EU can work harder on sums for poor schools

By David Cronin

Date: 20/11/03

THE world's richest countries allocate roughly €1.2 billion per year to providing primary education in poor countries. The sum is less than one-fiftieth of that which the US Senate agreed to release earlier this month for the country's military endeavours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Such comparisons will probably not be made in Oslo today (20 November) when representatives of 22 industrialized nations (including all 15 EU states) gather to consider how school enrollment in the developing world can be boosted.

Instead the so-called donors' consortium meeting is expected to hear perky officials speak like good pupils about their governments' firm commitments to the struggle for universal education.

Assessments of their actual contributions, however, indicate that the EU's class of 15 has a long way to go before they can be deemed as pupils of exemplary generosity. At the moment, 115 million children do not attend school; 65 million of them are female. This is despite the fact that the UN Covenant on the Rights of the Child recognizes education as a fundamental right.

The two-day Oslo meeting is due to monitor the fast-track initiative (FTI), which was launched by the World Bank in spring 2002. The FTI is based on the premise that rich countries would reward poor countries which have far-reaching education plans with large donations.

This, in turn, is a follow-on from the UN's Millennium Development Goals. The first two of these eight objectives are to slash abject poverty by half and ensure all children complete primary education by 2015.

Rich countries agreed back in April 2000 at the World Education Forum in Dakar, Senegal, that no country should be hindered from providing universal primary schooling due to lack of resources. The UN reckons that making good on that pledge requires collective donations of €4.8 billion a year.

According to a study published this week by the Brussels-based Global Campaign for Education (GCE), an umbrella group for anti-poverty activists, achieving that target requires rich countries to devote at least 0.7% of gross national income to development aid and more than 4% of that amount specifically for school projects.

Yet the GCE finds that the Netherlands and Luxembourg are alone among EU member states in exceeding both targets, respectively allocating 7.25% and 10.45% of their aid to education.

The European Commission is due to be represented in Oslo by Lieve Fransen, a Belgian doctor based in its directorate-general for development.

In a recent letter to the GCE, Development Commissioner Poul Nielson said he wished to see "rapid progress" made towards universal education.

Nielson said his officials are identifying money from the European Development Fund for the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) bloc which is deemed to be "dormant" (cash earmarked for particular projects which has remained unspent for more than two years). Replying to a Parliamentary question in October, Nielson indicated that €1.4 billion from the fund falls into that category.

Under current arrangements between the EU and ACP countries, the latter's governments need to request sums for education for the money to be released. "I remain convinced that progress will be made over the next few months and look forward to seeing ACP countries eligible for FTI support asking the Commission to recommit funds to the FTI," Nielson added.

So far, however, the Commission has agreed to only two education projects as part of the fast-track initiative, granting around €2.5 million each to Zambia and Mozambique.

Louise Hilditch, coordinator with ActionAid Alliance, believes the EU executive can do better.

"The Commission could have been more vigorous in identifying unspent resources," she argues. "It is taking a long time, without anything happening.

"Eighteen poor countries already have plans that have been accepted as viable. The onus is now on donors to say "we will fund X, Y and Z countries'."

To benefit, poor countries must devote 20% of their national budgets to education. Niger, where 1.4 million children are out of school, is among the countries participating in FTI. Its government says it needs €82 million from foreign donors over a three-year period. But rich countries have agreed to provide less than half that sum.

Gene Sperling, who advised former US president Bill Clinton on economics, has stressed the importance of sound education in combating AIDS, a disease which European Commission chief Romano Prodi has called the greatest threat to Africa.

Earlier this year Sperling, now director of America's Centre for Universal Education, stated that because the 5-14 age group has the lowest rate of HIV transmission, informing them about preventing the disease is essential - but it is extremely difficult to do this outside schools.

Small successes give hope for the future, he added, citing a sex education programme in Uganda which resulted in the number of sexually active pupils in their final year of primary school falling from 43% to 11% over a two-year period.

As things stand, however, the EU and other industrialized countries are on course to fail the tests posed by the Millennium Goals. The UN Development Programme has calculated that girls' enrollment in schools will not match boys' until 2025 at the earliest and, without much swifter progress, Africa will still not have all its children at school before the beginning of the next century.

Writer Mark Twain quipped that we should never let school get in the way of our education. Some 115 million children do not have the luxury of worrying about that.

Preview of an aid donors' consortium meeting in Oslo on 20 November 2003 to discuss how school enrolment in the development world can be boosted.