DEVELOPMENT: World Bank Wants Cash for Primary Education Plan

By Emad Mekay Reprint | | Print |

Emad Mekay

WASHINGTON, Jun 13 2002 (IPS) - The World Bank has unveiled another plan to educate the planet’s poorest children but says it will require billions of dollars from rich nations and some concessions from developing countries.

The ‘Education For All Fast Track’ aims to provide primary schooling for every boy and girl in 23 countries by 2015, as long as those nations “prioritise primary education and embrace policies that improve the quality and efficiency of their primary education systems,” the Bank said in a news release Wednesday.

For a start, developing countries should devote at least 1.4 percent of their gross domestic product to primary education, added the Bank, which is widely criticised for tying conditions to its development aid.

Bank President James Wolfensohn said at a press conference Wednesday the Group of Eight (G-8) most industrialised nations should do their part by funding the plan.

“Now it is up to the G-8 and other donors to follow through and provide the financing necessary to make this education fast track work,” Wolfensohn said. “For generations to come, the children of the world will thank them for it.”

The G-8 countries – Canada, Britain, Germany, France, Japan, Italy, Russia and the United States – will hold meetings later this month in Canada. Topping their agenda is development in Africa, and for the first time they have invited five African nations to the meetings.

The Bank says the G-8, and the international community would need to commit about three billion dollars a year in additional financing for the next 10 years to pay for the new education programme.

But a previous Bank plan has not worked.

At the World Education Forum in 2000, the Bank, 180 governments and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) pledged to deliver education to all by 2015.

Since then, say non-governmental organisations (NGOs), governments and international organisations have dragged their feet and failed to agree on how to co-ordinate the effort.

Bank officials say the ‘Education For All Fast Track’ will be different, partly because world donors earlier this year pledged an additional 12 billion dollars annually for education and other development priorities.

And they say the world’s finance ministers have endorsed the plan for universal primary education by putting the item on the agenda for the upcoming G-8 meeting.

But figures still cast a shadow of doubt on such commitments. In May, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) said development aid from its 22 member countries – including money earmarked for education – dropped to 51.4 billion dollars last year from 53.7 billion in 2000, a fall of 1.4 per cent in real terms.

But the Bank insists that education is now a priority and may even be the single most important catapult for development in many areas world-wide.

For example, the children of a Zambian mother who has completed a primary education have a 25 percent better chance of surviving. In Bangladesh, women with a secondary education attend political meetings three times as often as women with no education.

The international advocacy group Oxfam applauded the plan and described it as “the first really credible attempt to tackle the global education crisis” but said that the money to make it work was still missing.

“The U.S. and the G-8 will play a critical role in defining whether we are embarking on a true global compact on education, or just another empty promise,” said Phil Twyford, director of global advocacy with Oxfam International.

Oxfam says it wants the G-8 to endorse the Education For All action plan and commit at least four billion dollars, or one billion dollars more than the Bank’s estimates, for its implementation and to announce an immediate agenda to fast track “a group of 15-20 countries”.

The Bank says that to access such financing, countries will have to put in place a poverty reduction strategy (PRSP) by the end of August.

The 23 countries in Wednesday’s announcement belong to a group of 88 low and middle-income nations that, without special efforts would not achieve the goal of a complete primary education for all children by 2015, says the Bank.

World-wide, one child in five is out of school, while millions drop out before learning to read, write, or do simple sums. About one adult in six is illiterate, according to the Bank.

Even in countries with slightly better education systems, many children are being taught in hugely overcrowded classes, or have been enrolled but sent home pending construction of new classrooms.