or whether some are to be considered in terms ofpercentages set nationally has also got major implications for costs.
These calculations have led some (including

50

NORRAGNEWS 52

Joining up the dots: Tax to GDP ratios and therise of private schooling?
It may be worth exploring whether there is any
connection between very low tax to GDP ratios
and the growth of private schools, for example inPakistan and Nigeria. Where the state raises very
little, comparatively, for public services such as
education, it may well be that this proves fertile
grounds for so-called low fee private schools to
emerge. There are no less than three accounts ofprivate schooling in NN52, in Ghana, Nigeria (Lagos
State) and Peru (Riep, Adefeso, and Balarin). It will
be important to take account of their domestic
tax raising status, but also to note with Fredriksen(NN52) that for ensuring that the majority of theresources for education are mobilized domestically, ‘the single most important condition will be high,sustained economic growth’. He adds that at leastin the case of Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), it alreadyspends a higher share of GNP (4.7%) and publicbudgets on education (18%) than other developing
regions.

Locating the rise of the private within wider
education governance arrangements
The rise of low cost private schools is not an
isolated phenomenon, nor is it identical in
all contexts as the articles in NN52 illustratepersuasively. But the wider global environment
in which they are located is one which has also
seen the marketization of microﬁnance (seeCharmes NN52). In addition, it is one where several
development cooperation agencies have openly
altered their approach ‘from social development
to economic growth as the engine of development’(in the words of Boeren for the Netherlands’
cooperation). The same is as true of Japan; indeed
the very words ‘powerful engine for economic
growth’ are used of the private sector in Japan’s
new development cooperation charter. Equally, for
the UK’s DFID, Justine Greening, the Secretary ofState, commented in early July 2015: ‘At DFID, ourrelationship with business has never been closer’(Greening, 2015). It is a sign of the times that thisongoing shift that the word ‘private’ occurs no lessthan 45 times in the 38 pages of the AAAA, even if‘public’ occurs 65 times.
Agreeing the benchmarks and delivering ontime
It is one thing to agree, as in the Incheon Declaration,
to aim for adherence to the benchmarks such
as 4% to 6% of GDP to education, but as theexample of China securing 4% can illustrate, it
can take a very considerable time from a country’s
ﬁrst agreeing a target in 1993 to ﬁnally reachingit in 2012 (see Li in NN52). The same challenge isclearly there in the case of the target of 0.7% of
GNP for ODA for all developed countries. The
AAAA’s welcoming the decision by the European
Union, conﬁrming its collective commitment to
the 0.7% target by 2030, needs to be seen in thislight (AAAA, 51).
The many faces of non-state funding of
education
The value of the FFD Conference in Addis is that
it focused attention both in the plenary sessions
and in many side-events on the sheer range of
non-state provision and funding of education.
Thus, it was entirely appropriate for the major
national and international NGOs to be present
in Addis. Many readers of NN would assume thatthe well-known bilateral and multilateral agencies

are allocating a good deal more to educationand particularly to basic education than large
international NGOs. The article by Ndaruhutse
and Naylor in NN52 may be surprising to many
readers in demonstrating the sheer scale of major
NGO support to basic education over against thatof several of the bilaterals and multilaterals. Nor
is it just a comparison of quantities; the authors
also argue that their case study shows majorinternational NGO programmes are more closelyaligned with the EFA goals than much bilateral aid.
In the same spirit, the OECD’s latest Development
cooperation report 2014 illustrates that theworld’s largest NGO, World Vision, had a budget in2010 that was larger than that of 13 individual DAC
providers (OECD, 2014: 111).
Since the FFD is focusing attention inevitably
on Ethiopia, we have included an illustration forthat country of a ‘free private school’ which has
been running since the 1990s entirely on externalcharitable donations of some £100k per year, forthe beneﬁt of very poor children, often orphans.
The illustration of Asere Hawariat School in Addis(see Kinahan NN52) is critically important foremphasizing that not all very valuable initiatives
in education are easily classiﬁable within the
discourse of sustainability.
Philanthropic support to education, North andSouth
Like the case of the NGOs just mentioned,
educational philanthropy also raises somesurprising issues. It has of course been known
for some time that in in the case of US private
foundations, global health philanthropy outstrips
global education philanthropy by many times; but
less attention has been given to what it is about
health as opposed to education that gives it sucha powerful appeal to US philanthropy. On the other
hand, there is evidence reported by Srivastava in
NN52 that the priorities are by no means the same
when it comes to private actors and foundationsin the South; often education turns out to be
their ﬁrst choice. Clearly, if the notion of a global
fund for education, mentioned earlier, is to betaken seriously, much more will need to be known
about the diﬀerential philosophies underpinningphilanthropy in diﬀerent contexts.
Revisiting Arab donors
It is almost ﬁve years since NN44 looked at Arab

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51

donors in the context of ‘Non-DAC’ and ‘Emerging’
donors. At that point, it appeared as if there had
been a decline in Arab aid despite a rise in wealth.
By contrast now, despite the wider ﬁnancial crisisand the turmoil associated with the Arab Spring,
Arab donors and foundations are making theirmark, in several diﬀerent ways (see Jalbout NN52).
Many readers may be surprised to learn from thisarticle that UAE is now the top donor relative to
its GNI/ODA ratio worldwide; it had reached noless than 1.25 per cent in 2013. Beyond this, its
education foundations and conferences havebecome internationally known.
China’s aid or South-South Cooperation
Despite Japan publishing a new development
cooperation charter and regularly organizing its
inﬂuential TICAD event, its aid has continued to
decline since the decade of its being the world’s
top bilateral donor. On the other hand, China
has continued to keep clear of the donor club,
but is now being ranked sixth in the world. Whilestill preferring the discourse of South-South
cooperation, and presenting itself as a developing
country, it is expected to take on wider international
responsibilities, as the world’s second largest
economy (Huang NN52). Interestingly, neither
the Incheon Declaration nor the ﬁnal draft of the
AAAA provide any benchmarks for the ambitionsof South-South cooperation. Intriguingly, however,the AAAA explicitly aﬃrms the principles ofSouth-South cooperation, including ‘respect fornational sovereignty, national ownership andindependence, equality, non-conditionality, noninterference in domestic aﬀairs, and mutual
beneﬁt’ (AAAA, para 56).
But what is very evident from the articles by Liu
Jing and Wan Xiulan (NN52) is that China’s ﬁnancing
of education and skills covers a whole spectrumof diﬀerent modalities. But it is made more
complicated by the sheer range of government
sources engaged in ﬁnancing diﬀerent dimensionsof China’s cooperation, especially with Africa.
Beyond this, the statistical review of China’s aid
data remains challenging (King, 2015).
Given the absence of benchmarking for SouthSouth cooperation and the principles of common
but diﬀerentiated responsibilities (CBDR), it will
be very important to see how far China engages
eﬀectively with the ﬁnal UN summit around theworld’s new development agenda in September.
Will these turn out to be more critical than its joint

52

NORRAGNEWS 52

Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC),tobe located in South Africa in December 2015? Its
most recent paper of May 2015 on ‘China’s positionon the post-2015 development agenda’ suggeststhat the ‘Chinese Government attaches great importance to the Summit’ in September 2015.
Financing the multiple faces of TVET
Unlike the other draft targets for SDG 4, the topic
of TVET is dramatically more complex. As can beseen in more detail in Palmer (this issue), TVET
can cover training funds (see Walther), skills funds(see Allais) and ODA support to private enterprise(see Langthaler). Commonly, and including in the
EFA GMR, the cost and ﬁnancing of TVET havebeen restricted to a calculation of what proportionof secondary school youth access technical andvocational education (see Hilal). Unlike the politics
of the public and the private in pre-schools, schools
and universities (see Adefeso, Balarin, Riep andTilak), there is no parallel debate when it comes toa review of the power of dual training systems –where ﬁnancing comes from the private employers
and from the public oﬀ-ﬁrm training institutions.
In the case of informal sector training which is still
the largest segment of training in many countries,
there has been little analysis of this as private
sector provision, though it is valuable to see thisacknowledged for micro-enterprises in the AAAA
(para. 35). Admittedly, micro-ﬁnance institutions
have been an additional source of funding for avery small proportion of the informal sector, butthese have been changing their philosophy awayfrom solidarity towards the market, as has been
noted above (see Charmes).
To a greater extent than the other targets for
SDG4, therefore, skills development continues tobe inﬂuenced (or plagued?) by crucial problemsof deﬁnition. Because of the importance offoundation and transferable skills to manyeducators, the universalization of lower secondary
education can be recommended as a priority
for the Dakar EFA Goal 3. Indeed the scorecard
for Goal 3 is actually entitled ‘Skills and lower
secondary education’ in the GMR 2015. Without
more comprehensive deﬁnitions of skill, theﬁnancing of TVET is in danger of being treated as avery minor component of school education.
Financing and uncertainty
Perhaps one of the reasons that health can raise
dramatically more funding than education, at least

from US foundations, is that there continues to bereal uncertainty for education about ‘what really
works to improve learning in developing countries’(see Schiefelbeins). Returning to Yoshida, we notethat this is exactly the challenge he identiﬁed
in costing quality, along with what he terms the‘conceptual ambiguity’ of some of the targets.
Similar confusion is present about what constitutes
the attraction, and positive dimensions, of Islamic
as opposed to Western education in Northern
Nigeria (see Hoechner). Equally, the attempt topromote only one-world universal targets and nottargets reﬂecting national contexts - which wasevident around the Incheon NGO Forum – is blindto the massive diﬀerences between the rich andpoor worlds in education (see Ahmed), or to thevery particular challenges of the countries of the
Sahel (see Fredriksen). Even more demandingis the identiﬁcation of what speciﬁc areas areappropriate for private sector promotion when theover-riding concern is with education as a public
good (see Singh). This is precisely the problem
being faced by several Gulf Council countries
which are anxious to diversify educational funding
beyond their current dependency on the stateand its oil revenues (see Ameen). In their many
diﬀerent ways, these continuing uncertainties
about the meanings of educational indicators,
goals and targets make for major diﬃculties
in assessing the scale of funding required. Thismay be one reason why national statisticiansranked educational indicators only third best
after indicators for health and energy targets (seeMotivans).
Financing and diversity
One of the red threads running through the
AAAA Outcome document is multi-stakeholder
partnerships. It is a shorthand for creative
approaches to ﬁnance acknowledging thecontributions of very many diﬀerent actors. It iscaptured here in a few lines (para. 10):Multi-stakeholder partnerships and theresources, knowledge and ingenuity ofthe private sector, civil society, the scientiﬁc community, academia, philanthropy
and foundations, parliaments, local authorities, volunteers and other stakeholders will be important to mobilize
and share knowledge, expertise, technology and ﬁnancial resources, complement the eﬀorts of Governments,and support the achievement of thesustainable development goals, inparticular in developing countries.
Another angle on the same ambition is theencouragementofinnovative
ﬁnancingmechanisms. These are also referred to manytimes in the Outcome document, and they often
draw private sector ﬁnance into partnership withpublic funding. Hence the term ‘blended ﬁnance’
which also turns up frequently in the document.
NN52 illustrates some of these mechanisms inthe ﬁeld of education, through the use of social
impact investments (Kharas), diﬀerent kinds ofsocial impact bonds (Gustafsson), and employerlinked student ﬁnancing (Vussonji). Often the very
term ‘innovative ﬁnancing’ involves some explicit
acknowledgement of a role for private ﬁnance,
as in this comment from the AAAA (para. 46): ‘We
encourage the use of innovative mechanisms andpartnerships to encourage greater international
private ﬁnancial participation in these economies.’
It sometimes appears that these new approaches
have been more tried out in the developed
economies than in the developing world, and thatthey appear to promise more than they deliver inreality. This is why is has proved useful for the OpenSociety Foundations to oﬀer a targeted course on
Innovative Financing for Education: Arguments,
Options and Opportunities (See Taylor).
Another approach to education funding, resultsbased ﬁnancing (RBF), is not strictly speaking‘innovative’, as it has been around for a very longtime – see the phrase payment-by-results whichgoes back to 1863!1 But it is now being exploredby a whole range of both public and private,multilateral and bilateral, providers, including byNGOs such as CORDAID (see Vroeg and Bosch).
Other methodologies, such as rates of return– see Patrinos – may also be challenged by thesheer complexity and diversity of new funding
approaches, but it is interesting to note, withPatrinos, that one of the critical factors in current
debates about rates of return is a concern with
the quality of education, whether at primary,secondary or tertiary.
In conclusion
We mentioned at the beginning of the ﬁrst
Editorial that one of the key pledges of Dakar
1 (https://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?storycode=6041160)!

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World Forum on EFA was ‘no countries seriously
committed to education for all will be thwarted in theirachievement of this goal by a lack of resources’. Thiswas interpreted as an aid commitment at the time.
Now, 15 years later, ODA remains vitally important,
but the core messages about ﬁnancing, including of
education, coming from the FFD Conference, are verymuch more complex. The three letters – SDG - are by
no means dependent on the three letters –ODA. But
upon another three letters – tax. This word occurs
more often in the Outcome document than ODA.
The Dakar Goals, and the MDGs which followed themafter the Millennium Summit in 2000, were widelyinterpreted as being for the developing countries andnot for the developed world. The Outcome documentfrom the FFD Conference certainly does not readas a prescription for the South, but as a one-world
proposal for ﬁnancing the SDGs. It will be importantto see if that universal focus is retained when thegoals and their targets come to the United Nations in
New York in September.

References.
Greening, J (2015) https://www.gov.uk/government/
speeches/changing-world-changing-aid-whereinternational-development-needs-to-go-next.
King, K. 2015. China and Japan’s training cooperation
with Africa: Discourse, data, and distinctiveness.
International Journal of Comparative Education andDevelopment, 17, 1, 1-18.
OECD, 2014. Development cooperation report 2014:
Mobilising resources for sustainable development.
OECD-DAC, Paris.
Steer, L. and Smith, K. 2015. Financing education:
opportunities for global action, Centre for Universal
Education, Brookings Institution, Washington.

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GLOBAL RESOURCE
MOBILISATION FOREDUCATION & SKILLS

55

In Search of Sustainable Financing for Technical andVocational Skills Development
Robert Palmer, Independent education and skills consultant, aﬃliated to
NORRAG and University of Nottingham
Email: rpalmer00@gmail.com

Key words: Technical and vocational skills;
ﬁnancing
Summary: No-one seems to be talking about theﬁnancing needs of technical and vocational skillsin the post-2015 agenda. While we can’t put a pricetag on them, since there is no clearly deﬁned
target yet, it is worrying that the issue of ﬁnancing
for technical and vocational skills is getting little
attention outside of the specialist technicaland vocational skills development (TVSD)
constituency. Just as we need to see a stronger
connection between the TVSD community who
are already working on improving TVSD indicators,
and the technocrats who are drafting post-2015
education indicators, we need to see a stronger
connection between the TVSD ﬁnancing experts
and the ﬁnancing for development experts.

Technical and vocational skills development(TVSD) spans many domains; in many countries itexists in schools and institutes under the authorityof multiple ministries, including of course theministry of education and ministry of labour; itexists in the private sector in enterprises andprivate vocational institutes; it exists at pretertiary and tertiary levels; and there are hugeamounts of TVSD in both formal and informal
economies.
The ﬁnancing of TVSD is equally complex, and cancome in the form of public funding from national
government (e.g. via the direct payment ofteacher salaries or grants to institutions, or by tax
incentives, scholarships, training vouchers), fromindividuals (via training fees), from enterprises(e.g. via fee payment, in-house training, levypayments and other means), and from nationalor sectoral training funds (e.g. via grants, levy
exemptions etc). TVSD ﬁnancing can equally comefrom development partners – both DAC and nonDAC – in the form of project grants, soft loans orbudget support.
Sustainable TVSD ﬁnancing is not simply about
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NORRAGNEWS 52

getting more money for the pot, or even about
using the money in the pot more eﬃciently. TVSD
ﬁnancing is intimately linked to the development
and sustainability of quality, relevant and equitabletraining systems. TVSD ﬁnancing mechanisms
can themselves be used to promote TVSD policy
objectives. It is therefore imperative that TVSD
ﬁnancing issues be discussed alongside TVSD
objectives. However, more often than not, policy
makers and politicians may view them more
separately; and this degree of separation appears
to have been carried into the post-2015 discussions
on technical and vocational skills.
TVSD ﬁnancing and post-2015 ﬁnancing: in different silos
Over the last 10 years, the issue of technical andvocational skills has been rising on the policy andpolitical agendas of many governments aroundthe world (e.g see NORRAG News 48, 2013). In
the post-2015 development agenda discussions
over the last three years, technical and vocational
skills have featured in many of the proposals put
forward (see King and Palmer, 2013), and in thelatest formal proposal of the Open Working Groupon Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (UN,2014), technical and vocational skills are the topic
of no less than three targets under the education
goal. Accompanying this interest in securing‘technical and vocational skills’ as part of a post2015 education target have been some more
recent discussions about what kinds of indicators
might be used (e.g. see UNSC, 2015; UNESCO,
2015: 285-290; UNSDSN, 2015). Inevitably, thinking
on indicators for technical and vocational skills
has been accompanied by discussions about lackof data and problems of monitoring (see UNESCO,
2015: 127); an issue that has long been raised,
including by this author (e.g. King and Palmer,
2008; Palmer, 2014a; 2014b; 2013).
Meanwhile, the wider education post-2015
discussions have moved beyond talking just about
indicators and monitoring to also talking about
ﬁnancing. Discussion (e.g. UNESCO, 2014a) has

tended to focus on two main types of ﬁnancing;including from governments (e.g. % of government
budget allocated to education) and from donors(e.g. % of ODA or its equivalent allocated toeducation), with ﬁnancing from other sources
including the private sector being mentioned,
but getting less attention. For general education,delivered in schools, this kind of ﬁnancing focus
on government budgets and donor money mightmake sense. But for technical and vocational skills
ﬁnancing, this focus is very narrow. It ignores what
in many countries is the largest source of technicaland vocational skills ﬁnancing; direct and indirect
ﬁnancing from enterprises, including for on the job
training in apprenticeships.

TVSD ﬁnancing discussions among the TVSD
constituency

Forget about the price tag

Meanwhile, the draft revision (UNESCO, 2014b)of UNESCO’s normative instrument concerningtechnical and vocational education (UNESCO,
2001) goes only a little further on the speciﬁcsof TVSD ﬁnancing, noting that: ‘Incentive
mechanisms and regulatory frameworks should be
set up to diversify sources of funding and involve
all stakeholders’, and that such stakeholders
include enterprises, individuals, local authorities
and public-private partnerships. It notes theimportance of giving TVSD institutions greater
operational and ﬁnancial autonomy so that they
can build partnerships and generate revenue. And,critically, it notes the need for more ﬁnancing
mechanisms that can increase eﬃciency,
stimulate the demand for TVSD, and promotebetter outcomes by ‘shifting the traditional
input-based models to more performance-based
ﬁnancing ones’.

Meanwhile, the April 2015 Education For All Global
Monitoring Report 2015 (UNESCO, 2015) provides
the latest cost estimates for part of the proposed
post-2015 education agenda - achieving universal
pre-primary, primary and lower secondary
education completion – but does not attempt
to cost other aspects of the proposed agenda,
including technical and vocational skills.
Indeed, no-one seems to be even talking about
the ﬁnancing needs of technical and vocational
skills in the post-2015 agenda, let alone trying toestimate what they might be. There are obvious
reasons for not trying to estimate the cost oftechnical and vocational skills in the post-2015
development agenda; there is no clear focus (onwhat kind of technical and vocational skills shouldbe measured), no real target (the OWG proposed
target talks of an x% increase in the number ofyouth and adults who have technical and vocational
skills), and insuﬃcient data.
However, standing back from a focus on trying tocost a post-2015 technical and vocational skills
target – which for reasons above is not possible- it is still worrying that the post-2015 ﬁnancing
discussions appear not to have addressed themechanisms and framework of ﬁnancing oftechnical and vocational skills, including continuing
vocational education and training (CVET). And
the July 2015 Financing for Development (FfD)
conference in Addis Ababa (UN, 2015a) also does
not look like it will cover this; the draft outcome
document of the Addis Ababa Accord (UN, 2015b),
simply refers to the need to ‘enhance technical andvocational education and training’.

But we should perhaps not be too harsh on the post2015 and FfD documents. The TVSD community’s
own documents are not well developed, or not up
to date, on TVSD ﬁnancing.
For example the 2012 Recommendations of theThird International Congress on TVSD (UNESCO,2012), simply noted the need to: ‘diversify sourcesof funding by involving all stakeholders, inparticular through the use of appropriate incentive
mechanisms’, and to ‘promote targeted funding
schemes to facilitate access of disadvantaged
groups’.

There have certainly been several recent initiatives
with regard to TVSD ﬁnancing; for example:
CEDEFOP’s work on ﬁnancing training,1 including
setting up a database on ﬁnancing adult learning in
EU countries;2 a European Commission organizedworkshop on ‘Financing VET’ in November 2014;
and reviews of TVSD ﬁnancing in developing
countries. And there are several older pieces thatare still key reference texts on TVSD ﬁnancing(e.g. Falch and Oosterbeek, 2011; Johanson, 2009;
Ziderman, 2002).
Just as we need to see a stronger connection
between the technical and vocational skills
community who are already working on improving
TVSD indicators (Palmer, 2014b), and the1 http://www.cedefop.europa.eu/en/events-and-projects/
projects/ﬁnancing-training
2 http://www.cedefop.europa.eu/FinancingAdultLearning/

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57

technocrats who are drafting post-2015 education
indicators (Raikes, 2014), we need to see a stronger
connection between the TVSD ﬁnancing experts
and the ﬁnancing for development experts. This
currently does not look like it will happen unlessthe international TVET community moves rapidly
to make its voice heard.

NORRAG News 51 - Education and skills post-2015
and the global governance of education: Agendas
and architecture. www.norrag.org

This NORRAG News article ﬁrst appeared as a
blog on NORRAG NewsBite on 15th April 2015:
https://norrag.wordpress.com/

UN (2015b) The Addis Ababa Accord. Zero Draftof the Outcome Document of the Third Financing
for Development Conference. http://www.un.org/
esa/ffd/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/1ds-zero-

UN (2015a) Third International Conference on
Financing for Development, www.un.org/esa/ﬀd/
overview/third-conference-ﬀddraft-outcome.pdf
References
Falch, T. and Oosterbeek, H. (2011) Financing
Lifelong Learning: Funding Mechanisms in
Education and Training. European Expert Network
on Economics of Education Analytical Report No.
10. European Commission.

UNESCO (2015) Education For All 2000-2015:
Achievements and Challenges. Education For All
Global Monitoring Report. UNESCO: Paris.

Johanson, R. (2009) A Review of National Training
Funds. Social Protection Discussion Paper No.
0922. World Bank: Washington.

UNESCO (2014a) UNESCO Position Paper on
Education Post-2015 (February 2014). UNESCO:
Paris.

King, K. and Palmer, R. (2013) Education and Skills
post-2015: What Evidence, Whose Perspectives?
NORRAG Working Paper #6: (December 2013)www.norrag.org

UNESCO (2014b) Revision of the Revised
Recommendation Concerning Technical andVocational Education (2001). UNESCO: Paris.

King, K. and Palmer, R. (2008) Skills for Work,
Growth and Poverty Reduction: Challenges
and Opportunities in the Global Analysis andMonitoring of Skills. UK National Commission for
UNESCO and the British Council.

UNESCO(2012)
ShanghaiConsensus:
Recommendations of the Third International
Congress on Technical and Vocational Education
and Training ‘Transforming TVET: Building Skills
for Work and Life’, Shanghai, People’s Republic ofChina, 14 to 16 May 2012.

NORRAG News (2013) 2012: The Year of Global
Reports on TVET, Skills & Jobs - Consensus or
Diversity? NORRAG News 48. www.norrag.org

UNESCO (2001) Revised Recommendation concerning Technical and Vocational Education (2ndNovember, 2001).

Palmer, R. (2014a) An Open Invitation to theTechnical and Vocational Skills Community:
It’s Time to Gate-Crash the Post-2015 Party.
3rd December 2014, NORRAG NewsBite
norrag.wordpress.com

UNSC – United Nations Statistical Commission(2015) Technical Report by the Bureau of the UNSC
on the Process of the Development of an Indicator
Framework for the Goals and Targets of the Post2015 Development Agenda. UN: New York.

Palmer, R. (2014b) Can we avoid another Vague
Skills Goal? 7th February 2014, NORRAG NewsBite
norrag.wordpress.com

UNSDSN – UN Sustainable Development Solutions
Network (2015) Indicators and a Monitoring
Framework for the Sustainable Development
Goals Launching a Data Revolution for the SDGs
(March 20, 2015).

Palmer, R. (2013) TVE(T?) and the GMR: Counting
and Comparing Apples and Oranges. 20th February,
2013, NORRAG NewsBite norrag.wordpress.com
Raikes, A. (2014) Indicators for Universal andNational Coverage of Goals and Targets. In

58

UN (2014) Report of the Open Working Group of theGeneral Assembly on Sustainable Development
Goals. UN: New York.

NORRAGNEWS 52

Ziderman, A. (2002) Financing Vocational
Training to Meet Policy Objectives: SubSaharan Africa. World Bank: Washington.

Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2015 –Money Matters
Aaron Benavot,Global Monitoring Report team, UNESCO, Paris
Email: a.benavot@unesco.org

Key words: Domestic funding; donor funding;ﬁnancing estimates and gaps; new commitments;
comparison with health funding and militaryfunding.

education in total government expenditure barely
increased over the ﬁfteen years in these countries
and remained at 15%, the lower end of therecommended range (15-20%) (UNESCO, 2015a).

Summary: Fifteen years ago the signatoriesof the Dakar Framework for Action considered
it “essential that new, concrete ﬁnancial
commitments be made by national governments
and also by bilateral and multilateral donors”.
The recently released Education for All Global
Monitoring Report 2015 assesses the extent towhich this became a reality, and looks at the needfor new commitments to reach new education
targets 2015-2030.

Donor governments also increased theircontributions to education. Aid to the sector morethan doubled between 2002 and 2009. But theﬁnancial crisis marked the beginning of a clear
downward trend and, between 2010 and 2012, total
aid to basic education fell by 15% (Fig. 1).

Since 2000, the poorest governments increased
their allocations to education, in some cases
considerably, but still not suﬃciently. Domestic
expenditure increased by 0.8% of GNP in low
income countries and by 0.5% in lower middle
income countries between 1999 and 2012.
However, this was the result of higher tax-to-GDP
ratios rather than countries prioritizing educationin their national budgets. Indeed, the share of

The 2010 Global Monitoring Report (GMR)(UNESCO, 2010) estimated that, just to achieve
universal primary education between 2008 and2015 in 46 low income countries, an additional
1.5% of GDP, was needed, much of it from externalsources. The annual cost of also achieving universal
lower secondary education was estimated atabout 2.5% of GDP. These estimates were a callfor countries to step up their eﬀorts. The fact thatthey did not, just as donors did not live up to theirpromises either, is a major factor that explains
why key Education for All (EFA) targets were notreached.
In March 2015 the GMR published revised cost

Figure 1: Aid to education fell by US$1.3 billion between 2010 and 2012

Source: OECD-DAC, 2014 in UNESCO (2015)

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59

estimates for a core set of the proposed post2015 education targets (UNESCO, 2015b),
including universal pre-primary, primary and lower
secondary education with strong considerationof the cost implications of equity and quality.
The paper showed that, because many countries
are unlikely or unable to increase their public
education expenditure to the levels required tocover the total cost of meeting the new targets,there will remain an annual funding gap across all
low and lower middle income countries of US$22
billion. This estimate is broadly consistent with arecent proposal by the Sustainable Development
Solutions Network, which projected that a global
fund for education would need to be replenishedannually with US$15 billion. It has been released intime to contribute to discussions being held at the
Financing for Development Conference in Addis
Ababa¹, and the international meeting in Osloscheduled in July 2015².
This new costing exercise closely follows themethodology used in the 2010 GMR (UNESCO,2010), although two diﬀerences in the scope of theanalysis mean that the results are not comparable:ﬁrst, coverage has expanded from 46 to all 82 low
and lower middle income countries; and second,
the time horizon has been extended from 8 years(2008-15) to 16 years (2015-2030), which spreads
the total cost over a longer period.
In absolute terms, the estimates found that theannual total cost of universal pre-primary, primaryand lower secondary education in low income
countries is projected to more than triple, from
US$10 billion in 2012 to an average of US$36 billion
between 2015 and 2030. In lower middle income
countries, costs are higher due to their larger
population and level of GDP per capita, meaningthat the annual total cost in these countries is
projected to more than double, from US$90
million in 2012 to an average of US$203 billion over
2015–2030 (Table 1).
The increased costs reﬂect two factors. First,
if we are to achieve universality in access frompre-primary to lower secondary, the number ofchildren and adolescents enrolled will need torise signiﬁcantly so that no one is left behind. The
number enrolled in pre-primary education willneed to more than double by 2030, and to increase
six fold in low income countries from 4 million to 25
million. Second, spending per student must growconsiderably if we are to improve quality in linewith the SDG agenda. For example, the cost per
primary education student in low income countries
is estimated to increase from US$65 to US$199.
In relative terms, governments will need toincrease domestic public expenditure on preprimary, primary and lower secondary educationfrom 2.3% to 3.4% of GDP in low income countries
and from 2.6% to 3.3% of GDP in lower middle
income countries between 2012 and 2030.
Splitting the total annual ﬁnance gap by income
group, the paper shows that it totals US$10.6
billion in low income countries, and US$11.8 billion
in lower middle countries. Current aid levels
only cover a small part of the gap. In low income
countries, development assistance for preprimary, primary and general secondary education
amounts to US$2.3 billion and would therefore
need to more than quadruple to ﬁll the gap.
Learning from the implications of the ﬁnancial
shortfalls for the success of EFA, we must
underscore the need for new commitments if weTable 1. Annual total cost by education level, US$ billion, 2012 and 2015-2030 (average)

Source: UNESCO (2015)
1 http://www.un.org/esa/ﬀd/overview/third-conference-ﬀd.html
2 http://www.globalpartnership.org/event/oslo-summit-education-development

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NORRAGNEWS 52

are to be able to successfully implement the newsustainable development agenda. And, while theoverall ﬁnancing gap in education may appear
large, it is equal to just 4.5 days of annual global
military expenditure (Fig. 2). Other sectors canattract such large sums: at present 53 percent of
US foundations’ grants are allocated to health andonly 8 percent to education. If we work together tomake a better case for education’s central role indevelopment, we may be able to close this ﬁnancegap and achieve our goals.
Figure 2

References
UNESCO (2015a) Education for All Global
Monitoring Report 2015 – Education for All
2000-2015: Achievements and Challenges.
UNESCO: Paris. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0023/002322/232205e.pdf
UNESCO (2015b) Pricing the Right to Education:
The Cost of Reaching New Targets by 2030.
Education for All Global Monitoring Report,
Policy Paper 18. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0023/002321/232197E.pdf
UNESCO (2010) Education for All Global
Monitoring Report 2010 – Reaching the
Marginalized. UNESCO: Paris. http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0018/001866/186606E.pdf

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Why the World Needs a Global Fund for Education
Chandrika Bahadur and Guido Schmidt-Traub, Sustainable Development
Solutions Network, Paris and New Delhi
Emails: Chandrika.bahadur@unsdsn.org;
guido.schmidt-traub@unsdsn.org

Key words: Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs), Global Partnership for Education (GPE),
Global Fund for Education (GFE), Financing forDevelopment
Summary: The Sustainable Development Goal on
education will require matching greater ambitionand eﬀort within countries with increased
international support including through a Global
Fund for Education that builds on today’s Global
Partnership for Education (GPE). The Financing
for Development Conference in Addis Ababa andthe September UN SDG Summit oﬀer a unique
opportunity in 2015 to launch a Global Fund for
Education and commit to an ambitious plan toachieve global education priorities.

A high-quality education is the human right of every
child. This right is enshrined in the 1948 Universal
Declaration of Human Rights and forms the centerof the Education for All Initiative launched in
2000, the Millennium Development Goals, and theupcoming Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Indeed, SDG 4 will be the most ambitious global
commitment to education in history, focusing
on universal completion of schooling from preprimary to secondary level for all girls and boys. Yet,
the world will not achieve these ambitious goals
unless international support is scaled up and betterorganized, including through a Global Fund for
Education that builds on today’s Global Partnershipfor Education (GPE).
Ensuring universal quality schooling will require
better policies as well as greatly increased
resources, including for well-trained andmotivated teachers, improved curricula, education
infrastructure, learning materials, and the useof modern information and communication
technologies. The 2015 Education for All Global
Monitoring Report projects that even withaggressive increases in domestic resource
mobilization, countries will need an additional $39
billion per year in international ﬁnance to close

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the ﬁnancing gap for universal access to uppersecondary education. This gap will need to beclosed through oﬃcial development assistance(ODA), which must therefore increase four-foldfor low- and lower-middle-income countries. And
these ﬁgures probably low-ball the true needs
since the EFA-GMR estimates do not cover upper
secondary completion and tertiary education.
The upcoming Addis Ababa conference on
Financing for Development must tackle theﬁnancing challenges for the education sector,
but it must do so also with regard to major nonﬁnancing challenges that must be addressedin the education sector. In doing so we should
learn from the lessons in health – the sector thathas experienced the most rapid and sustained
progress under the Millennium Development
Goals – as described in a recent SDSN Working
Paper (SDSN, 2015) that underwent an extensive
public consultation.
Progress in health was achieved through aunique global partnership comprising national
governments, civil society organizations, business,international organizations, and science. The
pooling and scaling up of international ﬁnancing
through Gavi and the Global Fund to Fight AIDS,
Tuberculosis and Malaria supported countries incrafting and implementing long-term strategies
for addressing the health challenges. Bothinstitutions promoted unprecedented innovationin delivery, technologies, and organization throughtheir ability to work with the private sector, civilsociety, and governments.
The education sector lacks the organization andscale of international support that is neededto achieve the education SDG. As the premierpooled ﬁnancing mechanism in the education
sector, the Global Partnership for Education (GPE)
has successfully promoted increased domestic
funding for education. It has strengthened
country-owned planning processes and brought
together partners for advocacy, capacity building,and implementation. Today, the GPE reachesaround 60 countries with total annual donor
funding of nearly $1 billion. Yet, given the ﬁnancing
gap of $39 billion, the scale of the GPE must be
increased by several orders of magnitude to some
$15 billion per year by 2020. To reach this scale ofﬁnancing the GPE must become the Global Fundfor Education.
Building on the successes of the GPE, and in linewith the experience of Gavi and the Global Fundin health, a scaled-up Global Fund for Education
would provide funding at scale to support theimplementation of national strategies to achieve
the education SDG in all countries that requireinternational ﬁnancial support, particularly lowand lower-middle income countries, as well as
countries in conﬂict situations.
Some question the need for such a Global Fund,but the experience in health shows clearly
that rapid progress requires not only greater
domestic and international resources; it also
depends on overcoming the high fragmentationof international support for education. At timesof empty public coﬀers in most donor countries,
pooling and eﬀective use of scarce ODA resources
should be the number one priority in international
support for education.
We propose that an eﬀective Global Fund for
Education build on the GPE around the following
principles:1.

2.

Support for nationally-owned strategies
that have been independently vetted: The
Global Fund for Education should support
national action plans to achieve SDG 4 thatare transparent, quantiﬁed, monitorable,
supported by broad sections of society,and that mobilize adequate volumes ofdomestic resources.
National actionplans will be subject to the scrutiny of an
Independent Expert Review Committee
comprising experts from UNESCO, UNICEF,
the multilateral development banks, andother experts that would make funding
recommendations to the board of the Global
Fund
Adequate volumes of pooled ﬁnancing:
To close the external ﬁnancing gap, donor
governments, philanthropists, civil society
organizations, and businesses need toprovide at least $4-5 billion annually during
the ﬁrst three years of the Global Fund for
Education rising to some $15 billion by 2020.

Innovative ﬁnancing instruments such associal bonds can also raise funds, but theseshould all ﬂow through a common fund.
3.

Strategic and independent board: The
Global Fund for Education requires a strategic
board composed of globally eminent
individuals representing all key stakeholders:donorgovernments,
businesses,
philanthropic donors, civil society, andrecipient governments. The board should be
independent of any international agency.

4.

Direct disbursement to in-country
recipients: Like the Global Fund to Fight
AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, the Global
Fund for Education will provide funds directly
to national governments or other recipients– such as sub-national governments,
civil society organizations, internationalorganizations, or businesses – nominated bynational stakeholders without needing local
intermediaries.

5.

Focus on marginalized children: Countries
with large numbers of out-of-school children,
including those in conﬂict or in the midst of
humanitarian crises would be funded on apriority basis, subject to each country making
the maximum appropriate domestic eﬀort.

6.

Investment in global public goods: The
Global Fund for Education would invest in
information technologies for education,
education accounting systems, metrics andassessment programs, and other public
goods that support national education
programs.

7.

No new institution: The Global Fund for
Education will build on the GPE and therefore
does not require a new institution. The
governance structures of the new fund would
need to reﬂect its larger mandate and scaleof operations.

The Incheon Declaration laid forth some of theseprinciples, but fell short of a whole-hearted call for
scaled-up ﬁnancing with the appropriate global
architecture to support its implementation. World
leaders will meet again at the July Conference on
Financing for Development in Addis Ababa and theSeptember SDG Summit at the United Nations.
These two events provide a unique opportunity
to ensure that the SDGs will support a goal-based
approach to achieving education priorities, just

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63

like the MDGs galvanized health.
Norway and Norwegian leaders have played acentral role in transforming public health, and thecountry is poised to do the same with education.
The Government has organized a summit on
education ﬁnance in early July 2015, which oﬀers
a unique opportunity to work with UN SecretaryGeneral Ban Ki-Moon, the Global Partnership for
Education, major philanthropists, and leadersfrom civil society and business in order to prepare
the ground for announcing the Global Fund for
Education later this year.
Clearly, the Global Fund for Education will not
resolve all challenges in the education sector, but
it is impossible to see how the education SDGs
can be achieved without pooling greater volumesof international ﬁnancing and promoting greater
innovation. We hope that world leaders rise to thischallenge. Children around the world deserve no
less.

References
SDSN (2015) Financing for Sustainable
Development: Implementing the SDGs throughEﬀective Investment Strategies and Partnerships.
http://unsdsn.org/resources/publications/financing/64

NORRAGNEWS 52

Financing the Massive Education Catch-Up Needed in
Sub-Saharan Africa
Birger Fredriksen, Consultant Washington, formerly World Bank
Email: birger.j.fredriksen@gmail.com

Key words: lag in building basic human capital, funding needs, catch-up growth, population
growth, aid priorities
Summary: This article looks at aid priorities foreducation in Sub-Saharan Africa, in light of theneeded catch up in building basic human capital,
compared to other regions.

Compared to other developing regions, SubSaharan Africa (SSA) needs much higher levelsof funding over the 2015-30 period to catch up
in building basic human capital. To build suchcapital is a development stage that no nation can“leapfrog”. What does this mean for education aid
priorities? Some facts:
First, SSA has achieved solid progress towards
Universal Primary Education (UPE) since theyear 2000. The ﬁrst pan-African conference ofministers of education (Addis Ababa 1961) called
for this objective to be reached by 1980. Impressive
progress was made: Student and teacher numbers
in 1980 exceeded by a wide margin what was
projected. However, the population of school age
grew by 80% between 1960 and 1980, four times
faster than projected in 1961. Therefore, the Gross
Enrolment Ratio (GER) – although doubling fromless than 40% in 1960 to 80% in 1980, fell shortof the target. Between 1980 and 1990, the GER
declined to 73% and at the Jomtien conference(1990) the target was slipped to the year 2000.
In that year, the GER had barely regained its 1980
level of 80% and the target was further slipped to2015 (Dakar 2000). In 2012, the GER had reached102%, an impressive growth.
Second, regarding ﬁnancing, the education
stagnation in the 1980s and 1990s was largely
caused by economic decline: SSA’s GDP per
capita declined annually by 0.9% in the 1980s
and by 0.5% in the 1990s. As a result, educationbudgets grew by only 1% annually between 1980
and 2000 as compared to a 2.4% increase in theschool-age population. Conversely, the 22 point

GER gain between 2000 and 2012 (despite 2.5%
annual growth in the school-age population) was
largely thanks to resumed economic growth.
During the period 1999-2007, about 2/3 of therise in public education funding was generated byeconomic growth even though this was a periodalso marked by strong growth in aid (by 35%) andin the share of GNP spent on education (from 3.5%
to 4.5%).
Third, the two main challenges making UPE
such a moving target will remain up to 2030:
i.

Slow demographic transition: SSA’s
population aged 5-14 is projected to increaseby 35% between 2015 and 2030, compared to
declines for South and East Asia (-2%) and
Latin America (-5%). Between 2000 and 2015,
the growth was 46% for SSA, 2% for SouthAsia, a slight decline for Latin America and a
32% decline for East Asia.

ii.

Catch-up growth to complete the EFA
agenda: Due to low primary enrolment (40%)
and literacy (9%) in 1960 and decline during
the 1980s and early 1990s when other regions
made major progress, SSA’s need for catchup growth is massive. In 2012, the GER was
only 20% in pre-primary and 50% in lower
secondary education, 30 million children ofprimary school age were out of school, and
27% of those aged 15-24 years were illiterate.
In addition, less than 60% of those starting
primary education reach the ﬁnal grade anda high share of those did so without having
learned basic literacy and numeracy skills.

Four, the overwhelming majority of theresources needed must be mobilized
domestically and, even more so than in the past,
the single-most important condition will behigh, sustained economic growth. Aid is unlikely
to increase much during the 2015-2030 period and
SSA already spends a higher share of GNP (4.7%)
and public budgets on education (18%) than otherdeveloping region. Also, to build basic humancapital, governments (and donors) must make

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65

budget trade-oﬀs in favour of population groups
who missed out on basic education. Because suchgroups have less political clout than the rapidly
increasing number seeking entry to post-basic
education, the political economy of achieving thiswill likely be even more diﬃcult in the future thanin the past.
Five, while aid as a share of total education
funding is likely to decline, the impact of aid
in promoting poverty reduction and equity
could increase hugely if the aid were morestrategically targeted on areas and populationgroups where it would provide additionality
in increasing the impact of total education
funding. In particular, aid should to a greater
degree help give voice to the large number ofchildren, youth and women who now miss out onbasic education (in the way aid since the early
1990s has successfully helped promote girls’
education). More aid should also be used to help
avoid the situation in which whole generations ofyoung people miss out on education in emergency
situations and in failed states.
Six, prioritization of aid must recognize that
SSA is a huge and increasingly diverse region.
Its share of the world’s school-age population is
projected to grow from 20% in 2015 to 26% in
2030. And while some countries are making major
strides, others are not. Thus, in the absence ofmajor eﬀorts, completing the EFA agenda risks
remaining a moving target even beyond 2030.
The countries in the Sahel pose a particularchallenge. For example, in 2013, Niger was lastamong the 187 countries ranked on UNDP’s Human
Development Index. Despite impressive growthsince year 2000 -- the GER in primary education
grew from 31% in 2000 to 71% in 2012 - Niger
needs massive catch-up growth, caused by a highshare of children out-of-school, high dropout andextremely low learning outcomes. In addition,
Niger has the world’s highest illiteracy for youths(73% for males, 83% for women) and adults (81%for males, 89% for women). Meanwhile, despite
recent economic growth, Niger’s GDP per capita is
lower than at independence and its fertility rate is
the highest in the world. As a result, the population
is projected to grow from 19 million in 2015 to 69
million in 2050. The combined population of Chad,
Burkina, Mali, and Niger is projected to increase
from 67 in 2015 to almost 190 million in 2050.
What impact should these developments haveon the use of increasingly scarce aid? Failure to

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address these catch-up growth needs will havevery serious implications for SSA’s development
prospects and, in turn, for peace and stability inthe region: For example, 1/3 of SSA’s labour force
could be illiterate in the 2030s (as much as 2/3 inNiger) and more than 1/3 of children risk being born
to illiterate mothers (2/3 in Niger), reinforcing thevicious cycle of poverty, inequity and high fertility
rates. And the impact will be felt beyond SSA.
Already, the ﬂow of economic refugees across theMediterranean as well as to more successful SSA
countries is a major concern.

Cost Eﬀective Strategies for Improving Latin American
Education
Ernesto and Paulina Schiefelbein, Alberto Hurtado University, Santiago
Emails: pschiefe@gmail.com (Ernesto);schiefelbeingrossi@gmail.com (Paulina)

Key words: teacher training, salaries, management,
use of research, policymaking, ﬂipped classes
Summary: Some 90% of Latin American children
reach the last grade of primary school, but only
20% of the population aged 16-65 reach the reading
and numeracy abilities required to participate in amodern society. This poor performance seems tobe the result of ineﬀective use of resources, suchas use of frontal teaching with heterogeneousgroups of students.

Latin America is reaching universal access to
education, but much of this education is still of low
quality. Over 94% of the total number of childrenof oﬃcial primary school age are attending primaryor secondary school and 90% of children entering
the ﬁrst grade of primary school eventually reachthe last grade of primary school (UNICEF Global
databases 2014). However, over 80% of the
population aged 16-65 have diﬃculties copingwith the reading and numeracy activities that arecommon in modern life (IALS, 2000).
Diﬀerences in reading levels by socioeconomic
status are huge. Reading tests administered by the
UNESCO Regional Oﬃce show that two thirds of
4th graders in the upper half of the socioeconomic
distribution are able to understand simple
messages in writing, but in the lower half of the
distribution only few students can. Furthermore,even the best students in expensive private
schools only perform at the level of the average
student in OECD countries.
These poor results cannot be explained by theamount of resources, but from the training ofteachers. A fair amount of GNP is allocated toeducation (4.5%) and there are 21 pupils perteacher (below the world average of 24 students
per teacher). Therefore, the main constraints for
improving education seems to be: poorly trainedteachers (prepared to work only with the elite
students that received early stimulation andstarted school with a good vocabulary); severely
underpaid teachers (annual salary around 50%of per capita GDP compared with 95% in OECD
countries); and ineﬀective school management(primary schools’ best teachers seldom teach inﬁrst grade).
Increasing teachers’ salaries (to raise the qualityof entering teachers) would have a direct impact
on costs, but improving teachers’ allocation
to particular classes would only demand
management decisions. For example, reallocating
the school’s best teachers from the upper grades
to the initial grades would make a boost in students’achievement with no additional cost. However,improving initial teacher training would require
helping the Schools of Education to increase theirfaculty with doctorate degrees (from the present
10% to at least half of the faculty members) and,probably to organize or expand Graduate Schoolsof Education.
On the other hand, the Escuela Nueva model in
Colombia showed that teachers’ performance
could be upgraded by using carefully evaluatedtexts (learning scripts) that help small groupsof students to try out interesting learning
experiences. This strategy has been applied in
20.000 Colombian rural schools and evaluations
carried out by World Bank and UNESCO conclude
that Escuela Nueva schools have better levelsof Spanish and Math than urban schools (intests to third and ﬁfth graders). In addition, theEscuela Nueva students have higher degrees ofself-esteem (Forero, 2006). D. Kirp wrote a vivid
description of this model in New York Times(February 28, 2015).
Unfortunately, there is no agreement on what
“Really Works to Improve Learning in Developing
Countries” (Evans and Popova, 2015). At most,
we have a few examples of failed changes (USA
reduced class size from 1980 to 2005, but student
outcomes remained constant). Therefore, it is hardfor policy makers to ﬁnd the best cost-eﬀective
alternative among the large amount of competing

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67

proposals. Should the country start to increase
time-on-task by reducing teacher absenteeism
and frequent interruptions of class per day? Switchfrom traditional teacher-centred instruction (thatdoes not work well in heterogeneous classrooms)
to small groups working with scripted materialsor ‘ﬂipped classes’? Upgrade teachers´ training informal courses or coach school principals to help
their teachers to reﬂect on the eﬀectiveness of
speciﬁc practices?
In summary, there are serious constraints forthe design of successful improvements andfor implementing cost-eﬀective strategies.
Furthermore, it is especially diﬃcult to agree
on the time and teams required to prepare theeventual trainers of the new breed of eﬀective
teachers and how to get the initial group of
experienced mentors that will provide quality
induction to the new teachers.
Therefore, it is relevant to recall that “Almost
every country has undertaken some form of school
system reform during the past two decades, but
few have succeeded in improving their systems
from poor to fair to good to great to excellent”(McKinsey, 2010). There is a high probability that
this pattern will be replicated in Latin America in
the next decades. So implementing the ambitionsof the SDG in Education must bear this in mind!

References
Evans and Popova, 2015, What Really Works to
Improve Learning in Developing Countries?, WorldBank Working Paper No. 7203
Forero, Clemente, 2006, Escuela Nueva´s Impact
on the Peaceful Social Interaction of Children in
Colombia, Springer.
IALS, 2000, Literacy in the Information Age, OECD
McKinsey, 2010, How the world’s most improved
school systems keep getting better

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Dutch Aid, Trade and the SDGs
Ad Boeren, Netherlands Organization for International Cooperation inHigher Education (NUFFIC), The Hague
Email: aboeren@epnuﬃc.nl

Key words: ODA, SDG, Trade, Netherlands,
Education, Development Cooperation, Policies
Summary: Dutch development cooperation has
adopted a strong focus on economic self-reliance,
trade and mutual interests while adhering to
the MDGs and SDGs. Shifts in the development
cooperation budget tell the story.

In my article for NORRAG News 51 (Boeren, 2014),
I described the changes in Dutch development
cooperation up to 2010, especially with regard to
the support to education. A clear shift had been
made from social development to economic
growth as the engine of development and fromaid (one-directional support which nurtures
dependency) to economic collaboration and trade(which serves mutual interests). Development
cooperation became an integral part of the Dutch
foreign and economic policies with an emphasison creating and supporting conditions for selfreliance of development partner countries andthe promotion of mutual interests. Support was
focused on four areas where the Netherlands is
considered to have ‘a comparative advantage’to other countries: food security, water, sexual
reproductive health and rights, and peace and therule of law. A growing role of the Dutch private
sector in development cooperation was foreseen.
Support to basic education no longer ﬁtted in thisnew policy framework and is being phased out.

Support to basic and secondary education is fully
stopped in 2015. What has remained is the support
to post-secondary education which, although ﬂuctuating, has remained fairly stable over the years.
The share of the budget which is earmarked forthe sustainable trade and investments is steadily
increasing from 14% in 2014 to an envisaged 29%
in 2017. In this domain the focus is on strengthening
the private sector and improvement of investment
opportunities in developing countries, improving
the international trade system, and strengthening
the Dutch trade and investment position. Thisfocus on economic self-reliance and trade can be
regarded as linked to SDG 8 (promoting sustained,
inclusive and sustainable economic growth, fulland productive employment and decent work
for all) with possible spillover eﬀects on poverty
reduction, improved nutrition and healthy lives.
The other budget lines on ‘Sustainable
development, food security and water’, ‘Social
development’ and ‘Peace and safety fordevelopment’ cover the majority of the other
SDGs. None of these SDGs can be achieved
without an educated population and qualiﬁed
work force; hence all levels of education should
get due attention in the new development agenda.
Strengthening the private sector and improvementof investment opportunities in developing
countries are important but inadequate
instruments to create economic self-reliance if
not combined with other enabling strategies.

This shift in policy is reﬂected in the compositionof the budget as can be seen form the tables below.

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69

Reference
Boeren, A. (2014) Dutch Aid to Education: How
Social Development was Exchanged for Economic
Self-Reliance and Trade. NORRAG News 51, www.
norrag.org

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How 4% was Achieved: the Process of Realizing Education as
the Priority
LI Wei, ZHAO Jing, The Open University of China, Beijing
Email: weiwei860126@126.com

Key words: education funding, 4%, education as
the priority

Compulsory Education vs Non-compulsory
Education

Summary: This article analyzes the target ofreaching the goal of education funding accounting
for 4% of GDP in 2012. It is found that realizationof the target comes from the support ofpolicy, national ﬁnance and the eﬀorts of local
government. Primary education, compulsory
education, rural education and education incentral and western regions are main elements of
the 4%. After realization of 4%, how to establish
reasonable education investment classiﬁcationand sharing system will be a key and diﬃcult
question facing the Chinese government.

The nation pays a good deal of attention tocompulsory education. In 2006, the Compulsory
Education Law was revised and this provided much
more detail on enhancing the input of compulsory
education. After that, the Ministry of Education(2012) said that China has fully popularized nineyear compulsory education in 2011. The National
Bureau of Statistics (2014) shows that input
of compulsory education rose from 50 Billion
yuan to 101 Billion yuan during 2007 to 2011, an
increase from 34.5% to 36.75%. Compared with
non-compulsory education (16.70%), the averageannual growth rate of compulsory education ishigher (19.46%). The deputy minister of Ministryof Education, Du Yubo, (2014) pointed out aprinciple for realizing the 4%, namely, newlyadded expenditure is allocated to compulsory
education.

China is a typical government-led country foreducation development; thus government
investment is of great importance for education
development. Early in 1993, the Chinese
government proposed the target of realizing thatdomestic ﬁnancial education investment would
account for 4% of GDP by 2000; however, thetarget was not realized until 2012. How was the
Chinese government’s education input distributedand changed?
Total Amount vs Per Capita
The National Bureau of Statistics (2014) showedthat the proportion of national ﬁnancial education
expenditure in GDP increased from 2.46% in 1993
to 4.16% in 2012. The rise is related to the increasein proportion of state revenue in GDP which rosefrom 19.15% in 2007 to 21.95% in 2012. We can seethat education is an important input area in public
ﬁnance. Nevertheless, we have to point out thatthe proportion is still very low compared with other countries. In 2011, the OECD average national
ﬁnancial education expenditure accounts for 6.1%
of GDP.

Primary VS Secondary VS Tertiary Education
From 2007 to 2011, primary education was the mainarea of national education input, and secondary
education and higher education equally shared
the rest. It is related to nine-year compulsory
education in China. Besides, what needs to be
pointed out is that input of pre-school education
is greatly increased in realization of the 4%. From2008 to 2012, as Du Yubo (2014) pointed out, theincrease of ﬁnancial input of pre-school educationis the fastest, with a growth rate of 49%. It is
directly related to the development target andhuge development requirements of pre-school
education proposed in 2010.
Rural VS Urban, Eastern Region VS Middle andWestern Regions
Rural area is a main region of the national
education input. From 2007 to 2011, the ratio of
education expenditure in rural as well as urban
areas is basically kept at 3:2. According to Du

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71

Yubo (2014), no matter in rural or urban areas,no matter compulsory education or secondary
vocational education, free school has become areality up to 2014. What’s more, more than a halfof resident students of compulsory education in
the rural areas in middle and western regions canenjoy free accommodation, living supplement andsubsistence allowance.
Central Government VS Local Government
Local government takes the main responsibilityof China’s education input. The National Bureauof Statistics (2014) shows that the education
input proportion of local government at all levels
accounted for 94.56% in 2009 and rose to 94.97%
in 2013. It is related to the education strategy
of realization of 4%. In Opinion on Further
Increasing Input of Financial Education issued
by State Council (2011), it details the indicatorsand clariﬁes the government responsibilities,emphasizing that local government carries themain responsibilities, usage and management.
What’s more, it established a new incentive
system, awarded good implementers as wellas punished poor implementers. But what must
be clariﬁed is that because of the economicand educational development levels, the scale
and areas of education input between diﬀerent
regions still has a big gap, for example, between
Shanghai and Guizhou.
It is noteworthy that the realization of the 4% has
depended on three important reasons, namely,
policy, national ﬁnance and eﬀorts of local
governments. The increase of total expenditure
input is a direct reason for realizing the 4%.
In order to reach this 4%, strategies such as
quantiﬁying targets, distributing responsibilities,
broadening ﬁnancial resources and establishingrewards and punishment system were applied.
And the primary education, rural education andeducation in middle and western regions were themain areas of education input. Local government
carried the main responsibility for education input.
Although 4% has been realized, China’s education
input still falls behind other countries and needs
further enhancement. The Ministry of Education
proposes that the 4% will be mainly used as aguaranteed basis, to supplement shortcoming andto facilitate fairness, which are to provide basic
public education service in the future. However,after the era of the 4%, optimization of education
input structure, realization of reasonableclassiﬁcation, and the sharing mechanisms will be
developed.
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References
State Council (2011). Opinion on Further Increasing
Input of Financial Education [EB/OL]. http://www.
gov.cn/zwgk/2011-07/01/content_1897763.htm
Du Yubo (2014). To Spend Education Expenditure
on Where it is Required Most [EB/OL] http://www.
moe.gov.cn/publicﬁles/business/htmlﬁles/moe/
moe_176/201402/164144.html
National Bureau of Statistics (2014). China
Statistical Yearbook. Beijing: National Bureau of
Statistics Publishing.
OECD (2014). Education at a Glance. Paris: OECD
Publishing.

National Policy on Education: Issues in Financing of Higher
Education
Jandhyala B G Tilak, National University of Educational Planning and
Administration, New Delhi
Email: jtilak@nuepa.org

Key words: Public good, externalities, India, higher
education, ﬁnancing, UGC, Private Universities,% of GDP, Student fee, Student loan, National
Knowledge Commission, Yashpal Committee,
National Policy on Education.
Summary: In the overall context of discussion on
formulating a new education policy in India, theneed to clearly articulate the issues in ﬁnancing of
education is highlighted. The critical importanceof public ﬁnancing of education is also stressed.
The government has to make a ﬁrm commitment
to funding education.

repeatedly reiterated that we should spend at
least six per cent of GDP on education, as statedin the 1968 National Policy on Education, and 1.5
per cent on higher education, as recommended by
the Committee on Financing of Higher Educationof the Central Advisory Board of Education in2005. While there is need to revisit these targets,these may be viewed as minimum targets forthe immediate future. These resources need to
ﬂow out of general and speciﬁc tax and non-tax
revenues of the government (at central and statelevels). Presently, however, less than about four
per cent of GDP is allocated to education.

The ﬁrst national policy on education wasformulated in 1968, 18 years after development
planning in independent India was launched. It
was exactly 18 years later again that the second
national policy on education was formulated
in 1986, which was then marginally revised in
1992. During the last few years, the need foranother national policy on education has become
increasingly felt, given the signiﬁcantly changing
landscape in all spheres of development, and in
the education sector in particular.

There should be a proper sharing of responsibilities
in funding higher education in India between theunion (central) and state governments. Whilethe central government, directly or indirectly
through the university grants commission (UGC),
fully funds the central universities, only thedevelopment expenditure of state universities
and colleges is funded by the union government.
Recent commissions / committees (e.g. National
Knowledge Commission, Yashpal Committee)
have suggested that the union government shouldfund state universities and colleges as well,beyond only covering development expenditure.

In the absence of any new policy, during the last
couple of decades changes in the education
sector were introduced with executive orders
and uncoordinated initiatives. Immediately
after coming to power, the current government
indicated that it would come out with a newnational policy on education.
This short note focuses on higher education, andespecially on the ﬁnancing of higher education.
Higher education is widely acknowledged
as an important public good, and as a social
responsibility. Because of its direct relationshipwith development, and more importantly theexternalities it produces, state funding of higher
education assumes critical importance. It isnecessary that the state makes a ﬁrm commitment
to the funding of higher education. It has been

The higher education sector needs to beadequately funded, keeping in view the goals
relating to expansion, improvement in access ofmarginalised groups, the improvement in quality
to an acceptable level, and the achievementof excellence in a large number of selected
institutions. Before expanding further the higher
education system with new universities andcolleges, it is necessary to ensure that the existing
institutions are reasonably well developed and are
put on a sound ﬁnancial footing. Like the ‘operation
blackboard programme’,1 the government may
need to launch a similar programme to ensure
investment in essential basic infrastructure
1 ‘Operation Blackboard’ outlined in the 1986 National Policy
on Education, and commenced in 1987, aimed to upgrade
physical facilities in primary schools across the country

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facilities in all institutions of higher education.
To promote quality and excellence, substantial
resources need to be allocated to promoteresearch in all universities and other institutionsof higher education. Reasonable proportions ofbudgetary allocation to higher education need tobe committed to research and also to scholarships
to promote equity and merit. The ﬂow of funds tothe higher education institutions needs to respondto the varying needs of diﬀerent institutions on the
one hand, and the performance of the institutions
on the other.
A related issue that one has to examine is:whether it is justiﬁed to allocate public funds
to private universities and colleges, which aredeﬁned otherwise as ‘self-ﬁnancing’ and aretreating education as a ‘business’, as the Yash
Pal Committee (2009) observed rightly. The
issue becomes particularly important as state
resources are not enough to adequately ﬁnanceeven the public institutions of higher education. So
ﬁnancing of private institutions may mean ‘publicpauperization and private enrichment’ (Panikkar
et al., 2011).
Since higher education produces a wide set ofsocial beneﬁts to the whole society, there isno justiﬁcation to expect the higher education
institutions to signiﬁcantly rely only upon student
fees. Earlier committees constituted by the UGC
and the All-India Council for Technical Education
have suggested allowing these institutions
to generate about 20 per cent of their budget
requirements through student fees and othersources. A Committee of the Central Advisory
Board for Education (2005) has suggested that
this 20 per cent may be seen as an upper limit sothat equity considerations of higher education are
not traded oﬀ.
Similarly, while student loans are becoming
increasingly popular, these also cannot be seen asa reliable method of ﬁnancing higher education ona large scale. The adverse eﬀects of student loans
on students’ attitudes and approach towards
higher education and the values that theseloans impart, besides its accentuating role incommercialization of higher education, need to becarefully examined before further expanding loan
programmes.
Strong higher education systems are created insome developed countries with liberal fundingby the state and equally liberal funding by thesociety at large, speciﬁcally through donations

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and endowments from the corporate sector andindividuals, including alumni. In some of thesecountries, student contributions in terms of fees
constitute a relatively minor source of overall
funds. It is necessary to develop a framework in
India that promotes this missing source of funds– the non-state and non-student sector. Besides
trying to link some of the provisions of the
Corporate Social Responsibility Act speciﬁcally tothe higher education sector, innovative measures
to promote individual and corporate donations
and endowments to higher education need to befound. A proper system of matching grants tohigher education institutions needs to be put inplace.
Lastly, at least a 10-20 year plan of funding of
higher education that corresponds to a longterm plan of higher education development in
the country needs to be produced, based on
sound principles of ﬁnancing of higher education.
Such a plan should assure the higher education
institutions of a steady ﬂow of funds for a 10-20
year period, with suﬃcient provision for rewards
and punitive action. This might also require thatevery institution prepares a sound, feasible
long term plan for development. Perhaps the
new national policy on education will give someattention to this.

References
Yash Pal Committee (2009) Report of ‘The
Committee to Advise on Renovation andRejuvenation of Higher Education’. http://www.
academics-india.com/yashpal-committee-report.
pdf
Panikkar, K., Joseph, T., Geetha, G. and Lal, M.
(2011) Quality, Access and Social Justice in Higher
Education. Pearson.

The Funding of Higher Education through an Export Industry
Richard James, University of Melbourne
Email: r.james@unimelb.edu.au

Key words: Internationalisation, tuition fees,
Asian higher education, higher education markets,
higher education funding.

and universities anxious to generate new revenue
streams and you have the recipe for a thrivingalignment of demand and supply.

Summary: Australia has built quite a remarkable
export industry in higher education in the Asian
region and is now seeking to achieve sustainability
through new markets in other regions of the globe.

Australia’s international students were once
welcomed on quite diﬀerent terms. TheinternationalisationofAustralianhighereducation began in the 1950s under the Colombo
Plan, with sponsored students from developing
countries taught through an Australian aid
program. Presently however, international
students are, in the main, full fee-paying students,
unsubsidised by Australia, and universities arefree to set their own prices according to what themarket will bear. For domestic students, higher
education fees are regulated by the government
and are typically only 25-35% of the fees paidby international students. Clearly therefore
international students are ﬁnancially attractive
for Australian universities (even though their
recruitment, admission, teaching and support are
most costly than for domestic students) and their
fee revenue supports other university operations.
International students provide discretional
income and the viability of some universities
is dependent on their success in maintaining
international student enrolments.

If the inward ﬂow of international students
is an acceptable if blunt measure of theinternationalisation of national higher education
systems, then Australia is one of the world leaders
on a per capita basis. Around one quarter of thestudents in Australian higher education are fromoverseas. In some universities and courses this
proportion is much higher. Most of the teaching
and learning is undertaken onshore in Australia,
though there is some oﬀshore provision,
principally in Asia, where some universities havesatellite campuses.
Many Australians are probably unaware that
education is now one of the nation’s major
exports. When expenditure for tuition fees,
accommodation, food and daily living is factored in- including for international students undertaking
senior secondary schooling in Australia withthe objective of gaining entry to an Australian
university - education ranks as Australia’s thirdlargest export industry, surpassed only by the
extractive industries of coal and iron ore mining.
Australia’s success in internationalisation ispartly due to a lucky alignment: a Western-stylehigher education system located in Asia among
nations with under-developed university systems
yet growing demand, tuition in English, a strong,high quality university sector - one with soundquality assurance arrangements - and a generally
safe, multicultural environment. Add to this thefavourable national policies that have supported
uniﬁed national marketing, the inducement of theprospect of permanent residence for graduates,

International students are not only about revenueof course. International students bring vibrancy tocampuses and programs and assist all students
to be globally aware and culturally sensitive.
They also help Australia build strong, trusted
relationships with its neighbouring countries as
we enter the Asian century. International students
enrich Australian higher education. Despite this,Australia’s international education industry is the
subject of regular concern and occasional burstsof strident criticism. The integration on campus
of international and domestic students is notalways as eﬀective as it could, and should, be.
Worryingly, some international students struggle
due to inadequate incomes, unsatisfactory
accommodation and poor support networks.
The most recent public criticisms of the

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international education industry have beenof academic standards, with claims of dodgy
recruitment practices by overseas agencies, theforging of educational records, soft marking andmanagement pressures to pass international
students with sub-par knowledge and skills. The
actual extent of such problems is not clear.
A signiﬁcant disruption to the market dynamics
may be imminent. First, the source markets are
shifting. The largest number of international
students are presently from China. Anticipatedgrowth in the Indian market has not happened,
partly due to unfortunate incidents some years
ago in which Indian students were subjected toviolence. Australian institutions are increasingly
looking to South American nations as newmarkets, assuming rising middle-class incomes
and increasing public demand for higher educationthat cannot be met by existing national systems.
Second, the Australian government is committed
to deregulating domestic undergraduate pricing,though this policy direction is highly contested andhas been rejected in the upper house of parliament.
Domestic deregulation would almost certainly
push up fees overall, in the leading universities
perhaps markedly so. Higher fees for domestic
students would reduce the favourable margin thatis presently achieved with international students.
The market behaviours of Australian universities
would certainly change signiﬁcantly.

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The Power of Tax: The Case of Education
David Archer, ActionAid, London
Email: david.archer@actionaid.org

Key words: tax, ﬁnancing, revenue.
Summary: If we are serious about expanding
sustainable ﬁnancing for education we need tofocus less on external aid and more on domestic
resource mobilisation, particularly tax justice.
Unless tax-to-GDP ratios rise, governments will
struggle to ﬁnance comprehensive education
systems. A lot can be done to end harmful tax
incentives, stop aggressive tax avoidance, outlaw
over-invoicing and increase progressive revenue
collection.

Introduction
For a long time education advocates havefocused on securing more aid for education – yet,in practice, aid to basic education is declining
and remains unpredictable. So, increasingly
advocates have focused also on sustainableﬁnancing of education through domestic resource
mobilisation, arguing for a greater share of national
budgets to be invested in education. Popularisingbenchmarks of 20% of national budgets and 6%
of GDP has had some success in leveraging newcommitments and these found their way into thedeclaration of the World Education Conference inIncheon (UNESCO, 2015). However a fair share ofa small overall budget is still small – and this has
led a new generation of education campaigners
to look more seriously at the overall size of thegovernment budget and to argue that we need to
pay attention to the power of tax.
Piketty and Tax to GDP Ratios
In 2014, the Education for All Global Monitoring
Report (UNESCO, 2014) did some important work
looking at tax to GDP ratios, observing that, “amodest increase in tax-raising eﬀorts, combinedwith growth in the share of government budgets
allocated to education, could help raise education
spending by US$153 billion by 2015 in 67 countries,
a 72% increase from 2011 levels.” This is 100 times

more than the total amount of global aid that
goes to support basic education in Africa. Basedon these calculations, Rwanda, which has a tax
to GDP ratio of just 12.8%, could have increased
spending per primary school child by 75% by 2015.
Meanwhile Uganda, with a present tax to GDP
ratio of 12.5%, could have increased spending by
50% over the same period. This is the scale ofincreased investment that can make a real difference, enabling all children to be in school andlearning.
Piketty (2014), in his book Capital in the TwentyFirst Century, highlights the importance of thesetax to GDP ratios. He charts the evolution of thestate from what he calls the “regalian state” ofthe 19th century to what he terms the “social
state” of the 20th century. If your share of taxes
in national income is only 8% (as was the case inEurope in the 19th century) government can only
credibly perform “regalian functions”, ﬁnancing“police, courts, army, foreign aﬀairs, generaladministration etc.” Today GDP to tax ratios
are much higher and this is normalised in richer
countries at over 30% (for example: U.S. 30%,
UK 40%, Germany 45%, France 50% and Sweden55%) enabling a social state to emerge that takes
responsibility for universal education, health,pensions and social protection etc. If we look in
detail at a cross section of low and middle income
countries in each continent we see some startling
patterns in the 2012 data on tax to GDP ratios (seeWikipedia). The emerging economies – Turkey,
South Africa, Brazil and Mexico all have ratios
around 20% to 30%. The lower income countries
with some of the biggest development challenges
have ratios of 10% to 20% and there are someshocking outliers of states such as Afghanistan,
Haiti and Bangladesh with ratios of under 10%.
When we look at these data it becomes abundantly clear that the struggle to universalise access toquality education must go hand in hand with thestruggle to expand the tax base. It is unrealistic
to build a social state in Piketty’s terms without
attention being paid to this critical element of the

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tax base. Fortunately there are some simple ways
in which countries can expand their tax base in a
progressive way.
Ending harmful tax incentives
One simple way to dramatically increase tax
revenues is to stop giving away unnecessary
tax incentives and holidays to multi-national
companies. ActionAid (2013a) estimates that $138
billion annually is given away unnecessarily inharmful tax incentives to multinational companies
by developing countries. These are incentives
given to attract investment but in most cases the
incentives are a long way down the list of factorsthat make a company invest in a particular country.
Companies will do what they can to push for a tax
break, but not receiving a tax break is very rarely adeal-breaker for them. Yet in much of sub-SaharanAfrica, these tax exemptions can amount to theequivalent of 5% of GDP. If these incentives were
stopped you could ﬁll the global ﬁnancing gap on
education within three months.
The Education for All Global Monitoring Report(UNESCO, 2014) calculates that if Ethiopia
eliminated tax exemptions and devoted 10% of
the resulting revenue to basic education, then it
would have “an additional US$133 million available,enough to get approximately 1.4 million morechildren into school”.
In a similar way, governments also lose valuable
revenue by selling natural resource concessions
for much less than their true value. The EFA GMR(UNESCO, 2014) notes “The Democratic Republicof the Congo incurred losses of US$1.36 billion
from its deals with ﬁve mining companies between 2010 and 2012. This is the same amount as
allocated to the education sector over two years
between 2010 and 2011”.
Challenging aggressive tax avoidance
Another key way to increase tax revenue is tochallenge aggressive tax avoidance. ActionAid’s
report “Sweet Nothings” on Associated British
Foods in Zambia (ActionAid, 2013b) showed that
aggressive tax avoidance by just one company
deprived the Zambian government of fundingthat could have provided primary education for
48,000 children. In another expose, “Calling Time”
ActionAid (2010) showed that a woman sellingbeer outside the largest SAB Miller brewery in

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Ghana paid more tax than the entire brewery andin fact paid more tax than the entire company did,
not only in Ghana but across the whole of Africa.
In Tanzania, the Global Campaign for Education’s(2013) “A Taxing Business” report observed thatthe amount lost to tax dodging by big companies
could pay for the training of all Tanzania’s untrained
primary school teachers, as well as training andsalaries for more than 70,000 additional teachers,building 97,000 new classrooms, and ensuring
every primary school-aged child has a reading andmathematics text book.
Exposing over-invoicing
One way of avoiding tax is by “over-invoicing”(Neate, 2014). A recent study commissioned by
the Danish trade minister showed that “morethan $60bn has been illegally moved in and out of
Uganda, Ghana, Mozambique, Kenya and Tanzania
over 10 years, with most of it passing throughtax havens”. Over-invoicing basically means thatimporters pretend to pay more for goods than they
actually pay and the extra money is slipped into
oﬀshore bank accounts: “In one notable case an
American company invoiced for plastic buckets at$972 each”. It is through scams like this that much
more money ﬂoods out of Africa than arrives in aid– depriving governments of the revenue needed toinvest in education.
Increasing revenue raising capacity
All of these practices could be challenged if
developing country governments had stronger
revenue authorities with technical expertise tostrengthen tax systems, close tax loopholes andcombat corporate tax avoidance. This would be
one of the best and most sustainable uses of aid.
One study quoted by EFA GMR (UNESCO, 2014)
showed that for every $1 spent in aid to support
tax systems, $350 in tax revenue was raised.
Unfortunately under 0.1% of aid is presently spent
on supporting tax systems.
Conclusion
In the coming months there will be new estimatesof the overall ﬁnancing gap for achieving progresson globally agreed education goals and targets.
Attention will be placed on a single headline
ﬁgure for what external aid is needed to ensure

all countries achieve progress. These calculations
will almost certainly not have looked at alternativeand more sustainable ways of raising thisfunding - through coordinated action on tax
justice. In some countries national tax justicecampaigns have already emerged and under theumbrella of the Global Alliance for Tax Justice(www.globaltaxjustice.org) more broad based
campaigns are emerging. In the coming years,
education advocates need to be making common
cause with such tax justice campaigners - because
expanding the tax base is the most realistic meansof securing sizeable increases in ﬁnancing for
education.

Wikipedia. List of Countries by Tax Revenue as
Percentage of GDP. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
List_of_countries_by_tax_revenue_as_percentage_
of_GDP

References
ActionAid (2013a) Tax Incentives Cost $138
Billion…? http://www.actionaid.org/2013/07/taxincentives-cost-138-billion
ActionAid (2013b) Sweet Nothings. http://www.
actionaid.org.uk/sweet-nothings
ActionAid (2010) Calling Time: Why SAB Miller
Should Stop Dodging Taxes in Africa. http://www.
actionaid.org.uk/sites/default/files/doc_lib/
calling_time_on_tax_avoidance.pdf
Global Campaign for Education (2013) A
Taxing Business: Financing Education For All
Through Domestic Resources. http://www.
campaignforeducation.org/docs/reports/GCE_A
TAXING BUSINESS.pdf
Neate, R. (2014) African Invoice Fraud Hampers
Development of Poorest Nations. http://www.
theguardian.com/world/2014/may/11/africaninvoice-fraud-tax-havens-development
Piketty, T. (2014) Capital in the Twenty-First
Century. Belknap Press
UNESCO (2015) Incheon Declaration. World
Education Forum 2015. https://en.unesco.org/
world-education-forum-2015/incheon-declaration
UNESCO (2014) Increasing Tax Revenues to
Bridge the Education Financing Gap. Education
for All Global Monitoring Report, Policy Paper
12.
UNESCO
http://unesdoc.unesco.org/
images/0022/002270/227092E.pdf

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80

NORRAGNEWS 52

THE CHALLENGE OF THE
PRIVATE, NON-STATE AND
INNOVATIVE FINANCINGROUTES

81

Financing the Post-2015 Agenda: the Scope for Social Impact
Investments
Homi Kharas, Brookings, Washington, DC
Email: hkharas@brookings.edu

Key words: post-2015, social impact, impact
investing, ﬁnancing for development, education
ﬁnance.
Summary: Reaching the sustainable development
goals will require integrated approaches toeconomic, social and environmental issues.
Impact investing is an innovative way for businessto contribute in such an integrated way that shows
great potential for growth although signiﬁcantobstacles to the industry remain.

A deliberately open and inclusive goal-setting
process has led to a set of proposed sustainable
development goals (SDGs) that are ambitious
in scope and universal in applicability. The goals
reﬂect a ramp-up in both breadth and depth.
No estimates have been agreed on for speciﬁc
ﬁnancing requirements, but the scale is implicitin the joint report by multilateral developmentbanks to the Development Committee in April
2015: “From billions to trillions: transforming
development ﬁnance” (World Bank – IMF,
2015). The post-2015 agenda is a “beyond-aid”
agenda that calls for everyone to contribute. In
today’s constrained and unpredictable ﬁnancing
environment, non-traditional funding sources likesocial impact investing can be an important part of
the response.
Social impact investing is deﬁned as investing forthe purpose of social and environmental impact aswell as ﬁnancial returns. It actively seeks to havea positive impact on society. All businesses that
seek to contribute to the SDGs through an integrated approach will have the characteristics ofsocial impact investors. Because impact investingmandates a ﬁnancial return on investment (and at
least seeks the protection of the principal) it canbe a powerful self-sustaining ﬁnancing streamthat presents an attractive alternative to grants
and philanthropy for public and private donors.
Impact investing is a rapidly growing industry.
Impact investment funds had a total of $46
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billion in assets under management in 2013 anda year-over-year increase of nearly 20% (JPMorgan, 2014). It could be poised for a break-out
in terms of volume expansion. Impact investing
was targeted by the G8 as a major opportunity,
and the synthesis report by the chair—the United
Kingdom—documents how a few reforms could
lead to rapid development of the industry (Social
Impact Investment Taskforce, 2014). Most impact
investments are in developed countries and thepotential for social impact investing to contributeto the SDGs may well be felt ﬁrst in developed
countries. But there is also scope in developing
countries; by some estimates, an estimated$1 billion was allocated to education in developing
countries.
Impact investing is facing two hurdles: (i) provenbusiness models that investors feel comfortableto support; and (ii) the removal of regulatory impediments that were often designed for diﬀerent
times.
There are ever-more examples of successful
business models. In education, private schoolingmodels like Bridge International Academies in
Kenya and the Beaconhouse School System
in Pakistan show that socially and ﬁnanciallysustainable models are possible and can be scaled
up far more rapidly than alternatives based on
grants, or those that rely on government service
provision. Many governments in developing
countries do not have the money or administrative
capacity to expand education rapidly. In thesecircumstances, impact investing has the mostpotential.
Who invests in impact investing companies?
Bridge boasts investors including the Omidyar
Network, OPIC and Bill Gates, but they are also
attracting investors, especially high net-worth
individuals, interested in pure ﬁnancial returns.1
One of Beaconhouse’s ﬁrst campuses was

1 http://www.bridgeinternationalacademies.com/company/
investors/

ﬁnanced by the International Finance Corporation,
the World Bank’s private investing arm. Impact
investing often provides an opportunity forinvestors to diversify risk as companies servea diﬀerent market segment—one that targets
low-income households for example—so impact
investments can still be valuable in a portfolio as
the lower expected ﬁnancial returns can be oﬀset
by lower risk.
Impact investors report that the most diﬃcult
ﬁnancing to mobilize is between the “innovation”
and the “scaling-up” phases. They can getphilanthropies or small grants for the initial
innovation, and can tap capital markets whenthe “proof of concept” is complete and there
is a suﬃcient track record of ﬁnancial returns
for investors to review, but they need patient
capital for the in-between phase. This is also theconclusion of the U.K. synthesis report on impact
investing.
One obstacle for impact investors in social
sectors like education or health surrounds thefees that can be charged for services provided.
Impact investors need an income stream andcharge parents and families; Bridge, for instance,
currently charges $6 a month per student. But insome countries there is strong opposition; indeed
the SDGs suggest that primary and secondary
education be free, something that would destroy
impact investing in the sector unless alternatives,
like Chile’s government voucher system, are put inplace.

more to the achievement of the SDGs, it isnatural to expect that social impact investing
will be an attractive option for investors seeking
to align themselves with the post-2015 agenda.

References
JP Morgan (2014) Spotlight on the Market. The
Impact Investor Survey. http://www.thegiin.
org/binary-data/2014MarketSpotlight.PDF
Social Impact Investment Taskforce (2014)
Impact Investment: The Invisible Heart ofMarkets. http://www.socialimpactinvestment.
org/reports/Impact%20Investment%20
Report%20FINAL%5b3%5d.pdf
World Bank – IMF (2015) From Billions to
Trillions: Transforming Development Finance.
Post-2015 Financing for Development:
Multilateral Development Finance. http://siteresources.worldbank.org/DEVCOMMINT/
Documentation/23659446/DC20150002%28E%29FinancingforDevelopment.pdf

Impact investing is also hampered by legal andregulatory impediments. In some countries, like
Egypt, ﬁrms may be classiﬁed as non-proﬁt or
for-proﬁt but not in-between. Other countries,
like the U.S. and the U.K. have allowed forhybrid legal forms that are more suitable for
impact investment. Similarly, in some countries,
institutional asset managers (such as charitablefoundation or pension fund trustees) have aﬁduciary responsibility to maximize ﬁnancial
return. The intentionality of impact investors to
pursue objectives other than proﬁt could deter
fund managers from including impact investments
as part of their portfolio.
The sustainable development goals provide an
opportunity for countries to measure how they
are faring on a range of social, environmental andeconomic targets. Impact investors measure how
companies are contributing to similar objectives.
With companies being called upon to contribute

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Transnational Venture Capital and the Rise of‘Low-Fee’ Private Schools:
The Case of Pearson and Omega Schools in Ghana
Curtis Riep, University of Alberta
Email: curtis.riep@gmail.com
Key words: transnational corporations, venture
capital, low-cost private schools, Pearson
Aﬀordable Learning Fund, education ﬁnancing

basic education in a cost-eﬀective manner, and (2)develop new markets and sources of proﬁtability
in the low-cost private school sector.

Summary: Transnational corporations are
considered by some to be part of the global‘solution’ to education ﬁnancing in the post2015 context. This article critically examines
the education corporation, Pearson, and its
investment in Omega Schools - a chain of ‘lowcost’ private for-proﬁt schools in Ghana.

PALF makes strategic investments in ‘optimal
markets’ where conditions are conducive to
growth and returns on investment. Beyond
partnering with local ‘edu-preneurs’ who exhibit
the capacity to deliver low-cost and ‘innovative’solutions, Pearson targets contexts where theregulatory environment is more ‘open’ to private
sector participation and proﬁt-seeking and wherea suﬃcient number of prospective customers
exist who can ﬁnancially sustain the for-proﬁt
enterprise.

As global ﬁnancing of education continues to fallshort and demand for access and skills continues
to grow, private corporations have emerged as new
ﬁnanciers, investors, partners, and providers ofeducation. Pearson plc, the self-acclaimed ‘world’s
leading learning company’, is a case in point. This
brief article will review the Pearson Aﬀordable
Learning Fund (PALF): a commercial investment
fund established in 2012 by Pearson that makes
private equity investments in for-proﬁt companies
providing ‘low-fee’ private schooling throughout
Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Here the focus ison Pearson’s investments in the Omega Schools’
Franchise in Ghana.
Pearson describes PALF as ‘a for-proﬁt venture
fund, in response to the vital market opportunityand government need for low-cost private
education in the developing world’ (PALF website).
Pearson launched PALF with $15 million of initial
capital and in January 2015 it was announced an
additional $50 million would be invested over the
next three years, bringing the Fund’s total assets
under management to $80 million (PALF website).
By 2020, Pearson expects PALF’s investments to
help provide ‘millions of the poorest children in theworld with a quality education, in a cost-eﬀective,
proﬁtable and scalable manner’ (PALF website).
PALF, therefore, has two primary objectives:(1) demonstrate to governments, donors, andinvestors that private equity investments in chainsof low-cost private schools can help universalize

In 2012, PALF became a private equity investorand shareholder (at an undisclosed amount) in
the Omega Schools’ Franchise in Ghana. In Ghana,
low-cost private schools can be registered as forproﬁt institutions, which is not a common practicein other ‘developing’ countries. By 2014, Pearson’s
investments helped Omega expand to 40 proﬁtgenerating schools with more than 20,000 feepaying students.
Omega Schools operate on a ‘Pay As You Learn’system whereby student/customers pay GHS 1.50
(about US$0.65) per day for classroom services.
Income generated from daily tuition fees to cover
the operational costs of each school, including
teacher salaries and other material inputs, while
also turning up a surplus. Proﬁts are then used
to ﬁnance the construction of new schools in
the franchise and/or provide capital return tocompany shareholders. Pearson’s commercial
investments in Omega Schools are therefore
expected to produce market-returns as a result of
proﬁts accumulated from user fees. Pearson sets‘market-based returns as conditions of continued
investment’ (‘Pearson makes new investments’,2015). As a result, the ﬁnancial sustainability of
Omega Schools is precarious since continued
investment by Pearson is conditional upon marketbased returns.
In order to increase proﬁt-margins, chains of low-84

NORRAGNEWS 52

cost private schools like Omega can beneﬁt from
economies of scale by producing high volumes ofservices, at very low cost. However, Omega’s main
source of cost-cutting has come as a result of the
exploitation of teachers’ labour. Since the company
hires unqualiﬁed ‘teachers’ without professional
teacher training or accreditation who are paid afraction of what qualiﬁed teachers in the public
sector make in Ghana (that is, 15-20% or roughly$3 per day). While this cost-cutting (or ‘costeﬀective’) practice is advertised as a strategy for
reducing fees to a level that are intended to makeOmega Schools ‘low-fee’ and ‘aﬀordable’ options
for the most economically disadvantaged pupils in
Ghana, in reality, this is not the case.
User fees charged by Omega suggest that low- tolowest-income households in Ghana would haveto expend 25-40% of their annual householdincome to access these services. Fee-paying
private schools like Omega are more an elective
for those who can already aﬀord to pay rather
than be a method for extending access to themost marginalized. In a sample of 437 pupils taken
across four diﬀerent Omega Schools, only 1 out of
437 students questioned had not been enrolled
in classes at another school prior to Omega (Riep2014). This ﬁnding refutes any suggestion that
Omega Schools are signiﬁcantly extending initialaccess to basic education through its provision of‘low-fee’ private education.
The joint venture between Pearson and Omega
Schools represents a ‘bottom of the economic
pyramid’ scheme (Prahalad, 2005) — that is, acapital accumulation strategy to develop newmarkets and sources of proﬁtability by selling
low-cost private education services to the world’s‘poor’. Omega plans to grow to more than 200
for-proﬁt institutions in the next few years, while
extending its services beyond Ghana and into
other West African markets. With 500 fee-paying
students in each school, Omega’s shareholders,
including Pearson, will proﬁt largely from thesale of basic education services to low and lower
middle income communities in West Africa.

initiate a similar chain of schools in Sierra Leone.
And in 2013, the UK government’s Department
for International Development (DFID) provided
a ﬁnancial grant to Omega Schools as well. But
as the international community of concerned
governments and donors seek out new sources
and recipients of education ﬁnancing, private
enterprises that aim to develop ‘low-fee’, yet
for-proﬁt, education services for the mostvulnerable must be carefully and criticallyinterrogated to determine who really ‘wins’ and‘loses’ as a result. The case of Pearson’s joint
venture with Omega Schools demonstrates
that commercial investments and for-proﬁt
edu-businesses are driven more by their own
bottom line than by developing innovativemodels of education.

References
Pearson makes new investments to improvelearning outcomes in the developing world.
(2015, January 20). Retrieved from https://www.
pearson.com/news/announcements/2015/january/pearson-makes-new-investments-to-improve-learning-outcomes-in-de.html
Prahalad, C.K. (2005). The fortune at the bottomof the pyramid – eradicating poverty throughproﬁts. Upper Saddle River: Wharton School
Publishing.
Riep, C.B. (2014). Omega Schools Franchise in
Ghana: ‘Aﬀordable’ private education for thepoor or for-proﬁteering? In I. Macpherson,
S. Robertson & G. Walford (Eds.), Education,
Privatization, and Social Justice: Case studies
from Africa, South Asia, and South East Asia
(pp. 259-277). Oxford: Symposium Books.

Private sector participation and private
corporations are considered part of the global‘solution’ to education ﬁnancing in the post-2015
context. Chains of so-called ‘low-fee’ private
schools like Omega have gained increased levels
of international policy focus and advocacy,
considered to be cost-eﬀective panaceas foruniversalizing basic education. In 2011, Omega
received a $250,000 grant from Google.org to

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85

Low-Fee Private Schools in Peru
María Balarin, Group for the Analysis of Development (GRADE), Lima
Email: mariabalarin@gmail.com

Key words: Default privatization, low-fee private
schools, regulation, educational segregation,
citizenship
Summary: Low fee private schools are a growing
phenomenon in many low and middle-income
countries. This article looks at the rise of low-fee
private schools in Peru.

Low fee private schools are a growing phenomenon
in many low and middle-income countries. Theiremergence usually takes place in the context ofdefault privatization processes which, thoughoften aided by generous legislation, are not the
product of government design but a more bottomup response to the unavailability or perceived
inadequacy of public education services,
especially in such countries’ poorest areas.
Hailed by some as an area of hope and greater
opportunities for the poor (Tooley and Dixon
2005a, b), questions have been raised about theregulatory environments in which low-fee private
schools operate, and about the extent to whichsuch schools might be trading on the dreams andhopes of the poor without really oﬀering much inexchange (Robertson and Dale 2013).
A case study of default privatization and of therise of low-fee private schools in Peru provides
insights into the complexities of this sub-sector
of private education (Balarin 2015). Peruvian lowfee private schools have emerged, en masse, inthe past decade against the backdrop of a legal
decree passed in 1998, which sought to promoteprivate investment in education by reducing
legislative constraints for opening private schools,
allowing private schools to operate for-proﬁt andoﬀering generous tax credits to investors. This led
to a surge in the supply of private schools, which
since 2004, when the country entered a decade ofstrong and steady economic growth, has been met
with an equally important growth in demand for
private schooling. Private school enrollments havegone from 13 percent in 1998 to 26 percent in 2014.
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In the city of Lima, which holds almost one thirdof the country’s population and approximately
half of all enrolments in basic education, private
school enrollments are now at 50 percent, up from
29 percent in 2004 (Cuenca 2013). Evidence showsthat the trend is well established in most major
cities in the country.
In Peru, the growth of private education has
taken place in the context of a process ofdecentralization, through which executive
capacities have been devolved to newly createdregional administrations whose administrative
capacities are still weak. In this process, regulatory
functions with regard to private schools havealmost disappeared. Licenses for new schools are
granted by local authorities which do not perform
any regular supervisory role with regard to private
schools, nor collect any regular data that could
facilitate their regulation or the development ofknowledge about this growing school sector.
Evidence from other studies shows that Peru
is one of the Latin American countries withthe greatest degree of school segregation andwhere, consequently, students’ socio-economic
characteristics are most strongly correlated with
their educational achievement (Benavides, León,and Etesse 2014). Research also shows that theschool system is deeply stratiﬁed, with schools
catering for very distinct populations on thebasis of their residential location and purchasing
capacity. These trends are marked in both the
public and private sectors, but the range ofstratiﬁcation is greater in the latter, where supply
is often beyond the reach of the state’s regulatory
control.
Poor families who choose to send their children
to low-fee private schools navigate the school
market with no public funding and very little
information to enable and support their choices.
Driven less by an ideological preference for theprivate, or by the status concerns that often drive
the choices of middle and upper class families,
poor families’ choice of private schools derives

from very practical concerns about service
availability in their areas, student-teacher ratios
and the lower risk of sending their children toa small school near their home where they cankeep an eye on them. Families are also concerned
about the quality of teaching and learning, but
their parameters for judging quality are often
weak or even misguided. It is when faced withproblems such as their inability to pay or the lackof responsiveness from schools that are often
run as family businesses - employing unqualiﬁed
staﬀ or incurring inadequate practices - thatfamilies realize the potential (or real) implicationsof sending their children to a low-fee school: thelikelihood of their children having to interrupt theirschooling trajectories and the lack of protection
from inadequate or abusive practices.

Robertson, S, and R Dale. (2013) “The social
justice implications of privatisation in education
governance frameworks: a relational account.”
Oxford Review of Education 39 (4):426-445.
Tooley, James, and Pauline Dixon. (2005a). “Is
private education good for the poor.” Cato
Institute, Washington DC.
Tooley, James, and Pauline Dixon. (2005b). Private
education is good for the poor: A study of private
schools serving the poor in low-income countries:
Cato Institute, Washington DC.

That their choice of school will provide theirchildren with the opportunities these families
hope for seems unlikely in a context where low
fee private schools operate under such loose
regulation and standards. Such a claim has further
support from the Peruvian national assessments,
which have shown that children in private schools
operating in areas with high concentrations ofpoverty tend to have similar, and in many cases
worse, results than those in public schools
operating in those same areas.
Beyond this, however, lie the implications for
citizenship and social justice of an unregulated
school market that separates children from
diﬀerent socio-economic groups in entirely
diﬀerent schools, with the negative consequences
this tends to have for the children from the poorest
backgrounds.

References
Balarin, M. (2015) “The default privatization of
Peruvian education and the rise of low-fee private
schools: better or worse opportunities for the
poor?” CIES, Washington D.C.
Benavides, Martín, Juan León, and Manuel Etesse.
(2014) Desigualdades educativas y segregación
en el sistema educativo peruano. Una mirada
comparativa de las pruebas PISA 2000 y 2009. In
Avances de Investigación. Lima: GRADE.
Cuenca, Ricardo. (2013) “La escuela pública en Lima
Metropolitana.¿ Una institución en extinción?”
Revista Peruana de Investigación Educativa (5):7398.
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Non-State Funding of Education – a Case Study from
Ethiopia
Timothy Kinahan, Helen’s Bay, Northern Ireland
Email: kinahan@supanet.com

Keywords:
precariousness.

networks,

personal

links,

Summary: Funding through personal networks:
eﬀective for now, but precarious in the long term.

The Asere Hawariat School in Addis Ababa,
Ethiopia, currently has 1,100 pupils, drawn fromthose sectors of the community who would ﬁnd itdiﬃcult, if not impossible, to aﬀord the incidental
fees – registration and other costs – associatedwith government education. It has always beenﬁnanced by voluntary contributions.
When the school began in the very early 1960s,
it was small and largely funded by contributions
from expatriate teachers who had taught thefounder, Asfaw Yemiru, when he was a student at
the British Council-run General Wingate School.
It was given an early boost by an award from the
Haile Selassie Foundation.
As the school grew it was largely ﬁnanced by
the Swedish Rädda Barnen charity, and thiscontinued until the mid-1990s when a change
in Swedish funding arrangements meant thatthe responsibility for funding fell to the Asere
Hawariat School Fund, a UK based-charity founded
by a group of former volunteers at the school. At
the time they had no notion of what this would
entail, or where the money would come from!
Now this Fund supplies almost 100% of therunning costs, amounting to £9,000 per month,along with occasional injections of extra cash forvital infrastructural and other demands. This all
has to be raised by public appeal. Some of thiscomes from individual donations; some fromschools and churches; some from charitable Trustsand Foundations and some from bequests. It canoccasionally feel a little precarious.
This model is, currently, sustainable through a
network of people who have heard of, and in somecases visited, the school. Many former volunteers

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who worked at the school in its early years are
generous both with their ﬁnancial contributions
and in encouraging others to donate. The trusteesof the Fund give talks to a wide variety of groups,
and sometimes these talks have unexpectedly
generous ﬁnancial spin-oﬀs. This work is madeeasier by the inspiring personal story of thefounder, Asfaw Yemiru, and by his internationalrecognition (he is a past winner of the World’sChildren’s Prize for the Rights of the Child and of
an award given him by Tierra de hombres in Spain).
However, this network covers less than 50% of
costs. The rest comes from trusts and bequests.
It is, as I have already said, a somewhat precarious
model, and its long-term sustainability is far fromassured.
This model of funding has proved remarkably
eﬀective over the years, but there are many factorsthat suggest that it is probably a one-oﬀ and isover-dependent on personal links. The Trusteesof the UK fund are very aware that generationalchange both in Ethiopia (on-going) and in the UK(eventually) will inevitably change things.
In the medium term both sides of the equation are
actively examining alternative models which will
ensure the future of the school and those it seeks
to help. There are no obvious immediate answers.

Much ado about Nigerian Private Schools – a Case for PPP?
Modupe Adefeso-Olateju, The Education Partnership Centre,
Lagos, Nigeria
Email: moadefeso@gmail.com

Key words: low cost private schools, publicprivate partnership, Nigeria, Lagos, education,
public schools, private schools
Summary: As the second private schools’ census
is conducted in Lagos, this article explores how
the expansion of private schools (especially of
the low cost variant) is stimulating changes in
the government’s ideological stance on private
schools, and asks whether these changes present
opportunities to design and establish eﬀective
PPPs in the state.

Many education researchers and policymakers are
waiting with bated breath to see the results of thesecond private schools’ census to be held in Lagos.
This census is a big deal because in 2010 the ﬁrst
private schools’ census to be conducted in thisstate - the most populous in Nigeria - revealed that
there were a staggering 12,000 private schools in
Lagos, as compared to 1,500 state schools. Critics
argued that the bulk of these private schools weretiny, with average enrolment sizes below 100, a far
cry from public schools which are typically muchlarger. However, analyses of the data revealed not
only that an average of 48% of enrolled children
at primary and secondary levels attended private
schools, but that the share of pre-school enrolment
in the private sector exceeded 70%. Galvanised bythis startling reality, the government swung into
action, constructing dozens of impressive multistorey brick ediﬁces across the state in an attempt
to lure parents – particularly of pre-schoolers andprimary-aged children - back to the public school
system.
There is much evidence to suggest that thedecision to move from fee-paying private schools
to tuition-free state schools is predicated onmuch more than an expansion in access. In Nigeria,
it has been found that some of the most important
determinants of private school choice are stronglevels of accountability within the schoolingsystem, perceptions of care, and proximity to thehome. In Nigeria, these characteristics are often
diﬃcult to replicate in highly centralised andbureaucratic public education systems. So, 5 years
after the ﬁrst census of private schools, it will beinteresting to see what has changed. Has any
signiﬁcant school shifting from private to publicschools occurred? Why and how?
Whilst we await the hard data, some analysts
estimate that there are now more than 15,000
private schools in Lagos. They argue that whilst
state provision has also risen signiﬁcantly, theshare of enrolment that accrues to the private
sector continues to grow, especially at presecondary school levels. A critical look at trends
in the growth of private schooling suggest that
this estimate may not be far from the truth. Other
interesting observations are made: Sizeable
overseas development funds are being channelled
into strengthening the market for low cost private
schools, and even the state has relaxed in its war
against what used to be known as ‘mushroomschools’, now preferring to engage in constructive
dialogue with associations that represent these
low-cost schools. The notion of competition
between the public and private sector, whilst still
very much evident, is certainly less ﬁerce than it
was years ago.
Perhaps the time is ripe to shift the discourse
further along the change curve, from state
tolerance and tacit support of private education
providers, to an exploration of opportunities toestablish innovative, large-scale public private
partnerships which harness the strengths of boththe state and the private sector to deliver quality
education to the 4.5 million school-aged childrenin Lagos. What can parental behaviour regarding
school choice tell us about how to design policies
and programmes that help teachers teach betterand students learn more? The results of theprivate schools’ census may yet oﬀer some of themost compelling evidence for de-emphasisingideological positions regarding the role of thestate and the non-state sector, and refocusing
attention on what works for the children of Lagos
state.

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Reference
The private schools’ census is being carried out by
the Lagos State Ministry of Education.

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Funding Education as a Key Public Good
Kishore Singh, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the
Right to Education, Geneva
Email: kishoreparis@gmail.com

Key words: public good, investment in education,state obligations, development planning.
Summary: Preserving education as a public goodwith enhanced investment is essential for common well-being.

Insuﬃcient funding for education has been amajor constraint on achieving Education for All
targets and the education-related Millennium
Development Goals. This trend is being reinforced
as Governments disinvest in education, andprivate providers are mushrooming, with scant
control by pubic authorities. This is leading to amercantalization of education. It is detrimental
to education as a public good, and vitiates
its humanistic mission; it also erodes social
responsibility in education.
Modalities such as the Sustainable Development
Solutions Network and calls for more partnerships
between United Nations and business toachieve the Sustainable Development Goals canjeopardize education as a public good, unlessintergovernmental mechanisms with a humanrights accountability framework are devised as
an essential prerequisite. Without this, a humanrights-based approach to post-2015 development
agenda being embraced will remain merely lip
service. Governments must also be cautious of therepercussions of corporate inﬂuence on education
as a public good that the United Nations Global
Compact promote in the post-2015 process.
Decreasing investment in education is a matterof serious concern in the context of proposals
submitted in September 2014 by the Open Working
Group on Sustainable Development Goals to
the UN General Assembly: “By 2030, ensure thatall girls and boys complete free, equitable andquality primary and secondary education leading
to relevant and eﬀective learning outcomes.” The
future agenda envisages that basic education isprovided ‘free of charge’. This is indeed the core
responsibility of governments. It should, therefore,

be clearly stipulated that States will not disinvest
in public education by relying on private providers,
but provide necessary resources as a matter of
their obligations towards the right to education.
Education should receive strong commitmentsfrom global leaders for its funding as a global
public good.
In that perspective, States must be remindedof their international obligations under humanrights law to provide maximum resources for therealization of the right to education and makethem available on a consistent and predictablebasis. This is all the more important as the right toeducation, from which both the individual and thesociety are beneﬁciaries, is not only a human rightin itself, but is also essential for the exercise of allother human rights. Education as a foundation forhuman development is of paramount importancefor common well-being.
Guided by the principle of social justice which
is at the core of the global mission of the United
Nations to promote development and humandignity governments should protect education
against forces of privatization and safeguard it asa public good. This is critically important in the faceof advocacy and engagement by the World Bank,
supporting proﬁt-seeking companies for investingin education to the detriment of education as apublic good.
Beyond the corporate sector, other stakeholders
have roles and responsibilities in education,and public investment in basic education can beenhanced by mobilizing contributions of local
bodies, private donors and communities throughproper incentives and institutional mechanisms,
especially through a national legal and policy
framework for domestic resource mobilization for
education. This can be invaluable in supplementing
Government funding. Governments can also
encourage public utility foundations engaged in
education to invest more in education. Moreover,corporate social responsibility can be harnessedto supporting education development projects

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on a priority basis. All those valuing education
as a public good and as a social cause should
be encouraged with an ‘enabling environment’and good governance to contribute to national
investment in education. Besides, international
development cooperation in line with the Paris
Declaration on Aid Eﬀectiveness (2005) andin a spirit of international solidarity remainsof abiding importance for future development
agenda. In considering recommendations
and analysis presented in the Report of theIntergovernmental Committee of Experts on
Sustainable Development Financing (August2014), safeguarding education as a public goodshould be an overriding concern.

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Impact Bonds for Early Childhood Development in Low andMiddle Income Countries
Emily Gustafsson-Wright, Center for Universal Education,
Brookings Institution, Washington
Email: egustafssonwright@brookings.edu

Key words: Innovative ﬁnancing, impact bonds,
impact investing, early childhood development,
outcomes
Summary: The impact bond, a mechanism which
provides upfront private capital for social services
with repayment by government or a third party
payer contingent upon outcome achievement,
could be one way to bring more funding andimprove outcomes for neglected areas such as
early childhood development. Though several
impact bonds exist that support children in theirearly years in developed countries, we have yet tosee any in low and middle income countries.

We know that early childhood development (ECD)
interventions such as maternal and child healthand nutrition programs, parenting programs andquality pre-primary education lead to a multitudeof short and long-term positive outcomes(Manuelyan Atinc and Gustafsson-Wright, 2013).
Despite this knowledge and concrete example ofprograms that work in these settings, we fail tosee many low and middle income countries with
ECD reaching scale and even less so reaching thedisadvantaged individuals who would beneﬁt themost. A few of the dismal indicators include 165
million stunted children worldwide, an under-ﬁve
mortality rate of 82 deaths per 1,000 live births
in low-income countries and a mere 17 percent
of children accessing preschool in low-income
countries (UNICEF-WHO-World Bank, 2012; WHO,
2012; World Bank, 2013). And these statistics don’teven include the longer term health, education,
employment and crime statistics that result froma poor start in life.
There are four main constraints to achieving scale:
1. insuﬃcient ﬁnancing, 2. poor quality and capacity,
3. knowledge gaps and 4. insuﬃcient politicalwill. The challenges posed by these constraints
suggest that innovative ﬁnancing mechanisms
might be considered to crowd in upfront capitalfor ECD and improve quality. Until now, the private

sector has mainly played a role for ECD in theprovision of services such as preschool education(although mostly to higher income levels) andﬁnancial support or advocacy via corporate social
responsibility (CSR) or philanthropic ventures. The
landscape of ﬁnancing the social sector is rapidlychanging however and there is promising potential
for harnessing this new landscape to beneﬁt ECD.
Impact investing, a concept that describes
investments that pursue both ﬁnancial and social
or environmental returns or so-called blended
value, is increasingly being used to ﬁnance thesocial sector in both developed and developing
countries (Bugg-Levine and Emerson, 2011). This
market has begun to attract such diverse investors
as ﬁnancial institutions, family endowments,
foundations and pension funds (Saltuk, 2014;
Social Finance, 2012).
A particular class of impact investing, social
impact bonds (SIB), also called pay-for-success(PFS) ﬁnancing in the United States and social
beneﬁt bonds (SBB) in Australia, has gained
particular attention in recent years. In this model,
private investors put up capital to fund a social
intervention and governments repay the investor
only if an agreed upon outcome is achieved.
Development impact bond (DIB) is a term used
for a SIB that is implemented in low and middle
income countries where a donor agency or afoundation is the outcome funder as opposedto the government (although some combinationof government with third party is also possible)(CGD - Center for Global Development and Social
Finance, 2013). As of May 1st 2015, 43 social impact
bonds are being utilized in developed countries
to, among other social issues, provide high qualitypreschool education, reduce prison recidivism,
provide family support and increase youth
employment. In developing countries, several
projects are underway to establish impact bonds
in various areas including health and education.
The nature of ECD makes it a promising candidate
for this tool. Unlike other services which may have

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93

entrenched interests, the multitude of agencies
and non-state entities ﬁnancing and providing
ECD services, potentially allows for more roomfor experimentation. Also, the preventive natureof ECD programs ﬁt well with the core feature of
impact bonds which is that preventive investments
will result in improved outcomes and potentiallycost avoidance later on. There is ample evidence
that early childhood interventions impact school
readiness, learning and other outcomes.
How could impact bonds address some of theconstraints in ECD that were identiﬁed above?
First, they can bring in needed upfront capital
to ﬁnance interventions while government iscurrently paying for costly remediation resulting
from a failure to invest in prevention. Second, they
can help tackle the quality issue since repayment of
the investment is contingent upon the successfulachievement of outcomes. Third, they can address
gaps in knowledge by providing evidence on whatworks and by bringing together stakeholders andamplifying access to information. Fourth they canserve to increase political will to invest in ECD andalign interests across society by demonstrating
the potential of early interventions to achieve
important short and longer-term outcomes.
While individual impact bond transactions areunlikely to make much of a dent in the outsize
problem of achieving ECD at scale in thedeveloping country context, larger impact bondfunds like those being used in the United Kingdom
may be able to contribute more substantiallywhere problems are both deep and wide in reach.
Where impact bonds have the largest potential istheir ability to produce a systemic shift in how wethink about service provision, taking advantage ofknowledge and expertise that exists in both the
public and private sectors to move us beyond a
conversation about access to one about improving
lifelong outcomes for the youngest among us
across the globe.

References
Bugg-Levine, A. and Emerson J. (2011) Impact
Investing. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
CGD - Center for Global Development and Social
Finance (2013) Investing in Social Outcomes:
Development Impact Bonds. Washington, D.C. and
London.

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Manuelyan Atinc, T. and Gustafsson-Wright, E.
(2013) Early Childhood Development: the Promise,
the Problem, and the Path Forward. The Brookings
Institution. Accessed May 1, 2015. http://www.
brookings.edu/research/articles/2013/11/25early-childhood-development-atinc-gustafsson.
Saltuk, Y. (2014) Spotlight on the Market: theImpact Investor Survey. New York: J.P.Morgan
and the Global Impact Investing Network;
Social Finance. http://www.thegiin.org/binarydata/2014MarketSpotlight.PDF
Social Finance (2012) A New Tool for Scaling Impact:
How Social Impact Bonds Can Mobilize Private
Capital to Advance Social Good. Boston. http://
www.socialfinanceus.org/sites/socialfinanceus.
org/ﬁles/small.SocialFinanceWPSingleFINAL.pdf
UNICEF-WHO-World Bank - United Nation’sChildren’s Fund, World Health Organization, The
World Bank (2012) UNICEF-WHO-World Bank JointChild Malnutrition Estimates. New York: UNICEF,
Geneva: WHO, Washington, D.C.: The World Bank.
WHO (2012) Global Health Observatory Data –Under Five Mortality. http://www.who.int/gho/child_health/mortality/mortality_under_ﬁve_text/en/World Bank (2013) World Development Indicators
2013. Washington D.C.: The World Bank.

Enabling the Promise of Innovative Financing
for Education
Aleesha Taylor, Open Society Foundations, New York
Email: aleesha.taylor@opensocietyfoundations.org

Key words: pooled fund, impact investing, development ﬁnance, summer school
Summary:The Open Society Foundations has
been engaging in innovative ﬁnancing since 2010.
This submission presents an overview of theirattempts to advance the ﬁeld through supporting
the exploration of a range of instruments andapproaches and, more recently, focusing building
the capacity of national level stakeholders toadvance innovative ﬁnancing for education.

The challenges facing the education sector are
clear, as the integrated Sustainable Development
Goals increase attention and require signiﬁcantresources to improve quality and expand accessto universal education through the secondary
level. With stagnating and unpredictable ODA andan estimated annual funding gap of $39 billion,1
the framing for this edition of NORRAG rightly
questions the status of the ‘apparently promisingworld of innovative ﬁnancing for education’. Since
the Leading Group on Innovative Financing forDevelopment2 established a task force to explore
opportunities in the education sector in 2010, muchhas been written about ‘promising’ instruments
and ﬁnancing arrangements but evidence ofgenerating signiﬁcant and sustainable additional
funding at scale remains elusive. Innovative
ﬁnancing has been presented as an opportunity
to generate and leverage funding for the sector
through novel mechanisms and partnerships. It
has also generated skepticism and is plagued bypolarizing debates, largely around the assumed
promise of the private sector in the ﬁnancing anddelivery of education as a public good.
The Open Society Foundations entered thisspace in 2010, ushered in by our experience as aparticipant in the Liberia Education Pooled Fund,3
a partnership among a multilateral organization,a private foundation and a developing country
government that provided critical funding for
education while also strengthening local systems
and capacity in a fragile and conﬂict-aﬀected
setting. We have since partnered with organizations
and researchers to deﬁne the concept,4 explore
the application of existing instruments,5 imagine
alternative approaches,6 and to map thelandscape and activity for approaches such as
impact investing. 7Our experience has revealed aneed for increased dialogue and understanding
across the various stakeholders in the sector,
and, more importantly, for education activists andspecialists to develop a deeper understanding of
not only innovative ﬁnancing, but development
ﬁnancing more generally.
To this end, we shifted our focus away from shaping
the global discourse and exploring potential
instruments to developing a better informed
and integrated constituency of stakeholders toadvance the issues and instruments at the national
level. In 2012, we partnered with Central European
University to develop a week-long course,
Innovative Financing for Education: Arguments,
Options and Opportunities.8 Since then we havegathered 80 participants (including researchers,
activists and practitioners from the education andﬁnance sectors) from 23 countries to understandand debate the potential and challenges that
innovative ﬁnancing for education present. Our
faculty have the opportunity to workshop theideas and mechanisms that they are developing,
3 http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/sites/default/
ﬁles/liberia-education-pooled-fund-20100831.pdf
4 http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/reports/innovative-ﬁnancing-education
5 http://www.dilipratha.com/index_ﬁles/DB-education.pdf.
pdf
6 http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/reports/innovative-ﬁnancing-global-education

1 http://www.globalpartnership.org/news/ministerial-statement-education-ﬁnancing

7 http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/reports/impact-investing-education-overview-current-landscape2 http://www.leadinggroup.org/rubrique20.html

8 http://www.summer.ceu.hu/innovﬁnancing-2015

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and course participants are able to walk throughthe technical aspects of innovative ﬁnancing,grapple with political economy and social
justice implications, and consider the concernsand priorities of the full range of stakeholders.
Participants have utilized the knowledge andnetworks gained through the course to inform theirwork and have published on the topic, developed
graduate courses, designed mechanisms andpartnerships, and inﬂuenced advocacy agendas.

Burnett, N and Bermingham, D. (2010) Innovative
Financing for Education. Open Society
Foundations
WorkingPaper
http://www.
opensocietyfoundations.org/reports/innovativeﬁnancing-education

Though elusive, innovative ﬁnancing remains
promising for the sector, evidenced by theincreasing interest and engagement from bilateraland multilateral organizations. While we remain
hopeful for movement in global ﬁnancing bodies,
OSF is committed to ensuring a broad cadreof stakeholders at the national level (including
professionals in ministries education and ﬁnance,
civil society institutions, and universities)
who are better able to engage in the design
and implementation of innovative ﬁnancing
instruments and develop nuanced advocacy
agendas that seek to increase funding ﬂows andimprove aid eﬀectiveness in the sector.

Ketkar, S. And Ratha, D. (2011) Diaspora Bonds for
Funding Education. Migration Letters, Volume: 8,
No: 2, pp. 153 – 172

Though elusive, innovative ﬁnancing remains
promising for the sector, evidenced by theincreasing interest and engagement from bilateraland multilateral organizations. While we remain
hopeful for movement in global ﬁnancing bodies,
OSF is committed to ensuring a broad cadreof stakeholders at the national level (including
professionals in ministries of education andﬁnance, civil society institutions, and universities)
who are better able to engage in the design
and implementation of innovative ﬁnancing
instruments and develop nuanced advocacy
agendas that seek to increase funding ﬂows andimprove aid eﬀectiveness in the sector.

References
D. Capital Partners (2013) Impact Investing in
Education: An Overview of the Current Landscape.
http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/reports/
impact-investing-education-overview-currentlandscape
Filipp, R. and Lerer, L. (2014) Innovative
Financing for Global Education. http://www.
opensocietyfoundations.org/reports/innovativeﬁnancing-global-education

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GPE - Global Partnership for Education (2015)
Ministerial Statement on Education Financing.
http://www.globalpartnership.org/news/
ministerial-statement-education-ﬁnancing

Schmidt, C. and Taylor, A. (2010) Liberia’s Education
Pooled Fund: A Case for Private Foundation
Engagement in Post Conﬂict Education Recovery.
http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/
sites/default/files/liberia-education-pooledfund-20100831.pdf

Financing Education and Skills: Emerging Models of Private
Financing for Higher Education
Devang Vussonji, Dalberg, Global Development Advisors, Johannesburg
Email: devang.vussonji@dalberg.com

Key words: private ﬁnancing, co-funding,employers, loans, risk-sharing, pay-as-you-go,
disruption
Summary: While governments play an importantrole in funding education, students and families
still need access to additional ﬁnancing.
Innovative ﬁnancing mechanisms that tap into
the top economic beneﬁciaries of an educational
investment – students, their future employers, andthe educational institutions – provide promisingsources of sustainable ﬁnancing for education.

In Africa, demand for higher education is
growing at 15% per year; however, the shortfall
in education ﬁnancing suppresses access to
education and ultimately constrains economic
growth. Looking ahead, 65% of youth will aspire
to attain a secondary school education by 2030,
up from 46% in 2010 (AfDB, OECD, UNDP, UNECA,
2012). The total cost of school fees for these 380
million students seeking secondary education will
be $1.5 trillion between 2015 and 2030. In addition,
the tuition costs for the 30 million students
pursuing post-secondary education between 2015
and 2030 will be $270 billion.1 Addressing ﬁnancerelated challenges for students and theirfamilies will be particularly vital in the coming
years given the vast number of youth expected
to pursue higher education.
While governments play an important role infunding public secondary school fees, students
and families still need access to additional
ﬁnancing. Often, the public education system
1 Based on 20-24 year-old cohorts by level of educational
attainment from 2010 to 2030 in 5 year increments. Assumes
cumulative number of 20-24 year olds with secondary andpost-secondary school through the period 2015 to 2030, andaverage school length of 6 years for secondary school and 3
years for post-secondary school. Based on average annual
school cost US$650 for secondary school and US$3,000
for post-secondary school (data source: Aid for Africa, Howmuch does school cost, 2014)

requires them to pay for a portion of fees and/or other academic expenses. Further, uncertain
economic growth (AfDB, OECD, UNDP, UNECA,
2014) and increased competition for government
funds (Brookings, 2013) may limit governments’funding capacity or make it more volatile, thereby
increasing students’ need to access other funding
sources. Given the limited government funding
available for post-secondary and vocational
education, students pursuing tertiary education
and/or vocational training also need to secureﬁnancing for both tuition and other educationalcosts. Finally, the high personal, economic, andsocial returns that can be unlocked as a resultof higher education suggest that there is latentdemand for education, which can be realized by
improving access to education ﬁnancing.
In order to tap into and further develop
sustainable ﬁnancing sources for education, we
should look to the top economic beneﬁciariesof that investment, that is, the students,
their future employers, and the educational
institutions. Many models have already emergedin which these stakeholders – including students,
current or future employers, educational
institutions, or even ﬁnancial institutions – areworking to overcome ﬁnancing challenges.
Employers or educators chieﬂy help by sharing
the ﬁnancing risk with students through partial
payment of training costs or deferred tuition
payments, respectively. Students can alleviate
their own ﬁnancing burden through income
earned from work and/or their prior savings, often
achieved in collaboration with a partnering school,
company, or ﬁnancial institution.
In the employer-ﬁnanced model, employers
assume the ﬁnancing risk by paying for someor all of the students’ tuition. When a future
employer shares ﬁnancing risk with students,
they not only lower students’ ﬁnancing barriers to
pursuit of higher education, but can also incentivize
educators to develop curriculum and approaches
that promote student employability. For example,

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in South Africa, Harambee2 provides work-skills
training to disadvantaged youth. Employers work
directly with Harambee to deﬁne their recruitment
needs and pay placement fees that cover a small
portion of students’ training costs. In anothermodel, Bridge International3 provides direct
training to its employees and bears the entire costof the program, but if a teacher leaves prior to
the expiration of the contract, she/he repays theorganization for a portion of the training costs.
In the educator-led model, the school assumes
a greater portion of the risk by allowing fordeferred tuition payment that is contingent on
students ﬁnding employment. Educators are
only repaid, by the student and/or employer, oncethe student secures a job. For example, West Africa
Vocational Education (WAVE)4 charges students
only a small upfront fee. After the student is placedin their ﬁrst job, WAVE charges the student andemployer an additional fee, both calculated as apercentage of the graduate’s ﬁrst month’s income.
WAVE is incentivized to deliver high-quality andrelevant programs because revenue is contingent
on employment. WAVE can scale up its operations
rapidly if it has access to a much larger working
capital facility through banking institutions.
Insurance providers such as HUGinsure5 can derisk such transactions for banks, while holding
WAVE accountable for performance through its
insurance premiums.
Another approach to addressing student
ﬁnancing challenges is to decrease students’
need for education loans. This intervention
includes products to help students better manage
their cash ﬂow to cover educational costs, as wellas programs that create opportunities for students
to earn income while they are in school to oﬀset
education costs. Some ﬁnancial institutions
oﬀer tailored education savings products to
help students and their families decrease or
eliminate the need for loans when they enterschool. These savings accounts oﬀer attractive
terms, and often have additional incentives suchas direct linkages to partner schools and enhancedsavings if certain criteria are met. For example,
United Bank for Africa (UBA) oﬀers a “U-Care
Savings Account”6 to parents saving for theirchildren’s secondary school education, and allows
parents to make direct payments to registeredschools through the account.
To oﬀset educational costs, some educational
institutions have set up businesses to employ
students part-time. These businesses help cover
students’ tuition costs while enabling students todevelop critical work-readiness skills. For example,
the Maharishi Institute (MI) in South Africa createdand now runs Invincible Outsourcing, a call center
that employs MI students and pays MI directly forstudents’ services to oﬀset school fees charged.
Students also receive a $30 monthly stipend from
Invincible Outsourcing7 for expenses. Fundación
Paraguaya,8 a global non-proﬁt operating in 20
countries, has created the Self-Suﬃcient Schoolmodel to serve low-income rural students at
the upper secondary level. The schools support
students to run microenterprises on campus,
which generate income for schools to reachsustainability.9 Even more pioneering “pay-as-yougo” education ﬁnancing models would eliminate
the need for a large upfront investment (that can
only be paid oﬀ over many years); instead students
could learn skills in smaller units over longer
periods of time, and pay tuition incrementally.
Thus, students from low-income families canﬁnance their own education rather than relying on
government funding, which is already spread toothin.
A number of these emerging models addressing
the ﬁnancial barriers to education are being
tested in developing economies. These models
proactively engage and team up with the ultimate
economic beneﬁciaries, that is, those who havea vested interest in ensuring access to highquality education, and in particular, with a view
towards employability. However, these promising
approaches are not yet at scale, from a regional
or global perspective. Going forward, ﬁnanciersinterested in the education space can help advancethe reach and depth of these programs.

References
AfDB, OECD, UNDP, UNECA (2012) African
Economic Outlook, Promoting Youth Employment

2 http://www.harambee.co.za
3 http://www.bridgeinternationalacademies.com

7 http://www.invincibleoutsourcing.com/education.html

4 http://www.wavehospitality.org

8 http://www.fundacionparaguaya.org.py/?lang=en

5 http://www.huginsure.com

9 Center for Education Innovations, Financially SelfSuﬃcient Schools, 2014

6 http://www.ubagroup.com/countries/ng/personalbanking/savingsaccounts/08

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AfDB, OECD, UNDP, UNECA (2014) African
Economic Outlook, Macroeconomic Prospects
Brookings (2013) Financing for Global Education

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The Implications of Changing Private Rates of Return to
Schooling
Harry Anthony Patrinos, World Bank, Washington
Email: hpatrinos@worldbank.org

Key words: Education; Returns to Education;
Labor Market Outcomes; Education Finance
Summary: High returns signal that tertiary
education is a good private investment; the publicpriority, however, isn’t a blanket subsidy for all,but a concerted eﬀort to improve fair, equitable,
sustainable cost-recovery at the tertiary level

In addition to being a basic human service,education produces some strong economic
beneﬁts. One of the most commonly cited islabor market earnings. Known as the returns toinvestment in schooling, they have been calculated
since at least the 1950s. It is only recently that wehave had such estimates for the vast majority ofcountries.
In many emerging economies, education andlabor market experience are the only assets
for a vast part of the labor force, especially thepoor. Therefore, it is important for students,
their families, providers and funders to know theeconomic beneﬁts of investments in schooling. For
the individual, weighing costs and beneﬁts means
investing as long as the rate of return exceeds theprivate discount rate (the cost of borrowing and anallowance for risk).
In a recent paper with Claudio Montenegro wereport the latest estimates of the private – what
the individual student earns – returns to schoolingusing comparable data from 139 economies and819 harmonized household surveys. The results ofthe study show that there are signiﬁcant returns.
The global average private rate of return toschooling is 10 percent per year of schooling.
The returns are highest in Sub-Saharan Africa(13 percent). The ﬁve economies with the highest
returns are all in Africa: Botswana, Ethiopia,
Rwanda, South Africa and Tanzania. Returns arelowest in the Middle East and North Africa (7percent).

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The returns to schooling are higher for women. The
overall rate of return to another year of schoolingfor women is 12 percent and 10 percent for men.
At the primary school level the returns are about
the same. At the secondary and tertiary levels, thereturns diverge, with higher returns for females
at the secondary (9 versus 7 percent for men) andtertiary (17 versus 15) levels.
In a stunning reversal from previous compilations,and what might be surprising to many, the private
returns to university education are now higher
than the returns to primary schooling. The returns
to primary schooling are above 10 percent, andthey decline sharply at the secondary level to justover 7 percent, before jumping to 15 percent at thetertiary level. Still, the returns are higher in SubSaharan Africa at all levels. There are variations byregion: there are high returns to primary schoolingin the Middle East and North Africa (especiallyfor females), while the returns to tertiary are low.
Returns to primary schooling are surprisingly low
in South Asia.
The biggest change in the patterns observedis that the returns to primary education are nolonger the highest. However, the results reported
here are private returns. Policy makers need toknow the social returns to schooling. In previous
analyses, using older data than we have now, thesocial returns were estimated to be higher for
primary schooling than for tertiary education.
Social returns to secondary were the lowest(Psacharopoulos and Patrinos 2004). However,with the increase in the private returns to tertiary
education, it may turn out that social returns
are just as high for both primary and tertiary
education. But given the other, non-wage beneﬁts
to primary schooling, the need to improve quality,
and the imperative to build the foundations of theeducation system, the priority for many countries
may still be primary education.
Yet, there are policy implications emanating fromthis compilation. There are three important policy
lessons. The ﬁrst is that there is a continuing needto focus public investment on the poor. The returns
to primary schooling may be falling because thequality is poor. If the quality is poor, then accessto the secondary and tertiary levels for the poor
will slow down and higher returns at the tertiarylevel will lead to growing inequality. A focus on thepoor, starting with quality basic education, is also
an investment in the higher education of the poorin the near future.
Therefore, the second implication is to invest in
education quality. The focus on basic educationemphasized access and not enough attention has
gone towards quality. Access to basic education
increased considerably over the last few decades.
Lower returns to primary schooling do not imply
that one should abandon basic education as apriority.
The third implication is that higher education
should be expanded. High returns to tertiary
signal that university is a good private investment.
Therefore fair, equitable, sustainable costrecovery at the university level is warranted.

References
Montenegro, C. and Patrinos, H (2014) “Comparable
Estimates of Returns to Schooling around theWorld.” Policy Research Working Paper 7020,
World Bank, Washington, DC.
Psacharopoulos, G. and Patrinos, H.A. 2004.
“Returns to investment in education: a further
update,” Education Economics 12(2): 111-134]

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NGOs as Donors to Education: What Role Might They Play in
the SDG Agenda?
Susy Ndaruhutse and Ruth Naylor, CfBT Education Trust, UK
Emails: sndaruhutse@cfbt.com; RNaylor@cfbt.com

Key words: non-governmental organisations; aidfunding; basic education
Summary: since the turn of the century, nongovernment organisations (NGOs) have played
a much more signiﬁcant role in funding basic
education than we might have expected, witha particular focus on supporting the countries
furthest away from reaching the Millennium
Development Goals. Looking ahead to the roleof donors in supporting the post-2015 education
agenda, evidence from analysis of three large
international NGOs suggests that the larger
NGOs are likely to continue to play an importantrole as education donors and individually may begiving similar ﬁnancial volumes to some of the key
bilateral donors.

When we talk about the key donors to education,
our immediate focus is usually on the big
multilateral, bilateral and UN organisations. We
don’t generally tend to think of non-governmentalorganisations (NGOs) or faith-based organisations
as playing a substantial role in ﬁnancial terms.
Since the turn of the century, NGOs have become
more inﬂuential in the education sector, often
being represented on both donor and ministry ofeducation coordination and technical committees.
However, for a number of reasons, the ﬁnancial
size of their contribution is often diﬃcult toestablish as they do not channel their education
aid through established mechanisms.
In a background paper for the 2015 UNESCO
Education for All Global Monitoring Report, we analysed the role of NGOs as education donors. We
considered the volume of aid to education frombilateral government donors that is channelled via
NGOs and found that in 2012, the total was US$1.3
billion, which corresponds to 11 per cent of total
education Oﬃcial Development Assistance (ODA).
We then looked in detail at three large internationalNGOs (and their respective partner organisations)with signiﬁcant education programmes: Plan102

NORRAGNEWS 52

International, Save the Children,1 and BRAC. For
each NGO, we explored their sources of income,the prioritisation of education within theirprogrammes, the types of education intervention
and the countries in which their programmingtakes place, and changes over time in income andexpenditure patterns.
The key ﬁndings of this analysis were that:•

Overall, their incomes have been growing inrecent years;•

Grant funding makes up 25 to 50 per cent of
the income of these NGOs;•

The education programmes of these NGOs
are of a similar ﬁnancial size to that of somebilateral and multilateral donors;•

Their programmes are more closely aligned
to the Education for All goals than government (bilateral) aid with the vast majorityof funding going towards basic education(pre-primary, primary and basic life skills),
and work in secondary education having astrong focus on gender equality; and•Education forms a core part of the
programming of these NGOs in situations ofemergency and post-conﬂict recovery.

By contrast, much of education ODA still goesto higher education, and to countries where theneeds are less acute, and education receives only
a tiny proportion of bilateral and multilateral
humanitarian spending (UNESCO, 2014).
From the analysis, we can surmise that thesethree NGOs together receive around 18 per cent

1 Given that ﬁnancial reports for Save the Children
International only exist for the two most recent years, thus
not permitting trend analysis, we focussed on an analysis of
the activities and budgets of Save the Children UK and Save
the Children US, the two largest members of the Save theChildren group.

of all ODA to education channelled through NGOs.
However, we cannot assume from this that thesethree NGOs comprise a similar proportion of all
expenditure by NGOs on education, as the degreeof grant funding and prioritisation of education
among NGOs varies. What we can assume is that
the NGO sector as a whole is playing a signiﬁcantand increasing role in the funding of basic education
when compared to oﬃcial international aid, whichsuggests that they have an important role toplay in contributing to the proposed Sustainable
Development Goal and Targets for education.

Table: Total aid to education and basic education from case study NGOs
(2012) and selected bilateral and multilateral donors (2013/14)

Plan International
Save the Children
BRAC
Australia
Netherlands
FranceNorwayJapan
UNICEF
Asian Development
Bank

Estimated total aid to
education(US$ millions)

Estimated total aid tobasic education(US$ millions)

160
230
65
233
214
301
216
250
58
128

135
220
55
128
149
167
180
84
34
82

Source: Authors’ own calculations and UNESCO (2014), EFA Global
Monitoring Report 2013/14 Aid tables

Further reading
UNESCO, 2014. Teaching and Learning: Achieving
quality education for all. Education for All Global
Monitoring Report 2013/14. Paris, UNESCO.

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Mind the Gap: Assessing the Philanthropic ‘Buzz’ in Global
Education
Prachi Srivastava, School of International Development andGlobal Studies, University of Ottawa
Emails: prachi.srivastava@uottawa.ca | Twitter: @PrachiSrivas

Key words: Philanthropy; education ﬁnance; post2015
Summary: There is growing buzz about thepotential of philanthropic actors to meet gaps inﬁnancing and to implement learning ‘solutions’ in
the Global South. However, there are substantive
gaps in data tracking philanthropic engagement,
and in funding that global education attracts frominternational philanthropic organisations. Turning
our attention to philanthropic engagement bySouthern actors in the South may provide moreclarity; however, knowledge gaps remain.

Nonetheless, it is easy to see why big philanthropy
is attractive. Jeﬀery Sachs (2015) estimates that
if the world’s richest 80 people devoted just 1%of their net worth each year it would ﬁll nearly theentire ﬁnancing gap to cover schooling to lower
secondary.
But what do we actually know about philanthropic
engagement in education in the Global South?
My ongoing research and recent review of theliterature reveals serious gaps that we must
consider.1
The Data Gap

In impending post-2015 engagement, there
is a growing buzz around the potential ofphilanthropic actors, particularly internationaland domestic ‘mega-donors’ and the purportedly
growing numbers of local Southern foundations,
not only to ﬁll ﬁnancing gaps in basic education,
but also substantive gaps in scaling up ‘solutions’for improved learning. Philanthropic actors are
idealised as at once, non-market and non-state,
and as naturally ﬂexible, brisk, agile, and wellsuited partners in complex ‘multi-stakeholder’
arrangements. This view is best encapsulated in
the United Nations (2013) High Level Panel Report:
Foundations, other philanthropists andsocial impact investors can innovate andbe nimble and opportunistic, forming
bridges between government bureaucracies, international institutions and thebusiness and CSO sectors. Foundations
and philanthropists can take risks, showthat an idea works, and create new markets where none existed before (p. 11).
Increased philanthropic participation has gained
currency. This is despite emerging criticalresearch that questions claims of eﬀectivenessand eﬃciency; scale, scope, and reach;sustainability; and the broader impact of marketbased philanthropic action on basic education.

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The realised potential of international andSouthern domestic philanthropy is diﬃcult
to track. Sources for analysing philanthropic
engagement in the Global South are fragmented
and incomplete. Despite purported increases ofinternational and Southern philanthropic actors
in the Global South, their exact numbers andactivities in education (and other sectors) are
diﬃcult to trace.
While there are some regional and global
philanthropic networks, all do not collect data.
There is relatively more information on American
private foundation activity and on some emerging
powers, notably on China and India. However, asa sector, data that are collected are not usuallycomparable, are inconsistently updated with few
exceptions (notably, the Foundation Center), andare diﬃcult to obtain in a disaggregated manneron sectoral engagement in education. This may bepartly due to the noted tension in the transparencyof operations in the philanthropic sector, but
it is also related to the structural diﬀerences
between ‘what counts’ as a private foundation ora philanthropic organisation in local contexts, andwhat the reporting motivations, compulsions, andmechanisms are.
1 This work is part of a larger research project, ‘Right to
Education and the Emergence of Non-state Private Actors’,
funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities ResearchCouncil of Canada.

The Funding Gap: Global Education vs. Global
HealthGlobal education has failed to capture the attentionof international philanthropic investment relative
to global health. According to the latest Foundation
Center (2014) data, international health initiatives
by US private foundations continue to outstrip
education, a gap which has increased over time.
Data show that in 2012, health received over $USD
700.6 million in grants internationally, compared
to $USD 156.1 million for education, outstrippingit by a factor of 4.5. Between 2002 and 2012,
covering the majority of the global Education
for All timespan, education saw a slight increase($USD 113.6 million to $USD 156.1 million), but
health enjoyed a substantial increase from $USD
242 million to current levels. In addition, there
have been years (2006 and 2011) where health has
seen spikes in investment amounting to ten times
that of education.
Global education has not yet seen similar initiativesof scale championed by philanthropic actors.
Much of the philanthropic activity in global health
may be attributed to high proﬁle engagement byinternational mega-donors for the Global Fundto Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (GlobalFund) and the Global Alliance on Vaccines and
Immunisation (GAVI), both substantively led
by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The
Gates Foundation has contributed or pledged
a total of $USD 1.4 billion to the Global Fund
(Global Fund, 2015) and $USD 2.5 billion to the
GAVI Alliance (GAVI, 2015). In contrast, unlike its
domestic program, in which 84.9% of spending
was dedicated to education in 2012 (representing
12.6% of all spending), the Bill and Melinda Gates
Foundation did not support education in its Global
Development Program (Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation, 2012).
Filling the Gap? Southern Philanthropic Activity
in the SouthIf we turn our attention to Southern philanthropic
engagement by Southern actors, we realisethat our understanding of philanthropic activity
in education globally may be myopic. Various
reports note that in many countries of the Global
South, the education sector is either the ﬁrst
or a very close second amongst the priorities
of local philanthropic actors and foundations.
The importance of local philanthropic activity in
education has been noted in Latin America, Sub-

Saharan Africa, China, India, and various countries
in Southeast Asia and the Paciﬁc. The BRICS
countries in particular have been highlighted
as domestically reaping what one may call ‘thephilanthropic dividend’ from their more recent
economic developments. That is, they seem tohave a new base of younger, goal-oriented, andstrategy-focused donors.
The Hurun China Philanthropy Lists from 2011
through 2013 showed education as one of the
top causes by local philanthropists, a trendthat increased over time. A number of sources
examining philanthropic and private foundation
activity in India noted education as claiming the
top share of giving. The Hurun Report’s India
Philanthropy List ranked 31 Indians who donatedmore than Rs. 100 million ($USD 1.6 million) for
the 2012 ﬁnancial year. Education was the mostpopular cause, with a total of Rs. 122 million ($USD
1.9 million). Over three-quarters of this came fromdomestic mega-donor, Azim Premji, Chairman of
IT company Wipro, and founder of the Azim Premji
Foundation focusing on primary education in India.
While philanthropic engagement in education
may have some promise, data and comparative
research on the sector within the Global Southby local actors and the value-added by Northern
actors are scant. There is little information interms of the scope of activities, sub-sectors ofengagement within education, and the long-termsustainability of initiatives.

References
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. (2012). 2012
Financial report. Retrieved from: http://www.
gatesfoundation.org/~/media/GFO/Documents/
Annual%20Reports/2012_Gates_Foundation_
Annual_Report.pdf
Foundation Center. (2014). Foundation stats.
Retrieved from: http://data.foundationcenter.
org/#/fc1000/subject:all/international/total/
trends:amount/2012 Last accessed on 21 April
2015.
GAVI. (2015). The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Retrieved from: http://www.gavialliance.org/
about/partners/bmgf/ Last accessed on 21 April
2015.

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Hurun Report. (2011). 2011 China philanthropy list.
http://www.hurun.net/usen/HRCPL.aspx?nid=2011—.
(2012). 2012 China philanthropy list.
h t t p : / / w w w. h u r u n . n e t / u s e n / H R C P L .
aspx?nid=2012—.
(2013a).
2013
Chinaphilanthropy
list.
Retrievedfrom:
http://www.hurun.net/usen/HRCPL.aspx?nid=2013—.
(2013b).
Hurun
India
philanthropy
list
2013.
Retrievedfrom:
http://www.hurun.net/usen/NewsShow.aspx?nid=1498
Sachs, J. (2015). Financing Education for All. Project
Syndicate. 19 March 2015. http://www.projectsyndicate.org/commentary/ﬁnancing-educationpoor-children-by-jeﬀrey-d-sachs-2015-03
Last
accessed on 21 April 2015.
The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, andMalaria. (2015). Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Retrieved from: http://www.theglobalfund.org/
en/partners/privatesector/gatesfoundation/
Last accessed 21 April 2015.
United Nations. (2013). A New Global Partnership:
Eradicate Poverty and Transform Economies
through Sustainable Development. The Report of
the High-level Panel of Eminent Persons on the
Post-2015 Development Agenda. New York: United
Nations. Retrieved from: http://www.un.org/sg/
management/pdf/HLP_P2015_Report.pdf

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FINANCING EDUCATION
IN CONFLICT AND
EMERGENCIES

107

Results Based Financing for Eﬀective Resource Allocation in
Education Systems in Fragile Regions
Piet Vroeg and Alinda Bosch , Cordaid, The Hague
Emails: Piet.Vroeg@cordaid.nl ; Alinda.Bosch@cordaid.nl

Key words: Results Based Financing, Cordaid,
education system strengthening, accountability
Summary:
Cordaid
implements
Results
Based Financing, an innovative payment andaccountability system, to strengthen education
systems in the most fragile and under-served
regions of the world.

Although the beneﬁts of education are
overwhelming, an estimated 72 million children
do not have access to education, particularly infragile and conﬂict-prone regions. But if accessto schools is not complemented with good quality
and relevant education, the child is still left emptyhanded. Too many children quit school without
the required skills to enable them to ﬁnd a job.
The main causes of hampered access to quality
education are chronic underfunding, failures in
the organization of the public education system,
as well as ineﬃcient use of scarce resources(resulting in system leakages). Cordaid’s approachtackles these issues.
Cordaid is a leading Dutch international nongovernmental organization for relief anddevelopment aid. The mission of the Child &Education (C&E) unit of Cordaid is to contributeto the Education for All agenda by strengthening
education systems in the Democratic Republic ofCongo, the Central African Republic, Burundi andMalawi. We believe that interventions in schools
and the educational system as a whole will generate
results when all relevant stakeholders are involved
and take their responsibilities. Stakeholders
include the Ministry of Education (MoE), school
inspectors, school managers and teachers as wellas the community (as represented by the children
and their parents). Our education programs arealways aligned with national education plans of
the Ministries of Education.
To create the desired changes, Cordaid uses
Result Based Financing (RBF). RBF is an innovative

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payment and accountability system which we use
to improve education but also health and more
recently security and justice systems. Contrary
to a traditional input ﬁnancing system, an RBF
approach entails a direct link between funding
and results. In RBF education programs, schools
receive their payments only after results areachieved and have been veriﬁed. Schools are
incentivized to enrol and retain marginalized
children, such as girls, orphans and children withdisabilities, and to improve quality and relevanceof the education services (improved didactics,
pedagogy and learning environment).
RBF is based on a split of functions between
purchaser (i.e. an organisation that contracts theschool/provider), regulator (MoE inspectors),
provider (schools) and communities. Payments
to school are made by a central fund holder (forinstance the Ministry of Finance or a pooled(donor) fund), while the purchaser veriﬁes andcontracts service delivery at local level. The splitof functions is regulated via a series of contracts
that specify in a transparent way which services
and qualities are expected and by what RBF actor(schools, districts and national school inspection
authorities, and independent veriﬁcation
agencies).
In general, a local partner of Cordaid takes up thepurchasing role of Contract Development andVeriﬁcation (CDV) agency. CDV agencies negotiatewith and contract targeted schools about RBF
performance indicators. On a monthly basis, CDV
agencies closely monitor and verify quantiﬁable
results at contracted schools, whereas school
inspectors speciﬁcally monitor the quality ofeducation.
RBF also includes a ‘counter-veriﬁcation’ survey
to assess beneﬁciaries’ satisfaction. Survey
results are used to provide feedback on theperformance of school managers and teachers. If
satisfaction is (too) low, payments are suspended.
In line with decentralization policies, schools are
given autonomy to allocate their cash revenue

in their school plans the way they deem best
(hiring additional staﬀ, buying teaching materials,
improving teachers’ housing, etc.), rather thanreceiving centrally planned in-kind supplies.
Autonomy stimulates entrepreneurship andenables school managers to ﬁnd and implement
creative solutions for often practical problems
like supply of energy, building toilets or increasing
the accessibility of the building for children withdisabilities.
The RBF payment is a surplus to the overallﬁnancial resources of a school and equals ingeneral to a maximum of 20% of the school’s
budget. In line with the social agenda of Cordaid,
RBF allows for payment of additional subsidies
to stimulate equality or to compensate forchallenging circumstance (like remoteness or ahazardous environment). Through these extra
payments, school managers and teacher are
more likely to stay (instead of moving to moreconveniently situated schools) and to increase
their eﬀorts to enrol vulnerable children and toretain children at risk of dropping out.

potential to address the shortcomings in education
systems. We aim to do more research to ﬁnd proof
that education systems become more cost-eﬃcientthrough RBF, where systems leakages are tackled
and scarce resources are used more eﬀectively.
Future research will need to show that functional
and transparent monitoring and accountability
mechanisms that we set up as part of our RBF
approach are also sustainable in the long-run.

More information:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2FtlDEAzUM#t=19
https://www.cordaid.org/en/topics/child-education/

There is growing recognition of the success of
our RBF programs. In South-Kivu, Democratic
Republic of Congo, 68.000 children are enrolled
at primary and secondary schools working with
RBF. This group includes orphans and children
with disabilities. In the Central African Republic(CAR) we rehabilitate through RBF 80 schoolsthat suﬀered from riots. By the end of this year, we
strive to have 50.000 children enrolled in primaryschools that are included in our RBF program.
Recently, RBF has been adopted as national policyby the MoE of CAR.
Apart from these concrete results the RBF
programs contribute to several higher-order
goals: a) a strengthened ‘social contract’ between
governmental institutions, schools and civilsociety as a result of increased accountability andtransparency structures as well as autonomy atdecentralized levels; b) enhanced social cohesion
as a result of inclusive education. We hope thatthat this may increase tolerance and contributeto peace-building processes; and c) increased
self-reliance and self-esteem for the children
who received an education; this may improvesocioeconomic development later in life and thepotential to earn a decent living.
We strongly believe that the Education for All
agenda needs to be addressed systematicallyand that the RBF approach embodies a realistic

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109

Education and Skills Development Financing in Occupied
Palestinian Territories (oPt)
Randa Hilal, Consultant, Ramallah
Email: rhilal@optimum.ps

Key words: Fragile, oPt, Education, VET,
Humanitarian
Summary: The fragile context in the Occupied
Palestinian Territories increases the demandfor emergency funding at the expense ofdevelopment funding, and threatens the on-goingdevelopment and state building eﬀorts.

The quasi status of Palestine, acknowledged
internationally as a state, yet its context ischaracterised as occupied Palestinian territories(oPt), overburdens its development and adds to
its fragility. Palestine is striving to build its own
independent state following the international
agreements and Oslo accord that resulted in theestablishment of the Palestinian Authority (PA).
The on-going vulnerable political status adds
to the fragility of the oPt, as described by the
UN Oﬃce for the Coordination of HumanitarianAﬀairs (OCHA): “The context in the oPt is a
protracted protection crisis with humanitarianconsequences, driven by insufﬁcient respect forinternational law by all sides. Palestinians in theoPt face a range of serious protection threats
related to these factors including threats to life,
liberty and security, destruction or damage tohomes and other property, forced displacement,
restrictions on freedom of movement and on
access to livelihoods, and lack of accountability
and eﬀective remedy. These threats areexacerbated by the inability of the sides toreach a political agreement, which could end thelongstanding occupation and conﬂict” (UN-OCHA,
2014). 1
Palestinians on the other hand are striving tobuild their own state. The PA national strategies
of 2009-2011, 2011-2013, and 2014-2016 have set
the strategic priorities within these directions,with education and skills development as apriority (PNA, 2011; State of Palestine, 2014).

1 For further info on the oPt: www.ochaopt.org

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Government allocation to education was over
19% in 2014 (State of Palestine, 2015). Palestineis highly dependent on donor funding with theprivate sector hampered by the Israeli occupation
measures and restrictions (World Bank, 2013).
Donor assistance provided for education issplit between: funding to the PA as budgetary
support; support to development projects for
either the PA, UN agencies, international andnational NGOs; and, emergency/relief related
support either through PA, NGOs or implemented
directly by donors or international organizations.
Budgetary support covered running costs andsalaries and represented 19% of the budget, while
the remaining support was provided either toeducation in general, basic education, pre-school,secondary and postsecondary. General support
to basic education increased over the years
2002/2003 to 2010 (Hilal, 2013).
However, spending on skills development
and vocational education and training (VET)
through various modes has only reached 5% of
aid to education (ibid). Spending on vocational
education by the government is 1% of the MOE
budget and spending on VET reached 0.34% of
the government allocated budgets (Hilal, 2015).
UNRWA is also a main provider for education
and VET for Palestinian refugees in ﬁve regions
including the West Bank and Gaza, and their
total aid to education reached US$ 379m in 2012
(UNESCO, 2015).
Education sector ﬁnancing modalities by donors
for the state building and development eﬀorts
are either direct support, or through Joint Funding
Agreements (JFA) that funds the Ministry of
Education and Higher Education (MoEHE) strategic
goals through joint goals and agreements. The
Sector Wide Approach (SWAp) enabled the movefrom project-speciﬁc support to a system-wide
focus (Pettigrew, 2013). A Sector Wide Approach(SWA) led by the PA MoEHE is supporting the
Education Sector Strategy, which integrated
all the responding elements to emergency.

Meanwhile, emergency support for education iscoordinated through the Humanitarian Country
Team (HCT), which is a policy and decision-making
body composed of UN humanitarian agencies,
along with national and international NGOs, led
by the UN Humanitarian Coordinator supported
by OCHA, supporting joint appeals and Strategic
Response plans (UN-OCHA, 2015a).
The state building eﬀorts have contributed
towards capacity building, system development
and enhanced coordination mechanisms. Withlearning processes in place, and on-goingnational eﬀorts for development, oPt’s fragile
context increases the demand for emergency
funding at the expense of development funding,and threatens the on-going development andstate building eﬀorts. The 2015 GMR noted that
education indicators have regressed over the
recent years in Palestine (UNESCO, 2015).
Finally, and as concluded by the recent UN-OCHA
report: “The overall situation is a protection basedcrisis, with negative humanitarian ramiﬁcations.
This crisis in oPt stems from the prolonged
occupation and recurrent hostilities, alongside
a system of policies that undermine the abilityof Palestinians to live normal, self-sustaining
lives and realize the full spectrum of their rights,
including the right to self-determination. Werethese factors removed, Palestinians would be
able to develop their government institutions
and economy without the need for humanitarianassistance” (UN-OCHA, 2015b).

the State Building our Future, http://mopad.pna.
ps/enp.pdf
State of Palestine (2015) The General Budget Law
for the Year 2014. Directorate-General for Budget,
Ministry of Finance, the State of Palestine.
State of Palestine (2014) National Development
Plan 2014-2016. http://www.mopad.pna.ps/en/images/PDFs/Palestine%20State_ﬁnal.pdf
UNESCO (2015) EFA Global Monitoring Report
2015: Education for All: 2000-2015, Achievements
and Challenges. Paris, UNESCO
UN-OCHA(2015b)Occupied
Palestinian
Territories- Strategic Response Plan 2015, Jan
2015
UN-OCHA(2015b),Occupied
Palestinian
Territories- Fragmented Lives-Humanitarian
Overview, March 2015, accessed at: http://www.
ochaopt.org/documents/annual_humanitarian_overview_2014_english_ﬁnal.pdf
UN-OCHA (2014) Occupied Palestinian TerritoriesHumanitarian Needs Overview 2015, Dec 2014
World Bank (2013) Fiscal Challenges and Long Term
Economic Crises. Economic Monitoring Report to
the Ad Hoc Liaison Committee, March 19, 2013

References
Hilal, R. (2015) The Reality and the Prospects for
Financing Vocational Education and Training (VET)in Palestine, paper presented to HHCOT conference on TVET, 15th April 2015.
Hilal, R. (2013) EFA Skills Development- Palestinian
Experience and Recommendations to Post
2015 Goals, paper presented to 12th UKFIETInternational Conference on Education andDevelopment, Oxford, UK
Pettigrew, M. (2013) Evaluation of the Education
Development Strategic Plan (EDSP 2008- 2012) ofthe Palestinian Ministry of Education.
PNA – Palestinian National Authority (2011)
National Development Plan 2011-2013 Establishing

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The Cost of ‘Boko’ and Alternative Education Options inNorthern Nigeria
Hannah Hoechner, Free University of Brussels
Email: hannah.hoechner@posteo.de

Key words: northern Nigeria, Islamic education,
Boko Haram
Summary: Low enrolment in secular educationin northern Nigeria is often explained in terms ofcultural resistance, especially in the context of
Boko Haram. This piece sheds light on the ﬁnancial
hurdles making it diﬃcult for poor parents to enrol
their children in ‘boko’ schools, and motivatingthem to opt for Islamic education instead.

Few people know northern Nigeria’s Islamist
insurgents by their real name. But the Jama’atu
Ahlis-Sunnah Lidda’awati Wal Jihad, or ‘People
Committed to the Propagation of the Prophet’s
Teachings and Jihad’ have won notoriety under
the label ‘Boko Haram’ (coined by the people of
Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State, where
the insurgency originated). Most commentatorstranslate it as ‘Western education is forbidden’.
‘Boko Haram’ has become shorthand not only
for the insurgent group’s name but also for its
agenda. Repeated attacks on secular educational
institutions, including the spectacular abductionof over 200 schoolgirls from a secondary schoolin Chibok in April 2014, seem to validate the label‘Boko Haram’. Yet, it should not blind us to thefact that the Jama’atu’s rejection of ‘Western’education is based not on “an atavistic, irrational,
religiously based anti-modernism,” but muchbeyond that, implies “a rejection of the Nigerian
government and its institutions” (Brigaglia, 2012).
The public education system stands in as it were
for a secular state considered fake and corrupt.
The singular focus on the Jama’atu’s rejection of‘Western’ education has added to the confusion
surrounding the group. If Boko Haram’s agenda
is to uproot ‘Western’ education, then, many
commentators conclude, institutions of traditional
Islamic education must be the movement’s natural
allies. Eliza Griswold for example declared in the
popular online magazine, Slate, that “Boko Haram’sswelling ranks are ﬁlled with boys and young

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men who attended almajiri schools, West African
madrassas” (Griswold, 2014). Nobel laureate Wole
Soyinka takes the same line, arguing that “the footsoldiers” of Boko Haram “were bred in madrassas”(Soyinka, 2012). What empirical evidence exists
suggests that the Jama’atu recruits from various
diﬀerent educational milieus. It is a commonplacethat the parents enrolling their children in
traditional Qur’anic schools in northern Nigeria
don’t appreciate secular knowledge. Yet, what
emerged from my doctoral research on Qur’anicschooling, for which I conducted over 13 months of
ethnographic ﬁeldwork in Kano State in northern
Nigeria between 2009 and 2011, is a diﬀerent
picture. Not a rejection of secular education, but
ﬁnances appeared to be a major factor determining
school choices in Kano.
Oﬃcially, basic ‘boko’ (Western) state education
is free. Yet, paradoxically, despite receiving morestate funding than any other form of education, it
is far from being the cheapest education option innorthern Nigeria. First of all, this is because studyin ‘boko’ schools is material-intensive, and students
are expected to purchase things like stationery,
textbooks, a uniform and a school bag themselves.
Very few of the pupils I met in my rural ﬁeld site
Albasu in eastern Kano State could aﬀord even halfof the required supplies. What is more, schools levy
(semi-oﬃcial) fees for the rehabilitation of school
facilities, which are often in a deplorable state,
and ask students to contribute to the expensesof chalk, brooms, report cards, and other sundry
running costs. Finally, some teachers extort money
as a form of punishment, and for example charge
students who arrive late for class. Expenses thus
add up, and leave families wondering whether the‘boko’ education on oﬀer is worth incurring theconstant drain of money. Post-primary education
often requires students to commute/board andchildren from families lacking both ﬁnancial means
and the right connections cannot easily transition
from one level of schooling to the next. Secondary
school admission letters are a scarce good as thenumber of places is limited. Scarce places are often
distributed based on ‘purchasing power’ rather

than merit, I was told. This causes frustration anddiminishes respect for the state school system.
Given these conditions, informal Islamic schools
are an attractive alternative for poor families.
Whereas the presumed pay-oﬀ of ‘boko’ education– a job in the formal economy – more often than not
fails to materialise for the children of the poor, atleast they can be certain of the spiritual beneﬁts
of a religious education. What is more, the costsof Islamic schooling are mostly low and often
highly negotiable. Traditional Qur’anic schoolsfor example request little more from enrolling
students than a wooden slate and a prayer mat.
Teachers rarely ﬁx school fees, but students
contribute whatever they (or their parents) canaﬀord – even if this means that some traditional
Qur’anic teachers live barely above the breadline.
But after all, won’t God reward their eﬀorts inthe afterlife? Finally, for rural families traditional
Qur’anic schools occasion few opportunity costsin the form of foregone income from children’slabour: Unlike ‘boko’ schools, they are well adjusted
to the work rhythms of rural peasant households
and break during the periods when demands for
agricultural labour peak. Studying in ‘modernised’
Islamic schools, which employ ‘modern’ teaching
techniques and thus ask their students topurchase books, pens, and uniforms, is somewhat
more costly than traditional Qur’anic schooling.
Usually such schools give parents an indication of
the amount of fees they expect them to pay. But
here too, God is part of the equation, and whichfaithful teacher could refuse a poor child access tosacred knowledge?
The state and international donors increasingly
acknowledge the potential of private religious
schools as a low-cost alternative for decent-quality
educational provision. In recent years, they havetherefore tried to harness the potential of such
schools to achieve universal basic education goals.
Various Islamic schools in Kano include secularsubjects in their curriculum today, and receive
state or donor support in exchange. As long as
such programmes can avoid the association withthe corruption and ‘fake-ness’ that the Nigerianstate and Western donors evoke in many people’s
minds, they are probably northern Nigeria’s best
bet for educational provision.

References
Brigaglia, A. (2012). Ja‘far Mahmoud Adam,
Mohammed Yusuf and Al-Muntada Islamic Trust:Reﬂections on the Genesis of the Boko Haramphenomenon in Nigeria. Annual Review of Islam in
Africa, Vol. 11, pp. 35-44. Pp. 36-7.
Griswold, E. (2014). Why fear Boko Haram? The
Slate, 28 April.
Soyinka, W. (2012). The Butchers of Nigeria. The
Newsweek Magazine, 16 January.

Follow-up resources
Sa’ad, Abullahi Yahaya (Director), & Hoechner,
Hannah (Producer). (2011). Duniya Juyi Juyi / How
Life Goes [Participatory docu-drama with andabout traditional Qur’anic students in northern
Nigeria]. Kano, Nigeria: Goethe Institute. Online
at: http://www.qeh.ox.ac.uk/research/video/video-hlg
Hoechner, Hannah (2014). Traditional Qur’anic
students (almajirai) in Nigeria: Fair game for unfair accusations? In M.-A. Pérouse de Montclos(Ed.), Boko Haram: Islamism, politics, security andthe state in Nigeria (pp. 63-84). African Studies
Centre, Leiden. Online at: https://openaccess.
leidenuniv.nl/handle/1887/23853
Hoechner, Hannah (2011). Striving for Knowledge
and Dignity: How Qur’anic Students in Kano,
Nigeria, Learn to Live with Rejection and
Educational Disadvantage. European Journal of
Development Research, 23(5), 712-728.

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INNOVATIONS ANDLESSONS FROM TVET
AND MICROENTERPRISE

115

Skills Levy Failing to Drive Changes in Occupational Training
in South Africa
Stephanie Allais, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
Email: stephanie.matseleng@gmail.com

Key words: skills levy, South Africa, levy-grantsystem, technical and vocational education andtraining, skills planning.
Summary: Experiences in post-apartheid South
Africa reveal some of the diﬃculties of using skills
levies to fund technical and vocational educationand training.

After the ﬁrst democratic elections in South
Africa in 1994, the Ministry of Labour introduced alevy-grant system through which employers were
taxed 1 per cent of their payroll. The aim of this wasto create an incentive for employers to train theirstaﬀ, to improve information about the training
needs of the economy, and to improve the quantityand quality of education programmes aimed at
preparation for the workplace, particularly inpriority areas. Nearly twenty years later, there
are few demonstrated achievements in any ofthese areas. This piece explores how apparently
simple policy requirements can have unintended
consequences.
To achieve the goals above, a set of new institutions,
25 Sectoral Education and Training Authorities(SETAs) and a National Skills Fund were created.
The SETAs were supposed to manage the skills
levy and quality assure provision and assessment,
and the National Skills Fund to support training for
the unemployed.
Employers could get 50% of their levy contribution back by submitting each year to the relevant
SETA a workplace skills plan, indicating their training needs and plans, and an annual training report,
indicating what they had achieved. This mechanism, called the mandatory grant, was supposed toencourage employers to train in priority areas, andto ensure that the SETAs obtained information
about employers’ training needs, thus enablingeach SETA to understand skills needs across theirsector. 20% of the skills levy went to the National
Skills Fund, and 10.5% for SETA operational costs.

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The SETAs could use the rest to fund training in
key targeted areas. This was called the discretionary grant, and could be given to employers or
to directly fund to a provider oﬀering training in apriority area.
Contradictions in the details of how these systems
were supposed to work, as well as other aspectsof the policy environment, meant that none of thisworked as planned.
At ﬁrst, in order to award the mandatory grantback to employers, SETAs attempted to review
workplace skills plans against sectoral priorities.
This angered employers: it caused considerable
delay in getting their money back, and the SETAs
lacked insight into sectoral priorities, and lacked
the capacity to make meaningful judgments.
Treasury instructed SETAs to pay the levy back on
submission of the workplace skills plan regardlessof their view of the correctness of these reports.
SETAs then evaluated employers based on
how well their annual training reports reﬂected
achievements against targets set in workplaceskills plans. Some smaller employers started
dropping out of the system, regarding the levy as
simply a tax. Larger employers, who wanted toclaim from the discretionary grant, played games
to achieve superﬁcially compliant workplace skills
plans and annual training reports. This included only
stating in plans training that could be addressed
within the ﬁnancial year, and focusing on trainingthat was easy to achieve - short courses on
diversity or HIV, for example. In the annual training
report, they often only reﬂected training against
the plan, and not other training conducted. All of
this meant that that the quality of information
obtained about training needs and training
conducted was often extremely poor - preventing
SETAs from developing an understanding oftraining in their sector. Where training led to full
qualiﬁcations, short qualiﬁcations - which often
did not qualify graduates to actually work - oﬀeredachievable targets. SETAs also had a strong
incentive to support one-year qualiﬁcations,which were registered on the NQF often with
their assistance, as they were evaluated against
how many qualiﬁcations they pushed through thesystem.

absorption, little government intervention tocreate a demand for skills, and a labour market
which oﬀers uncertain rewards in mid-leveloccupations.

Approved SETA plans often set very low targets
which were easy to meet, and which they often
greatly exceeded: many SETAs over- or underperformed by up to 700%, suggesting targets
were unrelated to the reality of delivery. Not
only were SETAs inclined to set low targets,
but there was a range of contradictory andconfusing reporting requirements to diﬀerent
government departments, making it harder for
SETAs to develop clear systems and priorities, andimpossible for government to make meaningful
judgments about their performance.

Various changes have recently been made. The
mandatory grant has been reduced from 50 to
20% of the levy. Attempts are being made to
improve the questions asked of employers in
the workplace skills plans and annual training
reports. Discretionary grants are increased, and
80% of them must be spent on professional,
vocational, technical, and academic learning
programmes that result in qualiﬁcations orpart qualiﬁcations; within this, there should bea strong focus on public provision. Reporting
requirements have somewhat improved. All of
this is an improvement, but indications of further
proposals to substantially or partly change therole and structure of the SETAs suggest that the
problems have not been solved. Like the wealthy
English-speaking countries from which South
Africa derived its systems, in particular the UK
and Australia, the stage seems set for a seriesof shifting institutional conﬁgurations, on-going
review of qualiﬁcations, and little likelihood ofaddressing the underlying problems.

Because SETAs had weak information about theirsectors, their role in funding training priorities
was almost impossible, as there was no clear wayof determining priorities. Further contributing
to problems, the quality assurance system of theSETAs, based on the dysfunctional national qualiﬁcations framework (NQF) which contained manysmall bits of qualiﬁcations called unit standards,
and large numbers of providers, led to highly bureaucratic systems, oﬀering little or no insight
into quality of provision. The upshot of all this wasthat private providers, who could pay consultants
to navigate the quality assurance system and to
get accreditation from the SETAs, and had systems for tendering for contracts, obtained funds
to oﬀer short-term training, leading often only
to part-qualiﬁcations or weak full qualiﬁcations
which did not meet economic needs. The instability of provision funded, which ﬂuctuated dramatically from year to year, conﬁrms a lack of relationship between demand for skills and the funding ofprovision, and created diﬃculties for providers
who had to up- and down-scale at short intervals.
Much money remained unspent, particularly in
the National Skills Fund (the speciﬁc problemsof which are not discussed here). And little money
went to the starved public system, which, for all its
weaknesses, remains the backbone of technicaland vocational education in South Africa.

This draws on research conducted for the
Ministerial Task Team on SETA Performance.

Many other factors contributed to the problems,
including the usual suspects of weak institutions
and corruption, a confusing mandate for the
SETAs, problems with their stakeholder nature,and the dysfunctionalities of the NQF whichconstrained and restricted the development ofeducation programmes. Underpinning all of thisis an economy with very little capacity for labour

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The Financing of Vocational Training in Africa:
Conclusions and Lessons Learned
Richard Walther, ADEA, Paris
Email: walther.richard@orange.fr

Key words: training funds, West and Central
Africa, public and private funding of TVET, equity
funding
Summary: A review of training funds in West andCentral Africa suggests that complementary public and private partnership in funding TVET is thebest way to go.

The lessons learned from the analysis of the Latin
American and African training funds allow us toreach the following conclusions:
Current ﬁnancing of vocational training by publicauthorities is not on a par with what is at stake inthe role that vocational training has to play in termsof competitiveness and jobs. This is particularly
true for Africa, which devotes too small a share of
public expenditure on education on technical andvocational skills development (5% on average).
The training funds were created to compensate
for the lack of public ﬁnancing by a ﬁxed
contribution from the private sector. However,States often consider the continuing training andapprenticeship taxes introduced to that purposeas para-ﬁscal revenue. This situation has anegative eﬀect on the development of continuing
vocational training and apprenticeship.
There is a virtually general consensus today(OECD/AfDB, 2008; ADEA, 2012) on the factthat socioeconomic stimulation by means ofvocational training requires the implementationof a partnership-based steering system for thedevelopment of technical and vocational skills.
In this perspective, training funds must become sustainable pilot institutions of the said
partnership-based management.
The training funds are proof that the future of
vocational training is only possible through public/
private co-ﬁnancing, which, in turn, presupposes
bipartite or tripartite management. However,contrary to the typology established by Johanson

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NORRAGNEWS 52

and to certain conclusions of the analysis of theLatin American funds, the said co-ﬁnancing must
give priority to leaving the function of “equity”
for the public authorities, whose mission is tocare about the most disadvantaged groups andthose excluded from the realms of training andemployment.
The West African and Central African funds
surveyed in this study are not exempt from theequity function, but are expected to integrate it intheir primary missions, which are the developmentof continuing training and apprenticeship or of preemployment training for groups where demands
for skills are high.
The additional ﬁnancing contributed by technicaland ﬁnancial partners should not make up for
the failings of the public authorities but, on thecontrary, encourage the latter to make direct
payment of the training and apprenticeship taxes
to the training funds.

References
OCDE/BAD (2008), Perspectives économiques en
Afrique: Développer les compétences techniqueset professionnelles. Paris.
ADEA (2012), Promouvoir les connaissances,compétences et qualiﬁcations critiques pour ledéveloppement durable de l’Afrique: comment
concevoir et édiﬁer une réponse eﬃcace dessystèmes d’éducation et de formation. Tunis.

Financing and the Informal Sector
Jacques Charmes, Institute of Research for Development (IRD),
Centre for Studies on Population and Development (CEPED),
University Paris-Descartes
Email: jacques.charmes@yahoo.com

Key words: informal sector, income-generating
activities, microﬁnance, formalising
Summary: If most of the microenterprises of theinformal sector continue to start their activities
with limited initial capital drawn from own orfamily resources, microﬁnance has earned a major
place in funding income-generating activities over
the two past decades through its ﬁnancialization.
But it was to the detriment of its value of solidarity
and it is still far from satisfying the needs of the
global poor.

Since its discovery in the early 1970s, the informal
sector has aroused many studies and research
about its contribution to employment, to GDP,
to growth as well as the working conditions thatprevail in the sector and the potential it conceals
as a hidden engine for innovation and growth
and also a hidden tax base for governments with
reduced budget revenues. It was later, in the
1980s, that scholars started looking at its ﬁnancial
dimensions.
One of the main characteristics of the informal
sector has always been not to rely on externalsources of funding. The small amount of initial
capital that allows starting an informal microenterprise mainly originates from own orfamily savings and informal operators rarely
seek after credit at the initial stage, but they
regularly use credit from their immediate anddaily/weekly providers of the goods they sell ortransform. Nevertheless the combination of tightrequirements with large numbers of operators
constitutes a vibrant market and has been thebasis for the development of micro-ﬁnance.
Micro-ﬁnance has for long existed in traditionalsocieties under the form of rotating savings/credit
schemes or clubs (known as “tontines” in somecountries in Western and Central Africa) for thegood of their members. Important actors emerged
between the mid-1970s and the mid-1980s, among

which are the Grameen bank, founded in 1983 byMohamed Yunus, Peace Nobel Prize in 2006, while
SEWA (Self-Employed Women Association’ microcredit Bank (SEWA) based in Ahmedabad, Gujarat,has operated since 1974 with more than 450,000
members to-day. Such institutions, among others,
are based on trust and solidarity and provide
support to poor households, helping them in theirincome-generating activities: as of April 2015, theGrameen Bank has 8,673,257 members (96,1%
women) and has cumulatively disbursed US$17
billion since its inception; its outstanding loan
is currently of US$ 1,164 million for more than
6,500,000 borrowers as micro-entrepreneurs andmore than 78,000 beggar members (beneﬁting ofloans with 0 interest rate), for an overall rate ofrecovery of more than 98%.
Besides these major and long-established actors
in the ﬁeld, Islamic micro-ﬁnance institutions
have started to play an important role (especiallyin East Asia and in Middle East and North Africa),
not to mention governments, which have more
and more been involved in the ﬁnancing of initial
capital for the micro and small entrepreneurs(mostly targeting the young unemployed
graduates) as a major dimension of their active
policies of employment creation, and also in theprovision of small assets and working capitalfor income-generating activities (throughprogrammes dedicated to the poverty alleviation).
Revealing itself as proﬁtable, microcredit has
attracted international investors; and a majorchange during the past decade has been the entryof micro-ﬁnance institutions into the capital
market through partnerships with internationalbanks, investors and investment funds, which havestarted to invest in the micro-ﬁnance market insearch of proﬁt and changed the overall landscapeof micro-ﬁnance institutions. The search for proﬁt
has progressively taken precedence over thesolidarity motivation. But there are many who
now think that ﬁnancialization of micro-ﬁnanceinstitutions is not compatible with its basic values.
All the more so, stories of indebted farmers in Indiaand elsewhere who suicide because they were not

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able to repay their debts have made the headlines
and suggest that trust and solidarity have lost
ground to these newcomers (read the recent bookby Guérin, 2015, on these topics: Microﬁnanceand its derivatives; Empowering, disciplining or
exploiting).
If the number of users (borrowers, members) of theservices of Micro-ﬁnance institutions is estimatedat 200 million at world level, it covers relatively
few, compared to the one billion poor. What itmeans is that the large majority of informal sector
enterprises and income-generating activities
is left dependent on usurers. It also means thatways and means of making the transition fromthe informal to the formal economy (the newdoxa of the ILO, which has been discussed at theInternational Labour Conference in 2014 and again
in 2015) will still have to be found. A greater accessto funding remains an issue and a solution for sucha transition.

Reference
Guérin, I (2015) La microﬁnance et ses dérives.
Emanciper, discipliner ou exploiter? Demopolis

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Austrian Private Business as Partners in VET Provision in
Developing Countries
Margarita Langthaler, Austrian Foundation for Development
Research (ÖFSE), Vienna
Email: M.Langthaler@oefse.at

Key words: dual system apprenticeship, private
business as partners in VET

share of training costs is often seen as anothermajor advantage.

Summary: In-company skills training by Austrian
private business in developing and transition
countries based on the Austrian dual systemapprenticeship appears to be an innovative
contribution to local VET systems if appropriately
accompanied by development cooperation.

However, in the public discussion the dual system’s
particular socioeconomic and institutional setting
is often overlooked. Its basic organizing principle
is not so much the duality of places of learning,but the vocational concept of Beruf. Beruf
relates to a more holistic understanding of thelabour process and the skills required for it thanis usually assumed in the Anglo-Saxon model ofskills required for a work process fragmented into
narrowly deﬁned tasks. Moreover, Beruf refers
to the speciﬁc pattern of social organization oflabour in the German-speaking countries based ona social contract which involves all stakeholders
from government to private business and workers’
representatives. In a nutshell, the dual system
is deeply embedded in a speciﬁc socioeconomic
context. This casts doubts on its transferability.

Interest in the dual model of apprenticeship,a traditional form of vocational educationand training (VET) in Austria and other
German speaking countries, has been growinginternationally due to high youth unemployment
rates in many countries. Simultaneously, Austriandevelopment cooperation (ADC) is increasingly
cooperating with Austrian private business in theﬁeld of private sector development. Both of thesefactors have contributed to growing involvementof Austrian private business in the provision of
VET in developing and transition countries. Recent
ongoing research by the author at ÖFSE is trying
to analyze these activities and their implications
for development cooperation. This text presents
some preliminary ﬁndings.
The dual system of apprenticeship
The Austrian, and German-speaking, dual systemof apprenticeship is highly reputable for its
perceived relevance and quality in terms of skills
training. Unlike most VET models, it consists ofa concomitant training scheme based on 80%
in-company training and 20% instruction in
vocational schools. Graduates are assumed tohave good chances on the labour markets and tocontribute to economic productivity thanks tohigh levels of skills. Against the backdrop of theinternational job crisis, the good performanceof German-speaking countries in terms of youth
employment appears to prove the dual system’s
eﬃciency and eﬀectiveness. The company’s highPreliminary research ﬁndings
Nevertheless, in recent years an increasing
number of Austrian companies have started toengage in skills training similar to the dual modelin countries where they have established local
branches. Target countries are mainly locatedin Central and South Eastern Europe, but also in
Asia, the Arab world or Latin America. A high shareof these training activities is partly ﬁnanced byAustrian development cooperation in an attempt
to create synergies between private business
investment and development cooperation.
Since most of the projects have begun very
recently there are no proper evaluations available
and lessons of experience are scarce. What canbe said so far is that the companies’ motivations
are either a request for skilled workforce notavailable locally or the need to respond to CSR
requirements. Companies mostly report goodresults in terms of a high interest of adolescentsand their families as well as from partner countries’
governments. Encountered diﬃculties include

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diﬀering understandings of learning and work
cultures, adverse legal and institutional settingsand outﬂow of the newly skilled work force.
Austrian development cooperation has set up
a special funding scheme for private business
investment in developing and transition countries.
This scheme turns out to be the major funding
source Austrian companies can apply to for skills
training in these countries. Since experience from
Germany and, to a lesser extent, Switzerland
regarding the transfer of the dual system points tomeager results, ADC’s policy in that ﬁeld assertsthat local context is a major factor of consideration.
Rather than the dual system as a whole, only
elements should be transferred, if and whereappropriate. Consequently, ADC funding criteria
include the integration of company training in thenational education system as well as a numberof other factors ensuring demand-orientation,socially relevant impact and sustainability.
Open questions

References

Based on the information available to date,dual model training by Austrian companies indeveloping and transition countries seems to bea valuable and innovative contribution to VET
provision in the respective countries. However,a number of questions persist related to both
system and content.

Maurer, M. and Gonon, P. (eds) (2014) The challenges of policy transfer in vocational skills development. National Qualiﬁcations frameworks and thedual model of vocational training in international
cooperation. Bern: Peter Lang.

As for the system’s level, most of the VET projects
examined are too small and too restricted to havea systemic and transferable impact. Althoughlinking up with local business is part of ADC’s
funding criteria, it has to be proven yet in what way
and to what extent it will be possible to spread thistype of training to local companies. Likewise, itappears rather implausible that change on the levelof regional and national VET schooling systems
can develop out of such restricted interventions.
Against this backdrop the risk emerges thatfunding of these VET projects beneﬁts therespective Austrian companies rather than longterm development goals. While in-company skills
training in developing countries is laudable in itself,
it appears to be problematic that this should be
ﬁnanced by ODA funds rather than other Austrianbusiness development sources.
In a more general sense, the question arises underwhat conditions it could be reasonable to introduce
elements of a VET system based on the Germanspeaking concept of Beruf into totally diﬀerent

122

educational, institutional and socioeconomic
settings. Firstly, the dual system, as any other
VET approach, has to be seen as one element ina broader set of economic, labour market andsocial strategies. Taken alone, it will solve neither
VET nor employment or productivity problems indeveloping countries. Consequently, it appears
necessary that dual system training by private
business in developing and transition countries beaccompanied by context-sensitive interventions
on the systems’ level that aim at inspiring local
stakeholders rather than transferring existing
systems. Secondly and most importantly, thecrucial element of the dual system should beseen in the social contract on which the systemis grounded more than in the focus on workplace
training. Otherwise the risk persists that funding
for VET interventions based on the dual modelturns out to be support for developed country
companies.

NORRAGNEWS 52

Langthaler, M. (forthcoming) The transfer of thedual model of vocational education in developing and transition countries. The case of Austria.
ÖFSE Working Paper

EDUCATIONCOOPERATION FROM THE
EMERGING DONORS

123

Engaging Arab Donors in Financing Global Education
Maysa Jalbout, Brookings, Abu Dhabi, UAE
Email: mjalbout@gmail.com

Key words: ﬁnancing education, non-traditional
donors, Arab aid
Summary: Arab donors are signiﬁcant
contributors to education nationally, regionallyand globally. This paper presents the case for theeducation community to more eﬀectively engage
the key Arab donors in addressing the global
education ﬁnancing gap.

For the over 120 million children who continue tobe shut of out of primary and secondary school,
accessing a good quality education will be thekey diﬀerence in whether they lead safe, healthy,
prosperous lives or get trapped in vicious cycles
of insecurity, disease and poverty. As decision
makers ﬁnalize the post 2015 agenda, they have achance to focus eﬀorts on the children who neededucation the most - refugees, those living in urban
slums or rural areas, children with disabilities, andgirls.
One of the key challenges in providing schooling to
the most disadvantaged children in poor countries
is closing the $38 billion yearly ﬁnancing gap – a
gap that is widening, as more traditional donors
reduce their funding to education. Part of the way
forward must be better engaging donors fromemerging economies and developing countries.
As outlined in The Case for Engaging Arab Donors
in Financing Global Education (Jalbout, 2014), Arabdonors should be part of a new global discussion
on raising new funds and allocating existing funds
for education more eﬀectively. In reviewing the
support for education between 2010 and 2012provided by approximately 200 Arab donor
institutions - ranging from multilateral ﬁnancial
institutions to local religious organizations - itbecame evident that Arab donors are signiﬁcant
contributors to education nationally, regionallyand globally. Five areas are particularly promisingfor engaging Arab donors:

First - religious charity. After religious institutions,124

NORRAGNEWS 52

education is the second most common form ofIslamic endowment. Since the 12th century, theseendowments have ﬁnanced scholarships, books,
libraries and salaries for teachers. Education
continues to be a focus of religious giving, suchas educating poor children and orphans both
inside and outside the Arab world. Today, thistradition is as strong as ever - which makes Muslim
organizations important partners in implementing
and funding education in the Arab world andbeyond.

Second - oﬃcial development assistance.
Between 2010 and 2012, bilateral and multilateral
Arab aid agencies committed close to US$ 2 billion
to global education. In the forms of loans andgrants, Arab investments in education span acrossthe globe (from Asia to sub-Saharan Africa) andcover several education sub-sectors. Half of thisaid went to secondary and tertiary schoolingwhile almost a third to vocational learning. But,
only a quarter went to basic education. While
Arab aid to education has been substantial there
is a great opportunity to redirect some of thisfunding for greater impact. This could be achievedby strengthening reporting and aligning priorities
around the post-2015 agenda.
Third - royal advocacy. Education is a high priority
among Arab royalty who have establishedphilanthropic organizations. Over 30 royalorganizations are involved in one or more
sub-sector of education, with ﬁve working
exclusively on education. With diverse ﬁnancial
means and operating models, some focus onaccess and quality locally, while others focus
on basic education in Asia and Africa. As theglobal education community seeks new donors
and partners, the network and resources royalorganizations often attract are of great potential.
Fourth - private sector. Increased demands forskilled graduates coupled with opportunities
to proﬁt from providing high quality private
education, have brought the private sector closer
to the center of the education challenge in theMiddle East and North Africa. While there is anincrease in the number of corporations engaged
in philanthropic activity, including corporate
foundations and family foundations built from
corporate wealth, there is also a greater need formore corporations to move beyond supporting
education as a corporate social responsibility
activity to more meaningful win-win partnerships.

Fifth - diaspora. Arabs in the diaspora are
an invaluable partner in understanding andsupporting education in the Arab region. The
diaspora is especially eﬀective in times of conﬂict
and crisis – rallying resources quickly and investingin the long-term growth of their countries of origin.
The global education community must engage theArab diaspora in both the countries where they
reside and in the countries where they are wellpoised to invest.
Arab donors are likely to continue to be important
contributors to international aid. The United ArabEmirates (UAE), for example, is the most generous
donor relative to its gross national income (GNI),
with a ratio of oﬃcial development assistance(ODA) to GNI of 1.25 percent in 2013, surpassing
the previous world leaders, Norway and Sweden,
which both had ratios of 1.07 percent. Beyond
simply providing funding, however, Arab donors
are increasingly looking to play a more signiﬁcantrole in addressing their own national and regional
education challenges, as well as in contributing to
global eﬀorts. Further research and dialogue are
essential to exploring the potential opportunities
and to addressing the barriers for better engaging
Arab donors.

Reference
Jalbout, M (2014) The Case for Engaging
Arab Donors in Financing Global Education.
Brookings. http://www.brookings.edu/research/
papers/2014/10/31-engaging-arab-donorsﬁnancing-global-education-jalbout

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BRICS Education Expenditure
Mamphokhu Khuluvhe, Department of Higher Education and Training,
South Africa
Email: Khuluvhe.M@dhet.gov.za

Key words: Financing; Education; BRICS;
Expenditure; Sustainable Development Goals(SDGs)
Summary: The Incheon Declaration adopted by
the World Education Forum held in Korea in May
2015 sets high targets for government expenditure
on education. This article assesses whether BRICS
member states are close to achieving thesetargets.

Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa(known as BRICS) are emerging economies thatare forecast to continue to realise fast economic
growth and achieve the status of developed
economies. These countries also continue topresent signiﬁcant development opportunities
and their collaboration is aimed at meeting the
economic needs of this century which includes,
amongst others, infrastructure development,
innovation systems and the provision ofquality education to the world’s population. An
examination of their expenditure on education
will therefore provide useful insights into thediﬀerent processes of allocating ﬁnancial
resources adopted by each country and how thesecountries can help each other to improve theireducation systems. As a group, BRICS countries
have an important political and economic roleto play on the world stage as they occupy about
26% of the planet’s land, in addition to being
home to 41% of world population and about 46%
of its workforce. The countries had a combined
GDP of approximately $14.9 trillion, accounted
for about 19% of the world GDP in nominal terms
and approximately 26% of global GDP in terms ofpurchasing power parity and an estimated US$4.5
trillion in combined foreign reserves in 2012.¹
During the ﬁnal quarter of 2012, the rise in WorldGDP by 2.5% was largely because of these big
emerging economies. The BRICS alone have been
responsible for 55% of global growth since theend of 2009.
Table 1 shows that between 2010 and 2013, all
BRICS member countries realised positive GDP
growth, with South Africa recording the lowest
average GDP growth of 2.8% and China, thehighest at 8.8%. China in particular has been an
outstanding emerging economy, recording a GDP
of about $2.246 trillion in 2013 while South Africa
is falling short of matching similar levels as that ofthose other BRICS members with GDP amounting
to $351 billion.

Table 1: Gross Domestic Product1 National Treasury website: http://www.treasury.gov.za/
brics/sbe.aspx

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NORRAGNEWS 52

Improving the quality of education and training
for employability is considered the highest
priority by the BRICS member countries, andtheir development strategies centre aroundmaking these priorities achievable. For BRICS
member countries, the right to education has
been constitutionally endorsed to give eﬀect tostrategies that aim to ensure that every citizenin the country has equal rights to education. The
South African constitution for example statesthat everyone has the right to basic education;
hence South Africa’s White Paper on Post-School
Education and Training (DHET, 2013) advocates
for the establishment of community colleges tocater for youth and adults who did not complete
their schooling or never attended school. BRICs
countries continue to make major investments in
education.

and total government expenditure. There are
signiﬁcance diﬀerences in education expenditureacross the BRICS member countries. Amongst
the BRICS countries, South Africa continues toallocate the highest percentage of its GDP (at6.6% in 2012) and share of total government
expenditure (20.6% in 2012), to education. Thisis acceptable by international standards. Brazil
follows closely, with 5.8% of the country’s
GDP devoted to education and 14.6% of total
government expenditure being spent on education.
The share of GDP devoted to education ﬁnancing
is lower for both China and India, even though their
GDP has been growing signiﬁcantly over the years,
which can mean that a signiﬁcant share is being
devoted to other competing priorities as opposed
to education. Russia devotes the lowest share of
total government expenditure towards education
when compared to other BRICS member countries.

Table 2 reﬂects the amount of money government
devotes to education out of the country’s output
Table 2: Government expenditure on education as a % of GDP and total government expenditure

The total investment made by a country in its
people in the form of education is a matter of greatinterest and importance. The Incheon Declaration
adopted by the World Education Forum recognisesthat the proposed Sustainable Development
Goal for education cannot be achieved without asigniﬁcant and well-targeted increase in ﬁnancing.
The declaration has increased the education
ﬁnancing targets for international benchmarking
and has set targets to at least education
expenditure of 4 - 6% of Gross Domestic Product(GDP) and/or at least 15 - 20% of total public
expenditure to education (World Education Forum,2015). Of the BRICS countries, South Africa, Brazil
and Russia’s education expenditure relative to
GDP is fairly acceptable while that of India andChina seem to be slightly lower than the required

target proposed by the Incheon Declaration. South
Africa and China’s education expenditure as apercentage of total public expenditure seems to
be within the range required while that of Brazil,
India and Russia falls short of the target required.
As indicated in Table 3, for the three countries
for which data were available, India recorded
the lowest per pupil expenditure for all the threelevels of education. Brazil is leading in both theunit costs expressed in Purchasing Power Parity(PPP), as well as GDP per Capita for the primarylevel of education, while South Africa spent
the highest per unit cost for tertiary education
students. South Africa and Brazil spent similar
amounts for secondary, while India was fairly low
at 16%. Brazil’s GDP per capita expenditure on

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primary education was very high at 21%, followedby South Africa at about 19%. Table 3 also showsthat India’s expenditure per tertiary student as a
% of GDP stood at nearly 54% in 2011, while thatfor South Africa was about 40% in 2013.

Table 3: Total government expenditure on each level of education per pupil

References
DHET (2013). White Paper on Post School
Education and Training. Department of Higher
Education and Training. Pretoria. National Treasury
website: Available on: http://www.treasury.gov.za/
brics/sbe.aspx
UNESCO (2014). BRICS Building education for the
future: Priorities for National Development andInternational Cooperation
UNESCO Institute for Statistics. Available from:http://www.uis.unesco.org/Education/Pages/education-ﬁnance.aspx. Data extracted on 16 Apr
2015
World Bank database: Available from: http://data.
worldbank.org/indicator
World Education Forum (2015) Incheon Declaration.
Education 2030: Towards inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong learning for all.
http://www.waam2015.org/sites/default/files/
incheon_declaration_en.pdf

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Sustainable Funding for the GCC Education System
Hana M Ameen, Ministry of Higher Education, Sultanate of Oman
Email: hmameeny@gmail.com

Key words: Gulf Cooperation Council, Education,
Private Higher Education
Summary: The economies of GCC states
depend heavily on oil and gas; it is their uniquesource of wealth. The recent fall of the world
oil prices highlights the importance of having
sustainable resources to ﬁnance education to
face uncertainties of ﬂuctuating oil prices.

Over the past decade, the Gulf Cooperation Council(GCC) countries - namely, Saudi Arabia, United
Arab Emirates (UAE), Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain andOman - have been among the fastest-growing
in the world because of rising oil prices, but also
sound macroeconomic policies, investments inhealth, education, and infrastructure, and reforms
to the business environment. Human development
index scores have improved substantially, infantmortality has decreased, expected years ofschooling have increased, and life expectancy hasrisen (Callen et al., 2014).
As the GCC countries aim to reduce theirdependency on oil-based economies, governments
across the region have acknowledged the needfor a strong education system to build a welleducated and well-trained local workforce that will
not only be able to replace expatriate labour, butalso contribute to the prosperity of the countries
in a competitive global market. The GCC has madesigniﬁcant developments in education. During
2013 the average net enrolment rate in primaryschool reached 94 percent, and the averagegross enrolment rate in secondary school was 102
percent. Average adult and youth literacy rates
are over 90 percent and 97 percent, respectively,
comparable to some European economies (Callen
et al., 2014). In addition, the region witnessed a
rapid increase in gross enrolment rates in higher
education, which reached 31 percent in 2013.
The GCC states have also built diversiﬁed higher
education systems, of recognised quality, and thishas contributed substantially to human and socio-

economic development. Many public universities,
colleges and technical vocational institutions havebeen established. Also the overseas scholarshipprogram has been expanded for graduate andpost graduate degrees. For the last 15 years, the
GCC has witnessed a vast expansion of private
higher education institutions in an eﬀort toincrease higher education capacity beyond public
systems. There has been a growth of private
higher education institutions aﬃliated with wellestablished foreign universities, in addition tointernationally renowned universities setting up
their campuses in the region.
The public spending on education in the GCC as ashare of national income (2004–13) averaged 3.9
percent, compared to an average global spendingof 4.6 percent (Callen et al., 2014). The medianspending on education as a percentage of total
spending on public expenditure in the GCC is
expected to be 15% in 2014 (Alpen Capital, 2014).
However, the education systems in the GCC
still have shortcomings: the number of years ofschooling and enrolment rates in early childhood
education are still relatively low, while standardized
test scores (TIMSS) reveal a comparatively low
level of learning achievement. But one of the mostchallenging issues in the GCC education sector isits full dependence on the government as the soleﬁnancier. The economies of GCC states depend
heavily on oil and gas, and these continue to form
the backbone of these economies, accounting
for more than three fourths of their government
revenues and over half of their exports (Callen etal., 2014). It is a matter of fact that oil resources
are ﬁnite and will be depleted, and experience
shows that both the price of and the demand foroil have ﬂuctuated considerably. World oil prices
have declined by 40 percent since June 2014, andthis will undoubtedly have an impact on ﬁnancing
the education sector in GCC states. A coherent
and rational approach toward management of theentire education sector is therefore needed. Moretraditional, informal arrangements may no longer
be adequate (Alhinai 2014).

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GCC policy makers should place the issue ofsustainable funding for education on the political
agenda.

References
Alhinai, A. (2014) Education and Development in
the Post-2015 Landscapes: Financing Education:
Oman Challenges. In NORRAG News 49: Education
and Development in the Post-2015 Landscapes,
www.norrag.org
Callen, T., Cherif, R. Hasanov, F., Amgad, H. andKhandelwal, P. (2014) Economic Diversiﬁcationin GCC: Past, Present, and Future. International
Monetary Fund, Washington
Alpen Capital (2014) GCC Education Industry.

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China’s Development Financing for Developing Countries
Meibo Huang, Xiamen University, China
Email: mbh841123@163.com

Key words: China, foreign aid, international responsibility, common but diﬀerentiated responsibility.
Summary: During the post-2015 era China will takegreater international responsibilities and increase
the scale of its foreign aid. But as a developing
country, China insists that it provides foreign aid
under the principle of ‘common but diﬀerentiatedresponsibilities.’

China began to provide development ﬁnancing toother developing countries from 1951. From the
1950s to 1970s, China adhered to its diplomatic
policy of emphasizing solidarity with developing
countries, ﬁghting against new colonialism, andproviding substantial foreign aid, especially tocountries that were not yet independent. A large
amount of foreign aid was provided beyond Chinese
capacities under the eight principles which were
proposed by former Premier Zhou Enlai. Foreign
aid as a percentage of government expenditureand total GNP was very high, especially in theearly 1970s. In 1973, the amount of China’s foreign
aid hit a record high,1 with the amount of CNY5.58
billion, accounting for 2.05 percent of GNP for thatyear (in 1973 China’s GNP was CNY 272.09 billion)(Zhang, Yuhui 2012), and foreign aid exacted a big
burden on China’s economy.
In the 1980s, Chinese government realized that
China’s foreign aid should be provided within its
capacities. The principles of “equality and mutual
beneﬁt, diversiﬁed forms, eﬀect-orientation,common development” were proposed in 1983, andChina began to reduce foreign aid disbursements.
From the mid-1990s, especially after 2004, with
1 “It is said that Soviet Union reduced foreign aid and China
increased aid to poor countries”, New York Times,1974.12.8.
cited in “Reference News”(Can Kao Xiao Xi), 1974.12.27, 1stedition. Accessed on 27 Feb. 2015, http://www.2vi.org/w/
waidianpingwenge/1974/12/67.htm

the strengthening of China’s economy, the scaleof foreign aid once again began to expand. Kitanoand Harada (2014) use the OECD-DAC deﬁnition
of ODA to estimate the volume of Chinese foreign
aid. According to their estimation, from 2001 to
2013, with the rising trend of China’s GDP, China’s
total amount of foreign aid has been gradually
increasing with an annual growth rate of over
18%. Compared to the major ODA providers, thetotal amount of Chinese net foreign aid ranked
6th in 2012 and 2013, just behind France and Japan.
But Chinese foreign aid as percentage of GDP
is still low. Unlike the DAC donors, China is still adeveloping country, whose GNI per capita was
only US$3,567, 50th in the world in 2013. There arestill more than 80 million Chinese people who live
under the World Bank’s absolute poverty line, andthus the country’s domestic poverty reduction
task is still urgent. With such underlying domestic
conditions, it is reasonable that Chinese foreign
aid be provided “within the reach of its abilities
in accordance with its national conditions” (StateCouncil Information Oﬃce 2011).
At present, at the beginning of the post-2015
development period, as a rising developing country,
China needs to consider the level of international
responsibilities it should take, as well as the roles
it should play in the international development
system in the new era. On the one hand, China’s
GDP has been rising very quickly. In 2010, China
became the second largest economy in the world,a fact that has led both other donors and recipient
countries to expect China to undertake greaterinternational responsibilities, and to increase
the amount of its foreign aid. On the other hand,
China’s per capita GDP or per capita GNI is
still quite low. China unquestionably remains adeveloping country, and foreign aid continues
to be categorized as a form of South-South
cooperation. So when considering its international
responsibilities, with the expected continuous
rising of comprehensive national strength, China
should and will take on greater international
responsibilities gradually and increase the scale ofits foreign aid to help other developing countries,

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while promoting the capacity to achieve post2015 development goals. At the same time, theinternational community and China both need toconsider China’s real level of domestic economic
development and poverty alleviation situation
and accept that China can only provide foreign aid
under the principle of ‘common but diﬀerentiatedresponsibilities’ (Huang and Xiong, 2014).

References
Huang, Meibo (2015) “Policies and Practicesof China’s Foreign Aid: A Comparison withJapan”working paper for workshop “Japan andthe Developing World: Sixty Years of Japan’s
Foreign Aid and the Post 2015 Agenda”, Tokyo: JICA
Research Institute
Huang, Meibo and Qinglong Xiong (2014) ‘Cong
Ren Jun Shou Ru Shi Jiao Kan Zhong Guo Dui Wai
Yuan Zhu Yi Wu De Lv Xing’ (Discussion on theinternational obligation of China’s foreign aid fromperspective of GNI per capita). Guo Ji Jing Ji He Zuo(International Economic Cooperation). June: 55-61
Kitano, Naohiro and Yukinori Harada (2014)
Estimating China’s foreign aid 2001-2013. Tokyo:
JICA Research Institute.
Zhang Yuhui (2012) ‘Zhong Guo Dui Wai Yuan Zhu
Yan Jiu: 1950-2010’ (Chinese foreign aid 19502010). Beijing: Jiuzhou Press: 102
State Council Information Oﬃce (2011) China’s
foreign aid white paper. Beijing: Xinhua News
Agency. 2011
— (2014) China’s foreign aid white paper. Beijing:
Xinhua News Agency.

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Trends of China’s Aid to African Education
Wan Xiu-lan, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua
Email: wanxiulan@foxmail.com

Key words: China’s education aid; diversity;
amount increasing; multilateralism; commitment
fulﬁllment
Summary: China’s ﬁnancial aid to African
education has been continuously increasing, indiversity and scope, and it has begun to rely on
multilateral mechanisms. China has fulﬁlled its
aid commitments to African education, but it stilllacks detailed oﬃcial statistical analysis on its
funding data.

As a developing country, China always provides
assistance as much as possible to otherdeveloping countries. As Africa has most of
the developing countries, it receives a great
proportion of China’s aid. From 2010 to 2012,2.

Scholarships AmountHere we look at the detail of Chinese government
scholarships (Full Scholarship) as an example:
The scholarship regulations in 2015 provide
exemption from registration fee, tuition fee, fee

China’s ﬁnancial aid to Africa made up 51.8% of
the total. ¹ Besides, China’s aid to Africa education
has been increasing, and the commitments are
better implemented than expected; so its eﬀorts
are being recognized by African countries.
I.

Government scholarship: more quota andincreased amount1.

Scholarship Quota

Over the period of the FOCAC conferences from2006 to 2012, it had increased scholarships by
291% in these 8 years. In other words, the numberof Africa scholarship students in China had risen
from 2000 in 2006 to 7821 in 2014, as the tableshows. So, the Chinese government has been increasing its government scholarships for Africancountries.

for laboratory experiment, fee for internship,
fee for basic learning materials, intramuralaccommodation and comprehensive medical
insurance and inter-country transportation costs;
the scholarship also provides a stipend for the
students. Here are the stipend levels for diﬀerent
academic categories (in RMB):

1 The Information Oﬃce of the State Council of thePeople’s Republic of China(2014). China’s Foreign Aid(2014) White Paper. Beijing.
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II.

Human resource training: The amount has
been expanding, and the level has been improved

Chinese government had established 10 education
aid bases in Chinese universities in the early 2000s.
Under the schemes of FOCAC, “China provides
many diﬀerent kinds of scholarships, training andseminar programs, which cover many diﬀerent
ﬁelds, including agriculture, industry, healtheducation, communication, media, science andtechnology, disaster prevention and mitigation,
administration”.
1. Training amount: from 2004 to 2006. China
trained more than ten thousand people under the
program of “Africa Human Resources Development
Fund”. In 2006, at the FOCAC Beijing Summit,
China committed to train 15 thousand personnel
in diﬀerent areas in 3 years. In 2009, at the 4th
FOCAC Ministerial Conference, China declaredthat it would train 20 thousand people in the next 3
years, including 1500 principals and teachers, 2000
agriculture technicians and 3000 medical staﬀ. In
2012, at the 5th conference, Chinese government
further proposed “training 30 thousand personnel
from diﬀerent areas from 2013 to 2015”. ² On the
training fund, for those 21-day training courses in
China, except for the transportation cost, it also
spends 25 thousand yuan for each person.
2. Training level: Since 2008, Chinese Ministry of
Education and Ministry of Commerce set up the
project of “training postgraduates for developing
countries”, assisting African countries to cultivate
talents, and meeting their diversity requirements
in human resource training. So far, in this project,
China has trained 336 students coming from 40
African countries. So far, this project has set
up four majors, including public administration,
education, international communication andinternational relations, and these are oﬀeredby Peking University, Tsinghua University, East
China Normal University, Sun Yat-San University,
Communication University of China, China Foreign
Aﬀairs University, and other national ﬁrst-classuniversities. “Sharm el Sheikh Action Plan (20102012)” indicated that, in 3 years, China would
recruit 200 African senior administrative staﬀ
for MPA degree. With the support of the Ministryof Commerce, Zhejiang Normal University will
implement “2015-2017 Developing Countries’
Masters Degree in Comparative Education”,
2 FOCAC(2012). “5th FOCAC Ministerial Conference—Peking
Action Plan (2013-2015)”. Beijing.
http://www.focac.org/eng/dwjbzjjhys/t954620.htm

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and it’s mainly aimed at African countries. it
will recruit about 30 students per year, andthese students will receive full scholarship. In“Sharm el Sheikh Action Plan”, China committed
that it would accept 100 African Postdoctoral
students coming to China for academic research.
III. Assistance ﬁelds gradually expanded, andcoverage gradually enriched
1. Promoting university cooperation. In 2010,
the “20+20 Cooperation between China andAfrica University Program” started smoothly.
In this program, 20 pairs of Chinese and African
universities carried out the cooperation
actively by one to one interaction. The forms ofcooperation include the exchange of students
and scholars, joint researches, faculty andmanagement staﬀ trainings and curriculum
development, etc. Many pairs of the cooperating
universities have established joint laboratories,
joint research centres and Confucius Institutes.
In order to expand the cooperation of two paired
universities into a comprehensive, wide-ranging
and multi-form partnership, the Chinese Ministryof Education has given strong support to these
institutions; which includes project funding, more
scholarships, teacher training, student exchanges,
the establishment of Confucius Institutes, Chineseteacher training, Chinese summer camps, etc.
2. Jointly establishing Confucius Institutes andConfucius Classrooms. From 2005, when the ﬁrst
Confucius Institute was established in Kenya, to
mid-2015, the Confucius Institute Headquarters(Hanban) has established almost 40 Confucius
Institutes and 7 primary and secondary Confucius
Classrooms in 28 countries in Africa. The
Confucius Institutes turned towards universities
and colleges, secondary and primary schools,
communities and businesses in providing ways ofteaching Chinese language, launching vocational
training, and promoting Chinese culture. In
addition, the Confucius Institute Scholarships toAfrica have been increased year by year, and thishas put more eﬀorts into training local teachers of
Mandarin in Africa. Until now, Hanban has provided
951 scholarships to Africa. ³
3. Dispatching volunteers. By the end of 2012,
China had dispatched 408 volunteers to 16
African countries, including Ethiopia, Zimbabwe
3 Division of International Cooperation and Exchanges of
Ministry of Education of the People’s Republic of China (2013).
“To Implement FOCAC Initiative and Enhance the Assistanceto African Education”. Beijing.

and so on. These volunteers have worked in theﬁelds of Chinese language teaching, health care,information technology, agricultural science andtechnology, international relief and other areas. ⁴
4. Aiding through building schools, and donatingteaching facilities. In 2006, China promised to aid
100 African rural schools in 3 years in the FOCAC. In
2009, China committed to continue its assistanceby building 50 China-Africa friendship schools. In
addition, China also provided teaching equipment
to another 72 primary and secondary schools.
5. Setting up technology demonstration centers,
and dispatching technical trainers. Here are
two examples: in April 2011, Rwanda Agricultural
Technology Demonstration Center was built, with a
total area of 22.6 hectares. This Centre is currently
the largest agricultural technology training basewith the most complete facilities in Rwanda. From2001 to 2012, China and Ethiopia jointed together
to develop vocational and technical educationand training in agricultural, and China has sent
more than 400 people to Ethiopia, and has trained
1800 teachers for local agricultural vocational
college and 35,000 agricultural technicians.

China not only provides a lot of funds for African
education but also tries to make some innovation.
However, the statistical analysis of general funds
for African education provided by China cannot
easily be found in oﬃcial websites like that of
Ministry of Education and Ministry of Commerce.
China’s assistance to African education has
multiple aiding bodies, diverse methods, extensiveﬁelds, and these would make for some diﬃcultyin data collection and analysis. However it canbe anticipated that a reasonable eﬀort to makestatistical analysis will be undertaken, which could
well be the next focus of China’s cooperation with
Africa.

IV. Assistance mechanism: From bilateralism
to multilateralism
China actively supported the capacity building of“The New partnership for Africa’s Development(NEPAD)”. Over the years, China provided two
million dollars to support the Nurse and Midwife
Training program, which was one part of NEPAD.
According to the “5th FOCAC Ministerial
Conference from 2012, China will provide 600
million RMB grant aid for the African Union over
3 years, which showed China’s strong support
for African integration, uniﬁcation and selfimprovement but it also displayed that China had
begun to attach more importance to multilateralmechanisms. Another promise from Chinese
government also displayed the emphasis on
multilateral mechanisms. It said that China would
provide $2 million every year to support African
education under the framework of UNESCO TrustFund.⁵ So far, China has aided $8 million.
4 The Information Oﬃce of the State Council of the People’s
Republic of China (2013). “Sino-Africa economic and tradecooperation (2013)”. Beijing.
5 Ministry of Commerce of the People’s Republic of China(2012). China’s Aid to Africa. http://images.mofcom.gov.cn/
yws/201304/yws_1304.pdf.

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Mapping the Landscape of Financial Resources of China’s Aid
to Education and Human Resource Development
Liu Jing, Nagoya University, Japan
Email: liujing@gsid.nagoya-u.ac.jp

Key words: Education, Financial Resources,
Human Resource Development, Scholarship,
China’s Aid, Post-2015.
Summary: China’s aid to education and humanresource development in developing countries is
keeping increasing without a clear structure. This
piece aims at mapping out a general landscapeof ﬁnancial resources of China’s aid to educationand human resource development in developing
countries through making a safari in diverse andfragmented information sources to uncoverfeatures and puzzles of the data, and discusseﬀorts needed for tracking the relevant data forthe road ahead in post-2015.

The EFA Global Monitoring Report (GMR) 2015
showed the information on what emerging donors
give to education but it is not clear despite
the rising scale and various ways they support
education. While reading the chapter on ﬁnancein the GMR 2015 report, I decided to share myexperience in exploring data about ﬁnancial
resources of China’s aid to education and humanresource development to elucidate its fragmented
and complicated structures in this short piece for
NORRAG News.
According to white papers on China’s foreign
aid published in 2011 and 2014, from 2010 to 2012
China appropriated in total 14.41 billion U.S. dollar
for foreign aid. However, there is no clear recordof the exact amount of foreign aid to education.
Moreover, these white papers also showed thatmost education-related ﬁnancial resources are
grant-based and come from China’s state ﬁnances.
These include school construction, providing
teaching equipment and materials, dispatchingteachers and experts, training teachers, oﬀering
government scholarships to students fromdeveloping countries, hosting seminars andshort-term training programs for government
oﬃcials and technical personnel from developing
countries. Since there is no exact ﬁnancial data

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on China’s aid to education, it is necessary for us
to explore relevant information from the related
ministries and organizations and combine thesefragmented sources in order to map out a pictureof ﬁnancial resources of China’s aid to educationand human resource development. It is diﬀerent
from some DAC members which have independent
foreign aid agencies and which publish annual
reports including detailed ﬁnancial information on
foreign aid to education.
Features and Puzzles
The mapping uncovered features and puzzles about
ﬁnancial resources of China’s aid to educationand human resource development. The ﬁrst
feature is that there are fragmented and indirect
resources. A safari in annual ﬁnancial reports of
the relevant ministries and organizations showedthat the aid-related information is from diverse
sources, at least including Ministry of Commerce,
Ministry of Education, Ministry of Foreign Aﬀairs,
The China Scholarship Council, and The Oﬃceof Chinese Language Council International. A
combination of the fragmented sources may
present a basic structure of China’s aid ﬁnanceon education and human resource development indeveloping countries. The second feature is thatthe accessible information lacks categorizationand description. Although we can ﬁnd the amountof money under category of foreign assistancein annual ﬁnancial reports from each related
ministry and organization, it is still diﬃcult to fully
understand what exactly the ﬁgures represent. For
instance, although we know from the white paper
on China’s foreign aid 2014 that China assisted
over 80 projects in relation to school construction,
we are not sure the exact amount of investment,
number of schools at each education level, and therecipients of these school constructions.
Besides, there are remaining puzzles about
China’s aid ﬁnance on school construction, training
programs and scholarships. Firstly, there are noclear data about funding for school constructionand educational equipment. It is still diﬃcult todistinguish which ministries or organizations arein charge of these projects and how much they
spend. Secondly, although research elaborated
that most training programs and human resource
development cooperation are hosted by the
Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of
Education, how much they spent on what types oftraining is still uncertain. Moreover, to estimate thescale and cost of training programs, it is necessary
to conduct a comprehensive exploration to
track programs listed in diverse sources fromaﬃliations of Ministry of Commerce, such as
Department of Foreign Assistance, Academy
for International Business Oﬃcials (AIBO),
China International Center for Economic andTechnical Exchanges (CICETE) and the Bureau
of International Economic Cooperation Aﬀairs.
Thirdly, it is necessary to distinguish how many
Chinese Scholarship Council awards and how many
Confucius Institute Scholarships are awarded topeople from developing country.

Recommended Readings
Information Oﬃce of the State Council, China.
(2011). China’s Foreign Aid 2011. Beijing.
Information Oﬃce of the State Council, China.
(2014). China’s Foreign Aid 2014. BeijingKing, K. (2013). China’s Aid & Soft Power in Africa:
The Case of Education and Training. New York:James Currey
UNESCO (2015) EFA Global Monitoring Report
2015: Education for ALL 2000-2015: Achievements
and Challenges, Paris: UNESCO

Solutions
To be honest, the results of the mapping
still did not show a clear picture of ﬁnancial
resources of China’s aid to education and humanresource development in developing countries.
Nevertheless, the results suggest there is anecessity to establish a comprehensive databaseor publish an annual report about educationrelated ﬁnancial resources of China’s aid
with detailed categorization and description.
Moreover, in order to establish an eﬀective global
coordination to best meet the need for educational
funding, it is also necessary for both Chineseand foreign scholars particularly in recipient
countries to develop a tracking system which cancomprehensively and accurately assess education
ﬁnancing in China’s aid. In addition, I want to show
my concern as to the extent China can fully engage
in the core issues of post-2015 and contribute to
the related fund raising, since so far China gives
more concerns on aid to post-secondary education(except school construction) and it is assumed itwill continue to do so. A follow-up observation andanalysis of what China will commit and practice forpost-2015 are deﬁnitely important and necessary.

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NORRAG’S NEWS139

Learning for Sustainable Futures: Making the Connections
13th UKFIET International Conference on Education
and Development
15-17 September 2015. An Update
Terra Sprague,Convenor, Bristol University
Email:terra.sprague@gmail.com

Key words: education and development, post-2015, learning, SDGs, UKFIET Conference
Summary: The 13th UKFIET International Conference on Education and Development has received a record
number of proposals for papers. Come prepared to debate and discuss the topic of learning in the promotionof sustainable futures. New session formats to allow for more contributions while encouraging greaterinteraction will stimulate further connections between traditional development sectors and proposed
SDGs.

Demand to participate in the UKFIET International Conference on Education and Development continues
to grow. We received an unprecedented number of proposals for papers for consideration in the 13th
Conference which will be held 15-17 September in Oxford. Thank you to all who submitted.
In order to incorporate an ever-widening range of voices and opinions, and in an eﬀort to encourage moredebate, we have established new session formats with a greater focus on discussion and interaction.
The new formats also make it possible to have a greater number of presentations than in past years.
Come prepared to engage with our wide constituency – which includes NGOs, consultancy groups, aidorganisations, researchers and practitioners – who will be ready to discuss the roles that learning has toplay in the development of sustainable futures. This, of course, requires us to look across the traditional
development sectors and to consider how learning can support the other proposed SDGs. To this end, weare also planning contributions from outside the education sector to help us make stronger connections andopen up new dialogue.
Relating to the theme of this 52nd issue of NORRAG news, UKFIET Conference contributions on matters of
post-2015 ﬁnance will be most prominent in following two sub-themes:•

In the promotion of sustainable futures, what educational planning and resourcing systems are
required?
▫ Convened by John Martin and Jawaad Vohra (Cambridge Education)•

In the promotion of sustainable futures, how should international support and co-operation evolve in
the next decade and beyond?
▫ Convened by Susan Nicolai (ODI) and Steve Packer (Independent Consultant and The Education
and Development Forum (UKFIET))

The topic of ﬁnancing is sure to arise elsewhere as well – in paper sessions, symposia and pop-talks - so be
sure to consult the entire conference programme when it becomes available this summer. We are working
on a mobile app that will make it easier than ever to scan the conference programme on the go.
Opening and closing plenary speakers will be announced soon. We are pleased that Professor
Kenneth King will be giving the BAICE Presidential Address on The Global Targeting of Educationand Skill: Policy History and Comparative Perspective on the afternoon of 16 September.

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Keep an eye on the conference website and follow us on Twitter (@UKFIET) and Facebook (http://www.
facebook.com/ukﬁet) for the latest news. Sign up for our email notiﬁcations on the main page: www.ukﬁet.
org
Registration to attend the conference is still open, though application to present papers has closed. Be
sure to sign up soon to be present as spaces will be limited and in demand!
For more information: www.ukﬁet.org

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