Conclusions and Recommendations
1. We universally support the case for aid
to primary education and welcome the significant progress in enrolment,
particularly for girls. We heard testimony of good work being
done, but it is unacceptable to rely largely on selective examples
and anecdotes to imply overall performance.
The majority of countries the Department supports are on track
to meet global Millennium Development Goals for primary enrolment
by 2015, with enrolment having risen from typically 50% or lower
in the mid-1990s to 70-90% now. But the Department lacks a coherent
framework for assessing the value for money of its aid. The recommendations
that follow are intended to help the Department better target
and manage its aid and so to increase its impact. We expect to
be informed of clear progress in a year's time.
2. The Department has placed insufficient
emphasis on value for money in deciding
where and how to spend. It is implementing a new approach
to allocating its funds between countries and sectors, including
education, and introducing other mechanisms to monitor how well
aid is spent, including setting up an Independent Commission on
Aid Impact. The Department told us that this will place a much
greater emphasis on value for money than under previous arrangements.
But it was unclear to us how much of a change this represented,
as the Department also takes into account levels of need in developing
countries and wider policy factors such as supporting unstable
countries. The Department should place value for money at the
heart of the new approach it is developing as part of its review
of how it allocates resources.
3. The Department has contributed to increased
enrolment, but cannot clearly demonstrate the extent to which
this is attributable to UK aid and influence.
The Department estimates its share of rising enrolment crudely
according to the proportion of funding it provides. We were unconvinced
that growth in enrolment would not have occurred without the Department's
investment. The Department should analyse the extent to which
its investment and influence supplements or simply displaces that
of other funders, including the recipient governments and the
private sector.
4. The Department has had too little focus
on the performance of education systems and pupil attainment,
throughout years of substantial investment.
It acknowledges that it needs to take a tougher, clearer stance
on the importance of information on cost and on indicators of
education delivery, such as hours of teaching delivered and pupil
attendance. It has also lacked adequate measures of pupil literacy
and numeracy. The Department should meet the commitment it gave
us to have a better series of measures within two years, and should
use this information to drive improved performance across the
education systems it supports.
5. Robust data systems are often absent in
developing countries. Where national data
systems are weak the Department should develop a clear plan to
strengthen them. But ultimately, where improvement is insufficient,
it should be prepared to use alternative means of collecting information
or change the way it delivers aid.
6. There is a risk that the Department does
not have enough experts on the ground to effectively manage rising
aid spending, including in education.
The Department currently has just 34 education advisers and in
key places its capacity is already stretched. Its aspiration to
increase the total number of education advisers appears not to
be keeping pace with the planned increase in spend. In deciding
how many expert staff it needs to manage aid programmes, both
at home and overseas, the Department should focus on the practical
work needed at the front line, to assess both the risks and the
cost effectiveness of programmes and the capacity it needs at
the centre to make informed decisions between them.
7. The Department had assessed the risk of
investing in Kenya's education system as manageable, but serious
frauds have arisen. The Department acknowledged
that it needed to learn lessons and is undertaking its own review.
In so doing, it should evaluate the wider implications for its
risk assessment processes and the controls it relies on when delivering
through other governments' systems, not just in Kenya.
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