Access to education is the fundamental human right of every person in the world and ensuring this is critical for the growth and development of any nation. Education fosters peace, supports gender equality, and increases a person’s prospects of benefitting from better life and career options. Nevertheless, despite its recognized significance, government spending on education across all continents is often very low and overlooked due to other priorities, while the monitoring of the quality of investment into this sector is often woefully inadequate.
To counterbalance the lack of funding in education, the international development sector, via multiple agencies, donor organizations, and non-profits among others runs a myriad of programs and projects across the least developed and developing countries.
How significant is the role of foreign aid in global education? Let’s dive into this topic and try to find out.
Education – one of the top pillars of the UN’s 2030 Agenda
There is a direct link between the quality of a nation’s educational system and the level of economic growth it achieves. Thus, generally speaking, developing countries tend to provide their residents with a higher level of education opportunities compared to the least developed countries while rich countries can boast a consistently high level of education.
United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4 envisages that every child will benefit from quality education and opportunities that last a lifetime. According to the UN, it is important that by 2030 every child has access to free primary and secondary education. In addition, SDG 4 seeks to ensure that all inequalities, be they gender or wealth-related, are eradicated and that everyone benefits from vocational training.
However, in the last few years, progress towards an equitable and inclusive educational system has proved to be excessively slow, and it is expected that more than 200 million children will still not be enrolled in school by 2030. For comparison, the current number of children out of school is 244 million according to UNESCO.
Today, due to ongoing conflicts, the financial issues that arise as a result and a lack of funding, many countries lack a normal education system and have a high level of population who are uneducated which in turn slows down economic development.
For instance, Niger, Burkina Faso, Mali, and the Central African Republic, some of the world’s poorest states, are among the countries with some of the worst education systems.
Education statistics and why development aid is vital
Investing in education is a crucial aspect of any country’s development program. With this in mind, numerous aid programs have and are being initiated around the world, which is especially important for the least developed countries.
For instance, through UNICEF’s education programs, more than 43 million children were reached in 2020 which is far more than in any other year. The organization distributed educational resources to address the COVID-19 pandemic and was among the first to support the reopening of schools as the world then started to get back on track.
However, many issues linked with education still have to be addressed and these sad statistics just go to prove this:
- 244 million children aged 6 to 18 are not enrolled in schools, according to UNESCO.
- Sub-Saharan Africa is the only place where the percentage of out-of-school children is falling more slowly than the population’s increase in school-age children. Today, around 98 million are not enrolled in schools in the region.
- There are around 137 million 5-year-old children in the world today, and one out of every four (around 35 million) has never attended any kind of pre-primary school.
- Even though two-thirds of children and teens globally are enrolled in school, more than 600 million still struggle to reach the minimum necessary levels in terms of reading and mathematics.
- Two-thirds of school-age children lack internet access at home which limits their ability to advance their education and improve their abilities.
Why do children lack access to a proper education?
The answer is due to poverty. Even today, poverty is one of the biggest obstacles to accessing quality education. For the most part, those who suffer from a lack of education are children who live in countries with economic instability, political unrest, or armed conflict. However, going to school may simply not be enough for some children.
Sometimes, even if enrolled in school, many children find studying challenging due to a shortage of qualified teachers, poor educational resources, and an underdeveloped infrastructure. Furthermore, today the world is short of 69 million teachers.
What is the role of development aid in education?
To develop human capital (the economic value of an employee’s knowledge and skills) that can help to eradicate extreme poverty, it is essential to make wise and efficient investments in people’s education. At the basis of this strategy lies the need to address the educational crisis, end learning poverty, and help children to acquire advanced intellectual, technological, and digital skills so that they can succeed in life.
In many nations, assistance from donors plays an essential role at every level of education. Moreover, in numerous cases, this is the only way to unlock the door to education.
Development aid helps education in a wide variety of ways and plays a crucial role. Here are a few examples of how can aid be used to develop the educational sector:
1. Aid programs allow children in need to benefit from quality education and learning facilities. This mostly concerns the least developed countries and regions, especially those highly affected by economic crises and ongoing conflicts. Here is a practical example:
The Global Partnership for Education (GPE) amassed over US$4 billion at the 2021 Global Education Summit, and 19 world countries agreed to devote at least 20% of their national budgets to education. The GPE aims to collect no less than US$5 billion by 2025 to fund education in 90 nations and regions. This will make it possible for underdeveloped countries to help 175 million children to gain access to education.
2. Development aid can help to carry out educational reforms which include the improvement of curricula and the integration of technology within the education sector. Here is a practical example:
In 2023, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) stated that it would provide new grants totaling more than Php20 million (US$370,000) for Philippine higher education institutions that focus on ground-breaking initiatives to better the lives of out-of-school adolescents in the country. These grants are expected to assist academic studies, develop new technological solutions, and improve the services provided to young people who are not enrolled in school.
3 . Aid agencies engage in scholarships and financial assistance initiatives to facilitate students’ access to higher education. Here is a practical example:
The World Bank’s Development Economics Vice Presidency (DEC) awards scholarships to students as well as talented young scientists to further the World Bank’s aim of creating innovative forward-thinking approaches to capacity building and knowledge exchange in developing countries.
4. Development aid can help to build and improve educational infrastructure including educational institutions, libraries, and research facilities. Here is a practical example:
In May 2023 it was announced that, with the help of JICA, the Government of Japan together with UNICEF and MENAPLN, had started to offer assistance for the building of new classrooms in several regions of Burkina Faso – a poor country located in West Africa. The initiative aims to help children from different parts of the country.
Final word
The right to education is a fundamental human right, an important driver of progress, and one of the most effective tools to encourage employment, decrease poverty, and promote innovation. Education plays an important role in healthcare and gender equality, and contributes to building peace and stability. Aid programs are critical to counterbalance the sometimes poor management and low investments of governments and maintaining this is very important as the continuous effort of the international community will promote long-term economic prosperity for societies worldwide.
