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| School Report - 2005 Rich Countries Missing the Mark: A 'School Report' on rich countries' contribution to Universal Primary Education by 2015 A new "school report card" reveals that 100 million children are still out of school because G7 and other rich countries are simply failing to provide the funding needed for a quality education. Click below to download report
Missing the Mark: Report Summary On a balmy September day in New York five years ago, heads of state set themselves eight tough goals for ending global poverty: the Millennium Development Goals. Among the most important of these was universal completion of primary education. Education, especially for girls, empowers families to break the cycle of poverty for good. Young women with a primary education are twice as likely to stay safe from AIDS, and their earnings will be 10-20 per cent higher for every year of schooling completed. Evidence gathered over 30 years shows that educating women is the single most powerful weapon against malnutrition - even more effective than improving food supply. Without universal primary education, the other Millennium Development Goals - stopping AIDS, halving the number of people living in poverty, ending unnecessary hunger and child death, amongst others - are not going to be achieved. Rich countries' aid to education is producing results. Over the past five years, primary school fees have been abolished in many African countries, and as children flood into schools, aid has helped to provide tens of thousands more teachers and classrooms. Africa's gross enrolments have risen to over 90 per cent and, as a result, an estimated 17 million more children, especially girls, are getting an education. However, despite recent gains, over 60 million girls and 40 million boys are still out of school. The first Millennium Development Goal - equal numbers of girls as boys attending school by 2005 - has already been missed, and according to UNICEF, 9 million more girls than boys are left out of school every year. To give every girl and boy a decent primary education by 2015, recent rates of progress need to double in South Asia and quadruple in Africa. It is therefore deeply worrying that bilateral and multilateral aid to basic education in low income countries, although it increased to $1.7bn in 2003, is still only about one-fifth of what is needed. For only $5.4bn more per year, we could provide a quality, free education to every child, and unlock the full power of education to beat poverty. This amounts to less than two and a half days' global military spending. For the price of just one of the Cruise missiles dropped on Baghdad, 100 schools could be built in Africa. However, our research shows that rich countries are still falling well short of the financing targets they set themselves, although some countries, such as Norway, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Denmark, are performing well. The chief laggards are Austria, the USA, New Zealand, Spain, and Italy. Five of the G7 countries are in the bottom half of the class, with a combined grade of 'D'. The two richest countries in the world, the USA and Japan, languish at the bottom of the class, providing less than 10 per cent of their fair share of support to education for all. Donor nations have launched an 'Education for All Fast Track Initiative' (FTI) to ensure that developing countries that come forward with good policies and clear plans for achieving education for all are rewarded by increased aid. The Fast Track Initiative has the potential to become an effective global partnership to achieve quality, free education for all, inspiring and enabling dramatically-increased efforts by both rich and poor countries. It is not such a partnership yet: it includes too few developing countries, mobilises too little in additional funding, and lacks clear and certain guarantees from the rich world. Some 40 per cent of the additional aid promised to the first 12 Fast Track Initiative countries has yet to arrive. Without an ambitious expansion of the Fast Track Initiative, progress in developing countries is likely to remain insufficient to achieve the education Millennium Development Goals in the short ten years remaining. To reach the goals, both developing and developed countries will have to work together to do more, do it faster, and do it better. That is why we need rich countries to back the Education for All Fast Track Initiative, and pledge enough resources to expand the FTI to all poor countries that come forward with credible and transparent plans for achieving the education goals.  1 Abu-Ghaida, D. and S. Klasen (2004) 'The Economic and Human Development Costs of Missing the Millennium Development Goal on Gender Equity', World Bank Discussion Paper 29710 (Washington: World Bank). Smith, L. and L. Haddad (2001) 'Explaining Child Malnutrition in Developing Countries,' International Food Policy Research Institute Research Report No. 111 (Washington DC: International Food Policy Research Institute). Global Campaign for Education (2004) Learning to Survive: How Education for All Would Save Millions of Young People from HIV/AIDS (London: GCE). Psacharapoulos, G. and H. Patrinos (2002) 'Returns to Investment in Education: A Further Update', World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 2881 (Washington: World Bank) 11 Based on trends in primary completion 1990-2001, as reported in the FTI Status Report, December 2004. 111 Global Movement for Children (2005) 'But the Children Cannot Wait: What Governments Must Do This Year to Fulfill the Promises Made to Children in the Millennium Declaration and Goals', March 2005 (processed). According to the three-year targets and budgets approved by donors, the first 12 FTI partner countries needed a total of $1.7bn in aid to finance the first three years of their UPE strategies (2003-2005), on top of $5bn of their own money. As of the end of 2004, only 1.05bn had been committed. These figures exclude Ethiopia, the most recently endorsed country, which faces a financing gap of some $200m per year. FTI Secretariat (2004), 'EFA-FTI Status Report', prepared for the EFA-FTI Annual Meeting, Nov 10-12, 2004 (revised December 2004). As noted above, more recent donor pledges may improve the situation slightly for some countries, but unfortunately no comprehensive information was available on 2005 pledges. See Box 2 for more information on the most recent pledges. |
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