The Case for Universal Education:
Free, Quality, Universal Education For All
Prepared by Gene Sperling
Chair, United States Global Campaign for Education
Director, Center for Universal Education | Council on Foreign Relations
1
The State of Universal Education:
A Global Overview
Over 72 million children around the world do not attend primary
school; hundreds of millions more lack access to secondary
school or suffer from a poor quality education.
2
The State of Universal Education
•
More than 78 countries are at
risk of not achieving the goal
of universal primary
education by 2015
– The most high-risk countries are
primarily in sub-Saharan Africa but
also include India and Pakistan
•
About 70 countries failed to
meet the gender parity goal
for primary and secondary
education by 2005
– Only 18 have a good chance of
making this goal by 2015
– The majority of low-performing
countries are in sub-Saharan Africa.
Others include Afghanistan,
Pakistan and Yemen
(All Statistics: EFA GMR, 2008)
3
A Global Education Overview
Children out of school:
Just over 72 million children are out of
school throughout the world.
• Roughly 33 million of them are in subSaharan Africa.
• There are 23 developing countries
that have over half a million out of
school children each – two of these
countries are in Latin America.
• India, Nigeria, and Pakistan account
for 27% of the world’s out-of-school
children
• Over 226 million children are not
enrolled in secondary school.
• Hundreds of millions of children go
to school but receive a poor quality
education.
Developing Countries with Over 500,000 Out-of-School
Children, 2004 (EFA GMR, 2007)
(All Statistics: EFA GMR, 2008)
Total: 43.3 Million children out of school in 28 countries.
4
Where Are Children Out of Primary School?
Central/Eastern Europe
North America/Western Europe
2.4%
2.5%
Central Asia
<1%
Arab States
East Asia/Pacific
8.5%
12.5%
Latin America/Caribbean
South Asia
20.3%
3.5%
Sub-Saharan Africa
49%
Percentage of the Global Total Number of Young People Out of Primary School by Region
2007 EFA Global Monitoring Report – “Out of School Children” based on a total of 76.8million
5
How Many Children Enroll in Secondary
School?
Region
Boys
Girls
Sub-Saharan Africa
26%
21%
Middle East/North Africa
58%
54%
Central Asia
86%
84%
East Asia/Pacific
69%
69%
Latin America/Caribbean 65%
69%
Central/Eastern Europe
81%
83%
(All Statistics: EFA GMR, 2007: Net Enrolment Ratios in Secondary Education)
6
Why Invest in Education?
7
Benefits of Education
Basic education is the
building block for national
development.
Education has the power to:
•
•
•
•
Reduce infant mortality
Reduce risk of AIDS
Boost income growth
Increase agricultural
productivity
• Foster democracy
•
•
•
•
No country has ever achieved continuous and
rapid economic growth without first having at
least a 40% adult literacy rate (Center for
Global Development, 2007).
Studies show that a single year of primary
school increases the wages people earn later
in life by 5 to 15 % for boys and even more for
girls (CFR, 2004).
For each additional year of secondary
school, an individual's wages increase by 1525% (CFR, 2004).
A 65-country analysis finds that doubling the
proportion of women with a secondary
education would reduce average fertility rates
from 5.3 to 3.9 children per woman (CFR,
2004).
•
In Africa, children of mothers who receive five
years of primary education are 40 % more
likely to live beyond age five (CFR, 2004).
•
More productive farming due to increased
female education accounts for 43 percent of
the decline in malnutrition achieved between
1970 and 1995 (CFR, 2004).
8
Wages and Productivity
Education leads to higher wages. Studies
show that a single year of primary school
increases the wages people earn later in life
by 5-15% for boys and even more for girls
(CFR, 2004).
Returns to secondary education are even
greater. For instance, returns to girls’
secondary education were shown to be 1525% in a recent study (CFR, 2004).
More education leads to more productive
and efficient farming. A 63-country study
found that more productive farming due to
increased female education accounted for
43% of the decline in malnutrition achieved
between 1970 and 1995 (CFR, 2004).
•
Educated women are more likely to
enter the formal labor market, where
they reap greater wage gains than the
informal sector. A study in Brazil
confirmed this correlation; by facilitating the
transition to the formal labor sector,
education helped promote higher wages
9
(Malhotra, 2003).
Education and Health
•
•
•
•
•
An extra year of girls’ education can
reduce infant mortality by 5–10 percent.
This link “is especially striking in low income
countries (CFR,2004).”
Multi-country data shows educated mothers
are 50 percent more likely to immunize
their children than uneducated mothers
(CFR, 2004).
In Brazil and Peru women with no education
have about 6 children, while women with a
secondary education only have about 3 (CFR
2004, UNICEF 2007).
When women gain four years more
education, fertility per woman drops by
roughly one birth, according to a 100-country
World Bank study (CFR, 2004).
A 65-country analysis finds that doubling the
proportion of women with a secondary
education would reduce average fertility rates
from 5.3 to 3.9 children per woman (CFR,
2004).
10
Education and Health: HIV/AIDS
Educated girls are less likely to contract
HIV/AIDS:
•
A study in Zambia found that AIDS spreads
twice as slow among educated girls (CFR,
2004).
•
Young rural Ugandans with secondary
education are three times less likely than
those with no education to contract
HIV/AIDS (CFR, 2004).
•
A review of 113 studies indicates that
school-based AIDS education programs are
effective in reducing early sexual activity
and high-risk behavior (CFR, 2004).
•
A study shows that HIV/AIDS education
leads to a 65% decrease in pregnancy
among young girls from riskier, older
partners (sugar daddies). High risk sexual
activities are the main drivers of the spread
of HIV/AIDS in this population (MIT, 2006).
11
Every Child Deserves a Fair Chance
Education is a human right.
• In 1948, the United Nations General
Assembly signed the Universal
Declaration on Human Rights. The
Declaration states that, “Everyone has
the right to education. Education shall be
free, at least in the elementary and
fundamental stages. Elementary
education shall be compulsory. Technical
and professional education shall be
made generally available and higher
education shall be equally accessible to
all on the basis of merit.”
•
The Convention on the Rights of the
Child was agreed by the United
Nations General Assembly in 1989 and
was ratified by 191 out of 193 countries,
making it a truly global bill of rights. The
Convention on the Rights of the Child
states that countries should make
“primary education compulsory and
available free to all.”
Education is one of the eight Millennium
Development Goals: by 2015, all children
should complete a full course of primary
schooling. In 2007, the world reached the
halfway point in moving toward this goal.
12
The State of Global Funding
for Education
13
Fast-Track Initiative
•
Global compact of developing and
donor countries and agencies to
support global EFA goals by
focusing on accelerating progress
towards universal primary school
completion by 2015
•
Launched in 2002 and housed at
the World Bank but not owned by a
specific institution
•
The FTI is a “virtual fund” designed
to be a global compact for
education: developing countries
present strong EFA plans and
donors harness resources to cover
the financing gap in a single process
14
Fast-Track Initiative

Currently 36 FTI Countries with
endorsed national education
sector plans

30 more are pending endorsement
in 2007 & 2008

Three of currently endorsed
countries – Guyana, Honduras and
Nicaragua – are in Latin America
FTI-Endorsed Countries
Burkina Faso
Guinea
Guyana
Honduras
Mauritania
Nicaragua
Niger
The Gambia
Mozambique
Senegal
Liberia
Georgia
Vietnam
Yemen
Ghana
Ethiopia
Kenya
Lesotho
Madagascar
Moldova
Tajikistan
Benin
Central
African Rep.
(All Statistics: FTI, 2007)
Timor Leste
Albania
Cambodia
Cameroon
Djibouti
Kyrgyz Rep.
Mali
Mongolia
Rwanda
Sierra Leone
Haiti
Sao Tome &
Principe
Catalytic Fund
Provides funding in the form of grants
to help close the financing
gap for countries with limited donor
presence.
Commitments total about
US$ 1.2 billion over 2003-2009
Countries Expected for
2007 Endorsement
Countries Expected for
2008 Endorsement
Bangladesh
Bhutan Burundi
Chad
Congo, Rep.
Georgia
Kiribati
Papua New Guinea
Sao Tome e Pr.
Solomon Islands
Tonga
Vanuatu
Angola
Bolivia
Bhutan
Burundi
Congo DRC
Eritrea
GuineaBissau
India
Indonesia
Lao PDR
Malawi
Nigeria
Pakistan
Sri Lanka
Tanzania
Togo
Uganda
Zambia
15
A $10 Billion Financing Gap Remains

Currently, government donors commit
approximately $2.5 billion to education all
children in the world

The U.S. gives just $460 million/year,
about what it spends to build 25 high
schools

Conservative estimates show a $5.6 billion
financing gap to cover 6 years of education
for all the world’s children

To cover the 8 years necessary for real
proficiency, the gap is probably closer to
$10 billion

Two donors currently leading on education
funding are the Netherlands and the
United Kingdom
Recently, the UK
committed to spending
$1.5 billion per year –
$15 billion over ten
years – to ensure
countries long-term,
predictable funding for
education
Some examples of the UK’s Commitment:
• Mozambique will receive ~$91m over 10 years
to help provide a national bursary for orphans
and girls in rural areas, and to reduce classroom
sizes in primary schools.
• Tanzania ~$515m from 2007-2017 to support
their national education program.
• India with ~$395m from 2007-2011.
16
Key Issues in Education
17
Key Issues: Quality
Major quality challenges include:
• Class size
– In countries with the highest pupilteacher ratios, barely one in three
students who start primary reach
grade 5.
• Teacher education
– In Tanzania and Ghana, less than
20% of all teachers have formal
training
• Resources
– Over half of sixth graders in major
African nations are in classrooms
without a single textbook
Other factors of quality: pedagogy, language
of instruction and school facilities.
2005 Global Monitoring Report – Summary: The Quality Imperative
There is some good news - several countries
have made significant progress:
•
Brazil has launched an initiative – FUNDEF
– to reduce regional funding inequities.
Proformação is a program started to train
unlicensed teachers using distance learning.
•
South Africa instituted incentives for bettertrained teachers to work in poorer schools
•
Chile has been adopting more participatory
learning methods to replace “rote” learning
A Southern Africa
Consortium Study found
that in four out of seven
countries, fewer than half of
sixth-graders achieved
minimum competence in
reading.
18
Key Issues: Avoiding the Access/Quality Tradeoff
•
•
•
Major expansion of access to education can
suffer serious declines in quality—the
student-teacher ratio may zoom to 100:1
from 50:1 in ill-equipped classrooms (IMF,
2005).
The heads of state in Uganda, Kenya, and
Tanzania all made major commitments in
recent years to abolish fees and saw
enrollments skyrocket by millions overnight.
– In Kenya, enrollment increased from 5.9
million to 7.2 million yet they added no
new net teachers (UN Millennium Project,
2005)
Without long-term, predictable funding,
Ministries are hesitant to add new teachers
because salaries are reoccurring costs that
constitute the largest component of an
expansion—usually averaging over 80
percent of education budgets in major
developing nations (IMF, 2005).
19
Key Issues: School Fees
In 2005, of 94 poor countries surveyed, only 16
charged no fees at all
Yet, countries have made strides. Strategies
include:
•
Eliminating Fees: Uganda, Kenya, Malawi,
and Tanzania
– Enrollment of the poorest girls in
Uganda nearly doubled when fees
were eliminated – from 46 to 82%
•
Reduction of Fees: Costa Rica,
Guatemala, Nepal, Peru, China, and
Senegal
•
Scholarship Programs: Bangladesh,
Mexico, and Brazil
– Mexico’s Progressa program gives
cash grants to the poorest families to
offset the opportunity costs of
schooling. Enrolments have increased
8% for boys and 14% for girls
•
Meal Programs: Kenya
International Food Policy Research Institute: Mexico Progresa
20
Key Issues: School Fees
•
Households spent significant
amounts of money on school fees
– Generally, 5-10% of annual
income, but up to 20-30% in
poorer households (CFR, 2004).
– In some cases, fees can cost up
to a month’s salary (UN Millennium
Project, 2005).
•
Even when direct fees are
eliminated, other costs remain:
– School uniforms
– Transportation
– Learning materials
– Opportunity cost of child not
working/helping at home
– Parent/Teacher Associations or
community fees
21
Key Issues: Girls Education
• Investing in girls empowers women throughout
their lifetime.
• Even a few years of education helps young
women:
- make informed choices that promote
sustainable families
- improve their own health and well-being
- achieve economic self-sufficiency, and
- even increase their political
participation.
A single year of primary education
correlates with a 10-20% increase in women's
wages later in life. The return to a year of
secondary education for girls is even higher, in
the 15-25% range.
Educated girls are more likely to delay sexual
activity and have fewer sexual partners over
their lifetime, reducing her risk of disease.
(All Statistics: CFR, 2004)
•
•
In Brazil, illiterate mothers have an
average of six children while literate
mothers choose to have less than three
children and are better able to care for and
invest in their children's well-being.
Educated women in Bangladesh are
three times more likely to participate in
political meetings.
22
Key Issues: Rural Education
Place of residence largely determines school
enrollment:
Over 80% of out-of-school children in subSaharan Africa and South Asia live in rural
areas (EFA GMR, 2007).
The share of children out of school is at least
twice as large in rural areas as in urban areas
in twenty-four of the eighty countries analyzed in a
recent study (EFA GMR, 2006)
The share of rural out-of-school children is even
higher in some countries:
Ethiopia (96%), Burkina Faso (95%), Malawi
(94%), Bangladesh (84%) and India (84%)
(EFA GMR, 2007).
In Ethiopia, rural children were sixty times more
likely to drop out than urban children
(EFA GMR, 2007).
Teachers in Rural Areas
•
Teacher shortages in
rural areas, particularly
in sub-Saharan Africa,
are a major barrier to
education.
•
Studies show that working
in rural schools is more
difficult and less motivating than teaching in
urban schools, mainly because of poor living
and working conditions
•
As a result, rural schools have:
– relatively fewer qualified and
experienced teachers
– higher turnover
(UN Millennium Project, 2005)
23
Key Issues: Incentives
•
Eliminate Fees: Eliminating fees has a
dramatic effect on encouraging parents to
send their children to school: yet unless
donors and governments work to find new
resources to make up for lost revenue from
fees and to pay for the additional teachers to
meet rising enrollments, class sizes can
escalate and quality can suffer.
•
Scholarship and Stipend Programs:
Programs that reduce direct and opportunity
costs by not only paying for books, tuition,
and fees, but also for lost labor time have
been very effective in Brazil, Bangladesh
and elsewhere.
•
Safe Schools, Close to Home – When
school is nearby, roughly 1 kilometer or less
from home, school seems more accessible
and parents are more willing to send their
children to school.
•
Making Schools Girl Friendly: For girls, a
crucial aspect of making schools safe and
accessible is ensuring female teachers are
present – especially when girls are older – and
providing private latrines.
(Source: CFR, 2004)
24
Key Issues: Incentives
•
Community Involvement – Many African and
Latin American countries have made great strides
with “parent-teacher management committees”
that allow parents to be involved in monitoring
school quality and education spending.
•
Active learning and good use of time – Moving
away from rote learning to active problem-solving
is consistently effective across cultures – from
Colombia to Egypt to Bangladesh, programs that
put the child at the center improve achievement.
•
Health services as incentives – School meals
and take-home rations also help improve
attendance, especially for girls. Programs to deworm children or provide vaccinations or
micronutrients at school, for instance, can also
help parents see short-term benefits.
(Source: CFR, 2004)
25
Key Issues: Teachers
•
•
•
Not enough teachers
– Class sizes are at 100 students
per teacher in Uganda and
other African countries; in Chad
they can reach up to 200
– Estimated 15 million more
teachers needed worldwide
Teachers’ low attendance
– Worse in rural areas
– Low enforcement of attendance
Poorly trained teachers
– Teachers’ level of education and
training linked with students’
enrollment and attainment
– Rote learning methods
(All Statistics: EFA GMR, 2007)
26
Key Issues: Conflict
25 million children are refugees or
live in conflict areas
•
•
Education Funding for Children of Conflict
often Falls through the Cracks
– Education is not seen as “life-saving” like
food or shelter and therefore does not
receive emergency aid funding
– Donors are often hesitant to invest in conflict
and post-conflict countries because the
governments are considered “fragile”
(Sperling, 2007).
Although education for children of conflict is
often forgotten, it is critical. It can:
– Be crucial for healing
– Bring a sense of normalcy to a chaotic
situation
– Prepare children for reintegration to society
upon return home
27
Key Issues: Conflict
•
Only 6 % of all refugee girls are enrolled in
secondary education (Women’s Commission,
2004).
•
With more than three million reported internally
displaced persons —and many more
unreported—Colombia has the second-highest
population of IDPs in the world after the Sudan
(Women’s Commission, 2004).
•
The UNDP and NGO sources believe that
youth comprise 50% of the internally displaced
population in Colombia (UNDP, 2006)
•
Schools are often not safe for refugee and
internally displaced children. Unsafe schools
can place girls at risk for sexual abuse and
boys at risk for military recruitment
28
Key Issues:
HIV/AIDS as an Obstacle to Education
•
•
•
HIV/AIDS creates a new class of
vulnerable children
– 14 million children under the age of 15
have lost one or both parents to AIDS.
– By 2010, this number is expected to
exceed 25 million.
AIDS Kills Teachers
– In Zambia in 2000, approximately 815
primary school teachers died as result
of AIDS – the equivalent of 45% of the
teachers that were trained that year
AIDS Leads to Absenteeism, as
teachers attend funerals, care for the sick,
or become ill themselves
– In high prevalence countries HIV/AIDS •
can account for up to 77% of
absenteeism
Children affected by AIDS are less likely to
attend school or remain at the appropriate
grade level
(All Statistics: CFR, 2004)
29
Regional Overviews
30
Spotlight: Sub-Saharan Africa
•
Sub-Saharan Africa is home to about half
the world’s out-of-school children – 38
million.
–
6.5 million of these children live in
Nigeria; 2.6 million live in Ethiopia
•
80% of children not enrolled in school
live in rural areas
•
The combined effects of exclusion are
staggering: In Guinea, an urban boy with
an educated mother and belonging to the
wealthiest quintile is 126 times more likely to
attend school than a rural girl from the
poorest quintile with an uneducated mother.
•
•
In Burkina Faso, Mali and Mozambique, only
10% of children from the poorest 40% of
households who entered primary school
managed to complete it
•
Teacher-to-student ratios are 70:1 or higher
in Chad, the Congo, Ethiopia and Malawi.
Some classrooms have upwards of 150
students
•
Several countries have more than 1 million
children out of school: Burkina Faso, Mali
and the Niger
Only 21% of girls are enrolled in
secondary school
2007 Global Monitoring Report – Regional Overview: Sub-Saharan Africa
31
Spotlight: South Asia
•
16 million children in South and West Asia
are not enrolled in primary school
–
4.5 million live in India; 6.5 million live
in Pakistan
•
Over 80% of the children who are not
enrolled live in rural areas
•
Over three-quarters of the 16 million South
and West Asian children who are out of
school have never been enrolled and may
never go to school; the rest either have been
enrolled but dropped out or are likely to
enter school but at an age beyond the
official entry age
•
Only 16% of Afghani children enroll in
secondary school
•
Children in the poorest 20% of households
are three times as likely to be out of
school as children from the wealthiest 20%
•
Almost half of the world’s illiterate adult
population – nearly 400 million – live in
Bangladesh, India and Pakistan
•
In Nepal: 43% of pupils repeat grade 1; only
31% of teachers are trained
2007 Global Monitoring Report – Regional Overview: South/West Asia
32
Spotlight: The Arab States
•
About 6 million children are not enrolled
in primary school
–
59% of them are girls
–
70% of out-of-school children live in
rural areas.
•
Gender parity remains low in the region–
for every 100 boys only 90 girls enroll in
primary school, the gap is even larger in
secondary school
•
Children from the poorest income group
are more than 3 times as likely to be out
of school than those from the wealthiest
category, the ratio gap being particularly
large in Algeria (6.4) and Sudan (5.5).
•
•
A child whose mother has no education
is twice as likely to be out of school as
one with an educated mother. The ratio is
close to 2.8 in Iraq.
School retention is high, more than 94% of
students reach the last grade of primary
education. However, only 48% of those
students complete primary school.
2007 Global Monitoring Report – Regional Overview: The Arab States
33
Spotlight: Latin America/Caribbean
•
About 95% of children are enrolled in
primary school
–
2.7 million children are out-of-school
–
800,000 of these children live in
Brazil; 700,000 live in Colombia
•
60% of out-of-school children live in rural
areas.
•
Despite high enrollment, retention and
completion remain a major issue. For
example, about 500,000 children in
Central America drop out of school each
year
•
Secondary School is a Bigger Challenge:
Only 65% of boys and 69% of girls enroll
in secondary school
•
The Dominican Republic, El Salvador and
Guatemala have some of the lowest rates of
public spending on education – hovering
between 1-3%
•
In most Latin American countries, less than
80% of teachers have been trained
•
Less than 60% of teachers have been trained
in Ecuador and Peru.
2007 Global Monitoring Report – Regional Overview: Latin America/Caribbean
34
References
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Center for Global Development, Rich World, Poor World: Education and the Developing World,
2007.
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Poverty-reduction in Latin America, Inter-American Development Bank, 2002.
Fast Track Initiative Website, www.fasttrackinitiative.org, 2007
Hall, G. and Harry Patrinos, Indigenous Peoples, Poverty and Human Development in Latin
America: 1994-2004, The World Bank, 2005
Herz, B. and Gene B. Sperling, What Works in Girls Education: Evidence and Policies from the
Developing World, Council on Foreign Relations, 2004.
Human Rights Watch, Colombia: Displaced and Discarded - The Plight of Internally Displaced
Persons in Bogotá and Cartagena, 2005.
Malhotra, Anju, Rohini Pande and Caren Grown, Impact of Investments in Female Education and
Gender Equality, paper commissioned by the World Bank Gender and Development Group, 2003.
Norwegian Refugee Council and Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre Report, 2006.
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on Foreign Relations, 2006.
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UNESCO, Education for All Global Monitoring Report, The Quality Imperative, 2005.
UNESCO, Education for All Global Monitoring Report, Strong Foundations: Early Childhood Care
and Education, 2007.
35
References, Continued
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
UNESCO, Education for All Global Monitoring Report, Regional Overview: The Arab States, 2007.
UNESCO, Education for All Global Monitoring Report, Regional Overview: Latin America, 2007.
UNESCO, Education for All Global Monitoring Report, Regional Overview: Sub-Saharan Africa,
2007.
UNESCO, Education for All Global Monitoring Report, Regional Overview: South/West Asia, 2007.
UNHCR, The State of the World's Refugees, 2006.
UNICEF, Colombia Statistics, 2007.
UNICEF, State of the World’s Children Report, 2007.
UNICEF, Nutrition Fact Sheet: Latin America, 2006.
Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children, Colombia’s War on Children, 2004.
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Displaced Children and Youth, 2006.
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World Economic Forum Global Competitiveness Report, 2005-2006.
36