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Schools for 156 million children

Thirty-two countries are at risk of failing to enrol all children in primary schools by 2015. This warning is contained in the recently published Monitoring Report on Education for All prepared by UNESCO with inputs from partner organizations.

One out of every five school-age child in developing countries does not attend school. In sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and the Arab States, nearly 100 million children, more than 60 per cent of them girls, are not in school, according to the report and an additional 156 million school-age children will need to be accommodated by 2015. For sub-Saharan Africa, this will mean 88 million children, for South Asia, 40 million and for Arab States, 23 million.

Several obstacles are hampering progress, the report shows. Some fifty countries today are in crisis situations, either caught up in armed conflict or victims of natural disasters. Roughly 300,000 under 18-year-olds are enrolled in armies in Afghanistan, Somalia, Congo, Sierra leone, Colombia, Sri Lanka and other countries. Only 1 million children and young people are beneficiaries of education services provided either in refugee camps or in special programmes. On top of that, the HIV/AIDS pandemic is threatening to undo the limited advances made in education in many sub-Saharan African countries.

"While the challenges are considerable, the task is not insurmountable," says Abhimanyu Singh, Lead Manager of UNESCO's Dakar Follow-up Unit, adding that many poor countries have made remarkable progress. Malawi, Mauritania and Uganda doubled enrolment to reach nearly 100 per cent
gross primary enrolment during the 1990s and Zambia has raised
its national literacy rate by nearly 15 percentage points in six years.
The key to success is commitment, from governments, the
international community and civil society. Civil society involvement
in the preparation of national EFA plans is disappointingly weak, according to the report. "Yet the Dakar Framework for Action presses for a broad-based societal movement nourished by government/civil society partnerships," says Singh.

The international community must step up its support of country efforts. Official development assistance (ODA) declined drastically in the 1990s and funding of basic education continues to constitute an insignificant proportion of aid.

Another key message is that education for all is affordable. The additional cost of providing universal primary education by 2015 will require between $8 and $15 billion annually. It is not as much as it sounds; $15 billion represents 0.06% of the GNP of developed countries, or 0.3% of total GNP of developing countries, the report says. "Yet ODA averaged only $703 million in 1997 and 1998. The resource gap is glaring," says Lene Buchert of the Dakar Follow-up Unit.

This report is the first in a series of annual reports to inform the High-level Group on Education for All. "Once again we are reminded of the urgent need for more and better information," says Singh, adding that many countries still lack the capacity to provide the statistics needed for global monitoring. Data on early childhood education, repetition and drop-out are particularly weak, he says. "We urgently need better tracking of educational spending and more information on what works"

The Monitoring Report on Education for All is available free of charge from UNESCO

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EFA High-level Group reconciles viewpoints

Members of the High-level Group moved the EFA agenda considerably forward when they met for the first time on 29-30 October 2001. The aim of the meeting, in the words of the Dakar Framework for Action, was "to serve as a lever for political commitment and technical and financial resource mobilization" and as an opportunity to hold the global community to account for its Dakar pledge.

"The size and complexity of the EFA challenge are too great for governments alone to address," said UNESCO Director-General Koïchira Matsuura, before going on to highlight three themes for the meeting: political commitment, resource mobilization, and civil society and partnerships.

Following two days of presentations and debates, the 48-member Group adopted a Communiqué. The Dakar commitment that no country seriously committed to EFA would be thwarted for lack of funds, raised questions for many Group members: When is it clear that a government is seriously committed to EFA? How will the international community fulfill its pledge?

Strong political will, national resolve and clear educational policies within poverty reduction strategies, removal of gender disparities and user fees, were judged to be indications of commitment. The Group recommended that a criteria on whether a country is "seriously committed" be developed.

It also agreed that the international community's commitment to meet the financing gap should be linked to national commitment to EFA, evidenced by countries' efforts to reach out to marginalized populations and children with disability, and to reduce repetition and dropout. This will entail dramatic policy shifts for many countries and the donor community promised to support these reforms.

"Putting marginalized groups into school will be more costly than previous efforts," says Abhimanyu Singh, Lead Manager of the Dakar Follow-up Unit. Current EFA cost estimates are considered unsatisfactory because they only take account of universal primary education. The World Bank is expected to provide a country by country assessment of resource gaps by early 2002.

"Focus on country-level action is key to the success of EFA, including that of the flagship programmes," says Singh. He believes that these initiatives should be redefined so that they take root in
countries. "They will become 'flagships' only if they are properly integrated into national plans", he says.

The High-level group concluded that, unless international political will is intensified and greater financial resources mobilized, the EFA goals will not be reached on time, or at all 

Contact: Abhimanyu Singh,
Dakar Follow-up Unit.

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