This study examines what has happened to funding agency contributions to EFA since Jomtien, focusing on financial contributions to basic education, as well as policy and practice. It is based on the responses to a survey of funding agencies, supplemented by data from the Development Assistance Committee of OECD, as well as a review of literature.
Agencies vary in their definitions of basic education.
In part this variation simply reflects a lack of agreement, but can also be related to their own perceived expertise, their foreign policy goals and their concerns about their status within the agency community. It is also a consequence of the inclusive nature of the consensus reached at Jomtien. Whilst agreement across agencies is neither feasible nor necessary and agreement between agencies and partner countries can be on a bilateral basis, this does pose problems for reporting and comparison, both nationally and internationally. For those countries providing disbursements data, proportions of overall aid to education have increased over the decade. The total absolute volume of bilateral aid commitment to education has remained roughly the same throughout the decade.