Education Report names and shames countries with poor education funding - 9 July 2010

Today the 1GOAL campaign (as part of the Global Campaign for Education) released its Annual “School Report” which showed that while donors such as Netherlands, Norway and United Kingdom lead the way on aid for education, many of the key donor countries were reneging on their aid commitments with the worst offenders being Japan, Germany, Italy and America. This comes as the UN confirmed that in 2010 African countries may be facing education cuts of up to $4.6 bn from their budgets as a result of the financial crisis.

The “School Report” which comes from data provided in 2008 contains a league table of how donors are being rated on their funding for education. In the top three donors are Netherlands, Norway and Denmark and at the bottom of the list is Italy followed by Japan and then Australia.

A number of western donors including France, Germany and the US give almost two-thirds of their aid to basic education in advice, consultancy and bureaucratic support rather than paying for teachers, classrooms, and children going to school. Not only is the spending directed in the wrong areas, a huge funding gap remains from donors with many not paying their fare share. The cost of paying every child to go to school is just 0.2% the estimated $8 trillion that was spent on bailing out the banks could have paid for every child to go to school.

The report shows that there has been huge success across Africa with 40 million children being able to school in the past ten years. There have been some notable country success stories with the number of children out of school in Tanzania decreasing from 3.1 million to 100,000 and in Zambia decreasing from 600,000 to 100,000 and a 36% increase enrolment for primary education.

1GOAL is calling on poor countries to increase their spending on education to 20% of their national budget and for a roadmap for all African children to be in school by 2014. The real challenge is to ensure that once the basics of education are in place that children are able to leave with an education, for example:

• In Malawi, Uganda and Chad less than 40% of children that enrol complete primary school
• In Central African Republic, Rwanda, Malawi and Mozambique there are more than 65 pupils for every teacher
• In Togo currently only 15% of primary school teachers have received appropriate training

The major breakthrough on education funding is set to come at the UN Summit in September where 1GOAL is calling on donors to quadruple funding on education from $4 billion per year to $16 billion per year. Along with new money, 1GOAL is calling for donors to prioritise the poorest counties and aid to cover the basic costs of schooling – teachers salaries, books and school buildings – are prioritised.



Source: http://www.join1goal.org/news_intern.php?page=1&NewsID=113

1GOAL: Education for All

1GOAL is a campaign seizing the power of football to ensure that education for all is a lasting impact of the 2010 FIFA World Cup. By bringing together footballers and fans, charities and organisations around the world, together we can call on world leaders to make education a reality for 72 million children by 2015.

In 2000, 164 world governments came together to create the Education for All goals, 189 governments also created the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. Two of the eight goals involve ending poverty through education:


* to ensure that all boys and girls complete primary schooling by 2015
* to ensure that girls have the opportunity for education at all levels by 2015.

They promised to make sure there was enough money and that the policies were in place to make it a reality. Since then many countries have abolished school fees, spending was increased by $4 billion and an extra 40 million children are now going to school.

The campaign has captured unprecedented support and political will across the world. 1GOAL is supported by the football world and its governing body, FIFA. 1GOAL supporters and ambassadors include a multitude of global football stars, celebrities and world leaders, all working to achieve the shared vision of education for all.

On October 6th 2009, the 1GOAL campaign was officially launched in a satellite-linked ceremony led by the 2010 FIFA World Cup host, South Africa President Jacob Zuma, Her Majesty Rania Al-Abdullah, Queen of Jordan, President of Ghana John Atta Mills, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, President of Spain, Jan Peter Balkenende, Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Kevin Rudd, Prime Minister of Australia, Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, Ban Ki-Moon, the UN Secretary General and Sepp Blatter, the FIFA President.


Source: http://www.join1goal.org/