EDUCATION-ASIA: Still the Best Fallback in Crisis

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

BANGKOK, Jan 17 2000 (IPS) - Asia’s recent economic shock has taught the world that major investments in education are a strong fallback position when hard times strike, government officials and experts said at the opening of a regional education conference here Monday.

These investments, made by many East Asian and South-east Asian countries in the past few decades, are now helping them get back to their feet in the aftermath of the financial crisis.

“The East Asia crisis was a wake up call to the world that development is fragile and that it can be undermined if all its key pillars not fully integrated,” said Ruth Kagia of the World Bank at the start of the Asia-Pacific Conference on Education for All (EFA) 2000 Assessment, which runs from Jan 17 to 20.

“Out of this experience has emerged a fundamental rethinking of development which includes the importance of protecting education and health for the poor and vulnerable during a time of economic crisis,” she said.

UN officials say that despite the crisis many countries drew on social support systems and families to try to ensure their children stayed in school as much as possible, and that countries like Thailand managed to ward off major cuts in the education sector.

Keynoting the opening of the conference Monday, Thai Prime Minister Chuan Leekpai said: “Due to the importance of our human resources, which is our country’s most valuable asset, my government has been working hard to continue to develop and reform our education system.”

He said his country passed a national education act last year and is pursuing reforms in the system. The new law stipulates that every Thai citizen will receive at least 12 years of basic education Asia is in a special position to share its lessons with the world because it is home to more than half of the world’s population, and because many of its countries have a long tradition of giving importance to education, experts say.

Kagia cited statistics showing, in fact, that more than 30 percent of the growth of the high-performing East Asian economies can be explained by the investments they made in human capital.

Corollarily, Kul Gautam, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) regional director for Asia, pointed out: “The single most impediment to the development potential of many countries in Asia is the lack of access to quality basic education.”

“The examples of the more successful countries in South-east Asia – including Thailand – show that investment in basic education greatly facilitated their rapid economic development,” he added. “By contrast, much of South Asia languishes in the vortex of poverty due to inadequate investment and poor progress in basic education.”

Many countries of East Asia and South-east Asia were forced to make cuts in their budgets, including in funds for education after the financial crisis of 1997 struck.

The burden of external debt also added to their financial woes — with lending institutions like the World Bank drawing flak for forcing excessively tight restructuring schemes that weakened the social fabric of vulnerable societies even further.

After a few months under the conditions that came with ‘bail- out’ packages for countries from South Korea to Indonesia, many social analysts began saying many multilateral lenders and aid donors had made the conditions of their economies worse by necessitating cuts in social sectors.

But Gautam says education is in fact a most cost-effective investment, and not one to be lopped off when financial resources come under pressure.

“The multiplier effects of progress in education are well- known: reduced fertility, better health care, decreased child mortality, improvement in women’s status and the highest rate of economic return of any investment,” he pointed out.

But even without having to cope with the effects of the Asian crisis, Asia-Pacific countries have some way to go toward meeting the goal of Education for All.

“We are not yet at Education for All – we are at ‘education for most’,”said Victor Ordonez, director for the Asia-Pacific re gion of the United Nations Economic, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) based here.

Still, he says, Asia has “outdistanced the rest of the world” when it comes to the number of children enrolled in schools. The time has come, though, for the region to look at disparities between boys and girls, cities and rural areas, ensuring that children are learning and not simply going to school, and that the number of adult illiterates is being

reduced.

“Even if we have made more progress, this has meant more progress for boys, more progress for cities, for majority populations,” Ordonez explained.

He also said the region should look for new, innovative ways to bring children into school and keep them there, especially since funds for basic education, after rising markedly after the 1990 Jomtien conference, have begun to slow once again.

Gautam adds that there is also the question of priorities by Asia-Pacific governments as they grapple with education needs – since their military expenditures have bucked the world trend and have increased by 27 percent from 95 billion U.S. dollars to 130 billion dollars from 1990 to 1998.

The amount Asia spent for military needs contrasts with the 8 billion dollar additional funding needed to ensure basic education in all developing countries. “Surely if there is enough political will, the funding gap can be closed,” he argued.