Memorandum submitted by RESULTS UK
EDUCATION IS
MORE THAN
JUST NUMBERS
1. Summary
1.1 Although the world has made progress
in cutting the numbers of children without access to education
since the1990s, there is still work to do. As the Prime Minister
and DFID have pointed out, it is estimated that over 70 of 94
poor countries still have some type of education user fees and
there are many other costs that families have to bear, such as
paying for school uniforms, books and meals. Barriers related
to secondary school are even more difficult for poor families
to overcome.
1.2 In addition, it is important to recognize
that it is not just about "bums on seats". While universal
access is a necessary prerequisite, it is not sufficient. The
quality of the education delivered is as important as the number
who receive it and the ability of donors to respond to urgent
transitional needs when countries scale up their enrolment and
provide effective support for improving quality is critical.
1.3 In our submission we recommend that
the UK government uses its considerable influence at the World
Bank to ensure that the potential decline in Bank lending to education
in Africa is halted and reversed and that the Bank gives more
emphasis to the quality of education resulting from its inputs,
along with a continued emphasis on access. Specifically, along
with the abolition of school fees, provision must be made for
the recruitment of well-trained teachers unrestricted by wage
ceilings and more work should be put into the use of appropriate
learning outcomes and their determinants.
2. Background
2.1 The number of children out of school
has dropped from over 100 million in the 1990s to 77 million in
2005. The great declarations on universal primary education from
the 1990 World Conference on Education for All, through the 2000
World Education Forum, to the G8 promises of 2005 have focused
attention on the need to improve access to education and it is
clear that good progress is being made towards Education for All.
2.2 However, there is still a long way to
go and continued barriers to access must be eliminated—particularly
continuing formal financial barriers, but also informal ones.
Too many children remain invisible. For example, when Burundi
abolished school fees they planned for an additional 250,000 children
to come into the classroom, but over twice that number turned
up. These were children who were not even on the government's
radar screen.
2.3 In order to keep children in the classroom
and ensure a meaningful outcome to their education, attention
must be given to the quality of the education delivered. This
takes resources, careful implementation and monitoring of learning
outcomes. Formally scrapping fees must be accompanied by major
increases in national and external financing or increased enrolment
will not be sustained and learning outcomes not met.
2.4 Clearly, enrolment and quality must
be addressed simultaneously by providing adequate external support
for countries to effectively scale up schools and make learning
outcomes a core objective for all primary education projects.
Countries must learn from the best practices and lessons learned
by other countries and plan to address learning outcomes as access
is being scaled up. Experience shows that it is more difficult
to retrofit quality onto a system that is already suffering from
lack of teachers and resources. Yet at the same time, countries
must not be forced to make the impossible choice of preserving
some level of quality by excluding a third or more of all children.
3. Teacher recruitment and training
3.1 Quality of education relies first and
foremost on the supply of well-trained, properly paid teachers.
Worldwide it is suggested that 18 million new teachers will be
needed by 2015, four million in Africa alone, to meet the target
of providing quality primary education for all children.
3.2 When tuition fees in primary schools
are abolished in order to achieve universal enrolment, teacher
recruitment and training must be massively scaled up to respond.
3.3 However, care must be applied in the
use of strategies to address the shortage of teachers. Although
incentives such as shorter training courses can work to speed
up the supply of teachers, they must not be at the expense of
effective training. Poorly trained teachers cannot provide the
quality of delivery required to engage the children and improve
their skills.
3.4 The use of untrained non-professional
teachers, while appropriate in some circumstances, is not an effective
long-term solution. Poor teaching by staff who are not adequately
trained, hired on low wages and offered no job security, leads
to high drop-out rates and poor learning outcomes. This should
not be viewed as a viable solution to the problem of teacher shortages.
4. Funding
4.1 In terms of overall funding for education,
aid to basic education in low-income countries rose from $1.8
billion in 2000 to $3.4 billion in 2004. Although pledges made
so far will increase this to $5.4 billion by 2010, this is still
far short of the $10 billion per year that will be needed.
4.2 The UK government's pledge of £8.5
billion for education over 10 years in April this year is an enormously
important step and can and should be used to further leverage
not only other bilateral donor commitments but also increased
commitment by the World Bank and other international financial
institutions. There is a particular opportunity to ensure quality
national education plans via the Fast Track Initiative (FTI).
4.3 Since its inception in 2002, the FTI
has proven to be an effective multi-donor mechanism, funding countries
with strong national plans and enabling donors to coordinate their
aid. Yet the UK's contribution to the FTI still represents only
10-15% of its overall spending on education and has not risen
since the increased overall pledge in April.
4.4 The UK must ensure that future spending
on the FTI from 2009 onwards reflects the increased pledge, with
a focus on ensuring access linked to quality.
4.5 In contrast to the UK's increased commitment
to education, the World Bank's lending on education has not increased
substantially in recent years. Lending for education in Africa,
for example, has fallen from $472.6 million in 2002 to $339.3
in 2006. And there are worrisome indications that the fall could
be more precipitous for 2008. As of mid 2007, there was only one
World Bank loan for education in Africa of all loans listed in
the 2008 pipeline for education. This is an alarming trend that
must be investigated and addressed.
5. All children deserve a quality education
5.1 As the largest external funder of education,
the World Bank has a responsibility to ensure that its lending
increases in line with the need. It must also ensure that the
education supplied is of good quality and sustainable by helping
countries to increase the supply of well-trained teachers, reduce
student drop-out rates and monitor learning outcomes.
5.2 Better collaboration between the World
Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) is needed to ensure
that IMF-driven public sector wage ceilings and budget do not
make it difficult for governments to hire all the teachers they
need. Recent research in sub-Saharan Africa has shown that a major
factor behind the chronic shortage of teachers is IMF policies
that have required countries to freeze teacher recruitment.
5.3 The Bank also needs to work with its
partners to reframe the priorities of the FTI to include improved
learning outcomes as along with a continued focus on enrolment
and completion. This would entail the inclusion of learning achievement
indicators in country's FTI proposals as well as a recognition
by the Bank that funding must take into account the unit costs
of providing schooling that actually teaches children basic literacy
and numeracy.
5.4 The UK government has a vital role to
play in influencing the World Bank to ensure that it plays a central
role in provision of resources for basic education, especially
in Africa, addressing both the removal of barriers to education
and the quality of that education.
"In many countries not all children have
the opportunity to enter a classroom or gain basic literacy or
numeracy skills, as there are simply not enough qualified teachers.
This has negative outcomes not only for the future of individual
children, but also for the development of whole societies."
Director-General of UNESCO, Kochiro Matsuura,
in a message marking World Teachers' Day, 5 October 2007.
EMPOWER THE
POOR THROUGH
MICROFINANCE
1.1 Microfinance has proven to be one of
the most effective development tools available for empowering
the poorest in society to break free from poverty and deprivation.
Despite its record of success, microfinance remains underutilised
by the World Bank.
1.2 In fiscal Year 2006 the World Bank,
through the International Finance Corporation, invested US$132
million in microfinance. The Bank has since confirmed that it
can not fully or accurately assess the precise level of IDA funding
dedicated to microfinance. Similarly the Bank is unable to state
with any certainty what proportion of that funding is reaching
those living on less than US$1 a day.
1.3 The World Bank should afford greater
priority to microfinance initiatives, recognising its valuable
contribution to poverty reduction and development. Furthermore
we recommend the following important measures to the World Bank
for their consideration:
(a) The World Bank should scale up its microfinance
programmes, enhancing their capacity and global reach. This can
only be achieved through greater investment.
(b) The Bank should seek to ensure that at
least half of all microfinance resources benefit those living
on less than US$1 a day
(c) Cost-effective poverty measurement tools
should be used to measure the poverty level of borrowers and thereby
ensure compliance with that goal; and
(d) The World Bank should report on the results
in an open and transparent manner.
RESPOND TO
AFRICA'S
TB EMERGENCY
1.1 Africa continues to bear the brunt of
the global TB epidemic, remaining the only continent where TB
cases continue to rise. The combination of weak health systems,
grinding poverty and high rates of HIV/AIDS have all contributed
to a trebling of the number of TB cases and deaths since 1990
(WHO 2007).
1.2 The scale of the TB epidemic is so great
that in August 2005, African Ministers of Health and the World
Health Organisation (WHO) declared TB a continent-wide health
emergency. A year later the first cases of extensively drug resistant
TB (XDR-TB) were reported, adding a new and deadly dimension to
the already severe health crisis. The World Bank's commitment
to tackling tuberculosis is crucial if the international community
is to effectively deal with the crisis.
1.3 There are now about 12 million people
infected with both HIV and TB—70% of these cases being in
Sub-Saharan Africa. The TB emergency is dramatically increasing
mortality rates amongst those infected with HIV. Treating TB is
therefore one of the most effective ways of reducing AIDS deaths.
1.4 Despite the inextricable link between
HIV/AIDS and TB only a few of the World Bank's multi-country HIV/AIDS
programmes included a dedicated TB component. Though the Bank
does provide TB funding in the way of budget support and sector
wide health investments, it is unable to accurately report the
scale or extent to which these programmes directly benefit TB
control.
1.5 In 2006 the civil society organisation
RESULTS International reported that the Bank devotes less than
1% of health sector financing for Africa to TB, despite a US$11
billion funding gap to achieve the MDG for TB in Africa.[117]
1.6 TB control has proven to be amongst
the most economically effective health interventions that can
be made. The World Bank has to its credit recognised this fact
in principle, it is now time for the Bank to follow through and
give TB control the increased attention and investment that it
deserves.
1.7 The UK government should seek to persuade
the World Bank to significantly scale up its commitment to fighting
TB in Africa, investing at least US$ 1.1 billion over the next
decade.
10 October 2007
117 In July 2007, WHO launched the MDR-TB & XDR-TB
Global Response Plan, which calls for an additional (ie, over
the resource needs identified by the Global Plan) $700 million
and $1 billion worldwide in 2007 and 2008 to respond the emergence
and spread of drug-resistant TB. WHO estimates that at least an
additional $1 billion will be needed annually from 2009-15. Back
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