UNESCO - Education for All - Global co-ordination

Innovative fund-raising and awareness-raising in support of Education for All.

4. Ensuring greater predictability in the flow of external assistance: Predictability in the flow of external assistance rests, on one hand, on the capacity UNESCO. of aid providers to fulfil negotiated commitments according to specified time schedules and, on the other, on the capacity of aid-receiving countries to absorb and use the funding in accordance with defined goals and targets. In order to increase predictability, governments as well as funding and technical assistance agencies should set medium- to long-term financial targets for Education for All which reflect their expressed political commitments. Furthermore, bottlenecks related to constricting aid conditionalities, for example tying of aid, lack of indexing to inflation or agency preference for investment in specific areas of their own choice, and to inadequate human and institutional capacities at the country level must be identified and removed. Social development and Education for All goals must remain core objectives for national development processes alongside macro-economic targets and political criteria. Differentiated support must be provided in view of specific country circumstances, including special considerations for areas in risk situations.

5. Providing debt relief and/or cancellation for poverty reduction and basic education: In the current situation of declining ODA, it is important to identify innovative financial schemes which can supplement ODA financing. Debt relief and/or cancellation is one mechanism which, together with debt-for-development- swaps, has received strong international attention and political backing. The core notion is that forgiven debt in specific countries would be translated into social development activities, in particular increased financial support for Education for All. The various debt relief mechanisms must be enacted with the utmost urgency. Financing of debt relief schemes must be undertaken through the mobilization of new and additional resources, and not be diverted from already declining ODA. Countries must receive all necessary technical assistance in order to link national EFA action plans with poverty strategies in order to, first, ensure that resources from debt relief are channelled into support for EFA and, second, that they achieve tangible systemic and societal improvements.

6. Facilitating more effective donor coordination: Effective donor coordination aims at ensuring consistency in goals and strategies adopted by all actors as a basis to promote holistic national development processes and to ensure maximum impact of international assistance. Governments in the North and the South must ensure coherence among their different sector policies and between nationally and internationally developed strategies and plans. Coordination of the EFA movement must be undertaken at global, regional and national levels. Coordination at the global level must facilitate coordination at the national levels. At the global level, a number of mechanisms have been put into operation, including UNESCO's membership of the United Nations Development Group in order to strengthen coordination of EFA with other United Nations development initiatives, the Working Group on Education for All which acts as a global forum for professional dialogue among all EFA partners and the High-Level Group which acts as a lever for high-level commitment and resource mobilization internationally. National, sub-regional and regional forums and other networks have been established through which partnership and consensus concerning EFA plans, implementation and monitoring can be coordinated. In-country coordination must be undertaken by governments with participation of all stakeholders, including civil society. The E-9 Initiative represents a highly influential South-South mechanism for EFA collaboration and exchange of experience, while inter-agency flagship programmes represent a particularly valuable way forward for coordination of Dakar special focus areas. Further steps must be taken to link existing mechanisms, including the global initiative as such, with other initiatives, in particular the G8 senior advisory group on EFA.

7. Strengthening sector-wide approaches: At the country level, sector-wide approaches have been identified as the best alternative to the kind of fragmented international project support that characterized international development cooperation in earlier decades. The sector-wide approaches are intended to support government leadership and ownership through establishing a working relationship based on partnership and policy dialogue at the country level. All partners are expected to work within the framework of government programmes which provides an opportunity for national authorities and development partners to be aligned with shared priorities. It also permits the agencies to provide longer term support against well-defined policy objectives and to support reforms through agreed operational commitments and devolving greater authority to national governments concerning resource decisions. The approaches are therefore potentially a very critical means to negotiate appropriate emphasis on Education for All in national development processes, and to strengthen understanding and collaboration between Ministers of Finance and Ministers of Education. The approaches can also assist in altering the traditional funding division of labour between governments and agencies, with agency preference for capital and development expenditures rather than recurrent costs. The successful application of sector-wide approaches rests on a number of pre-conditions at both country and agency levels. At the country level, they include longer term macro-economic planning, strong government leadership and effective participation of civil society organizations. They, therefore, often require provision of consolidated technical assistance by the development partners in order to strengthen the human and institutional resource base. The approaches also represent a particular challenge to the EFA movement in terms of adaptation of knowledge on, training in and learning from successful experiences.

8. Monitoring of progress towards the EFA goals and targets: The UNESCO Institute for Statistics has been charged with monitoring global progress towards EFA through its Observatory in collaboration with other partners. Its work has been concentrated in four major areas: data collection, development of new methodologies, capacity-building in collection and use of statistics, and data analysis and interpretation of cross-national data. Monitoring must form an integral part of national and regional EFA plans for action and be conducted regularly at those levels in order to allow for adjustments. It must be based on common output and outcomes indicators which can facilitate the production of national plans. The 18 core EFA indicators should be used and modified in light of the expanded Education for All concept and in light of new emerging areas of critical importance. Specific attention must be paid to better understanding and monitoring of international aid flows and private sector contributions as well as costs of and expenditures for education at the national level. A mapping of country needs must be urgently undertaken related to their capacity to undertake baseline surveys in order to enhance the quality, accuracy and validity of the data used to monitor progress, the appropriateness of their education management and information systems, and the existence of national capacities for evaluation and monitoring.

9. The global initiative is a complex undertaking of huge magnitude. Its success for the EFA movement will rest on an appropriate use of the identified six elements as a consolidated strategy applied in light of individual country contexts. The initiative should be put into action through identification by the EFA movement of an appropriate forum for coordination and monitoring.