France, Japan, Netherlands and Spain reduced aid to basic education by 40

UK cuts by 21% and US up by 23%

STAFF Report

PARIS: Although previous reports had recommended at least six times increase to meet $39 billion annual gap, the latest aid figures for education estimated by the Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report – UNESCO – show that levels went down by almost US$600 million or 4% between 2013 and 2014. The share of total aid being allocated to education also fell from 9.5% to 8.2%, indicating that the sector is falling further down the list of priorities for donors.
Aid to basic education has decreased by 5% since 2013 while out of school numbers for primary education are on the rise, making it
59 million by latest counts according to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics.
The GEM Report has previously calculated that aid to education needs to increase by at least six times to fill the annual finance gap of $39 billion in order to provide the global target of 12 years of quality education for all by 2030. Yet the latest
analysis shows that, rather than rising, levels of aid to the sector are 8% lower than they were in 2010. Aaron Benavot, Director of the GEM Report, UNESCO: “It is disheartening to see that
international aid to education is going in totally the wrong direction. This will make education progress extremely difficult.”

Pakistan received $643m, India 806
Total aid to education in Pakistan US$218 million (2002/3) 454 million (2013) 643 million (2014). This is the most any country in the region receives apart from India, which received 806 million in 2014. Total aid to basic education in Pakistan 126 million (2002/3) 252 million (2013) 342 million (2014) – again it was the highest in the region. Aid for basic education per child $7 in 2002/3, $12 in 213 and $16 in 2014 This is the fourth lowest in the region for 2014 after Nepal ($24), Sri Lanka ($25) and Afghanistan ($50). This latter point is probably the most shocking, given that Pakistan has such a huge amount of out of school children in comparison to these other countries.

The share received by Sub-Saharan Africa of total aid to basic education has fallen from 49% in 2002/03 to 28% in 2014, even though the region accounts for over half of all out-of-school children.
Between 2013 and 2014, four donors, France, Japan, Netherlands, and Spain, reduced aid to basic education by 40% or more, UK by 21%, or almost twice its rate of reduction of total aid to education, and is no longer the largest bilateral donor. Its place has been taken by the United States, which increased aid to basic education by US$164 million or 23%.
Neither is aid per child delivered according to need. For example, the average child in Mongolia receives US$45 even though the primary completion rate was 97% in 2010. By contrast, Chad, where the primary completion rate was 28% in 2010, received US$3 per primary school age child in 2014. Benavot continues “Governments around the world have just signed up to an enormously ambitious and promising vision for education and lifelong learning over the next fifteen years, an agenda they know is crucial if even greater ambitions for sustainable development are to be realized by 2030. Do they think such an agenda can be achieved if there aren’t sufficient funds to carry out the work?”