The experience of sectoral approaches is so far limited to a small number of initiatives in one or two countries in sub-Saharan Africa and South East Asia. Evaluation of these experiences is as yet very limited. Various donors have over the last few years incorporated this approach into the basic education sector, among them the Nordic countries, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, and to a lesser extent Austria, Ireland, and Australia. Some, like Belgium, are in the process of starting this approach. Among the multilaterals, the World Bank and the European Union have some experience in SWAPs.
SWAPs promise great potential as a vehicle for aid to basic education.
They suggest a partnership in which national governments design the educational policy and the donors support its practical execution, instead of generating their own portfolio of small projects via countless meetings with the recipient governments. In practice however, some doubts have arisen about this way of working, which are pertinent if, as it seems, the SWAPs are on track to be the predominant way aid for education is delivered in the future. The SWAP's emphasis on donor involvement in policy development and allocation of resources begs the question of the ownership of national governments. It puts back on the table the balance between partnership and conditionality, between sharing good practice and the imposition of recipes by the donors. The education sector programs of Burkina Faso or Ethiopia, defined in collaboration with donors including the World Bank, contain many of the traditional recipes from the Bank's policy documents, including the reduction of costs through contracting low-paid teachers and the increase in the number of students per teacher.