1
Wednesday, March 2, 2005
Holiday Inn on the Hill
Federal Ballroom
Washington, D.C.
[TRANSCRIPT PREPARED FROM TAPE RECORDINGS.]

AGENDA
PAGE
WELCOME AND KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Introduction and Welcome
Geeta Rao Gupta, President,
International Center for Research
On Women 4
Opening Remarks
Hon. Hilary Rodham Clinton
A U.S. Senator from New York 7
Opening Remarks
Jeffrey Sachs
Director, Earth Institute, Columbia
University; Director U.N. Millennium
Project and Special Advisor to
United Nations Secretary-General 13
Opening Remarks
Hon. Chuck Hagel
A U.S. Senator from Nebrasks 20
PANEL ONE: REACHING UNIVERSAL PRIMARY
EDUCATION AND GENDER PARITY: CHALLENGES
FOR NATIONAL GOVERNMENTS AND DONORS
Findings and Recommendations for the
Education Sector from the U.N. Millennium
Project Task Force on Education and
Gender Equity
Amina J. Ibrahim, Chair; National
Coordinator, Education for All, Nigeria 24
Experiences from Colombia
Vicky Colbert de Arboleda , Executive
Director, Escuela Nueva Back to the People
Foundation 27
Donor Challenges
Desmond Bermingham , U.K. Department for
International Development 29
Making the Donor Relationship Work
Elizabeth King , Research Manager,
Development Research Group, World Bank 32
2

AGENDA (Continued)
Closing Comments on Strategies for
Moving Forward
Nicholas Burnett, Director, Education
for All, Global Monitoring Report, UNESCO 39
PANEL TWO: GENDER PARITY: WHY SECONDARY
EDUCATION IS CRITICAL TO THE MDGS
Gender Equity Findings and Recommendations for Gender Equity from the U.N. Millennium
Project Task Force on Education and Gender
Equity
Geeta Rao Gupta , President,
International Center for Research on Women
Importance of Secondary Education
Cynthia Lloyd , Director of Social Science
42
Research, Population Council and Chair,
National Academy of Sciences Panel on
Transitions to Adulthood in Developing
Countries 46
Experiences from Bangladesh
Dilara Hafiz , Director of Secondary and
Higher Education, Ministry of Education,
Bangladesh 49
UNICEF'S Approach
Cream Wright , Chief, Education Section,
UNICEF 51
SYNTHESIS AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR MOVING
FORWARD
Importance of 2005; Ways to Move Forward
Gene Sperling , Director, Center for
Universal Education, Council on Foreign
Relations 58
Special Video Message
U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Anan 63
Final Closing Remarks
Nancy Birdsall, President, Center
for Global Development 63
3

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P R O C E E D I N G S
INTRODUCTION AND WELCOME
MS. GUPTA : Good morning. I think we should begin because we have a tight schedule for the day.
My name is Geeta Rao Gupta, and I'm president of the International Center for
Research on Women, a policy institute here in the Washington, D.C. area that works to improve the economic, social, and health status of women living in poor communities around the world.
On behalf of the Center for Global Development, the U.N. Millennium Project, and ICRW, I welcome all of you to this very important event.
Among all the VIPs that we have among us today, we are thrilled to have with us members of the boards of directors of both CDG and ICRW. And I'd like to acknowledge them and would like them to stand and like all of you to join me in a round of applause, because board members are volunteers to institutions, and they give a lot in terms of both time and their support.
First of all, Ed Scott, founder and chair of CDG.
[Applause.]
J oined here also by his wife, Cheryl Scott, who has also been a great supporter of
CDG. Thank you.
[Applause.]
A nd Adam Waldman. Is he here? A member of the board of CDG? And we're expecting Brooke Shearer , who isn't here yet, who's a member of ICRW's board of directors. I thank you all for your leadership and support of our institutions.
I also want to acknowledge the presence of members of our task force. I understand Arlene Mitchell is here. Is she here? There she is. Thank you, Arlene, for your efforts towards the work that the task force produced.
Gene Sperling is here somewhere. I saw him earlier. Gene, are you here? He's outside getting coffee. And Simon Ellis, who wasn't an official member of the task force, but contributed greatly to our deliberations and contributions. Is Simon here? Hi, Simon.
Thank you.
As you all know, in September 2000, the world leaders from 189 countries endorsed the Millennium Declaration, from which were drawn eight Millennium
Development Goals.
The goals cover a wide range of development outcomes, including eradicating poverty and hunger, improving maternal and child health, containing infectious diseases, and protecting the environment.
What we are gathered here today to do is to focus on two of those goals. Goal
Number Two, which is to achieve universal primary education, and Goal Number Three, which is to promote gender equality and empower women.
Both goals are critical w believe for meeting all of the MDGs. Investments in gender equality and education are some of the smartest investments we as a global community can make.
They have the ability to bring about large-scale and transformative intergenerational changes in the lives of women, men, and children.
And that will be the focus of much of the discussion today. These goals, like all the other MDGs, are backed by concrete and measurable targets. And that's what makes the Millennium Development Goals somewhat different from promises made before.

5
Most of these targets are to be met by 2015, but with one exception. A part of the target for the goal in gender equality and the empowerment of women is to eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education by the year 2005.
And so here we are in the year 2005, the year when the first of the targets for the
MDGs falls due--an important moment we thought to remind the global community--all of us--donors, governments, representatives of civil society organizations--that we need to do a lot more to ensure that we meet this deadline, because although we have made substantial progress since the year 2000, it has been too slow to meet the 2005 target.
That is the purpose of this meeting, to draw attention to the need to accelerate progress toward the target of gender parity in primary and secondary education, by listening to the view of key stakeholders on what it will take to get the job done--if not by
2005, at least by 2015--and to meet this target at high levels of overall participation because gender parity in primary and secondary education can often be achieved with very small proportions of girls and boys in school. What we want to be able to do is achieve that goal at high levels of participation.
Today's panels will touch on many of these issues and the challenges that we face as we move ahead, but most importantly, we hope that the discussion will lead to suggestions of very specific ways that we can all move forward to achieve the goals because there is really no other way forward but to meet the promises that we have made.
This event was made possible because of the support of our donors--the United
Nations Foundation. Is Amy Weiss present here? Thank you so very much for your support.
The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. Is Tamara Fox in the room? Perhaps not.
And the Nike Foundation, and I know that Maria Itel the president of the Nike
Foundation is with us in spirit, if not in person. And Magna International, who also couldn't be with us today, but has supported this effort.
So please join me in one more round of applause for these donors--
[Applause.]
Because I have to say it takes leadership on these issues to move these causes forward. I also want to mention that in support of another MDG, the one that seeks to contain the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the U.N. Foundation, one of our donors for today's event, is supporting, together with U.N. AIDS and other donors, a congressional breakfast on March 8th--this is a plug for the event--focusing on women and AIDS, because as you know, the face of the epidemic now is that of women, particularly young women. And because they're empowerment is key to containing the epidemic, I thought it was relevant to mention that that event is occurring on March 8th. And I think information on the event is available here today.
During the course of this morning, we will be outlining specific recommendations that were derived through a three-year long process of review, analysis, and discussion that was undertaken by the task force on education and gender equality, which was one of
10 task forces convened by the U.N. Millennium Project.
The U.N. Millennium Project is an independent advisory body commissioned by the U.N. Secretary-General to propose the best strategies to meet the MDGs. Its efforts are led by Professor Jeffrey Sachs. I must say an inspirational and committed leader, who's here with us today, and we're thrilled to have you here, Jeff. The task force on education and gender equality was co-chaired by Nancy Birdsall, the president of the
Center for Global Development, Amina Ibrahim, the national coordinator for the
Education for All Initiative in Nigeria, and by me.

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And we worked closely with 30 members of our task force who consisted of researchers, civil society representatives, experts from U.N. organizations, representatives from donor agencies and national governments. All of us worked together to look at the data that is available in order to identify countries that are on track to meeting these targets and goals or off track; to examine best practices and success stories, and then vet various theories of social change and development to come up with key recommendations for meeting the goals for universal primary education and gender equality.
It has been a pleasure and a privilege to work with Amina and Nancy on this effort, and we were ably supported with incredible technical expertise and knowledge by two senior associates, Ruth Levine from CDG and Caren Grown from ICRW.
The task force also benefited greatly from the efforts of Chandrika Bahadur of the
Millennium Project. We are grateful for your efforts, Chandrika, and from staff, particularly support provided by Kelly Tobin of CDG and Aslihan of ICRW. In fact,
Kelly was instrumental in organizing today's event. Where are you, Kelly? Not in the room when she should be. And worked closely with Chandrika in the Millennium
Project secretariat and with the communications team at CDG and with Aslihan at ICRW to make today happen. So thank you to all of you.
I hope you have already seen that there are copies of the task forces' reports.
There are two reports, one on education, one on gender equality, that are available for you outside, as well as the overview report of the Millennium Project that was authored by all of the coordinators of the task forces, led by Jeffery Sachs.
We also have shorter versions of the task force reports that are available as policy briefs in your packets hopefully, or maybe out there at the table. And you may have also had a chance now to look at the agenda.
Let me just quickly walk you through that so we are clear what's happening.
We have three keynote speakers this morning, and Senator Clinton will be joining us shortly. And then we have three panels. One that's focused on UPE, universal primary education. Another that's focused on gender parity, with a specific focus on secondary education, and the third that looks at ways to move forward.
We anticipate if we are good in chairing these sessions that there will be plenty of time for discussion and debate and we hope and encourage all of you to participate.
We really thank you all for being here. We're looking forward to a very informative and energizing debate and discussion this morning. I should say that this is a timely discussion. I don't know if you're all aware but as we meet here today, civil society and government representatives from around the world are meeting in New York
City to mark the 10th anniversary of the Beijing Conference on Women, and to recommit to the promises made.
They are facing some hurdles in making that happen, but they are determined to make it happen, because, in fact, it is many of those promises that are encapsulated in the goals that we are discussing here today.
It's also important to remember that we are only six days from International
Women's Day, which is on March 8th. And, therefore, we thought that this might be a good time to meet and gather, not just to recommit to the idea of gender equality and the empowerment of women, but to commit to taking action to meet the goal within a specified period of time. That's what we'll be focusing on today.
And to the extent that each of you can participate in making sure that happens, please do so. Share with us experiences that you may have had through your work, either within international agencies or at the country level, in making sure that these goals are

7 met and any successes or learnings that you have had through your work would be important to today's discussion.
Frankly, we have only 10 more years. It is a golden opportunity for us to take action and move forward. If this window of opportunity is missed, I think it will be very difficult to get the global community to recommit in quite the same way. It will be impossible to chip away the cynicism that I know is already growing in the work in which we're all involved.
So I just want to urge you all to think of this as a golden opportunity and to believe that there is really no time to waste.
I don't know if Senator Clinton is here yet. Do you want to take a quick look and see? Any questions about the agenda or about the day's proceedings?
[Pause.]
So give us a minute just to find out where Senator Clinton is at, and we'll proceed.
[Pause.]
Okay. Senator Clinton is still a ways away. We didn't quite time it the way we thought we had, so I suggest that you engage with the person sitting next to you in conversation, and we'll wait 'til she arrives.
[Pause.]
Sure. Yes. Can everybody please take their seats? We need to clear the outside area for the Senator's arrival. We weren't so far off from our timing. Can I please urge you all to take a seat and settle down?
Like Senator Hilary Rodham Clinton. Ladies and gentlemen, Senator Clinton.
[Applause.]
OPENING REMARKS
SENATOR CLINTON: Thank you very much, and I am deeply honored to be speaking in front of such a group of committed individuals who have in many instances devoted your own lives to helping women and girls, and, in other instances, devoted considerable financial resources, personal and charitable and corporate.
But all of you are here because you share a deep and eternal belief that we have much work left to do with respect to equal rights, gender equality, and what that means for a future of stability, prosperity, and peace for our world.
There are so many people to thank here, and I'm looking out at this audience, and
I see many people with whom I have worked in the past, going back in some instances 30 years, and others five years, and then some less than that. But I am delighted that we have such a broad cross section of people for whom the issue of gender equality is a passion.
I want to thank Nancy Birdsall and Geeta Rao Gupta and Amina Ibrahim for making this conference and this task force a reality in so many ways.
I want to thank Jeffrey Sachs and the U.N. Millennium Project for convening the task force on the Millennium Development Goals, and this team is a real leadership example for raising this issue and not letting it go. And I'm grateful for that.
I know later today we'll by joined by Senator Hagel, and I'm delighted that he will be here addressing you.
And finally, I want to thank my long-time friend Gene Sperling for his commitment to this issue. Ever since President Clinton sent Gene I think to Senegal in
2000, he has been a tireless advocate on behalf of gender equality and particularly universal basic education.
You know for more than 30 years I have worked on behalf of girls and women's issues. And particularly during the Clinton Administration, I had the great honor of

8 traveling throughout our world, often with my husband, often on my own, sometimes with my daughter, representing our country, and whenever possible visiting schools, going into communities, seeing first-hand what was happening in the lives of girls and women.
I remember going to a school in Uganda after President Museveni had made the decision to eliminate school fees. That was a terrible idea that went into effect in the
1960s, '70s, and '80s, and it put up a barrier to universal education; and it was particularly hard on daughters, because with limited resources, so many families made what seemed to be a very practical choice of sending their sons to school and not their daughters. It was one of those horrible ideas that I guess made sense in some air-conditioned office in
Washington or London, but in the realities of the lives of human beings, it was absurd.
And there was such a gap of resources between what was available and what was needed that trying to instill personal responsibility, which is I guess the idea behind it, in families by making them pay fees to educate their children just was a failure. And unfortunately, it lasted far too long, and we lost one, probably two generations of children. And when President Museveni decided he was going to try to make it possible for children to attend school, he had an overwhelming response. There was enormous pent up demand to educate all children and particularly girls.
I went to a school that was literally packed to the gills. You could not have put one more chair or one more child into this space. There were 75 or 80 children. It was a room, maybe 15 by 20 feet. There was one teacher. There were no supplies. But there was an eagerness that was just palpable and very humbling.
You know I remember being in a village outside of Lahore, Pakistan, sitting under a tree, talking to women about the school that they had for their girls, which came about because of strong village support to have a school. It was a, you know, a concrete building in, you know, somewhat better equipped. There was a map on the wall. There were desks. There was a teacher, but this primary school, which was the limit for the education of their daughters, and it was roughly up to sixth grade, was a source of some controversy for the mothers, because they wanted their daughters to be able to go on to secondary education. But, of course, they couldn't because there weren't fund to build a secondary school for girls in the village and no respectable family would send their daughters off alone to go to school, so they were at a stalemate. And, you know, I remember being with these wonderful women and, you know, asking them, you know, was there anything we could do, and they said they would just keep trying to persuade the government and the village governing group, the elders, to really commit their resources to the aspirations of their daughters.
You know, I remember being in a village in Bangladesh, where one of the experiments we tried during the Clinton Administration was beginning, and that was to provide both cash payments and food commodities to families in return for their sending their goals to school. And talking to the village elders there, I was amazed at how many would be encouraged and could feel they were affording the luxury of educating their daughters in return for a bag of rice. But there had to be some ability that they then could do without the services, the family contributions, of their children, both at home and in the larger economy.
So all over the world, we've had examples of progress. But I think it's fair to say we know we have a very, very long way to go.
As all of you probably know, girls' primary school completion rates in Africa doubled between the 1960s and the late 1990s, and many developing countries

9 significantly increased their spending on education for boys and girls, especially in East
Asia and the Pacific, Latin America, and the Caribbean areas.
The number of out of school children of primary school age declined from 106.9 million in 1998 to 104 million in 2001, according to 2003 UNESCO report. In Brazil, for example, the literacy rate increased from 80.1 percent to 88 percent in just a decade. And the literacy rate for women is currently at 88.3 percent, and we can point to these areas of progress, but we have to come back to the rather daunting fact that we have 104 million children who are not attending primary school.
But 2005 is the year of the first United Nations Millennium Development goal, when gender parity in classrooms was supposed to be achieved. Unfortunately, at least
70 countries will miss the mark. They won't attain this goal this year. And so we need to do better, and we need to come up with strategies that will enable us to do better.
Of those 104 million who are out of school, 60 million are girls. The problem is most pronounced in sub Saharan Africa, where, despite the progress mentioned above, nearly 55 percent--so over half--of girls do not complete primary school.
According to the World Bank Education Advisory Services, an additional 150 million children worldwide are currently attending school but are at significant risk of dropping out before completing primary school. And failure to provide adequate education has real consequences for families, obviously for the individuals, but also for the global economy, for national advancement, for national security, and there's no way to put a dollar figure on the limitless potential that is lost because children are not able to be educated up to their God given potential.
Uneducated women are too easily and too commonly denied the basic social rights that we believe all people should have--the right to own property, to hold a job, access to credit, to cast a vote, or to, you know, better themselves through further education.
So to guarantee women equal rights and to make our world in my opinion more peaceful and secure, it is in everyone's interest to continue to try to meet the Millennium
Development Goals. And education must be the foundation of any strategy to do so.
Research shows that investment in girls' education is a critical necessity for a country's development. And it translates into higher incomes and better health. A single year--a single year--of primary education correlates with a 10 to 20 percent increase in women's wages later in life.
The impact of a year of secondary education is even higher, increasing expected wages by 15 to 25 percent. And educating girls contributes significantly to a nation's health. Girls' education is one of the best ways to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS. Girls make up three-quarters of infected young people in sub Saharan Africa. And in some countries, girls aged 15 to 19 are infected at five times the rates of boys.
According to a recent survey of the academic literature, girls' education is the best single policy for reducing fertility and achieving sustainable families. I remember sitting under that tree in that village outside of Lahore talking to a very feisty woman with 10 children, five boys, five girls. She had done everything to get her boys educated, and she was so upset that her girls couldn't have a similar opportunity. And she said if I had to do it differently, I wouldn't have had so many children, because then I could have fought harder for my girl children.
In Brazil, for example, illiterate mothers have an average of six children, while literate mothers chose to have less than three. And they are then better able to care for and invest in their children's wellbeing.

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So I believe that we should focus on systemic reform and we should support countries that develop plans to put every child into school. And we need to address the overwhelming failure of education with a comprehensive global approach.
In the last Congress, I introduced the Education for All Act, which builds on the
Fast Track Initiative to promote systemic education reforms worldwide. I plan to reintroduce the bill in this Congress. And the bill calls for a development of a clear global strategy to achieve universal global education by the Millennium Development date of 2015. It encourages and helps to fund the necessary reforms in order to make this a reality.
The Act makes educating children globally a high priority of U.S. foreign policy, and it does this, in part, by dramatically increasing our investment in global education. It would be--assuming we could pass this bill and get it funded--$500 million the first year; a billion dollars the next; two billion a year by 2010.
My bill also calls for leveraging funds from non-governmental organizations, the private sector, and individuals.
Now I didn't propose to spend this much money in a vacuum. I coupled this resource commitment with strong accountability measures, which demonstrate to countries that if they step up to the plate, we will be there to back their efforts.
You know my bill requires countries to have a credible national education plan in place in order to receive funding. And the funding would be withheld if it turns out there is not adequate reform or sufficient accountability to make such statements with confidence.
I'm pleased we took a small step toward achieving universal global education with the 9/11 Implementation Act. I worked with my colleagues--Senators Lieberman and
McCain--to stress the importance of education to our national security. And thanks to this Act, by June of this year, the Administrator of USAID and the Secretary of State will jointly develop a strategy for promoting free universal basic education in Muslim countries. This strategy will include U.S. efforts to support education in general and will specifically focus on helping developing nations create national education plans. It includes a strategy to leverage resources from the G8 nations and other donors and a detailed plan to assist with the costs associated with making universal basic education available.
The 9/11 Implementation Act also authorizes an International Youth Opportunity
Fund, which will increase U.S. resources devoted to pursuing education in developing nations.
Now we've made some headway in U.S. funding for education. Last year's appropriations bill provided $400 million, largely due to the perseverance of my friend and partner in this effort, Congresswoman Nita Lowey from--she's my Congresswoman in New York, and a long-time champion of international education. And we have a $15 million pilot project to abolish school fees in one country in Africa.
So $400 million is a start, but it is far short of the U.S. share needed to cover the global financing gap in education.
To put it in context, $400 million, which is what we've appropriated for the entire world, is the financing gap that Pakistan faces for a single year. So I will continue to argue for increased funding and to emphasize the importance of funding international education as a U.S. priority and as part of an international global strategy.
So we have a lot of work to do, but I'm delighted that we have this U.N. task force, and that we have a partnership among so many of us as we try to think of ways,

11 both in the United States through the U.N., through the G8, and most importantly in the countries that are most affected.
So I'm pleased that we would have this important conference at a critical moment to take stock of where we are. We may be missing the mark in terms of meeting the 2005 gender equity goal, but we have a lot of energy behind this issue, and we need specific strategies around education and health care in order to be able to try to meet the mark in the years to come. Thank you very much.
[Applause.]
MS. GUPTA : Senator Clinton has a little bit of time to take a few questions if you have any?
MR. GUTTIEREZ: My name is Luis Guttierez. And this is my question: I'm sure that you are aware that girls are not sent to school in some cases for religious reasons, and I was wondering if you have given any consideration to this, and if you think that there is anything that can be done politically?
SENATOR CLINTON : Did you hear his question that there are some instances where girls are not sent to school for religious reasons, and I am, of course, aware of that.
But I also believe that primary education can be successfully achieved and religious objections can be overcome. I've seen that happen. I've talked with many people who've been part of making it happen. And I would just make a couple of points.
If there is no universal primary education, it leaves a vacuum. And some of the ways that vacuum is filled is through religious leaders who, for all kinds of reasons, decide that in their areas girls will not be educated. But in Afghanistan, where I've just come from, over 40 percent of the people who participated in the election were women.
President Karzai and the government of Afghanistan has just appointed the first woman governor to one of the provinces. Schools have just mushroomed all over the country, and there was some religiously framed objections to girls attending school, but the overwhelming majority of people wanted their girls to go to school.
So it was local resistance to that effort to try to disrupt and undermine education for girls that really was successful in keeping the girls in school, and, although, you know, the school may literally be a blanket under a tree, the important point is that we are reestablishing for the future the very clear commitment to education in Afghanistan.
In a recent conversation with President Musharraf, I was struck again by his efforts to try to reinstitute some form of universal primary education.
Now will there be areas that are harder than other areas? Of course. But this is a long-term effort that will be successful by convincing people that it is in their interests-that, you know, maternal health improves when, you know, girls and women are educated.
So there's just a lot of argumentation, evidence, facts that can be made. So I don't think we should be in any way dissuaded.
And the final point I would make on that is that because of the failure of states and the international community to provide for education, religious education, particularly in the form of the maddrasses, has filled that vacuum. And if you're a poor family in, you know, northeastern Pakistan, and there's no primary education available, and someone comes to you and offers, you know, not only an education, but three meals a day and housing to your sons, you're going to take that. It's better than, you know, anything else that's been offered to you.
So part of what we tried to do in the 9/11 Implementation Act is to provide more resources to expand the opportunities for governments to provide education, to remove

12 this vacuum that is often filled by religious leaders and dogma and often extremism. So, yes.
MS. BOCHER: My name is Coleen Bocher, and I work for a grassroots advocacy group called RESULTS, Senator Clinton.
SENATOR CLINTON:
MS. BOCHER:
Oh, excellent. I know RESULTS.
Well, great. Thank you. I thank you so much for mentioning what Uganda has done to eliminate school fees. The pilot project is very exciting. What
Uganda has done is very exciting. And I wonder if you have any thoughts about what we can to push other countries to do the same thing.
of the way that international organizations deal with countries. You know, I was perhaps a little bit harsh, but not in my view unduly so, because the creation of school going fees was really an international imperative for a lot of countries.
And so anything we can do to change the way that the World Bank, IMF, other organizations deal with the debt needs and the development agendas of countries is important.
I met recently with the new Minister of Education in Kenya, and that government has abolished school fees, and they've made a tremendous commitment to doing so.
But to go back to the first gentleman's question, you know, they have pastoral nomadic populations that are Muslim, and they've got a really difficult problem getting primary education into those areas. But the Minister of Education told me that outside forces are paying to send mullahs into those areas to proselytize and education the boys.
So we either will try to help these local governments provide primary education, and we can do it on a number of arguments. We can do it on it's the right thing to do. It's smart for, you know, your national development, and it's also smart for the security of your country and others, because, of course, we remember Kenya and Tanzania were attacked by Al Qaeda with the bombing of their embassies. So there's a lot of arguments to be made, but I think the international community has to be really committed and state behind doing this. And if we do, I think that we'll see a difference and maybe by, you know, maybe within the next decade, we can, if not meet completely, certainly get closer to meeting the 2015 goals.
MS. GUPTA : Any other? Just one last one perhaps?
SENATOR CLINTON: Yeah.
MS. : I think I can project. I'm a native New Yorker. We've been to these fairly--
SENATOR CLINTON: We're projectors--
MS. WILLIAMS: So a question and a comment. I'm glad that you mentioned
Kenya Tanzania. My name is Aleta Williams, and I work with USAID in the Africa
Bureau as an education advisor, and I had the pleasure of working on the education for development and democracy initiative, which was the Clinton Administration's Africa education initiative. I'm currently working on Push [inaudible] Initiative. Sorry.
SENATOR CLINTON: Good.
MS. WILLIAMS: And one of the things that--one of the efforts that we really have been trying to promote is working more with the local communities. While we've been doing it, it's been part of our USAID programs for as long as we've had education programs, and I have a colleague here who's been doing a lot of the work in West Africa.
We have placed an emphasis on really trying to address some of the issues that you mentioned--trying to open up greater opportunities for girls whose only opportunities, if any, are to attend these Koranic schools. We're trying to incorporate and integrate more

13 secular subjects into the learning experience. And so we're delighted to find out that-well, we know that we have [inaudible] before, and we're thrilled that there will be additional resources we hope, additional resources, to continue that for [inaudible].
SENATOR CLINTON: Thank you. Well, we have a long way to go before we get--I have one co-sponsor.
[Laughter.]
SENATOR CLINTON: And so anything you can do to encourage people. You know, and sometimes, you know, my constituents in New York say to me well, why would we spend money doing this? I mean, what about our own schools? Well, you know, absolutely. I mean, don't get me started on our budget and our deficit and all the other problems that we are facing right now. But I think that this, to me, is a smart investment in our security future. If you don't care about girls and you don't care about kids and you don't really care what happens to them, you know, I'm sorry for you and I'm sorry that that's your attitude. But at least make the security argument because we need people to be educated. We need them to participate in their societies, and we need particularly young women to, you know, think about the better future they want for themselves and their children.
So I'm very hopeful that this is a cause that will get broad support across our country, and we may not make it this year, but if we keep creeping up in the regular appropriations, Aleta, we'll keep providing funding for the programs you're supporting at
USAID, and we'll be--you know, slowly but surely make progress. Thank you.
[Applause.]
MS. GUPTA : Thank you very, very much.
[Applause.]
MS. GUPTA : Thank you from all of us for your leadership, Senator Clinton, and your commitment to this issue.
OPENING REMARKS
MS. GUPTA : Our second keynote speaker this morning is Professor Jeffrey
Sachs, Director of the U.N. Millennium Project, and special advisor to Secretary General
Kofi Anan on the Millennium Development Goals.
He's also currently Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, and holds several other titles. He also has a long and distinguished career and has authored hundreds of books and scholarly articles. But most importantly, I think, he serves as an inspirational and eloquent speaker on the inequalities that characterize our world, and on our collective responsibility as citizens in the industrialized world to rectify those inequalities.
I have been privileged to work with him on the Millennium Project. I have learned a lot from him, and been inspired by his energy and commitment to bring about the social and economic changes that we all work towards. Ladies and gentlemen,
Professor Sachs.
[Applause.]
DR. SACHS: Geeta, thank you for really such a warm and lovely introduction, and thanks to all of you for being here for caring about this issue and understanding its importance in the world. I want to pay tribute to several people in the room and not in a perfunctory way, they've been working round the clock for years, of course, Senator
Clinton, we're extremely grateful for all her leadership. It's real. It's longstanding, and, you know, we're counting on her to get that legislation. I think we have to dedicate ourselves to helping her get that through.

14
And Nancy Birdsall, the Director of the Center for Global Development, of course, is our leader in this city for pushing this agenda and does a marvelous job, and is one of the three co-chairs of the task force on education and gender produced the marvelous report that you've picked up this morning and probably have read weeks before.
Also Geeta Rao Gupta as Director of ICRW and another co-chair of this task force is a great leader, and if I've been able to teach you something, you've taught me so much more so this has been a wonderful process. And Amina Ibrahim, the third of the co-chairs of this joint task force that produced these two wonderful reports. We're grateful to you and also for what you're doing to help Nigeria, a country which has roughly one in five of all sub Saharan Africans, and is in desperate need of help and change, and Amina is one of the leaders of that effort, not only in education, but in all of
Nigeria's economic and development challenges.
Also you've already heard the spectacular role that Ruth Levine and Caren
Grown, Chandrika Bahadur played in helping this pretty complicated process which took place all over the world over three years and connecting a vast number of constituencies and stakeholders together, and also we owe a tremendous amount to Gene Sperling.
And in person. I also want to thank Ed and Cheryl Scott for making all of this possible in so many ways because your vision and--there your are--your name was invoked, favorably--but Ed and Cheryl have, through establishing the Center for Global
Development have helped to not only keep these issues alive in Washington, but add a new flame that's burning here that we're counting on to carry the day; and to the other sponsors of the conference.
Thank you. All of this counts a lot, and we have a very big hill to climb I have to stress. That's the main message that I want to convey in a few minutes this morning.
Let me read something quickly which does grab me as being straightforward and right. It says today more than ever U.S. foreign policy toward the developing world plays a vital role in the global balance between conflict and peace. U.S. national security challenges are increasingly complex, and the role of development is recognized as pivotal. This is reflected in President Bush's national security of the United States issued on September 17, 2002, which, for the first time, elevated development as the third component of U.S. national security, alongside defense and diplomacy.
Good words. They are in the budget request this year for the International Affairs
Account, dubbed the 150 account. They don't mean anything actually in reality right now in terms of the actual budget that goes around those words. But the words are right.
And our task is to make those words mean something actually, 'cause this is a city filled with vaporous words, and the ground realities are really very different; the ground realities of the people that we're actually discussing here who live several thousand miles away; even the ground realities of literally what surrounds those words, 'cause literally on this same page those words, pivotal. Did I see pivotal? Yes, I did see pivotal. For the first time elevated development is the third component of security, alongside defense and diplomacy. So on the same page, the development assistance line is cut by $300 million, and the child survival line is cut by $300 million.
Now this is really what we're after. What we're after is getting some reality into our lives, into our discourse, into our discussions.
First, let me say that the issue that we're discussing girls education and gender equality, and I would add sexual and reproductive health services, are not incidental goals. They are not just Goal Three of the MDGs. Without them, there ain't the other

15 seven goals. These are absolutely central to how societies function. They're central to economic development. Women's choice and women's empowerment is vital to every aspect of economic development, and girls education we know is vital to the empowerment of women in the coming generation.
We are in a year of Beijing plus ten. More words. Much too little implementation and no follow through by this government of ours right now on goals that were worthy, well thought out, and internationally agreed.
And so the task that we're talking about is not a small matter. I feel sometimes I just live in orbit these days, and yesterday I was in Ethiopia, and today I'm happy to be here. But I'm carrying with me the images, of course, that I saw in the last couple of weeks in rural Kenya and rural Ethiopia. We walked into a clinic, and a child was in convulsive seizures. There was a tongue depressor, so he would not bite off his tongue. I don't know whether the child survived or not. He had cerebral malaria. That's because the drug that he took, sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine, does not work anymore, and we know that. And yet we don't fund the [inaudible] and in combination therapies that do work.
They cost all of a dollar. So maybe this child will have lost his life for lack of our dollar or maybe he will have a lifetime of disability, cognitive, physiological disability from having been in coma and seizures. So that's what I saw in one room.
And in the next room I saw two people lying on a bed, head to foot. One dying of
AIDS, and the other adult suffering from malaria. So the one dying of AIDS will leave behind an orphan, and orphans won't get education. Now the one dying of AIDS is dying of AIDS because he lacks the dollar a day that's needed to keep him alive. It's actually less than a dollar right now. It's about 30 cents with SIPLA [ph] drugs or other generic fixed-dose combinations. This sub district hospital I was at has just gotten its first load in, and so maybe that individual will be saved.
Then we went--that was in Kenya. Then we went to Ethiopia to a rural area in
Tigre Province. It's a very dry area. The last five years the short rains have failed. This is probably the result of the warming of the sea surface temperatures of the Indian Ocean, probably the result of anthropogenic climate change, something we also don't do anything about here. So it's not incidental when the rains, when you live in a sub humid or arid environment, those short rains, the Belg rains, in Ethiopian can be the difference of life and death.
So when we went to the clinic, the children were talking about are they in school and so forth. Well, the problem there is that 50 percent of the children in this village in
Kararo Tabia [ph] in Tigre Province are less than 60 percent of the norm of weight for height, and height for age, stunting, wasting is pervasive. These are hungry children because the rain fails and you lose weight. You're immune system is suppressed, and you die if an infection comes, perhaps a bout of malaria, which is epidemic in this particular area.
We went next door to a little hut where one of the mothers in the village lived and spoke with her, and she told us that she spends six hours a day--six hours --collecting water, just collecting water. What you did turning on the tap this morning, she spends six hours a day. She takes three two-hour trips to the water hole. The water is not safe. Of course, this is unprotected springs and trickles of water. The whole water table has fallen dramatically. One morning we went to the bank of the river--this is a called a perennial river, which means it's supposed to flow all year. And there's no water at all in this river.
And a group of men in the village were digging a hole in the middle of the river bed down about two and half, three meters to get to the water table, which is below the river

16 bed now so that they could pump some water, carry some water up to their shriveled crops.
Well, girls and boys don't go to school when they're collecting water, when their mothers are collecting water six hours a day.
These are not impossible problems to solve actually. I'd say our climate change added a twist of the knife that is a very harsh reality. It means that any aid we give should come under the column of compensation, probably not aid. But even with that, these are solvable problems.
A diesel generator can pump water and save a whole village of women spending their entire lives collecting unsafe drinking water, and if you manage the bore hole carefully and properly, with proper pumping and getting the recharge rates to be equal to the discharge rates, then you can sustainably manage water. The health improves dramatically. The mothers actually have something to do when the daughters can go to school because they're not spending their whole young lives as beasts of burden also to stay alive.
You can drip irrigate. This is a place that with a little bit of investment could actually grow some fruit trees. The one thing they have absolutely par excellence is sunshine year round. And so orange orchards you could see with your mind's eye, but it requires some drip irrigation, which is not very much money, but beyond the means of this little community.
Malaria it's a wonder what a five-year long lasting insecticide treated net can do.
About three million children will die this year in sub Saharan Africa. Three million because they don't have a long lasting insecticide treated net which costs five bucks, lasts five years. A dollar a net per year. Two children typically sleep under it. Fifty cents per child per year. We're going to lose millions of children this year.
So I'm trying to figure out what the heck is happening to us in this country. Why we can't talk about anything honest anymore and make connections between words on paper, high concepts, great speeches, national security strategies and these ridiculous budget numbers, which are just coming from a different planet. And everything is faked.
And everything is spin. And we just can't grapple with even the most basic arithmetic.
Why are we cutting the child survival budget right now? Why aren't we leading the effort to get malaria under control. It would cost about three dollars per person per year in the rich world. About $3 billion to shift over to effective anti-malarials, environmental control, long lasting insecticide bed nets, presumptive treatment for young children and for pregnant mothers--in other words, the state of the art. These communities are desperate for it. It's only the ignoramuses that say there's nothing that can be done. You can't move the money, bad governance. It's people that don't go to a village that don't have a clue as to what the ground realities are and how desperate people are to stay alive.
As the Prime Minister of Ethiopia said to me a couple days ago, we don't use bed nets to fight wars. I always say bed nets don't always end up Swiss bank accounts.
What are we thinking, ladies and gentlemen? Why can't we do something so simple?
I raise this because this is what keeps children in school--when they're healthy, when they're fed, when they're not collecting water for hours. It barely costs any money at all.
So I went through this budget just stunned, place after place--child survival, investing in the health of the world's population, addressing global issues, special concerns, stabilizing fragile states, and promoting transformational development. Budget cut $300 million, to less than one--do I have this right--yes, $1.2 billion for the

17 developing world. That's about 50 cents per person per year. That's not going to accomplish very much at all is it? Because we don't do the arithmetic at all. And why are the budgets being cut? I can't imagine.
Child survival and maternal health to address the primary causes of maternal and child mortality and improved health systems primarily in sub Saharan Africa. Great.
You read that. Great. $326 million. Divide by 650 million people. Okay. Fifty cents for that wonderful goal of addressing the primary causes of maternal and child mortality.
Is this for real? Only in Washington.
The list goes on and on. I like this one. A total of $24 million for key regional countries--Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, and South Africa--to support economic growth, democratization, anti-crime, and anti-corruption activities. $24 million. Two hundred sixty million people. Use that ten cents wisely would be my advice, because you have to spread it out among economic growth, democratization, anti-crime, and anticorruption activities. policy.
Are we grown ups? I'm serious. This is basic arithmetic. This is not national
We're very confused in this country. We blame the poor for their problems. We don't understand the number of absolutely practical steps that communities are taking on their own if we only help them could actually succeed. Children can stay alive. Water can be safe. Children can be in school. School meals programs can be provided. The whole point of our report is practical, low-cost, specific, targeted, measurable. But it costs something. You know, it costs something, and we're happy with tens of billions of dollars when we want to do something. We just don't want to do this right now. We want to fake it through these titles of programs. These are not real programs, because every place I go, including the two places that I was last week, Kenya and Ethiopia, there's no money to do the things that need to be done. And then I always get a U.S. official calling me at the end of the meeting quietly to tell me, by the way, Professor
Sachs, our budget is being cut this year, not increased.
So that's why we're here with the first failed MDG in 2005, and on our way to seven other failures, because we're faking it. And we have to decide really whether we want to live in a world where we fake it or not. I think it's not a good idea actually.
It's really my advice, serious advice. I don't think it's a good idea because our spin doesn't work in Koraro, Ethiopia. Our spin doesn't work in Saorey [ph] Nyanza
Province, Kenya. Our spin actually doesn't work outside the Beltway. All of this is known, everything I'm saying is trivially obvious to everybody except Americans, who don't hear otherwise.
And now they're starting to hear because you're raising your voices. But we do have to decide in our generation do we want to tell the truth or do we want to have labels for programs. Do we want to announce that it's one of the three pillars? Can you imagine a building built with three pillars? One pillar, military, has a $500 billion base, and the other pillar, called development assistance, has a $15 billion base. That's a lopsided building. That one is going to come crashing down. Those are our pillars of national security. We're spending 30 times more on the military than we are on development.
And of that $15 billion, most of it is going to strategic states. Afghanistan alone is going to get more aid than all of sub Saharan Africa in development assistance this year in this budget.
So it's a choice. It's a choice whether we're honest, whether we do the arithmetic or not. It's as simple as that.

18
The whole point, and I'll wrap up, you know to do what really needs to be done, you don't need one more promise, one new commitment, one new program. It's all been said a thousand times before, including at what this Administration really likes the
Monterrey Consensus. The Monterrey Consensus says in paragraph 42 we urge all developed countries that have not done so to make concrete efforts towards 0.7 percent of
GNP, 0.7 percent of GNP, in official development assistance. We are at 0.15, and we don't see any concrete efforts underway whatsoever.
Now the good news is the rest of the world is not so completely living in this parallel universe as we are. They're living in the actual world. And Europe is mobilizing to do things. And that's heartening because it actually makes you think that there's human to human contact being made and people understand the challenge and what can be done. And most of Europe is about to announce this year 0.7 with a real timetable.
So Geeta asked us, and I'll stop here, for some concrete suggestions. Let me give them to you.
First, the United States should endorse the Millennium Development Goals.
Strange, they don't do it. A hundred ninety governments do it. One government says we endorse the international development goals in the Millennium Declaration. They don't even use the three words Millennium Development Goals in sequence. Come on. Let's join the world. Millennium Development Goals. Those are the internationally agreed goals. Let's tell the American people about it. Let's tell them how we signed up to it.
Let's explain what they are and why those words that I read at the beginning are real. Our security depends on getting this right.
Second, let's chose a World Bank President that knows something about development.
[Applause.]
The names that have been proposed are shocking and would be a disgrace. This is professional work. This is not a game. It's also life and death for hundreds of millions of people. This is not corporate affairs, this is not military policy. This is development. So let's find somebody in the world--it could be an American, maybe not--maybe the
Administration can't find anyone that knows about development in this country. If not, let's find somebody that knows about development because that's what the World Bank is about. This is a highly technical, knowledge-based position of extraordinary importance for the world, not a joke and not a game.
Third, let's commit to 0.7 with a timetable. We've already committed to it, but it's the biggest secret in this country. We signed the Monterrey Consensus. I urge you all to download it on the computer. Read paragraph 42. See what the United States, the
President in person signed on to in Monterrey in 2002. We urge all developed countries to make concrete efforts towards the target 0.7 percent of gross national product in official development assistance.
We are $65 billion a year short. It's not a lot of money by definition because it's about a half a percent of GNP, which means that it's 50 cents roughly on the hundred dollars of our income. Right now, we're giving Africa about two cents out of every hundred dollars. That's it. That's the game we're playing. So why don't we commit like the rest of the world.
Let's help Senator Clinton pass the Education for All Act. That's a good campaign for us this year. That's real. That would finance what we're here to finance.
Finally, let's understand how much can be accomplished in a short period of time and let's try to connect to the rest of the world because others get it. We're the last to get it.

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School fees could be dropped this year. All that is required is helping the countries make up the financing difference. That's the key. You see they use the fees to pay the schools. So if we actually helped to finance it, then you drop the fees immediately. When that's done, the children go to school. It's very simple. So this is a financing issue. This should be done this year. These school fees are a tragedy.
School meals for all children in schools. This could be done within the next year or two.
Malaria control with insecticide treated nets and proper medications. And while we're at it, why don't we save the 500,000 women who will die in childbirth this year for lack of basic obstetrical care. Something that also can be readily provided and is one of the great tragedies and shames of the planet.
Ladies and gentlemen, the only choice we have is whether we're living in the real world or the world of spin, and I hope we chose reality. Thanks very much.
[Applause.]
MS. GUPTA : On behalf of all of us, thank you very much, Jeff. Thanks for your comments and for your inspiring words. I would now like to welcome Nancy Birdsall,
President of the Center for Global Development, to the podium to introduce our next keynote speaker.
OPENING REMARKS
MS. BIRDSALL: Thank you very much, Geeta, and thank you to Jeff as well.
It's really a great privilege and a pleasure for me to introduce to you Senator
Chuck Hagel. In November 2001, Senator Hagel spoke at the launch of the Center for
Global Development. So he holds a very special place in my heart and in the hearts of my colleagues at the Center.
That was just two months, of course, after the September 11th tragedy, and what was heartening and remarkable to me when Senator Hagel spoke at our launch was how eloquent he was, how compelling he was, how he represented the heartland in speaking to the reality that it makes such a big difference what is America's role in the world.
Because it was right after September 11th, of course, he emphasized the security issues that Jeff referred to; that Senator Clinton referred to. What was also really wonderful was the way in which he represented the American people, including of the heartland, far away from what Jeff called the vaporous talk in Washington.
We have in Senator Hagel a person who does get it about the need to make a connection between the rich world and the poor world, and that means a lot to all of us at the Center for Global Development and, of course, at the International Center for
Research on Women, because at the Center in particular we're very concerned with insuring that the policies of the U.S. and the rest of the rich world are more and more friendly to development.
The Senator, in his work on the Hill, bespeaks the notion of a wise, measured approach to foreign policy, and he has show his concern within the context of foreign policy with the development issues that are so central to that policy insofar as that policy now includes defense, diplomacy, and development.
He is a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, Banking Committee,
Intelligence Committee. He chairs the Subcommittee of the Foreign Relations
Committee on International Economic Policy, Exports, and Trade Promotion. We could be more pleased to have someone who represents that approach to where America stands in the world to speak to us today on this issue that so many people here clearly care so much about whether we are going to miss the mark on girls' education. Senator Hagel.
[Applause.]

20
SENATOR HAGEL: Thank you very much. Nancy, thank you. I am privileged to be with you this morning, and I want to thank you all for what you to do, continue to do. You have been on a long journey, and I think that journey will take us all to areas that will, in fact, shape and transform the world, and it is because of organizations like yours represented here today and efforts, personal efforts, real efforts, in just words, not vaporous efforts that will make the difference.
Senator Clinton I know was here this morning. She has been a champion on these issues and others, and I have been reminded I think 17 times since I walked in that she has a bill.
[Laughter.]
SENATOR HAGEL: I will take a very close look--
[Laughter.]
SENATOR HAGEL: At Senator Clinton's bill. Senator Clinton and I have a very good relationship. I admire her greatly for her commitment to these kinds of efforts, so I will look and if we can join on this, we will. Whether I am a co-sponsor of that bill or not, I think Senator Clinton and I work rather well together on the overall issues, but I look forward to taking a long look at this bill.
I was going to bring my 14-year-old daughter this morning with some of her friends from her school, but in the interest of education, educating girls--since they have been out of school for almost a week because of snow and inclement weather, my daughter's mother thought it would be a better placed priority for her to stay in school this morning and having nothing to do with minimizing efforts or the importance of your organization. But I think they have been out of school since Wednesday of last week.
She was quite disappointed obviously for the content that she would miss this morning, having nothing to do with the fact that she would be out school again for another day.
But nonetheless, she is interested as are her friends.
There is no one in this room--I suspect no one in this country and probably around the world--that does not understand the importance of education. Education is the essence of human progress. Education is the foundation for empowerment. And we have a long way to go, especially in educating women--girls around the world.
There is progress. We have made some progress. We are not even near the edge of where we need to go on this issue. I think of Nancy's introduction of me and her comments about the heartland, which I appreciate. My constituents would appreciate that. I think when you talk of the heartland, of the work that the University of Nebraska at Omaha has been doing for many, many years in Afghanistan and continues to do.
Those are model programs that I have used to entice some of my colleagues to become more engaged, and those of you who are not familiar with what the University of
Nebraska at Omaha has been doing in Afghanistan, we have been there for a long time and helping educate, helping train teachers. We have an Afghan teacher program, and we have brought over the last three years to Nebraska over 200 Afghani women to help prepare them and educate them so that they can go back and teach. We have a program that brings young Afghani women into Nebraska to help educate them. Now we need to obviously get below that age group and that is much I understand the focus of your program today.
Listening a little bit as I got here a little later to what Jeff was saying, and his comments of what I heard are exactly on point as far as I'm concerned. And part I think of what Jeff was saying it's something that I have been talking about for a long time is that you cannot separate these great disciplines and great efforts in this arc of interests.
These are intersecting circles of interest that connect education, economic development,

21 stability, security, the environment. All fit within this great arc. And we struggle here in
Washington for many reasons every day, but we struggle in many ways principally because we are not integrating these interests of policy. We make policy far too often, even in today's more enlightened world we think, based on an isolated vacuum tube of interests. We do environment over here. We do some energy over here. We do economic development and trade back here, and have a little foreign policy over here, and we consider foreign policy some kind of a nebulous Kissingeresque kind of pursuit.
Well, foreign policy is the framework for all of our interests, for the world's interests, and here we are in a world of six and half billion people, interconnected, global in every way, and we're not going to unwind that. Whether it's a health issue, an education issue, a climate change issue, trade, transportation, telecommunications, we are in this together; and there are no boundaries. Certainly, we don't need to look much beyond what happened in this country on September 11th of 2001 to understand that security is no longer a matter of vast oceans on the east and west coasts, strong secure border on the north, and a good border on the south. It doesn't work that way anymore, and if no other lesson we should have learned from that tragic, tragic day in America and for the world, we should have learned that lesson; that the integration of all these policies is absolutely critical.
You take that deeper in what you're talking about, what you're doing, what you're leading on, education for girls, is what that is about--yes, individual enhancement, empowerment. Education does what we all know it does and why it's important. But it does something else. It stabilizes and secures a base of community, a base of interest, and it connects that interest that education, and it helps developing countries break that cycle of despair, of hopelessness. It deals with endemic health problems in poverty, in hunger. We will never ever begin to address these great challenges of the 21st century without education as the base.
We have taken a large segment of our society out of that in many regions of the world--women. And that cannot be. You know I occasionally remind some of my colleagues when they are talking about Jeffersonian democracy and America as the role model, and I say well, that's true but just remember that in America a hundred years ago, half of the citizens in America could not vote. Women could not vote a hundred years ago in the United States of America. So we had to work our way along here over a long period of time to empower all of our people.
Certainly the civil rights acts of the mid '60s were very much focused on that. So this country has been through a certain amount of that--different situations, dynamic times, pressures--and we're still not where we need to be in this country. But we should harness our resources and our leadership and our focus and everything that's good about our system and our society, and there is much good about it--imperfect absolutely--and harness that and project that in a way that really does affect the outcomes in the world.
Armies and divisions of soldiers will not change that. We will not impose our will, our form of government, or any other dynamic of our society with armies. The military component is a very critical component. It is a guarantor of foreign policy. We understand security. We understand that. But that alone won't change things. It will not affect the outcome. It will be people. It will be education. It will be empowering all the peoples of the world.
So for what you do, I not only as a United States Senator am grateful, but as a parent of two young people, I am grateful, because it will be you who really reshape the world. It will be you who will lead the transformation of mankind. And we are living at such a time I believe. I believe we are living at a very defining time in the history of

22 man. And these times come every 50 years or so--40, 45, 50, 60 years. They do come in cycles, and we are in such a cycle. How long that lasts I'm not near wise enough to know.
So with that and for all those reasons, I'm grateful that you would give me the privilege of exchanging some thoughts and before I go back and vote here on a couple of things that I think they're going to call the vote shortly, and prepare myself to meet
Senator Clinton on the floor of the Senate on her bill, I would be very happy to respond to any questions, comments, thoughts, advice, wise counsel. Gene Sperling has already given me some. He's already coming to see me soon.
MS. : I'm just here to help you with questions.
SENATOR HAGEL : All right. Well, good. That means you answer. Yes.
Yes, sir.
MR. GUTTIEREZ: My name is Luis Guttierez. And I was wondering if 9/11 didn't do it, and if hitting $50 per barrel of oil didn't do it, do you have any idea of what kind of a crisis will be necessary to bring the American people to the level of awareness that is necessary to make it politically feasible to embrace the Millennium Development
Goals?
SENATOR HAGEL: The Millennium--which goals?
MR. GUTTIEREZ: The Millennium Development Goals.
SENATOR HAGEL: Oh, are you speaking partly specifically about the
Millennium Challenge Accounts? Is that what you're--
MR. GUTTIEREZ: I'm speaking in general about Professor Sach's proposition--
SENATOR HAGEL: Okay. I see what you mean--
MR. GUTTIEREZ: That the United States--
SENATOR HAGEL : Yes. I understand.
MR. GUTTIEREZ : Has to become active in--
SENATOR HAGEL: Yes. I got it. I understand. Thank you. Well, I support what Professor Sachs was saying, and I support those goals and I think reflected in the comments I've just made I think you at least get some sense from me what I think the priorities need to be for our policy and our government and our leadership and resources in the world, which would I think fit pretty closely with what Jeff talked about. And I think the forces of reality are bringing this into a clear focus for the American people.
You mentioned two specific examples. You mentioned September 11th and $50 a barrel oil, and it's probably going to get to $60 a barrel oil. And there will be other pressures that will focus on this, what I call the forces of reality that will make it clearer and clearer to the American people this wide angle lens understanding and approach to these great challenges of mankind, and it is not enough to just be worried about American homeland security and securing our borders. That's part of it, of course--of course. But it has to go much wider than that.
I have spoken out in concern and in the Congress last three years and fought for a recommitment to exchange programs. Our immigration laws need to be reformed. I think it's nuts what we're doing in Cuba. I think it's crazy what we're doing to ourselves on a lot of the immigration issues. We have an immigration system that doesn't work.
We're pushing people out of this country that want to be here. I mean, after all, who is
America? America is a quilt and is a quilt that reflects colors, races, religions, ethnicity-all the great strengths that were brought to this country over the last 300 years from all over the world. That's who America is. And we need strong appeals outside. And we need new vitality to come to the United States, not just for economic reasons, but other reasons.

23
And so it is coming I think into clearer focus and vision the realities that connect
America to the rest of the world--exchange programs--all the programs that you're involved in--us, the United States willing to lead and do things that connect us to the rest of the world and the perception--and changing the optics.
Since World War II, we have been the leading power in the world. And the optics that we have viewed the world from have been essentially American optics. We view the world from our optics. We're going to have to reverse some of that. And we're going to have to understand how the rest of the world sees us, and why. That doesn't mean you give up your values, your expectations, and who you are, your sovereignty. That's nonsense. But the fact is this is going to have to be a different kind of a world because the world, if for no other reason, is just far too dangerous today than it's ever been if we don't do that.
MS. BIRDSALL: I'm going to ask you a question, if I may.
SENATOR HAGEL: Yes.
MS. BIRDSALL: It's a little unfair, but you mentioned the Millennium
Challenge Account of President Bush, which is an excellent initiative for ensuring that very poor countries with good governments get substantial resources to move ahead.
There are four or five countries eligible for the Millennium Challenge Account that are also eligible for a worldwide program agreed amongst all the donors, including the U.S., for something called the Fast Track Initiative for Education. Maybe I could ask you it's in the form of--it's a quasi question. Is there something that you can do or we can do to press forward on at least ensuring that Millennium Challenge Account funds, which are available and could be spent quickly, are allocated if the countries want to this initiative on education?
SENATOR HAGEL: Well, I think the general answer to that is first of all, yes, that we could do that. Another part of that question is what can I do, what can you do, what can this group do. I think inform and educate representatives on Capitol Hill,
Congressmen and Senators, about why this is important, why it can be done.
One of the reasons that I have been a strong proponent and a leader on the
Millennium Challenge Accounts is it gives these countries eligible, and it I think it is smart to focus the way we have the flexibility, Nancy, to be able to address their own problems' unique foundational issues. Every country is different. We understand that and you can't compartmentalize and make rules for every country. And the same way, there are certain general standards and certainly of accountability. That's what the
Millennium Challenge Account is about. But let those countries decide where their priorities are. I am a strong proponent of that; will continue to be. The specific program that you mentioned needs to be integrated into that because even though these are more economic development kind of funds and programs, you can't again, I say, as I said earlier disconnect these circles of interest that connect. And education is as basic to that--
[START OF TAPE 2]
MR. BIRDSALL: The Civil Society Action Coalition on Education for All.
This is a coalition of 124 different civil society organizations working on education in
Nigeria. So it's really a pleasure--it has been a pleasure work with Amina. She is a person who has worked inside government and outside government to make a difference for the children of Nigeria, and she has become a spokeswoman at the global level on these issues.
Amina will introduce to you the panel. You have the floor, Amina.
FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE EDUCATION SECTOR FROM THE
U.N. MILLENNIUM PROJECT TASK FORCE

24
ON EDUCATION AND GENDER EQUALITY
MS. IBRAHIM : Thank you, Nancy. I'd like to add my voice of welcome to everybody for making the time to come and be with us today. It is an important opportunity to engage with the work of our task force over the last two and a half years, and to hear some of your feedback on such important issues.
It also comes at a time when we look at the first target, as Geeta has said, and why we say missing the mark. In my country, for instance, we've missed in half the country, but the other half we still have a chance to reach it, and that's what we want to look at-the specific and strategic ways to achieving that within the next decade or sooner.
The panel this morning is going to deal more specifically around the issues of the country-level challenges by national governments and societies and also the donor community.
I have with me today four panelists, who've got vaster experience and would say in the field in their different aspects. I'd like to first start by introducing Vicky Colbert de
Arboleda, from Colombia. She is the founder and executive director of the Back to
People Foundation in Colombia, and she will be speaking to us about the country experiences from Colombia.
I then have my friend and colleague, Desmond Bermingham, from the
Department for International Development in the U.K. And Desmond is the head of the
Education Office and chief advisor to the Policy Division in the U.K. He will be giving us a perspective on the donor challenges, which are numerous. So from the U.K. side, and this is a year that we see the U.K. doing a lot in the forefront of championing the cause for our development issues.
Elizabeth King--sorry--Beth King. All right. It's Elizabeth. Beth King, a lead economist in the Development Research Group of the World Bank, will also be giving us a perspective on what helps make the donor relationships work.
And last but not least our director from the Education for Global Monitoring
Report, Nicholas Burnett, Nick Burnett, of UNESCO. He's been in charge of an independent report which monitors and tasks us on how far, in fact, we've gone to achieving EFA, the Education for All goals within the education sector.
Very briefly, our education recommendations, and I'm sure you've had some time to pick up our task force report and that of the overview. I'd like to speak really from the perspective of the country and donor challenges. So while we have two and a half years, three odd pages of recommendations, to focus on particular three issues: the compact and that's the genuine partnership between the rich nations and the poor nations and what that really does mean for us, both at the country and the donor level; speaking about the issues of those responsibilities and the things that have to happen at the country level to make the MDGs a reality; and also of those commitments by the donors and their constituencies in helping that to happen--ensuring that happens.
Very briefly I would like to say that in terms of the compact, it is about a partnership with some very clear responsibilities. And these partnership responsibilities, the commitments have all been spelled out in different international fora. We've signed onto the Monterrey Consensus, the MDGs for one, so it's not really anymore about more platforms, more plans, more commitments to it. It's about how do we make what we've already said we're going to do happen and happen now.
We've gone through two and a half years of work and that two and half years has shown us that we, by and large, know it all. We know what the problems are and what the issues are and how we can begin to tackle them. For many, many years, Africa and many other continents have been a Petri dish of experiments on how to make it work and

25 pilots of how it works, so there is a huge body of information; and I think that our report clearly says that. What is rather scant is that how do we go from successful pilots to making it work for the vast majority of the poor.
So in terms of the compact, the clear responsibilities and obligations for years asking countries to put up plans, plans that integrate MDGs, plans that integrate different other platforms. On the other side of it, what have we done actually to help support those plans in acting them out.
We understand that there are a number of commitments that have to be made at country level. Often and more recently, the governance issue has been high on the agenda for many of the developing countries. We have--we will have people talking about the history of money not working and is this just about throwing money at systems that don't work; that are weak; that are corrupt.
And I think that we have gone beyond that. I think that many, many countries have put in place credible plans, plans that we have had endorsed and approved by such initiatives as the FDI, by several governments, in fact, by the World Bank who have actually put some money, not enough, but some money into them. And so at that level, at the country level, things are beginning to happen.
We hear about some countries who have abolished school fees, but in abolishing school fees there's not been the money there to support them within the budget for the quality teachers, for the infrastructure, to help deal with the huge class sizes. And while in aggregate, we might find in my country you say that you have one to 39 in a class, the reality is there's one to a hundred, one to a hundred and twenty, and these teachers are, therefore, on the war front. There's nothing they can do about giving an education to those children. Education will certainly--they will pass through education. Education won't pass through them.
We talk about weak institutions and building capacities and putting in support for reforms. And countries do have reforms, but they do need money to make those reforms work.
We talk about going to the grassroots. How do we get to the grassroots? They need systems that work, systems that work for today and not for yesterday. So there needs to be an understanding of the time that it takes for attitudes, both in terms of work, in terms of values, to change to support those systems.
We understand that education can't do it all, and, as we've heard here, the best opportunity of showcasing that is the interdependence of the MDGs. You cannot ask a
Minister for Women's Affairs to sit at a table with her colleagues and argue about money that goes to education or to health or to water. All these are integrated. And for a long time, we don't speak together around the table. We go to fight for the meager resources at country level, and I think now more and more our plans need to be integrated about how one supports the other and that issues like gender, girls' education, women's education have to be crosscutting through the whole spectrum of development in our countries.
We have to make it much clearer and perhaps education has not been very good at marketing the importance of it to democracy and to the economy. And how do we do that in our plans? How do we make that a big message that it translates beyond the just the rhetoric and acts out.
Time is against us, and I'm supposed to keep this all in check. So I'm going to quickly go to the donors and the commitment that they need to make to how they do business at the country level.

26
There is a very clear disconnect between what is said at the international level and what is happening at the country level. The resources that come to the country level are very few. Often they're not timely. They're certainly not predictable, and they're insufficient.
How do we change that? You'll find that many government officials they haven't been in government long. It was something that I had to do to ensure that we got a participatory plan of action for EFA in Nigeria. But I've come to understand that you would have two or three officers--in more cases one--who is facing five or six different donor demands on how to access a pittance.
It's not even sufficient to make a difference. And often the case is those funds don't work towards, as is little as they are, they don't work towards achieving any one objective. So at the end of the day, you have average I think about 65, 75 percent of government officials' time spent on perhaps less than five percent of what comes into their budget to support the education sector.
This has to change. And often, we're told that the countries are in the driving seat.
They're not in the driving seat. You'd be surprised how many hoops and hurdles and barriers that they have to get around to get into the driving seat, and they're still not there yet. And I think that we have to have partners in this genuine compact that make a serious effort getting behind plans of countries, the targets they set themselves and the benchmarks that they put forward and fund those, support those. That isn't happening.
Often we find that a project cycle of a particular donor is far more important in meeting its targets and its timelines than is the country.
And we can't be--I mean, who's in a hurry for whom? Donors are constantly in a hurry to meet their deadlines. What about the deadlines of people? The people who don't have the same deadlines? You're in a very, very convenient environment. Everything works for you. It doesn't for us. We don't have power. We don't have IT. We've got the computers, but you can't switch them on.
And these are in urban centers. These are in capital cities. These are not just in the rural areas, yet the majority of our people are out there in the rural areas. So a lot of what donors have to do and agree to is to get behind plans in real terms.
We're seeing many, many reform strategies in our African countries which are laying out ambitious proposals, and they need to be supported now rather than later.
There are many, many things that can be done; that can be done that happen now.
Jeff talks about the quick wins. These are just more than quick wins. These are things that can be done now and don't need to wait, against, of course, a sustainable longer term measures that have to be taken, but in strengthening opportunities for girls' and women's education, the key is abolishing the fees. But don't just abolish the fees and think that that's going to do it. It isn't. There has got to be the institutional and the financial support that we don't just end up with quantity rather than quality. We've got to expect that we've got to address all aspects of the education holistically so that we look at the infrastructure and we look at the teachers.
The school feeding is a great idea, but let's not make the mistake of creating soup kitchens where people are there to eat and not there for an education. It has to be carefully designed and planned so we're not talking about throwing money at systems.
We're talking about carefully and strategically placing that money where it makes a difference now.
I hope that in this short space of time that I've had that we've been able to at least give a sense of where we're going. I think it's important that we don't forget how we monitor and evaluate what we do. We've got a number of instruments out in the world

27 that do this for us. And we're grateful to the Global Monitoring Report in Education that
I think is a constructive way of putting all partners on the defensive to see, in fact, how well have you done. But I think it needs to be done at the country level; that we need to go through our programs, not just with the end of project reports, but to evaluate constantly where we can improve them and we can make a difference.
I'd like to say that since we've launched the report, things are happening and they are working. In my country for one, four weeks ago or president set up an initiative and a committee on integrating and monitoring the MDGs. And the specific initiative behind that was to create a mechanism for monitoring public expenditure as it would achieve the
MDGs. And this was a very bold step to take. Nobody wants you to look into their budget processes. There's not enough money spread very thin and so for this we hope that in the peer review mechanism of [inaudible] in Africa that it's an initiative that other countries would get behind. We know there are some who do the tracking of budgets like
Uganda successfully and Tanzania and others.
So on that note, let me take--have the pleasure of introducing Vicky Colbert to give us a perspective on the Colombian experience.
EXPERIENCES FROM COLOMBIA
MS. COLBERT DE ARBOLEDA : Well, first of all, I want to introduce myself.
I'm directing the Escuela Nueva Foundation--Vol Vamos a la Gente, which means back to the people--that I created precisely when I left the Vice Ministry of Education 15 years ago for seeing that innovations fade within bureaucracies. So this was the first survival instinct we had to ensure that the Escuela Nueva model, which was a local innovation and became a national policy in Colombia would not fade away.
After 27 years of running in realities, as Jeffrey was mentioning this morning, my conclusion is that we need public-private partnerships to ensure sustainability and quality.
I have some good news from Colombia. It's promising. It gives hope for the future. In addition to exporting coffee and cocaine, we're exporting knowledge to other countries.
[Laughter.]
MS. COLBERT DE ARBOLEDA: Because the Escuela Nueva model has been visited by more than 35 countries, and it has inspired many educational reforms worldwide. It's one of the longest bottom up innovations of the developing world that still survives despite the political changes and the administrative changes in bureaucracies.
As I mentioned, it was a local innovation. It became a national policy at the end of the '80s, reaching 20,000 schools; 35 countries have visited, and it inspired the new law of education and the World Bank in 1989 selected it as one of the three innovations that had impacted successfully national policies and then the Human Development
Report selected it in Colombia as one of the three major achievements.
But I guess the most important lesson learned from this experience is that in order to ensure access and coverage, we had to tackle quality. And this has been extremely important coming from the Latin American region, where coverage and access has been increased significantly. In Colombia itself, coverage had risen to 80 percent by 1994 in rural areas--45 percent in rural areas as compared to seven percent in the urban areas, showing that Escuela Nueva did have results.
But looking at the Latin American region that has advanced in access, we have 22 million children that repeat every year, costing $3.5 billion of wastage every year, simply because it's more of the same. Ernesto Schiefelbein, right now a visiting professor in
Harvard and ex-minister of education of Chile, an ex-director of UNESCO for Latin

28
America, has been saying not more of the same. We need to have more transformative type of education. And in this sense, the Escuela Nueva has been adapted to most Latin
American countries.
We started in the rural schools, in the multigrade schools, which is a key word-it's a key word for girls' participation, because multigrade, as Angela Little mentions from the University of London, it's invisible to educational planners. We're just putting it back in the picture again. I just came back from a meeting in Dakar in Senegal, invited by the
World Bank, because they're looking into multigrade experiences worldwide, especially also the Colombian experience has been adapted to many countries also abroad, and also it's starting in Uganda right now, precisely to bring it again into policy planners and to see how important the analysis of multigrade schools is so essential for participation of girls. It's closer to schools. And in the Latin American context, multigrade schools forced us to challenge the conventional model of education centered on teacher-centered and going into what the convention says: active participatory methods, which is not new; a new role of the teacher as the facilitator; community participation strongly in the learning process; and, for us, in the Escuela Nueva model, a new generation of interactive learning textbooks, which are extremely important because the essence of learning in
Escuela Nueva is through participation in and through discussion and dialogue.
So this is extremely important. Okay. Multigrade is the key word as an entry point, but then we went beyond. We also adapted it to urban areas, the Escuela Nueva model, and now to displaced children caused by armed conflict. And here again we have reconfirmed solid results not only in learning achievement, girls' participation, but in democratic behavior and peaceful coexistence.
What does Escuela Nueva have? Nothing new in philosophy. We put together all the things we know work in education in a systemic cost effective way--$5 per year per child. It's the Escuela Nueva costs. And we put it all in a systemic way--active participatory learning. Children work in small groups. Flexible promotion. They go at different learning rhythms. There is school governments. We have a lot of instruments, a lot of aspects, that ensure girls' participation and especially that ensure strengthening self esteem of girls and strengthening--reducing stereotypes.
Why? Because when you work in cooperative learning approaches, children learn to participate, to discuss, to accept different points of view. Nothing new. This is what-what is amazing, as Jeffrey mentioned this morning, it's nothing new. It's just putting it all together in a systemic package, and this is what the Escuela Nueva did.
So I've been so happy to see that many governments have picked it up, especially in Latin America. We had a Congress two years ago. We're having the new Congress again this year. Fourteen countries from Latin America came to show their results and now looking at this evaluation that USAID, AED, and Juarez and Associates did--Ray
Chesterfield [ph]. They did ethnographic studies of girls' participation in Guatemala, where Escuela Nueva has been adapted; in Nicaragua, where it has also been adapted; and in the Philippines. And it's just amazing. Look at this. Here are the curves. Doing a little bit of propaganda, but it is extremely important because everything that Escuela
Nueva has done has had solid scientific evidence behind, both quantitatively and qualitatively.
So we have some good news. We have hope. We have perspective.
Transformative education, you know. Schools reproduce inequalities. The Coleman
Report how many, many years ago. So what we did was tackle the conventional model and go into a more renovated teaching practices. We focused much on the pedagogics,

29 because all Latin American reforms are administrative in nature. They forget about the pedagogical. The relationships in classroom.
So we have seen that it's more affordable, community participation, the flexibility of self-paced learning materials are key, because this helps girls.
So we have seen it. We confirm it, not only for boys but especially for girls.
Girls' participation has been extremely boosted. And now this is why we're also sharing from a south-south perspective the results of the Latin American region and especially of the Escuela Nueva model that has been disseminated by many international organizations. It just changes the names. In Chile, it's called Mesa Rural. In Brazil, it's called Escola Activa. In Guatemala, it's called Escuela Nueva Humanitaria. In Salvador, it's called Escuela Aulas Alternativas. In the Dominican Republic, it's Multigrado
Innovada. But all are based on the Escuela Nueva model, and many international NGOs are disseminating it.
My NGO is basically there to ensure quality and sustainability, because we really want to ensure results and sustainability of the results because through the governments it's not sustained.
So I guess these are some of my key reflections. I would love to share much more in detail all these different research, evidence that we have had. But for us, it's been very stimulating, especially when we were the best rural primary education in Latin America after Cuba. And our rural schools performed better in academic achievement than urban schools of small cities.
So when you have, you know, some good news like this, you have to sustain it.
My only problem is that governments forget it. The institutional memory forgets it, and also donors.
So this is why I had to create this foundation and this institution to continue pursuing the results that we had in Colombia and also to do it abroad. Thank you very much.
[Applause.]
MS. IBRAHIM: Okay. Thank you, Vicky. Desmond, next up.
DONOR CHALLENGES
MR. BERMINGHAM: Thank you, Amina. And good morning to everybody.
Let me first of all say many thanks to Nancy Birdsall for offering me this invitation to speak at this exciting meeting this morning. And to Amina and to Geeta and to the others in the Center for Global Development for their excellent work on the report.
I can say that from the U.K. perspective, that report is already having a significant impact, as is much of the works that's being done by the Center for Global Development.
So thanks to you all and congratulations for that work.
For me, this morning has been a very interesting demonstration of the point that we always make about the importance of political will in achieving Millennium
Development Goals generally and education in particular. To have Senator Clinton speaking with such passion and conviction about education here this morning is a very strong message for us all I think about the impact and the effect that that can have.
As many of you will know, back in the U.K. there is also very--extremely strong interest in this topic. The U.K. government is in the unique position I think at the moment of having both the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of the Exchequer who are
I would almost say competing with each other to make statements about how strongly they are committed to the cause of development to Africa in particular and to girls education specifically. And that's an exciting time. It's an exhausting time for those of us who work in the Department. But it's an exciting opportunity for us all.

30
The concrete demonstration of that recently this year, as many of you will know, is that the Department for International Development launched its girls' education paper.
It was actually launched by the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Treasury with a breakfast which UNICEF very kindly helped us co-host and there was some tremendous moments there for me where girls from developing countries were telling the Treasury and the Secretary of State of the U.K. government do what you said you were going to do. When are you going to do what you said you were going to do? And it doesn't take that much. Please just give us the support we need, and I think its was very powerful.
I was asked to speak this morning on what the challenges are for donors and
Amina has mentioned some of them this morning. DFID likes to think of itself as one of the more progressive donors. I think I would be the first to say that we haven't got it right, and we don't act according to our words in every occasion, but I think for us there are some very important lessons of how donors need to change their behavior and the challenges that are facing us.
And I would mention four challenges I particularly think are important.
Firstly, the challenge of more money. I think the U.K. government has accepted that more aid is needed; that more domestic finance is needing as well, but donors need to honor their commitments to meet the 0.7 target, and the U.K. government has committed to do that by 2012, and has set out a timetable for that.
In actual terms, to take Jeff Sach's points, we're talking in real money not vaporous money. The Department for International Development budget will increase from it's currently around 4.5 billion pounds a year, going up to 6.3 billion pounds by
2006, 2007. I mean in U.S. dollar terms, you can work that out for yourselves. But it's getting more and more in U.S. dollar terms as the years as the years go by, which is great.
Just great. I won't dwell on that one.
So in education terms, that means our investment in education will increase to over 300 million pounds over the next three years on average per year.
Now I think the key challenge, though, for donors is with increasing finance, how to spend that increasing finance in a way that supports national-led plans and national processes, including civil society processes and not undermine it.
There is a risk, and I think we have all seen this risk in other areas such as AIDS where large amounts of new money can skew that process that we have all worked so hard to build up in country where the government of a country is accountable to its own citizens for how it spends domestic financing and also how it uses external financing.
And I think that's a huge challenge for donors not to get in the way of that dialogue between the government and the people of its country.
And just to give one concrete example of this, I can remember speaking to what was in effect a Parliamentary Select Committee for Education in Rwanda. These were elected representatives of the new government of Rwanda, and I was talking to them and saying that in my view, what I would hope to see in the near future was that donors would sit behind them and listen to their conversation as they asked their Minister of
Education what are you doing? How are you spending this money? How are you increasing access to education in this country and particularly for girls?
And donors listen to that conversation rather than get involved and get in the way of that conversation. So I think there is a challenge for donors to raise more money, yes, but make sure that money is spent in a way that supports government-led processes.
Linked to that, the challenge of scaling up finances is huge for us all. And I think for us in the U.K., there is increasing interest the Chancellor's proposal on the international financing facility, and his target on this is to use that facility to raise

31 substantial additional financing, and he's talking about $50 billion through a global-through a bond issue, which is then channeled through existing mechanisms to support national plans.
I think for me it would be very interesting for us all to talk with colleagues here and colleagues working on the Fast Track Initiative about whether there is a potential for linking the additional financing that the IFF will raise to the disbursement mechanisms that currently exist in the FTI. I think it would be a very interesting to hear people's views on that.
The second challenge I think for donors is to take risks and donor countries and government departments are naturally risk averse. I think we do need to take more risks.
In the U.K. this has meant, for example, providing support to government budgets in countries where probably under the MCA categorization their governance structures would not be considered acceptable, and the phrase that we tend to use is are the government structures good enough? Is the governance good enough for us to work with it, for us to improve it by working with it; and, therefore, to strengthen the capacity of the government in the medium term.
That leads me on to the third challenge, though, which is for donors taking those risks means taking the home constituency with you. We have to recognize that DFID and
USAID and other donor countries are government departments which are accountable to the voters and the taxpayers in those countries. And I think in the past perhaps some of us who work in development have not given sufficient attention to this issue of the home constituency.
For me, it is remarkable how sophisticated the discussion on development in the
U.K. has become. And this is in the last two or three years I think. It came home very strikingly to me I think in the recent media coverage following the tsunami disaster, where the media coverage very quickly switched from oh, isn't this terrible we must do something to but let us not forget the massive problems in Africa. Let us not move money from those problems towards the tsunami so that those people in Africa lose. And let us not forget the long-term issues relating to education, development, and girls' education in particular.
Now that for me is an indication that the U.K. constituency at home is actually thinking quite carefully about development issues. The girls' education, the topic of today, is a real winner for us on this. I think it's one of those topics that it's very easy for people at home to think, yes, of course, we should supporting education for all girls in poor countries. Are we not doing it already? Why not? Why are you, our government, not doing more? It really is a political winner, and I think we should mobilize that and use that effort that Senator Clinton was talking about this morning.
And then the last point I would make is that in all of this discussion--and this came home very strongly in the launch of our paper--the challenge for donors is--and this will lead me to shut up--to talk less and listen more. And I think there is a big challenge there for us, and I take Amina's point very strongly. We take up far too much time of governments in developing countries who have their own business to get on with of running their education systems. And I think we as donor, DFID as a donor, works very strongly at the country level and at the global level to say to other donors let us talk amongst ourselves; let us as a group of 15 donors agree a single line, and then let us go to the government with one line and hear what they have to say to us so that we are actually reducing the transaction costs for them of talking to all of us. I think that is a challenge.
Too many of my colleagues are too good listeners, too good speakers rather, and not enough listeners.

32
So on that point, I'll stop and say thank you very much again. Thank you.
[Applause.]
MS. IBRAHIM: Thank you, Desmond. I just wanted to add something to--a positive thing that has happened in Nigeria between DFID and UNICEF. Rather than having parallel programs is to see an enormous amount of money go behind a girls' education program. It wasn't easy, and I believe it was one of the first test cases, and we hope that we would see examples like this scaled up and around the rest of Africa and
Southeast Asia this year. Thank you. Beth?
MAKING THE DONOR RELATIONSHIP WORK
MS. KING: Yes, thank you very much. Good morning, everyone. And I want to thank, like Desmond, I want to thank Nancy and Geeta and the rest of the people who organized this conference for the invitation. I wanted to start my talk about--with citing some of the numbers, also some description of what I think the problems are. But this morning we heard two very--three very powerful, compelling, and in a couple of cases very graphic depictions of the problem that we still face. Plus we have the excellent report by the Millennium Task Force to tell us the full picture of the problem of girls' education and achieving the Millennium Goal of gender equality in education. In fact, last week I was part of a team that was reviewing a proposal at the World Bank on what we should be doing next on girls' education or learning more about girls' education and one of the parts of that proposal was let's synthesize what's known about, you know, what works and so forth, and they said no, no, no. You do not want to go there if you've read the report of the Millennium Task Force plus a couple of other very excellent synthesis reports that's definitely not a value added. That's not where we want to spend our time.
But where do we want to spend our time and our resources in trying to contribute to understanding this and contribute to solving the issue of gender inequality in education, and where I think the World Bank should be going. Now, I'm not speaking, by the way, in an official capacity for the World Bank, and let me say that one reason why I've been invited I believe is because this one was--I think I probably organized the first conference on girls' education at the World Bank, and that was before 1990. And, in fact, there are few people in this audience whom I also invited to the Jungtien [ph]
Education for All Conference to speak at the symposium on the session on girls' education. So this is definitely something that's been close to my heart and close to my mind as well.
So where do I think the World Bank should be going in the next few years and where I think donors should also be going to. One is--first we have to be humble that our resources are not the biggest resources for education. Okay. We are the best that we can do really is to leverage the resources that are being spent for education. We compare ourselves, for example, just think about China and Indonesia and what we can give those two countries. In general, they do not need our money. Right? They do not need our money. They do not really need the monies of most of the donor organizations.
But what can we contribute then to understanding this problem. First, I think we need to sharpen our analysis about if we are going to make further progress in two aspects.
The first one is in diagnosing the nature of the problem. They've--the earlier speakers have told you that we've made some progress, even though things are not where they should be, we have made progress in the last decade, last 15 years. And if you look at the numbers given by the Millennium Task Force, we've seen countries, even the poorest countries making progress with respect to girls' education.

33
But if you take a look at the numbers more closely, and if you break down the numbers below the countries, that's where you see something that I think we really need to respond to. I looked at the demographic and health surveys. There are about 40, 45 countries where these surveys have been done. If you look at enrollment rates for ages six to 11, 12 to 14, and 15 to 17, and you look at the averages for world regions, you will find, if you even take a look at urban-rural differences, you look at differences between girls and boys in urban areas, they're not huge. Even especially at the ages six to 11, and that tells you how far we've gone with respect to gender equality.
However, if you look at rural differences between boys and girls, there you will be struck by in South Asia, the gender gap is three times the gender gap in urban areas, and in the Middle East countries, as well as in North African countries, it is 10 times the gap that you see in urban areas.
And if you look at the older ages--that's where we start going into secondary education ages--you see the same thing, the same pattern. Where we need to make a huge difference is really bringing rural girls to school, not to mention bringing rural boys to school. But really in both South Asian countries as well as in North African countries in the Middle East, the biggest gaps are in rural areas.
So that's just one aspect. If you also take a look at regional differences for countries. For example, in India, the northern states versus the southern states, there also you will get huge differences. Differences that are wider than the differences between let's say the poorest country in the world and the richest country in the world.
So we have to kind of go into the countries to understand how we can improve the gender equality in our countries that are not meeting the Millennium Development Goal.
Secondly, in discovering solutions, that's where we have to be--put our hearts and our minds to. We have to be really sharp about this. And we have to be sharp about discovering solutions, because even, for example, the high school girls in Bangladesh, who are benefiting from this stipend project at the secondary level, told us when we were visiting their schools, please don't bother to give the richer girls this stipend because it's so small. Give all the stipend to the poorer girls. They were saying you have to be a bit-you have to be smarter about the way you use your money, because it's not a whole lot really; and that they themselves don't need it. They want us to be sharper even in the kinds of solutions that we propose.
Here are some policy directions for policy I think and programs which we've not looked into very much. You know, the usual--and the report would say, you know, we have to build the schools closer, we have to make schools more affordable, reduce or eliminate tuition fees, increase the number of female teachers. These are things that we know and that are in the report. And we should scale them up. But in addition to those, what do we need to think about? One is giving children a better start in life. You have children who are stunted. They won't go to school on time. They won't go to school on time. They leave school on time. They will not be able to finish primary education.
Two, education is education. Right? It's not just a matter of bringing girls to the classroom. At some point, parents are going to be disillusioned with schools if they do not learn anything. So the way we have to measure our performance with respect to this is not only about bringing the girls to school. It's whether they learn something. There is a--we think that illiterate can't tell the difference between good education and bad education. Our experience in the northwestern provinces of Pakistan indicates that they do. Even when teachers pass a child, if the parent--we gave children independently a test, and not knowing the results--the results were not known by parents and teachers, still the children who were promoted by teachers but did poorly in the tests were not allowed by

34 parents to go to the next level of schooling. Okay? Indicating that even illiterate parents can tell the difference between schools that actually teach their children something and those that don't. So I think we have to move a little bit. If we're thinking about the future, where are our challenges?
What we have to think about is that schooling that doesn't actually improve knowledge and skills, we can sustain the kind of gains we think we would by achieving gender equality in participation.
And lastly, because time is short, I want to say that one of the challenges for donors is that the policy environment in education is always changing. Sometimes the
World Bank is blamed for decentralization in countries. Let me tell you that we're barely catching up with countries in the way because they want to change--they are changing policy. The policy environment is changing. They're adopting--one of the things that they are adopting is decentralization. And decentralization there are some good things about it, and if you look at the literature on decentralization, greater school autonomy, local participation in schools, et cetera. There are benefits from those. But there are also big risks and dangers.
And if you just take a look at what's happening in China, differences between the poor provinces and the rich provinces. In some other countries of the world, equity between rural and urban areas--and that goes back then, therefore, to my first point about the rural-urban gap--that is something that there's a risk there. And so we as a donor, we have to understand both in terms of our technical advise what we plan to finance; that the policy environment is changing, and that we have to learn--that we have to learn how to adapt to this policy environment and learn what the risks are and to try our best to make everyone more aware of the risks of these changes in the policy environment. So I thank you very much.
[Applause.]
MS. IBRAHIM: Thank you, Beth, Desmond, and Vicky. I think they've set the scene for question and answers now before I ask Desmond to do a wrap up, I think it would be useful to get some feedback. Yeah. He's--sorry. Sorry, Nick. Desmond, you're my friend. Yes, Nick. Nick is going to do the wrap up, and I think that it will be useful if he would incorporate some of the feedback that comes from some of the questions and answers rather than wrap up before the questions and answers. So, I turn this over to the floor. Yes.
MR. WYLAND: Hi. My name is Jim Wyland from the International Reading
Association.
I think there's a--talking about the donors--I think there's a perception that international aid really, to a large extent, benefits the donor country as much as it benefits the donee; that American universities, for example, really do quite well on overhead that they get from foreign aid for implementing foreign aid projects; that here in Washington, we have quite a number of organizations that do quite well on foreign aid. And one thing that I haven't really heard in the discussion is how the donor community addresses this situation of this constant importing of ideas, technology from the developed country rather than emphasizing the development of an intellectual base, research base within the countries.
MS. IBRAHIM:
MS. IBRAHIM:
You want to take that, Desmond?
MR. BERMINGHAM : You want to take--or do we take a few together?
Should we take a few. Okay. Let's take three or four together.
MS. GIBBONS: My name is Liz Gibbons from UNICEF, and it's nice to see
Vicky again. I was working in Guatemala when, in fact, UNICEF was supporting these

35 new integrated bilingual schools and that its' true the results were extraordinary.
However, at the time, and I think to this day, they still operated very much at the margin of the educational system. And you implied that that was overall a problem with the bureaucracies. But yet, with such great results and such really--especially for girls--I wonder if you can give us some sense of where a bureaucracy has wholly adapted this approach to its education system or what would be the hope of it happening or at least some of the methodologies so that the benefits could be spread widely through the country. Thank you.
MS. MILLER GRANVEAU : Hi. My name is Yoland Miller Granveau [ph].
I'm with USAID Office of Education.
[TAPE FLIP]
The support you give, you know, to basket funding and donor harmonization. But again, public and private partnerships has not really come up in your presentations. I just want to say one thing. We are spending a lot of time studying, analyzing, the community school movement, especially in Africa. And, Vicky, you know all about it. What we have seen in the past 13 years or so is we started focusing on access. Then we realized we needed to focus on quality and on equity. We did that pretty well.
Then we realized in the late '90s that we had to look at alternative delivery systems. We are doing that pretty well again.
Now most of our missions at USAID in Africa are saying we know we need to partner now for the sake of community schools, to increase access, equity. We need to partner with private partners. How do we do it? How do we do it? And I have not seen an answer to that yet.
So I'm just wondering if you could respond to that. Thank you.
MR. METHOD: My name is Frank Method. I'm with the Research Triangle
Institute.
I'd like to follow up on Vicky Colbert's discussion of Escuela Nueva, as well as
Beth King's observations about what happens at the secondary level.
What do you think about the feasibility and utility of taking the Escuela Nueva model up a notch to the college level--middle school level--with multigrade instructions, but more participatory process, et cetera, cross training of teachers. I think it is feasible, but I'd be interested in your judgment. I think it would address one of the emerging problems of the education of girls who hit the wall at grade five or six who don't have anywhere to go. But I don't know of good examples where there is being attempted. And
I don't know of any examples where international assistance is being put behind such efforts.
MS. IBRAHIM: Thank you. The last question for the time. Icha, here.
MS. BIDYALO : Yeah. My name is Icha Bidyalo [ph], and Beth King just recognized me despite my white hair, huh?
I would like you, Amina, to tell us how the international community can help better a country be in the driving seat, because this is what we need. And how you can coordinate all stakeholders of education pulling together national--when I call national, it means NGOs and, you know, all stakeholders, but also the international community.
You know, we just finished a mapping exercise in UNESCO, and our problem is how to avoid duplicating. How to harmonize our help, our support, because definitely we have to stop talking and do the listening and also for governments to make sure that they will be active. Thank you.
MS. IBRAHIM: I'm going to break my own rules. Karen's--

36
MS. GROWN: Okay. I have a question that follows on from that. I'm Caren
Grown with ICRW. I'd like to hear the observations, particularly of Desmond and anybody else on the panel in that respect, on how well fast track is working. The Fast
Track Initiative how well it is actually a mechanism for harmonization, and what are the challenges of the fast track vis a vis bilateral assistance. And I'm also--I'm very interested once countries have plans, the implementation. Are countries in the driving seat? How are those implemented? Perhaps you can say a bit about that?
MS. IBRAHIM: Right. Thank you. I think we are well up on our time here.
Could I start by asking Beth and then Desmond and Vicky and then afterwards I'll maybe say a couple of things before Nick sums up.
MS. COLBERT DE ARBOLEDA: If I'm not mistaken, the first question was how to develop research and analytical capacity in developing countries. And I think that the foundation of that question, which is that there should be research capacity in the developing countries, in our partner countries, I think is absolutely correct. And I think that we can do that, and I wish that, in fact--I think this is exactly the area where donor agencies should be working hand in hand. We need to develop a global research network that is going to strengthen research capacity for education; and, yes, also girls' education in our countries. And, in fact, we have a--the seed of such an effort. At the end of
March, we have a conference in Prague of global--a small global research network, and I hope that this is something that, in fact, we can invite many more agencies to join, because I think this is something that we can see as at least 10 years before it can keep going.
But think about how the different U.S. foundations--Rockefeller Foundation, Ford
Foundation--have been able to succeed in raising research and academic capacity in a lot of developing countries. And I think we--it's about time we have something that's focused on education.
On the question about public-private partnerships for primary education, I think that we often think of private education as something that's elite and very select. In fact, in many of the countries, of the poorest countries, private non-governmental education is-
-education provided by non-governmental organizations is actually--the schools that are able to reach the poorest, the rural, the remote rural areas, and also populations that are the most disadvantaged, what exactly. In visiting, for example, maddrasses in Indonesia and the rural Philippines and in the conflict areas of Mindanao, one big question to us was should we be supporting maddrassa education given that if you believe in separation of church and state, for example, and at least the Philippines does, what should the policy be towards maddrassa education? This is something that I think is a question for policy makers and something that donors need to think about. Indonesia, of course, is a different case, but is facing exactly this question because it is--if you take a look at the quality of schools, the worst schools are the maddrassa schools.
MR. BERMINGHAM: Thanks. I'll respond to Jim's question again and also to the USAID question and then to Caren's question on FTI.
Firstly, to pick up on the points Beth was making. I think this is critical that--it's a challenge for donors. I don't know how it works in the U.S., but certainly in the U.K.,
DFID comes under immense pressure from universities, research institutes, et cetera, in the U.K. to give more of DFID donor assistance to essentially build their capacity. And we've had to take quite a hard line to say, we very welcome your partnership and your involvement, but our priority has to be to build the capacity in the countries themselves and in the regions themselves.
But I take Beth's point about the need to actually work in a more harmonized way.

37
Part of our approach to that is actually in our--we call for expressions of interest for our research programs, which is ongoing. We have required all bids to have a genuine partnership with institutions in developing countries. And we will give preference to those where institutions in the south are the lead institution in the research strategies. So that's one entry point there and for us.
On the question relating to public-private partnerships, I think--I accept the point that the private sector in its broadest definition has an important role to play and contribution to make to education at all levels, and I think I would also endorse our findings in terms of the community school movement has been extremely important in many, many countries. But--and it's an important but, bearing in mind what we've been talking today--I don't think we should allow that statement to let us as donors off the hook, and to let the G8 countries in particular off the hook in terms of meeting our commitments and providing aid. I don't think it's one or the other. I think it's both, and it's a very strong message.
And I think second to that, we also need to keep an eye on that we don't allow the discussion around bringing in the private sector into the dialogue to bring school fees back onto the agenda again. And I think our experience has been--the evidence is very clear; that the removal of school fees, particularly in the poorest parts of countries, is a key factor in getting girls into school and keeping them there. I think that for us is something we have to keep strongly in mind.
And then to take the last question from Caren on the Fast Track Initiative. I mean, thank you for giving me the opportunity to respond on that. As you know, the
U.K. is the co-chair of FTI this year, along with colleagues from Swedish SEDA [ph].
And I know there are colleagues from the FTI here, and I'll hope that they'll correct me if
I get any of these messages wrong. But I think I would be the first to say that FTI has not delivered on what it promised to deliver from the outset. There were severe problems in the early years of FTI. The U.K. government has to take some responsibility for that,
'cause we intervened very strongly to say we don't want another global fund for education. Rather we don't want a global fund for education. It was a strong message from the U.K. As many of you will know, there's a high level forum on donor harmonization going on in Paris this week, and we briefed our permanent Secretary to give a comparison between three global initiatives--the FTI, the Global Fund for AIDS,
TB, and Malaria, and the Global Environment for [inaudible]. And for me going through that exercise of preparing that briefing was fascinating because I think it was clear that we have learned some very important lessons on FTI. And we have learned in particular the lesson of if you create a large scale centralized fund with an institution attached to it, then you will increase the risk of undermining country-level processes, because you create the institutional momentum that goes with that, or parallel processes--new plans, new institutions, et cetera, et cetera.
We've learned that lesson on FTI. And the key--I think we've gained on FTI I think--is the focus at the country level. The decisions need to be made at the country level wherever possible. The message that I say repeatedly on FTI is that the fastest track is actually the in-country track, where you've got a strong government, with a strong sector plan talking to a group of donors who are prepared to finance and support them.
The role of Washington and Brussels and Paris in that is to sit in the background and to monitor it and to account for it, et cetera, et cetera. But the dialogue happens there at the country level. I think FTI has emphasized that point very strongly.
I think there is still several things that we need to do more on FTI, and I think in particular the voice of developing countries in the FTI are at various different levels.

38
We're all recognizing that needs to be strengthened, and I hope that at the March donors' meeting and then the high-level forum and the FTI meeting in Beijing later this year will help us improve that. Thank you.
MS. COLBERT DE ARBOLEDA: Okay. Responding to Liz, in addition to the
Guatemala experience, and also public-private, and then to Frank.
First, a reflection I have after having participated so many, many years from different spheres; first, as a national coordinator with Escuela Nueva, then as Vice
Minister of Education, then as Education Advisor of UNICEF for Latin America and the
Caribbean, and now from an NGO.
And I had to create the NGO to ensure sustainability. The first reflection is to have results in education it takes time. And this does not coincide with the political terms sometimes. So, governments, donors, international organizations I think they should build more from scientific research and link scientific evidence with policy decisions.
In the case of Guatemala, for example, the same thing is happening as what happened in Colombia in the '90s. It was dropped. It was dropped simply because there was too much of Escuela Nueva before, and it was a horse that won the race, so let's start something new. So you don't build on existing experiences that have solid research findings.
In Guatemala, the same thing is happening. If we had not created the foundation in the case of Colombia, and had partnerships with the Coffee Growers Association,
Escuela Nueva would not have survived. The same thing is happening in Guatemala, because I sent a Colombian teacher to Guatemala to get it started. So I said don't forget link with NGOs. So Plan Internacional is disseminating Escuela Nueva, after it was dropped by the government in Guatemala also, and even by USAID. It supported it, but then went to do something different. So the coffee growers in Guatemala in plan are promoting the Escuela Nueva because the government sort of dropped it.
So here you have to go again and push the government and show them the scientific evidence to get it back in the picture. So the importance of having research findings is extremely important and linking with policy. For us, this has been our strength in Escuela Nueva.
We actually put it back strongly in the political picture two years ago, and then now everybody is getting into the government again.
In relation to public-private partnerships, in the case of Latin America or in the case of Colombia, we cannot create very easily community schools. We can ensure the participation of community in the processes of schools, but the government has the main responsibility of financing the schools. However, to do the job better, you can link with the private sector, like with the Coffee Growers Association, but the government does not lose the responsibility of financing basic education. So this is--these are the types of linkages we have to start thinking. Now we have in Colombia business people for education. So we're learning to dialogue with the private sector, without the state losing its responsibility. Even now that we're working for adapting the model for displaced children caused by armed conflict, we're bringing people in from the community not only working with teachers, but we have to make sure that the children are financed by the public sector. This is for us extremely important. If we created something alternative, the unions would not let us, at least in Colombia, or in Latin America.
So it's something we have to learn--how to do this public-private partnership dialogue.
And the third issue in relation to Frank's proposal and suggestion, yes, precisely.
Precisely the Coffee Growers Federation said this is working so well for us in primary

39 education. Let's put it into secondary education. It's an educational model. It's a methodology. It's a system. So we're now having it from sixth to ninth grade, which are our main challenges for the future goals, or the Millennium Goals in Colombia, because we achieved almost universal primary education. Now are challenges are in secondary education. And yes, we're introducing the Escuela Nueva in post primary education.
And having very interesting results, especially in the leadership of girls.
So we need more evidence on the girls issue in Colombia. It hasn't been so strong, but now with all the studies that have taken place on Escuela Nueva in
Guatemala, in the Philippines, in different places, I'm sure we can build--make it stronger--a stronger point now.
I guess those would be the questions.
MS. IBRAHIM : Thanks. Just before I ask Nick to come and do a wrap up for us, I'm going to attempt in 30 seconds to answer Icha's question.
There is no one answer to putting, you know, countries back in the driving seat. I think they're all different for different countries. But I think that unless you have a plan that is doable on the table that stakeholders can engage with and that the government can use as its roadmap to the key objectives, it won't happen. And if we go through evaluating the number of plans that countries have been asked to provide over the last three years, I think less than 10 percent of them have been plans that you can actually take to the field and do something with.
A lot--I think the donor community has to take a lot of blame for this, because many plans have been around spending very small pots of money within log frames, which don't really go to the issues. They don't the issues from the grassroots all the way up. They're sort of snapshots of what should be happening, and very rarely do they interface with the policies. In fact, some of our policies, or most of our policies, certainly in sub Saharan Africa, bear no relation to the plans that we want to put in place for achieving EFA and MDGs.
Now that takes time. So I think if donors are coming in to our countries to do education, it's for the long haul. There are no quick fixes for education in our countries.
The level at which education has sunk to is at crisis. And for that to come up again, it needs a lot of hard work. There are the short-term initiatives that have to be taken, but we have to look at the longer term. So no one answer, but I think it is a long haul. It's hard. And we have to get back supporting institutions with their policies and plans that are doable.
Nick, could you wrap up?
CLOSING COMMENTS ON STRATEGIES FOR MOVING FORWARD
MR. BURNETT: Thank you very much. It's a bit of a difficult task to wrap up this panel's discussion and also sneak in a few thoughts of my own. But I will try to do that, and I'm aware that we're very tight for time.
So what seem to be messages of this panel so far?
I think simply put: number one, we know what works; number two, perhaps said enough--the pace of--the recent pace of change has actually been rather dramatic; but number three, that pace of change is simply too slow if the goals are to be achieved.
So what needs to be done in order to accelerate that pace of change, both at the national level and among donors.
What is the way forward? I would suggest that there are perhaps six gaps that need to be closed in order to move forward faster, 'cause we are moving forward. Let's not forget. We are moving forward. We're must move faster.

40
The first gap I would call the awareness gap. We cannot let up on this topic. To my astonishment, two weeks ago, I was asked to review some terms of reference for a very important study to be carried out about Pakistan's education system. These terms of reference, prepared by education professionals about Pakistan did not once mention girls', women, gender, whatever you word you want to say. It is just stunning.
So we cannot let up. You may expect in this room that these things are now well known. They are not unfortunately still.
Second gap that needs to be closed: the knowledge gap. Yes, we know what works. But there are some things we perhaps still need to know a bit more about. Beth began to refer to that. There's also the important point about developing research capacity in the developing countries. But two points in particular.
One, we know a lot now about the economic determinants of enrollment, retention, and so on; and hence, many of the programs that have been very successful for getting girls in are based on that. But we know much less still about the social determinants of enrollment and particularly retention. This is clearly an important area.
A second area has to do with what I would call multiple exclusion. It's striking how many at least of the out of school girls are also in other excluded groups. They may be physically disabled. They may be in conflict countries or displaced people. They may be, as people have said, rural. You typically are rural. They may be from ethnic minorities. They may be from--it often goes together--linguistic minorities.
There's a very strange analysis that goes on that says well, we've got to deal with excluded groups. There are these girls, and then here's all these other ones. We've got to somehow bring that together I think.
Third gap is what I would call the learning gap. This is really what Beth's point: that quality matters. One of the problems with the concept of gender parity is, of course, it's basically being interpreted in terms of attendance at school; whereas what matters is parity in learning; that, in fact, everybody is also learning. So this is I think an third important gap.
Fourth gap, the political gap. And we've obviously heard a lot about that in the first part today. But it is very important, both at the national level and among the donors.
We've heard many references to Museveni. This is clearly a very important step--the one that he took. We could say within education ministries, I mean Ichava [ph] when she was the minister in Guinea, and extraordinary progress was made because this type of political visible commitment is made.
Similarly, among donors, we heard Desmond talking about the very interesting competition within members of the British Cabinet, you know, to take the lead on this sort of an issue. We don't see that broadly enough.
The second aspect of that--so that's a political leadership aspect, that part of the political gap. The other part of the political gap is the credible plan point, which Amina has made in several different ways. And I would add--I'm picking up on what several people said--plans at which level. One of the key points also is that in many of the countries which need the most attention from this perspective are large federal countries, where decision making and resource flows may actually be being determined at state or provincial or whatever level you want to call it. And it's very important I think to look not only is there some credible national plan, but does that actually translate into credible operational plans at these state and provincial levels?
The fourth--sorry--the fifth gap I would draw attention to is the scale gap. Yes, we know what works, but we need to do some things to make it work a lot faster. We've heard a lot about fees--terribly important. We've heard quite a lot about schools being

41 close to where the children live. There's I think some important findings now that this concept of closeness is not necessarily actually one about kilometers. It's got a lot to do with a sense of belonging. Where is the community? And so this is an important point.
We heard Beth talk about the importance of interventions at the early age. This is important. We haven't heard, but we could have heard about the importance of mother and child literacy, together. This is perhaps a very key thing. But this is the issue of girls' education must also involve women.
There are many other things which I could add. Of course, sorry. Secondary education, the important point--focus of the next panel and also one of the key recommendations of the Commission's report.
And the final gap, of course, is the standard one, but I think not to be approached in a standard way--the financing gap. This is both at the national level and the at the international level. At the national level, one part of a credible plan must clearly be an efficient use of the domestic resources. And there are important things happening, like
Amina mentioned, which is now beginning to happen in Nigeria. But still, more is needed. More is needed to allocate the domestic resources efficiently.
At the donor level I think Desmond's message, which I would endorse, is more but better. Much more but better. FTI clearly going to be one mechanism. Publicprivate partnerships going to be both internationally and domestically going to be another mechanism.
But I think it is important to just remember the need for more aid. Jeffrey Sachs was terribly eloquent about that this morning. Let me just add on figure to kind of bring that home.
He pointed out that 0.15 percent of the GNP is the total U.S. aid budget. That's the total of Netherlands' budget for aid for aid for education, because the Netherlands now is giving one percent of GNP for aid, and it has earmarked 15 percent of that for education.
So that's it. What is that? A twenty-five fold difference. So I think you know even a doubling of the U.S. aid would make an enormous difference obviously in absolute terms and still be quite minor in terms of catching up--in terms of global comparisons.
So I do think that the aid point does need to be reinforced.
Let me conclude by quoting perhaps a strange person--Chou En-Lai. He was once asked in the first half of the 20th century what he thought about the French
Revolution. Had it been successful? And he said that he thought it was probably a bit early to tell. And I think the same thing we might say today. Yes, we seem to have missed the mark, but it's a bit early to tell that we've been unsuccessful, and if we close some of these gaps, we can perhaps be successful. Thank you.
[Applause.]
MS. IBRAHIM: Thank you, Nick. That was a great summary of what has happened over the last hour and a half I think. Thank you to Beth, to Desmond, to
Nicholas, and to Vicky, and to the audience as well for the great questions that were posed here. They did elicit I think some great responses for us to go forward with.
It leaves me to say that there is a break next door. The walls will fall apart.
GENDER PARITY: WHY SECONDARY EDUCATION IS CRITICAL
MS. GUPTA : This is the problem with coffee breaks.
We're into Panel Number Two, which is on Gender Parity: Why Secondary
Education is Critical to the MDGs.

42
And we have a total of four presentations. I will begin with making a few remarks, followed by three other presentations, one of which will be on findings from a recent National Academy of Sciences study on transitions to adulthood; the next one on experiences from Bangladesh on what it takes to implement such a priority at the country level; and finally the perspective from UNICEF, a U.N. agency, that has within its mandate the meeting of the goal of education for all.
What I will restrict my remarks to will be some of the conclusions and analysis that we worked on within the task force with a focus on gender parity. And I will also serve as moderator and chair, and will introduce each speaker before they speak, just to introduce myself.
For those of you who joined us late, I'm Geeta Rao Gupta. I'm president of the
International Center for Research on Women.
Each of us will try and speak for 10 to 12 minutes no more, and can I ask Caren or
Ruth to monitor me? So if you can just put up your hand if I go way over? And then hopefully now that we've run short of time a little we'll have at least 15 minutes for discussion. If necessary, I won't sum up at the end. I think it's more important to get your inputs and to listen to all of you.
GENDER EQUALITY FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR GENDER
EQUALITY FROM THE U.N. MILLENNIUM PROJECT TASK FORCE ON
EDUCATTION AND GENDER EQUALITY
MS. GUPTA: So let me begin by sharing with you the main story line of what this panel is about, which came out of a recent review that colleagues of mine undertook at ICRW, Rohini Pande, Anju Malhotra, and Caren Grown; and that we used in our task forces deliberations on gender parity and education. And it is from that that our recommendation to focus on secondary education emerged. Not to not focus on primary education, but rather to continue the focus on primary education but now begin to shift attention to and invest resources in secondary education
Why? Why did we say that? As you all know, the impacts of girls' education on key development outcomes are legendary, almost legendary. Everyone talks about them.
They're talked about as smart investments for reducing fertility, child mortality, and so on.
But because of those strong linkages, it is presumed that education also enhances women's well being, women's own well being and their autonomy; that it empowers them; that somehow they get greater autonomy through investments in primary education and decision making or better opportunities for participating in the economy or the labor market.
But in this review that we conducted at ICRW, we found that education is a necessary but not sufficient investment to empower women; and that in most cases only secondary or higher levels of schooling led to improved options and opportunities and outcomes for women themselves.
And even there, for secondary education to have that great payoff for women requires investments to address the many social and economic constraints that typically exist in most societies that perpetuate the inequalities that we are trying to address.
So the story is essentially primary education is very important, but in order to get the returns, the greatest payoff for women themselves in terms of women's empowerment, which is what our goal was about, investments in secondary education are necessary, but not sufficient. It doesn't, therefore, mean that if you are investing in secondary and primary education, you need to invest in nothing else. There are several other strategic priorities that our task force outlined precisely for this reason.

43
You know--and we talked about this morning--the fact that most governments and donor agencies have made universal primary education their central policy aim and goal, which is great. It's a good start. As Nick and others said, this--in the earlier panel, we have made progress towards that goal, and we must continue. But if we want women and girls to not just get by, but actually thrive and do well, we need more.
You've heard a little about what the current situation looks like. I won't delve into the numbers also because of time limitations. But just to say to you keep in mind that there about 87 countries that are projected to miss the gender parity target for primary education in 2005. And about 19 of those are so far behind that if they do not get significant investments soon, they are likely to miss the target of 2015. And 14 of those
19 are in sub Saharan Africa.
So that's just a broad brush picture.
At the secondary education level, there are 52 countries that are projected to miss the gender parity target in 2005. And I want you to note that the earlier figure was 87 countries that I've projected to miss at the primary level this year, and secondary it's less.
It's 52 countries in 2005. And 14 of these are likely to fail us so far behind that unless investments are made today, they're likely to miss the target set for 2015. Again, the majority of those countries are in sub Saharan Africa, but the spread is greater on secondary education; therefore countries in East Asia and the Pacific--two in South Asia, one in Europe and Central Asia, and one in the Middle East and North Africa.
So it's significant at this point about why do we have--we typically say, you know, we have made greater progress in primary education for girls than we have on secondary education. Yet, we find that there are greater number that are of the mark on primary education than on secondary education
And the reason is that at the secondary level, even though we have achieved gender parity, which is a numerical equality, we haven't achieved high levels of overall participation of boys and girls in education. So the parity that we see in these countries is at very low levels of participation of enrollment, and that's not acceptable.
So even though the goal is freezed as gender parity, as a task force we underscored repeatedly the need for increasing the overall levels of attendance in schools if we were to achieve the goal.
And, of course, as has been said in the earlier panel, we know that enrollment alone is not enough. We were in some ways stuck with that indicator because that's where the data is for cross-country comparisons. We know that completion rates are a step better; you know, it's a better way to measure success here. It's a more meaningful indicator.
But we don't have completion rates for secondary education; and so couldn't do the kinds of comparisons we wanted to do on the secondary education front on completion.
And then, as I've said before, earlier today, even completion is not enough, because what really matters is the quality of what is learned. What is the quality of the education that is provided? What are the skills that are learned? What is the knowledge that is transferred?
And the data that we have show that countries on this indicator--we have limited data--but on the data we have countries are not faring very well. For example, in
Tanzania, only 21 percent of children finishing seventh grade pass the language test, and only 19 percent pass the math test.

44
And in Bangladesh, two-thirds of rural children 11 years and older who had completed primary school failed to achieve minimum levels of competence in tests of writing, reading, and mathematics. So clearly, there's a lot of work that needs to be done.
So why this focus on secondary education? And I'll share with you some of what our analysis through the literature review showed us. We found, for example, that women with higher levels of education are much more likely to reject the strong societal barriers that stand in their way of achieving their potential. So, for example, in India, women with high levels of education are much more likely to reject the strong societal preference for a son, and find ways to compensate for the lost support and rejection and negative sanctions that they may face when they give birth to a daughter.
Female secondary education we found is associated with better health outcomes for women overall. I mean, we know that they are good health outcomes when you primary education, but they're significantly better when you have secondary education.
You also have a higher age of marriage, low fertility and mortality, good maternal care, reduced incidence of violence against women, when women are more educated; reduced incidence of female genital cutting among the most educated women; reduced vulnerability to HIV/AIDS.
So I'm just sharing some of these outcomes with you to give you a sense of the possibility if we were to make the investments in secondary education possible.
So just to take the example of HIV for a moment. While primary education increases girls and women's ability to discuss HIV with a partner, ask for condom use, or negotiate sex with a partner, secondary education makes girls more--makes it more likely that girls will understand the costs of risky behavior and even know effective refusal tactics in different sexual situations.
And most importantly, of course, higher education increases women's probability to be engaged in formal paid employment; and, therefore, have greater economic returns to their education
And what's interesting is at those higher levels of education, the returns, the economic returns for women, are greater than for men at the same levels of education
In India, the wage benefit for women with secondary education was double that for men.
So it makes it less likely that women will then be engaged in formal work or in work that is jobs that are insecure.
So all of these are wins. They're positive outcomes that we felt very strongly in our discussions on the task force, and but we did recognize that the extent to which you could achieve those positive outcomes depends greatly on the social context and the economic context within which those women live.
So, for example, in Nigeria, the degree to which education increases women's autonomy and decision making, it depends on the family structure and women's' access to economic opportunities. So in a study of five ethnic groups, education had no effect on a wife's decision making among the Ibo, which is an eastern community, whereas among the Kainuti [ph] both primary and secondary increased women's decision making authority, and among the Hausa in the north and the Yoruba in the south, only secondary education had that effect. So all of that just to say that context matters, and the returns that you're going to get in the investments in secondary education you need to keep that context in mind.
There are many other reasons to invest in secondary education. I'm just going to go through these rapidly. The first is that we just haven't made the same kind of progress on secondary as we have made on primary, so because of the push for universal primary

45 education, there are more children in primary school than in secondary school. And we need to have that similar push forward at the secondary level and make enrollment rates go up.
Second, by focusing on secondary education, we can actually strengthen the pipeline that channel students through the education system, giving parents an incentive, in fact, to have their children complete primary school, a point that I think Amina made in the previous panel.
And it may, in fact, result in greater success with your universal primary education goal. In many parts of the world, as it happens, existing secondary school system cannot absorb the increasing numbers of kids in the primary school system. And, as a result, without that kind of absorptive capacity, it's hard to maintain the high retention rates at the primary school level.
Yet another reason is that gender parity in secondary education is much more likely to be attained with increases in the gross enrollment rates at the secondary level overall. So you want to push for more kids to be in secondary education because there is a correlation there. The more children there are, the more likely--there's more likely to be greater parity. It's a sort of a necessary but not sufficient condition for that to happen.
And finally, as primary schools become universalized, as we begin to achieve in some countries or come close to the UPE goal, participation of the secondary level becomes a major determinant of access to economic opportunity and equity, and it's important to keep this in mind as a poverty alleviation and reducing inequality strategy because many children today cannot enroll into secondary school for economic reasons.
The direct costs of actually enrolling in secondary school are quite high. In sub Saharan
Africa, for example, specifically in Tanzania, education participation rates of the richest
20 percent of households are more than 20 times those of the poorest 40 percent of households in Tanzania.
So that marginalization and inequality will be perpetuated and will increase unless we make specific investments to ensure that poorer children can access secondary school.
So it can be actually thought of as a poverty alleviation and inequality reduction strategy.
So those are the reasons that we feel underscore the need for this kind of an emphasis and for the global sort of policy community to begin to think about how this can be done without losing our focus on primary education, and if we're trying to decide how should we prioritize where these investments should occur, the task force sort of is recommending that we pick the countries that are moving close to the target of universal primary education, you know, that are--I think Vicky mentioned this, you know, those that already have achieved some of that that sort of automatically means that you need to now open and prime the pipeline for secondary education in those countries.
And so what are the strategies then to make secondary education of girls increase, and how do you get higher levels of participation overall?
They've been mentioned repeatedly earlier today. So I'm just going to flip through them quickly. There are four key strategies. They are in our report. Cost is a significant barrier for girls at the secondary level. We have to find a way to make secondary schools more affordable, either eliminating or reducing user fees or using targeted scholarships. Building schools closer to home--and I agree closer not just in terms physical distance, but social distance. And allowing perhaps for flexible class schedules so that girls can combine household tasks and other economic tasks with schooling. Making girls--making schools more girl friendly, ensuring that they're safe; that, you know, and that the design of the schools are suited to girls; that the curriculum is something that can interest girls and is gender equitable; and overall improving the

46 quality of education through gender sensitive textbooks, developing encouraging curriculum for girls in math and science. This is a big issue. All of sudden all over the papers ever since the President of Harvard University referred to this issue, and I feel that it's an issue we need to pay attention to in the design of curriculum. And maybe training more women as teachers. So these are not new. We've known these for a while. I think the question is one of investment, as we have said before--investment by national governments as well as by international donor agencies and making the mechanisms that we have in place work for girls in a way that allows national governments to set the tone and to set the priorities and develop the plans that they feel will work.
So I'll stop there, and introduce our next speaker who is Cynthia Lloyd. Cynthia is Director of Social Science Research in the Policy Research Division of the Population
Council, and she also serves in the National Research Council's Committee on
Population; and as Chair of the National Research Council's Institute of Medicine's Panel on Transitions to Adulthood in Developing Countries. And she's going to share some of the results of that work.
IMPORTANCE OF SECONDARY EDUCATION
MS. LLOYD: Thank you. Well, thank you, Geeta, and thank you, Nancy. I want to compliment you and all of your colleagues on these really two excellent reports.
And I don't want to repeat anything--I'll try not to repeat anything that's in them, but I want to share with you another effort which in a sense has been running in parallel with this effort, but somewhat in the shadows, because this has been a project, a panel that was commissioned about three and half years ago now--it's hard to believe by the National
Academy of Sciences--to bring together a group of 15 experts that represent a variety of disciplines and also come from a variety of regions, to get together to review what we know about transitions to adulthood in all aspects. And so we have--this group of 15 experts has been working kind of on the sidelines and in parallel, but the good news is I think we're coming out in a very reinforcing and complementary way with our findings.
The report was released in mid-December and will be published book, hopefully by the end of April.
And the title of that book I think is very timely, Growing Up Global: The
Changing Transitions to Adulthood in Developing Countries.
And throughout that report special attention is given to schooling during adolescence, and to the importance for successful transitions in all domains of adulthood, education is providing that means to success.
So to start with a little framework and background for the way we were thinking about these issues, and then I want to go on to supplement some of the points that Geeta has already made, to reinforce the value and the many benefits of schooling. First, just a reminder of some of the demographics we're dealing with. This year, in 2005, the U.N. estimates that there are roughly 1.5 billion young people ages 10 to 24 in developing countries who are currently making the transition to adulthood.
And they represent 86 percent of all young people in the world. Seventy percent of these young people live in Asia, 42 percent in China and India alone. Nineteen percent live in sub Saharan Africa, and 11 percent in Latin America and the Caribbean.
By 2015, these young people will be ages 20 to 34, and will have become young parents, citizens, and workers. And their personal futures and the futures of the communities, the countries, and, indeed, the globe where they live now rests on their ability to navigate this transition to adulthood successfully.
The challenges for young people in making this transition are global--
[START OF TAPE 3, SIDE A]

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And in other parts of the world, in particular South Asia and sub Saharan Africa, the size of these cohorts of young people will be continuing to grow into the future.
So globalization and its power to reach across national boundaries and into the smallest communities carries with it the transformative power of new markets and new technologies.
But at the same time, globalization is bringing new ideas and lifestyles that can conflict with traditional norms and values. And while the choices that young people make and probably more typically others, their parents and others make on their behalf, will facilitate their transition, and their--or constrain their success as adults. Their parents' past experience will provide little guidance to their children with respect to future employment prospects and the life experiences.
So what does success require in today's rapidly changing world?
The panel came up with several criteria for success, which we felt were set within the current context, that all young people will need good mental and physical health, including reproductive health and the knowledge and means to sustain health as adults.
They will need an appropriate stock of human and social capital to become productive adults in their societies.
They will need the acquisition of pro-social values, and the ability to contribute to their collective well being. They'll need adequate preparation for the assumption of adult social roles and obligations as worker, parent, and spouse.
They'll need the capability to make choices through a sense of self and personal confidence.
So in the panel's view policies that support universal primary schooling of adequate quality, that support the expansion of good post-primary or secondary schooling, and that promote good health during this phase of the life cycle are essential in their own right, but also important because of their role in promoting success in many other domains.
Learning occurs most intensively during childhood and adolescence, more intensely than during other phases of the life cycle, whether it be learning related to the development of physical and cognitive skills or the acquisition of knowledge and the shaping of values and beliefs.
So policies and programs which affect the timing and sequencing of learning and the quality of the learning environment during these years can have important implications for the development of adult productive capacities. And in the panel's view the failure to invest at these early stages of the life cycle is extremely unlikely to be compensated for at any later phase of the life cycle.
Now Geeta has already reviewed many of the findings from her report in the literature, and what I want to add now is some of our findings that will help to support and reinforce some of the benefits for girls and boys of being in school during the adolescent years.
There has been much less known about the more immediate benefits of schooling during the formative adolescent years, when young people are developing norms and values about gender roles, are beginning to experience their sexuality, and are beginning to have the opportunity to participate as a citizen in their schools and in their communities.
So the panel report was able to document some of these even more immediate benefits. First, as long as boys and girls remain students, the pattern of their daily lives appears to remain fairly similar, according to time use date collected in a variety of settings.

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It is when they reach puberty or when they leave school, whichever comes later, that their work roles and their daily lives become sharply differentiated. Both boys and girls tend to do domestic chores as long as they remain students.
It's after they leave school that girls take up and become more specialized in domestic work and unpaid family work and when young men begin to enter the paid labor force.
Thus, the longer boys and girls go to school together during the adolescent years, particularly secondary school, the greater the chance that the school can play a constructive role in developing norms and values among boys and girls that are supportive of gender equity.
Behaviors that young people adopt as adolescents have critical implications for their future health and mortality. Indeed, in the panel's view unprotected sex is one of the riskiest behaviors that young people can undertake, particularly in settings in which
HIV/AIDS is widespread.
The panel found in its analysis of recent data for the demographic and health surveys that in a vast majority of countries women ages 15 to 17, who remain students, often enrolled in secondary school, are less likely to report having had sex than their unmarried age peers who are no longer enrolled.
Furthermore, young people who are sexually active but remain in school are more likely to use contraception than sexually active young people who are no longer enrolled.
So the steady growth over the last 20 years in the percentage of young people who remain in school during the late teenage years suggests that schools are becoming an increasingly important institutional environment for young people at a phase of the transition to adulthood when sexual activity becomes more prevalent.
We need to learn more about what enhances the protective role of schools during these critical years of the life cycle in order to strengthen the capacity of schools to keep girls safe and healthy.
At their best, schools have the capacity to enhance success in all transitions to adulthood, through the acquisition of skills and lifelong learning, the acquisition of prosocial values and citizenship, knowledge, and skills; decision making, negotiating, and leadership skills; and the transmission of knowledge and means to sustain health.
In particular in an era of democratization and the rise of civil society, training in citizenship skills is gaining ever greater importance, particularly in secondary schools, when young people are anticipating adulthood.
However, schools can be a site for both learning and conflict, socialization, and exclusion. The language of instruction, the messages and values conveyed in textbooks, and the attitudes and behaviors of school principals and teachers in the school all have an impact on young people's sense of belonging, their integration with peers, and the type of civic identity they assume.
Geeta has already mentioned the benefits of secondary school in terms of delaying marriage and childbearing, so I won't go into that. I will just make one point about the data that shows that secondary school investments for girls are good investment, even though the rates for both boys and girls are much lower than we would like. And most of the regions we see that girls, in fact, if they do get to secondary school are slightly more likely, with the exception of South Asia, to complete secondary school than boys. So it's a good investment from that point of view.
So let me just end with a few of the panel's recommendations with respect to policies and programs.

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First, that policies and programs designed to enhance school quality or reduce dropout rates should be targeted to the poor, particularly poor young women who are often doubly disadvantaged. While the panel supports the U.N. development goals for education, it did not see the achievement of these goals--universal primary completion and the elimination of gender disparities--as sufficient for the next generation of young people to acquire the skills necessary for successful transitions to adulthood.
The rapidity of global change, and changing patterns of employment require that policy makers give equal attention to investments in school quality in order to assure that students start on time and achieve adequate learning outcomes at the primary level so that we can create a stronger base for expansion at the secondary level.
The panel's recommendations on gender equality emphasized the promotion of gender equitable treatment in the classroom through gender training for teachers and school administrators, as well as the development of compensatory educational opportunities for adolescent girls who missed the opportunity to enroll in school when they were younger children.
Finally, given that schooling during adolescence may be one of the most effective strategies for supporting adolescent reproductive health, the panel recommends active collaboration between the health and education sectors in supporting programs to enhance adolescent reproductive health. Thank you.
MS. GUPTA : Thank you very much.
[Applause.]
MS. GUPTA : The next presenter is Dilata Hafiz, who's the Director-General of the Directorate of Secondary and Higher Education at the Ministry of Education of the
Government of the People's Republic of Bangladesh. You've traveled a long distance to be with us, and we are very grateful because what we most need is the country experience.
EXPERIENCES FROM BANGLADESH
MS. HAFIZ: Thank you, Geeta. President, ICRW, Geeta Rao Gupta, respective speakers, ladies and gentlemen, it is a privilege and honor to be able to speak before such an august gathering.
Education has been considered as one of the strategies for effective human resource development, poverty elimination, and socio-economic development, culminating into national development.
Bangladesh achieved independence in 1971. At the time, its female literacy rate was 18.4 only. Female education has been a long-term concern of the government of
Bangladesh because of their lowest educational attainment, which prevented them from participating in the development process.
At the primary education level, things started improving when government started food for education program in 1993. Many parents could not afford to send their children to school as they were required to work in the paddy field or look after their cattle. In order to ensure kids present in school, the government provided substantial quantity of wheat to the parents on the [inaudible] basis.
This system worked wonders and enrollment rates in schools increased tremendously. Regarding girls, the total scenario has been changed at primary level when the government introduced compulsory free primary education. In 2002, girls' gross enrollment rate became 98.14 percent.
But in secondary level, in 1990, only about 33 percent of the total enrollees were girls. For that, the proportion of girls completing secondary was less than half the rate of boys. A number of studies have been undertaken to identify the reasons. These were:

50 poverty, gender disparity, awareness, early marriage, more involvement in the household work and babysitting siblings, transportation problem, sanitation problem.
In view of their work situation, the government of Bangladesh laid special emphasis in the fourth five-year to raise the female literacy rate in order to ensure enhanced participation of females in all spheres of national live. The government is committed to implement the Millennium Development Goal of promoting gender equality and empowerment of women to increasing the ratio of girls in all levels of education.
To achieve the objective, the government of Bangladesh introduced a free tuition program for girls studying in grades six to eight in schools outside the metropolitan areas.
But this program was not sufficient for them to continue their education up to grade 10.
As a result, it was felt necessary to launch a broad-based female stipend and tuition program.
Learning from the earlier initiatives, the government of Bangladesh, with support from international development agencies, launched the female secondary school assistance project in 1993, with female stipend and tuition program as its main component. The introduction of this programs created a nationwide enthusiasm for girls' education, which inspired the government to undertake a nationwide female stipend program.
The four stipend projects under the national female stipend program are idea assisted female secondary education assistance project, ADV assisted secondary education development project, NORAD assisted female secondary education stipend project, GOB financed female secondary stipend project.
The short-term objectives of the programs are to increase the enrollment of girls in grades six ten; to assist to pass their SEC [inaudible] examinations so that they can continue their education or qualify for employment as primary and secondary school teachers, agricultural extension [inaudible], health and family planning workers, NGO field workers and so on.
To refrain them from early marriage, long-term objectives of the program are to enhance the number of educated women capable of participating effectively in the socioeconomic development of the country; to increase the social status of women in the community and reduce the gender gap; to reduce population growth; to achieve empowerment of women, above all.
Eligibility criteria for stipend. The main objective of FSB female stipend program is not just getting more and more girls enrolled at the secondary level. Rather, it aims at enhancing the quality of education. With this end in view, some conditions have been set for a girl to be eligible for receiving stipend.
These are: the girl must attend classes for at least 75 percent of the total school days. She must have to secure at least 45 percent marks in the annual examinations. And she must have to remain unmarried 'til the SEC exam.
Being encouraged by the tremendous success of the nationwide female stipend program in increasing the enrollment of girls at the secondary level, the government of
Bangladesh launched the higher secondary female stipend program.
The increase of enrollment was so enormous that by the end of 2001, girls outnumbered boys in classes. This program has also been successful in bringing about some accompanying long-term benefits. These are: the incidence of early marriage has decreased. The birth of the first child [inaudible] has been delayed. Birth spacing has increased. Many stipend recipient SEC graduates are now either pursuing higher studies

51 or doing jobs. They are now becoming more aware of their rights and are participating in decision making on family and local matters.
Educated women are participating in local level elections. They have developed strong [inaudible] dowry. They are taking part in income generation activities. Educated mothers are more aware of health and their children and themselves and more conscious about food and nutrition. Enrollment of girls in secondary level raised from 30 percent in
1992 to 53 percent in 2002. Literacy rate has been increased, from 38 percent in 1994 to
62 percent in 2001.
All type of findings are reinforced by the U.N. Secretary-General, Mr. Kofi Anan, and Mr. Kofi Anan's statement on the idea female secondary school assistance program of Bangladesh, published in the New York Times on 19th March 2002, which says in rural areas of Bangladesh, most girls marry at a very young age, not because they wish to, but because their families cannot afford to send them to schools. In some districts, that is changing. Girls' enrollment in secondary schools there has more than doubled, and in three years time the proportion of the married women in the 13-15 year-old bracket dropped to 14 percent from 29 percent.
Families are getting smaller and more women are being employed with higher incomes. The benefits will reach far beyond individual girls. They will include lower birth rates, better health practices, fewer children dying in infancy, and a more productive force.
What made this change happen? Money. Since 1993, girls attending secondary school receive a small stipend while the schools receive tuition assistance. The pilot program sponsored by Bangladesh and financed by the World Bank is now to reexpanded to affect 1.45 million girls.
My country has missed the mark. It's a fact. But we are confident. We are trying to overcome our problems and credit goes to especially our Prime Minister, Khaleda Zia.
It is because of her special initiative and untiring efforts that the girls of Bangladesh attained the position where they can participate in development process in the country for years to come.
We are confident if the system of education could be pursued in right earnest the women of Bangladesh will become self reliant in all respects and prove to be worthy citizens of the country. Thank you for [inaudible].
[Applause.]
MS. GUPTA : That was very impressive. Thank you. Thank you for those remarks. Our next speaker is Cream Wright, who is Chief of Education at the United
Nations Children Fund, UNICEF, and previously was head of education and also acted as director of the human resource development division of the Commonwealth Secretariat in
London. Cream will talk about UNICEF's Experience and Work.
UNICEF'S APPROACH
MR. WRIGHT: Thank you, Geeta. I'd like to add my own word of thanks to
Nancy, Geeta, Caren, Kelly, and all the others who worked so hard to organize this activity--this event--and for inviting me to share a few thoughts.
I'd like to share not just the experience of UNICEF but also some of the issues more than the experiences, some of the issues that of concern to us not only within
UNICEF, but within a much broader partnership, the United Nations Girls' Education
Initiative, where these issues have been exercised in our minds.
The Third Millennium Development Goal is obviously about gender equality and the empowerment of women, and we know tagged to this are the related education targets, which call for achievement of gender parity in primary and secondary education

52 by 2005. It's interesting. That document says preferably by--to tell just a short while after the EFA conference people were beginning to hedge their bets already. It says preferably by--anyway by 2005, and gender equality at all levels by 2015.
I guess the issue that is of most concern to us as we meet here today is the fact that so many countries will miss the 2005 goal. On the other hand, I've been in meetings where colleagues are more or less celebrating that over a hundred and twenty something countries have actually made that goal or will make that goal. So it depends on your point of view, and for UNICEF and other partners because we take a rights-based approach, we are concerned with rights for us, even one country is one too many, and even one child out of school is one too many.
But the issue that is exercising our minds is the interpretation of the Millennium
Goal, and the implications that stem from that.
There is a danger I feel that we may be like the long distance runner, feeling that we are approaching the tape, when, in fact, we have several rounds to do round the track because we're not interpreting this goal properly.
We are told, for instance, by those who are optimistic that from many reports we know the gender gap is closing. Numbers are rising of children in school, and, in fact, in many countries in Latin America, in the Caribbean, and Southern Africa, we're even told the problem is boys, you know. There are more girls in school than boys. And even in
Europe, the concern now is that girls seem to be outperforming boys when it comes to learning achievement. So have we got it wrong? Should we really be focusing on girls?
Now this--when we focus--the problem is focusing on numbers, and numbers can distort the issues. So these arguments really distract from what the essence of the matter is as far as we understand the Millennium Development Goals. And it's not just a matter of girls and boys in school or numbers of girls and boys in primary and secondary school.
At the very least, it is about a sequence of things. It is this: it is about getting equivalent percentages of girls and boys into schools and providing them with an equally favorable experience of schooling. This is critical. The experience of schooling is very negative often for girls more than boys. So that they can stay on and complete primary and secondary cycles of schooling with comparable levels of achievement at the end of that process.
So it is a sequence of issues that we need to tackle if we're serious about parity, and not just look at numbers, when, in fact, the experiences may be different; when, in fact, completion rates may be different; when, in fact, learning achievement at the end of it all may be different.
And so from a serious point of view, these are the issues we want to look at when we talk about parity. And I challenge those countries that say we have achieved parity to demonstrate parity in all of these dimensions.
We know of countries where there are more girls in school than boys, and where in society at large, we still see the greatest disproportion in terms of power relations between men and women, in terms of opportunities, in terms of exercising their rights in society and so on. One of my colleagues was visiting Yemen recently, where great strides are being made in enrollment and so on, and his cynical remark to me was that sure the girls are many, many girls in school now in Yemen. They're all sitting at the back with veils covering their faces. I don't know if they're learning anything, you know.
But they're in school.
So people can be cynical when they look at these things. So we need to tackle these issues rather seriously. So I think what I'm trying to say here is achieving gender

53 parity, even just parity, never mind equality, is not just a balancing act of numbers and gender. It is intended to do two key things as far as the Millennium Goals are concerned.
First, it is intended to be a platform that enables us to get to universal primary education, i.e., you achieve gender parity on a rising tide of enrollment towards universal primary education. And so, I mean, it's ridiculous that countries that have 45 percent of their children in school tell you about gender parity. I mean, that's just a statistical illusion in a sense to talk about gender parity in that sense. But that's the first sense.
The second sense and more important for this session of our meeting is that gender parity is intended to set a basis for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of women. And my contention is that it is in this regard that secondary education is absolutely essential. If we are to realize that assumption that somehow through school and through education, we're going to achieve gender equality and empower women, we need to examine this much more closely, and secondary education is critical for a number of reasons.
Indeed, many of the benefits for girl and women, which we would like to attribute to education, and which we often quote, many of these can only be realized through a good quality secondary education. I think Geeta made the point that in the study that the group has done these benefits do not kick in just because a girl goes through primary schooling. They often kick in after secondary education.
This is true not just for preventing HIV/AIDS and reducing child labor or early marriage, it is also just as true for increasing self esteem and confidence, for increasing skills for the job market or the ability to negotiate difficult social situations and deal with personal emotional issues.
So to a great extent gender parity and gender equity I would argue require us to focus on the process and the content of secondary education as much as on the numbers, on the access, and the completion rates.
And now when we focus on the process and the content, it's not just those mechanisms because then we can get into the minutiae of what is going on in the curriculum. It's also tied to the prevailing ethos of secondary schools. What is this governance system? What is the management system? How are girls experiencing their rights within that sort of system?
And ultimately, this is tied up with issues of rights and governance in society generally. So there is a lot to delve into if we're seriously talking about parity and equity issues, we're talking about a rights-based issue.
So there are critical questions that should exercise our minds about what we are calling secondary education. We should ask for instance, is this education merely reproducing social and economic inequalities and the stratifications that already exist in society, even while it is imparting knowledge and skills? Is education really just reinforcing gender stereotypes and biases and can really call it education if this is all that it does?
A recent initiative that we've participated in with UNESCO in supporting the
Arab states, for instance, is a serious examination by Arab Ministers of Education of what does it mean to retain an Arab or how best can we retain an Arab identity yet be part of a modern world where we're valued and respected as part of a global community. This is saying that the next generation of Arab children coming up have to come to terms with a lot of quality issues. It's not about number of children in their schools. It's what are they using schools for? What is the curriculum about and how does it transform the lives of this next generation that is coming along so they can take their place in the world, and not

54 just say, oh, you know, the Arab world gave mathematics to the world. Arabs gave so and so, but we're part of a modern world, and we're playing a role in that world.
So when we look at education systems, and secondary education in particular, we have to examine things like do girls have free access to different forms of knowledge and freedom to practice the essentials of these forms of knowledge. I'm not advocating that we simply force girls into science and technology, but that they have the freedom to experience science and technology and to make choices for themselves of which areas they want to study.
Another area, a really big area for serious reflection, is what I call the curriculum black box that we refer to as life skills. You talk about HIV/AIDS people tell you oh, we give life skills education. You talk about drug addiction, oh, we give life skills education. There's a whole black box that we need to examine, because it can be one of the most powerful tools, but we need to know what is inside it, and how we use it and not just glibly talk about life skills education.
And so at the end of the day, what do we need to do? I think the way forward just to close really is that if we're serious about parity and equality--gender parity and gender equality--we have to get to these issues and not just congratulate ourselves on the numbers. Of course, in the rights-based approach, we have a principle which is known as accepting what you can get for now, a progressive realization. We can take what we'll get for now and work on what we want for later. So we're happy if the numbers are looking good, but these other things are much more critical and much more fundamental; and they are at the heart of parity.
We should also take account of what our schools do to children, to young people, and how they transform them. And I think in this process, we should accept two things.
One I think was mentioned by Nicholas. Some of the countries that have a lot to do are also the same countries that have done the most in the past. The greatest rate of increase, annual rate of increase, in education has occurred in the states of North Africa, Middle
Eastern North Africa, in Southern and Eastern Africa, as well as in West and Central
Africa. These countries over the past 20 years if you analyze household survey data have achieved the greatest annual rate of increase. They've done spectacularly. Unfortunately, some of them need to do three times as better if they are to achieving the--even the 2015 goals.
So it's not a question of progressing. It's a question of how can we get these countries to make quantum leaps over a few years of time, or how can we get them on an exponential trajectory, and so we got to think very differently in very radical ways, and gender parity and gender equality is at the heart of what we're trying to do here. And I think we do a disservice if we start celebrating too early. It doesn't mean we haven't achieved. We've achieved a lot of things, but we need to pay strong attention to giving the big push that is needed to achieve these goals which we also need to interpret properly in case we congratulate ourselves at the tape and be told you have to go around several times more. Thank you.
[Applause.]
MS. GUPTA : Thank you, Cream, for that reality check and remind that all of us that there's still a lot to do. Any comments and questions from the floor?
Let's open it up for discussion. Yes. Please come up to the microphone and introduce yourself?
MS. KORESHI: Sabra Koreshi [ph]. I'm an independent gender and social development consultant. There was a question--we heard some tremendous successes from Bangladesh, and we know that there's been a lot of effort by different categories and

55 different groups, and we know that the NGOs in Bangladesh have played a phenomenal role in its success. Could you tell us a little bit about that please? Thank you.
MS. HAFIZ : Thank you for your question. The NGOs are there. I have already mentioned. Just a minute. Asian Development Bank is there. Then NORAG is there.
[Inaudible] Agency. And right now these two are working with the government.
MS. KORESHI: I was talking about non-governmental organizations.
MS. HAFIZ : NGOs. They are working separately. They are not working with these programs about which I've told you. They are working separately. BRAC is there, and many others. DFID. One is DFID I think.
MS. GUPTA : Why don't we take two or three questions and then have--yes, please. There's somebody at the microphone. Please stand at the microphone so I know that you want to ask a question. I might not spot you otherwise.
MS. DEVOY : Hi. Yes. My name is Taloney Devoy [ph], and I work in urban education reform. My question, though, is about the appropriate sequencing of policy goals in terms of looking at tertiary education in addition to secondary education. Ms.
Gupta spoke about the need to boost secondary education in response to the success that we're having in primary education, and I have several young cousins in Nigeria who are very hesitant about going on to tertiary education because they're not seeing the return-they're not perceiving the returns to tertiary education as being as high as it was for secondary education and they're concerned about the environment, some of the issues in terms of dormitories, accommodations, so forth and so on, and the dilution of the quality of tertiary education in the last 30 years due to rapid expansion. So I was wondering if the panel could comment on that.
MS. GUPTA : Question here. Yeah.
MS. BADYA : My name is Aisha Badya [ph] from UNESCO. I just would like to ask you a small question. It's on--since talk about sex is taboo in the family, do you have guiding and counseling in school because we are dealing with adolescents. One.
The second question is this one: you know if international community does not help the maddrassas to become basic education where the curriculum from public schools is taught, there is no way girls will go to school. So one way of boosting girls' education in the secondary is really to promote the maddrassas, but transforming them into basic education. Do you do that in Bangladesh?
MS. GUPTA : Take another question.
MS. HASNABI: Sabine Hasnabi [ph] from the Academy for Educational
Development. My question is actually an extension of the tertiary education question, and it relates more to labor markets. Cynthia talked quite a bit about, you know, how there's a new cohort of youngsters who are growing up and by 2015 will be part of the workforce, and sort of be the actors and the agents of how--of economic forces globally.
Has there been any work done or recommendations made kind of aligning, you know, what possibilities--what economic and labor market possibilities are out there and how students from secondary--how secondary education can sort of link up with that.
MS. GUPTA : Yes.
MR. BOWENS: Hi. My name is David Bowens. I'm a student at Georgetown
University, and I have actually a question on teacher training. I think a few people have touched on it, but when looking at country like Afghanistan where they'll need another
150,000 teachers to meet the needs of the nine million students in 2015, and especially female teachers, I'm very interested some of the panel's thoughts on some of the real opportunities they've seen out there for innovative delivery. We've talked a little bit about the BRAC [ph], which has had--which has trained teachers on a community-based

56 level. But I guess a sense of--are there some successes we've seen, and can some of these successes be translated into the secondary level of teacher training.
MS. GUPTA : Okay. And the one final question, and then we'll.
MS. KLEIN: Hi. I'm Sue Klein [ph] from the Feminist Majority Foundation, the education equity director. And my question is primarily to Cream, but anyone else who wants to comment is you did bring up the important question or issue that in some countries, like the United States, girls are doing better than boys on many indicators of educational achievement, but you also were very strong in pointing out the role of education for changing us into a less sex stereotyped society. And I was wondering if you knew of strategies, policies, programs that are helpful for not only helping girls with that transformation, but also the boys. Thank you.
MS. GUPTA : Thank you. Why don't we start with Cynthia, and then go down
[inaudible].
MS. LLOYD: Yeah. I'll just--I'll respond to the point about the next generation entering the labor market and the changing rates of return to secondary and tertiary education. I think this has been mentioned earlier in the session that evidence from all parts of the developing world show very rapid rises in the rates of return to schooling, secondary and tertiary schooling, relative to primary schooling.
I think the assumption in a lot of the interpretations of that makes the assumption that that is primarily due to globalization and the changing employment opportunities and the requirements, you know, in terms of schooling that are needed for those types of jobs.
However, I think that there's another possibility, which is not such a nice possibility, which is that part of the reason for those shifts in relative rates of return could have to do with declining primary school quality. And so what you have is a very selective group of kids that are going on to secondary and tertiary education that are, you know, sort of self selected to be among the more talented sort of naturally.
So I think that there is more research we need to do to understand better how those rates of return are shifting and why. And whether or not, therefore, that those that do go on to secondary and tertiary education are, indeed, getting the kinds of skills that they need for the changing job environment.
MS. HAFIZ: I want to answer two questions. One about sex education. You know, we have a very conservative society. We are trying to proceed very slowly and in an indirect way so that the reactions should not be there. And the second question, maddrassa education, we are trying--we have already implemented modern education in maddrassa [inaudible]. They are now starting a reading, science, math, and [inaudible] reading, only they have included some Islamic things.
MR. WRIGHT: Thank you. Let me start with the question posed by Sue on girls outperforming boys and whether there are programs for addressing this concern. I think in general--not just UNICEF, many other agencies work in this way--it depends on what the underlying causes are. And we know, for instance, in some of the southern
African countries where there are more girls in school. They're not just outperforming-than boys. These have to do with traditional labor roles with boys being--a herd--boys looking after cattle and goats and so on. And, therefore, you address the problem in that light.
Increasingly what is happening if you look at the models in the Caribbean where it's felt that the issue is more to do with A, economic--young boys feeling they can make a living faster and do better things than hanging around in schools as they would see it, and also a macho culture which looks at schooling as, you know, really for girls. If you can go up there and cut a rap record or do something big, then that's different.

57
And the challenge, of course, is to try to address these issues in way that that empowers young men, empowers boys, that addresses their concerns, without threatening girls in the education system.
In the case of Europe and the United States, I think the issue is different. It's that what we're seeing is that given a level playing field in which all the right support is provided, we're seeing a situation in which girls are tending to outperform boys, which tells us that we need to begin to study what are the issues for boys? Are they home-based issues that are affecting their performance? Are there school-based issues that are affecting their performance? And we need to address these issues as well. Just as we took a lot of time and patience to find out what are the issues for girls in schools, we need to do something similar for boys in those circumstances.
So it's really why we use the term gender and gender equality. It doesn't mean it's just girls in a way. But wherever gender seems to be an issue of disparity, we need to address that very closely.
On the issue of teacher training, Afghanistan or wherever else. I think increasingly for the education systems in most developing countries to cope with this challenge, the model of teacher training will need to change. We need to have a model of teacher training which doesn't involve X years in an institution before people go out to start teaching, but involves some initial pre-service training, but the bulk of the professional development and training should be in-service, where it becomes more school-based, more teacher resource center based, and better supported and rewarded in that sense. And I think you can get the numbers as well as the quality right in that sense.
Otherwise, we're dealing with failed models that can never cope with the numbers we're dealing with.
MS. GUPTA : Just two comments. One is on the teacher training in sub Saharan
Africa, you also have to keep in mind the impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and what that's done to the education sector and particularly to the availability of just people to teach in schools, and the enormous demands that's putting on--and challenges it's creating within countries, particularly in southern Africa on that issue.
So in all of this, you know, to achieve the scale that we want, to achieve the emphasis on primary, secondary, and tertiary, and not just on enrollment but also on quality and completion and--I think it's good to keep all of those issues at the forefront and to not compromise ourselves by believing that somehow if we made the discussion really narrow and focused, we'd achieve our goal. That's what I think is the most important lesson for me having been through this task force and looked at the issue of education.
I think Cream is right in that you would keep your eye on what's the outcome you're seeking to achieve and what does it take to get that. And how can you then make those inputs happen in order to reach that goal.
A point that Cynthia made that, you know, wasn't discussed much earlier, in the earlier panel, is an important one which is the role of schools and education for sort of in the transformation of society, and Cream mentioned this too. We have to begin to see schools as the mechanism through which a transformation, a normative transformation, can begin to occur, and for that you need quality education. You need some of the innovative models that Vicky talked about earlier in the panel for girls and boys to be able to attain true equality and feel equally empowered.
I was happy to hear about--but I had a question for you, and I don't think there's, you know, much time, but you talked about these various donors. In the earlier panel, we talked about how do these donors work with the country government, and you didn't say

58 much about that. I was just curious to know--just very briefly if you can, because I
[inaudible]. Do they work based on your--on Bangladesh's national plans? Or do they work together well?
MR. HAFIZ: No.
MS. GUPTA : There's an honest answer.
MR. HAFIZ : I'm answering to your questions. You know there are many divisions in our country--that means subdistricts. All of them--donors--they divided the whole area in different--for their--
[TAPE FLIP.]
This is how they divided their work.
MS. GUPTA: But operating based on a national plan developed by the government--
MS. HAFIZ: Yeah. Yeah.
MS. GUPTA: In collaboration hopefully with the non-governmental--
MS. HAFIZ: Yes. Yes. Centrally developed--centrally government is arranging a meeting.
MS. GUPTA : So it works?
MS. HAFIZ
MS. GUPTA
MS. HAFIZ
: It works.
: You feel it is fairly synchronized?
: Yes. Definitely. It works.
MS. GUPTA: I'm curious about that. But I just thought that it was interesting when she listed the stipend program and how many people, how many different donors were contributing to the same stipend program and each one of them had a different name. Each one of them probably has the country's flag on it. And how that really works at the country level was an issue.
I won't say much more. Just to say to you I hope we have made a strong case for secondary education. That was the purpose of this particular panel. And to help us all expand a little bit our demand from the global community on what we are seeking for our boys and our girls, which is not just primary education. That is not sufficient; that we need more than that if we are truly seeking to achieve the Millennium Development
Goals. Thank you very much. I invited Nancy to call up her panel.
[Applause.]
And thank you to all the panelists.
IMPORTANCE OF 2005; WAYS TO MOVE FORWARD coffee.
MS. BIRDSALL: Oh, good. Gene is here. I thought he went out for another
I have a pleasure again to introduce a real champion of girls' education. Gene
Sperling, as you heard earlier, went to Dakar in the year 2000, and he got converted. And luckily for all of us, he went to represent President Clinton and since he was there, he has lived, eaten, slept education and girls' education. In between, he does a lot of other things. You hear him on the radio. You see him on TV talking about what some people think are the big issues, like Social Security and the U.S. budget. But Gene knows the big issue for all of us for the next 10 years, for sure, is girls' education. He is a senior fellow for economic policy, and Director of the Center for Universal Education at the
Council on Foreign Relations. Thank you, Gene, for bringing education to the Council.
And his work reflects a real interesting view that I hope he'll tell us about on how to move forward in the spirit of a compact. Gene.
[Applause.]

59
MR. SPERLING: Thank you very much, Nancy. Nancy and Geeta and Amina have chaired this process from the start, and I really congratulate them, and I have watched Nancy's passion grow and grow.
I came back from Davos and I said to somebody there is a session on Millennium
Development Goals that I was in. And somebody really went hard at Undersecretary
John Taylor on education and the Millennium Challenge Account and the Fast Track
Initiative. And I said guess what? It wasn't me.
[Laughter.]
I sat back and acted very diplomatic. But beyond thinking, Nancy, I also to say that her organization, which was founded by Ed and Cheryl Scott here, I have to thank them. And I have to thank Ruth Levine, who had the unpleasant task of having to take mine and others continually whiny notes on the draft and Reka Balu [ph] who helps me make my comments less whiny and more constructive, but also Sara Dean [ph], Sara
Lucas [ph] and Kelly Tobin for all the work they've done on making not only this day, but the report happen. It's not an easy task, but very constructive.
Nancy mentioned the idea of a--the Compact. And I think that you start with the fact that the one question we should dismiss forever is, you know, does money matter or does it not matter. Look, money that goes to corrupt or inefficient or wasteful governments or systems is a waste. It is counterproductive. We should never encourage it.
On the other hand, somebody doing everything right, who doesn't have resources, is also going to fail. And so our goal in having a Compact is how do you help direct a relationship between donor and richer countries with developing countries so that you are incentivizing reform and rewarding with resources those who are doing the right things who do have their own national plans, who do want to take responsibility.
Somebody had mentioned earlier--Jongtien--in the 1990, where we set the goal of universal education. And it failed.
And when the goal was rest in Dakar for 2015, there was a realization that you couldn't just let everybody go home. There had to be a clear financing structure, some where a developing country could feel that if they were doing everything right, they would not fail for lack of resources.
That is essentially the Compact. Now, we know what the developing country obligation is there. It is to come up with nationally owned plan. It is to devote the sufficient share of their resources. It is to have accountability and tracking. We know that.
What is the donor part of that Compact? One of our friends, who used to be
Minister of Education from the Gambia, used to say here's the Compact on Education.
We do those things, and then the donor countries may or may not help you, depending on their budget, depending on your foreign policy interest. And she would say that is not a
Compact. It is not a contract. Nobody got up today who has a job and says if I work real hard, I'm going to let my employer know I worked hard and hope he will pay me. You have a compact.
And the question then for us is how to design how we in the richer countries can have a clear guarantee that we offer; that says very clearly that if you do the right thing, if you have the right plan, we will not let you fail for lack of resources.
Now we saw in debt relief that when there was an agreement, and it was funded, countries had a certainty that if they did a certain number of measures, they would be funded. There is not that degree of certainty. There is not--the world has not come together yet and said here is the money; it is available. We're not going to let it go out.

60
Just we're not going to throw money, but it is there, and it is clear, and if a country has a right plan, the money will go out.
Now why is it so important to have that kind of clear contingent commitment, that kind of positive incentive?
Well, one is you need to empower the reformers within their country. We have reformers like Amina here who are in their country. They need to be able when they're pushing for reform to say there is something at the end of the rainbow. If you do things right, if you do take these difficult efforts to track your funds, if you do make these difficult reforms, if you are willing to take on vested interests, if you are willing to shift your resources, there will be a payoff. There will be a partner. Without that partner, education ministers have a hard time getting the attention of their finance ministers, because they're simply-they don't have the leverage. The reformers do not have the leverage.
Secondly, we can sit around here and talk about, you know, in order to ensure access and quality, countries should move up gradually; you know, increase access some; increase quality some. But that's not the way the real world works.
The fact is that primary and basic education is not always at the front of the list for most heads of states because economically it is an investment that helps your successors' successor. It does not give you the immediate returns. Ask why we, the richest country on the earth, do not even have universal pre-school. So what happens is that occasionally a head of state, even though they know it won't impact their economy right away, decides he is going to make this their personal legacy; that he as the head of state that brought in universal education. That is what happened with Museveni in
Uganda. That's what's happening with Kibaki in Kenya. That's what's happening in
Tanzania. They've decided to make that their legacy, and when somebody steps out of the short-term political incentive and does this, do they have knowledge or a guarantee that there will actually be support?
Now here's what actually happens when a country does all the things that we want them to do.
Students come into their schools and their quality suffers because they don't-because we do not live up to our part of the deal.
So let me be specific. When Kenya eliminated fees, enrollment went up in one year from 5.9 to 7.2 million--1.3 million in one year. In Uganda, 3.4 to 6.5 million--three million kids came in in one year. In Tanzania, one and a half million.
So what happens for these countries that have done what we wanted? And it should be clear: they've eliminated fees. They've decentralized and made transparent their financing. The money goes down at the village to the school level, with a certain amount of money per student. Usually, the local education official has to--or the principal has to post the amount and explain. So if the money is being diverted, he has to deal not with some abstract bureaucrat, but the people and the students and the parents and the community they live with.
So what's happened there? Classrooms have exploded. They have exploded. I myself have seen a classroom in Tanzania with 140 kids for one teacher. In Ethiopia, we were taken to meet this dynamite female principal. She was amazing. You could do a 60
Minutes Show on her. She was--we came up to the building. The kids were lined up perfectly. They were doing three chants simultaneously. She came in. They had a parent advisory committee--and this is something we set up with the U.S. government, where we give a little money, they kind of raise a little money; then they get to control how it's spent. These were people who were living without electricity and running water,

61 and they were going through a detailed description of the breakdown of the new, you know, walls they had built, the new desks they had built. It was so inspiring. And she said we have so inspired people that we have tripled enrollment. And I thought that's just fantastic until we went to the second grade class. A hundred and seventy kids. One seventy. I tried to take a picture with my camera, but you can never see the whole class.
You can just see faces together.
This was success. This was somebody who had done everything right. I wanted to bring every member of Congress who said resources don't matter. What mattered for those kids was they needed three or four more classrooms with three or four more teachers, because without that, what happens is that they are stuffed in this chalk and talk, rote learning model, which is not helpful. They do not even have the class size that allows for the type of quality, the type of interactive learning that we all know is very effective.
So this is another reason we've got to have clear incentive so that we can truly help a country. Look at Kenya now. We give $2 million to Kenya. You replace a corrupt regime with a new democratic regime. On the inauguration, the inauguration day, free basic education, and we are not by their side; and, of course, they will then say, well, you know, there's quality problems, classrooms going up. Well, gee, why did that happen?
Third reason that you really need the incentive is that we are really seeing a problem with recurrent costs. And what I mean by this is you're seeing over and over again that when a minister of education gets the plan ready, there's one big problem. If you want to get 50 percent more of your kids in school, you need more teachers. You have to train them. You have to hire them, then you have to give them incentives to go out to poor rural parts of villages that people don't really particularly want to live with.
Now when the World Bank--or us or someone--comes in and says, we've got a big mound of money over three years. I'll tell you exactly what happened. This is what the
Minister of Education in Kenya says. He says the Minister of Finance won't even let them get near hiring a teacher. He says boy, by the time we get that we get that teacher there, the money runs out.
So if we're serious about it, we have got to think about teacher salaries. In every country in the world, teacher salaries take up 80 percent or more of the costs.
At some point, you need more teachers, and if you want countries to move forward, they have to have a certainty that they're not going to have teachers rioting in the streets in two years because the money got pulled away.
Now we need--that's why many of us believe that what we need is to see from the
G8, to see through the Fast Track Initiative or one coordinating mechanism, this kind of clear commitment. We can talk about the amounts of money, but when you're talking about secondary education here, let's understand all the estimates you've ever heard before are about primary. If you just want basic education, if you just want eight or nine years, you're talking at least about $10 billion a year.
Ten billion dollars a year is not a lot of money for the whole world. One of the joys or tragedies of being part of the United States budget process for eight years is that you see what happens to two or three billion dollars a year at times. You see how many budgets are greased for two or three billion.
So for the U.S. to do its share and add a few billion seems like a lot of money.
But did anybody pay attention to how we fixed our WTO problem, the fisc's [ph] problem? It was four billion a year. We ended up having an additional 40 billion that

62 was for unrelated tax incentives having to do with cross crediting. It got no review. It gets no scrutiny. Nobody will ever do a conference on whether it was effective or not.
Yet, it was twice what the U.S. could have done to be the leader in the world in universal basic education.
Now we have a preemptive policy for weapons of mass destruction. We also need to have a preemptive policy for winning hearts and minds.
And I'll tell you one thing I have seen--
[Applause.]
MR. SPERLING: You know, there's the movie the Mouse that Roars, with Peter
Sellers. You know, he takes over. He tries to invade the U.S. so they'll attack them and rebuild them. Well, that's not a terrible strategy if you were just taking a hard-nosed view of what gets you education money. We have devoted a lot of money to rebuild schools after there's been a serious foreign policy problem. But that's probably not the best strategy.
But more seriously, there is something I am picking up everywhere I go in the world, and I'm sure many of you are, too, which is when I was asked to speak on education at the U.S.-Islam Forum in Doha, the number one comment I heard repeatedly, over and over again, is you only care about our kids' education to the extent we don't grow up to hurt or kill your kids.
You don't actually care about them. This narrow reactive focus where we try to say we're going to target a country where we think there's a threat to us is not working.
In fact, the fear of looking like you are a tool of the U.S. is preventing people from even wanting this money.
Now does this mean that we should not try to increase education to, as Senator
Clinton said, make us more safe? Absolutely not. But what it means is that the right way to do it is through the United States showing our heart, showing our heart, our sense of justice by asking for universal basic education, working in a cooperative multilateral forum like the Fast Track Initiative, because then we will get the job done. We will help the Pakistanis--not only the Pakistanis but the Kenyans--Kenyans get more money, and they will have better alternatives, and children will be less likely to chose negative alternatives or go to places where they might teach them hate.
But the right way to do it is not a targeted reactive approach. It's a preemptive approach and a broad global approach.
So, as I'm getting my note to get off, let me just close with one note. I speak everywhere at different places, and we go through all sorts of forms and discussions, and we talk about the returns on education, and we've published a book on all the academic studies. But I'll tell you something. I've come to feel that I don't--that I go to these forums all the time, and I kind of feel like you have to win every argument to show why it's a good economic return. Why it's--why if a country had to compete, you know, education should be something they do. And I feel that many of us do this, and we're not really true to ourselves in a lot of ways when we make it seem that the argument would end there. For anybody who watched the documentary Born in Brothels, when you saw those children, when you saw that one amazing child who is the son of prostitute who was burned to death by her pimp in her own kitchen, and you see that little boy, and he is a genius, and he will go on to be a genius because somebody took the time to give him an education, I started thinking about somebody doing an economic analysis in Calcutta and saying, you know what, we don't think basic education is a priority; and saying, therefore, we shouldn't really care whether those children had a chance to reach their potential or to find a genius. And you know what, I would have guessed most of us here believe that

63 even if we don't know all the exact details, facts, we believe that we're all God's children.
Everybody has a right to have education; that it affects a woman's ability to be empowered in her family to reduce the likelihood of domestic violence, to reduce the chance they'll die at death in pregnancy or that their child will, and that for those reasons alone, we feel pretty strongly that universal basic education is something that we should fight for.
And I'll say if you think this is just the view of an advocate, I would remind you that when the American public saw with the CNN cameras the Taliban preventing little
Afghani girls from going to school, they thought it was so wrong. They didn't have a single bit of our studies. They hadn't gone to one of our forums. They just knew in their heart it was wrong for those little girls to not have a chance to go to school. Thank you very much.
[Applause.]
MS. BIRDSALL: Thank you very much, Gene. I forgot to mention that it's
Gene who put the idea into Ed's head, who then consulted with Cheryl that led to the creation of the Center for Global Development. So I bless you, Gene, today, not only as the godfather, but as the godmother of the Center for Global Development.
[Laughter.]
SPECIAL VIDEO MESSAGE
MS. BIRDSALL: We now have a video. A welcome from Kofi Anan, as you all know, Secretary-General of the United Nations.
SECRETARY-GENERAL ANAN: Dear friends. Education is a right of every one of the world's daughters, as well as its sons. It is also crucial to our progress in reaching many other development goals. If we are to succeed in our efforts to build a healthier, peaceful and equitable world, classrooms must be full of girls as well as boys.
By educating girls, we will raise economic productivity and reduce both maternal and infant mortality. By educating girls, we will improve nutrition, promote health, and fight HIV/AIDS. By educating girls, we will trigger a transformation of society as a whole, social, economic, and political.
That is why education and gender equality, together, must be given priority. The world's leaders have set a target for girls to catch up with boys in primary and secondary education, not by 2015, but by this year.
Yet, of the more than 100 million children who are not in school, most are girls.
There can be no more excuses, no more broken promises. We have to work much harder to meet our targets.
Reaching these goals is not just about money. It is as just as much or more about sustained political leadership. So I thank everyone of you for your commitment. And I also thank you for contributing to our work to build a fairer, safer, healthier world.
[Applause.]
FINAL CLOSING REMARKS
MS. BIRDSALL: Ladies and gentlemen, I'm going to say a word about an emergency, but first thank our donors, the United Nations Foundation, the Nike
Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Magna Corporation.
Mention that a special inspiration for this conference came from the newest board member of the Center, Belinda Stronach. Thank again Ed Scott and his wife. They feel passionate about this issue. Thank all the speakers. I think we had a fantastic group of speakers today.

64
I want to extend special thanks again to Amina and Geeta, my collaborators. I want to mention Arlene Mitchell, who's here and who traipsed around Ethiopia with me on this task force, along with Chandrika Bahadur, who is also here. She was in Ethiopia and in many other countries and did some of the basic work that lies behind the task force's conclusions.
There are others to thank, and I'm doing it before I speak because it's so important to clarify how many people are behind what's happened today. Of course--and I feel somewhat embarrassed that so many people have thanked me because really the work has been so important from so many collaborators.
First of all, Geeta and Caren, at the International Center for Research on Women.
There's still a myth out there that women can't work together. And we made great partners. We really did.
Of course, Ruth Levine, who worked very closely with me on the task force on education, and Maurine Lewis, Sara Lucas, Sara Dean, Lawrence McDonald [ph], who helped put together the materials--some of the background materials today, and most of all, Kelly Tobin. You've seen her moving around. She is the force--we are the force that have made today what I think has been a huge success.
Now I want to say something about the emergency. The year 2005 is upon us.
Bono, whenever he speaks of the AIDS pandemic, makes the point that AIDS is an emergency; that people are dying. They're dying today.
What I want to emphasize is that we have another emergency. The girls who were born in the year 2000, when the Millennium Development Goals were set are already five-years old. Millions of them will not go to school, and millions who do will drop out early, earlier than their brothers. They won't die necessarily in a biological sense. But their spirits may well die. And, indeed, at age 15, in the year 2015, the year when the commitments of the leaders of the rich and poor countries, the big countries and the small countries, when those commitments are supposed to be reached, some of them at age 15 will die. They will die because they will have AIDS. And they will have AIDS in part because they did not get schooling. They did not have their spirits enhanced and consolidated. They did not learn that they should value their own lives and be able to protect themselves.
We only have between now and 2015 a little more than two presidential terms in the U.S. I think what we've heard today is that we know what to do. We know how to do it.
So what I wanted to emphasize in closing is not what developing countries already know about in terms of what to do. We heard a tremendous amount of good ideas today. And many of those ideas are reflected in the task force reports on education and on gender equality. A lot of things are happening in the developing world. We have evidence of what works.
So we know that they know--and I'm speaking now from Washington as an
American--we know that they know what to do. The question is what can we do? And in particular I would say because we're in Washington, what should we be asking the United
States Government to do? And I'd like to end with two simple proposals.
The first is that all of us do what we can to help Senator Clinton get some cosponsors for her bill. And let me emphasize I think it's important for us to help her get
Republican co-sponsors, because this is not a partisan issue. And, as Senator Hagel, made clear, and, as Gene just mentioned, in this country people do care. Indeed, a recent poll showed that of all the development issues that Americans were asked about the one they felt most important was access to basic education. So there is political will coming

65 from the heartland, coming from the Republicans, coming from the Democrats to move forward.
So let us figure out a way to ensure that Senator Clinton's bill gets some strong co-sponsors and moves forward.
The second thing that we can do is press the donor community, including the U.S. on the Fast Track Initiative. And here I'd like to say a word again in reference to the question I raised with Senator Hagel on the Millennium Challenge Account.
We have a situation in which the United States Congress has appropriated money to the Millennium Challenge Account, and there hasn't been a penny spent. We have a situation in which the donors for three years have discussed and negotiated and convened and discussed some more, and fussed some more. And as Desmond said, from the U.K., they've figured it all out. The donors, including the U.S., have decided to be coordinated.
They have decided that there are 14 countries in the developing world who have education plans that are sensible; that can be worked on--these are 14 governments, as
Gene said, that are responsible; that have good leadership; that are prepared to move.
Four of those countries, four of the 14 Fast Track Initiative countries are also now today eligible for spending from the Millennium Challenge Account. So what we can do in Washington is to try to make sure that all of the donors, including the U.S., know that there is a joining of the minds; that we can achieve the first big step on the Compact by putting together the Initiative--the Fast Track Initiative--plans of at least four countries to start with the Millennium Challenge Account money. And as Gene emphasized so well, it's just a deal.
And as someone else said today, the first step in the deal honestly, the next step in the deal, is that the donors, including the U.S., take a small risk and put the money on the table, because we have an emergency. The light is going out of the eyes of too many of the women or too many of the younger sisters of the 15- to 20-year-old women that you and I who work in developing countries see everyday. The light gone out of the eyes of women who didn't have access to schooling.
So as President Bush has said, no child left behind. No child left behind, anywhere.
Let me end by thanking the men who are here. You are in the minority, and we are very pleased that we can help you liberate yourselves, your brothers in the developing world, your fathers, your brothers, your uncles. We can help you if you will help us liberate our sisters, our daughters, and our mothers.
There is a reception so that you can all get together and talk about next steps. The doors will open here, and we invite you for some refreshments. Thank you very much.
[Applause.]
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