UNESCO and FTI Report Advances Toward Universal Primary Education

12.11.07

On the eve of the United Nations education summit in Dakar, UNESCO and the Education for All Fast Track Initiative are reporting significant advances toward universal primary education. Many more children in Sub-Saharan Africa are in school today thanks to progress made in the past few years, according to the recently released 2008 UNESCO Global Monitoring Report. Between 2004 and 2005 alone, primary school enrollments in sub-Saharan Africa jumped by about 5.7 million children. Despite this progress in expanding access, the report notes that the continent has some the lowest primary school completion rates in the world.

“These results are nothing but dramatic,” said Ben Hubbard, policy advisor at DATA (Debt, AIDS, Trade, Africa). “They prove that universal primary education by 2015 is not only possible in most African countries, it’s probable. The next challenge is to ensure these children are actually learning something. That comes with a price tag. African governments need to know that promised donor funding will be available. Providing a child with an education is not a commitment that can be reversed from one year to the next.”

The increases in school enrollment in Africa are largely due to savings from debt cancellation, which African governments have channeled to the education sector. Increases in new donor assistance have been modest in recent years. To keep these children in school and to help the 33 million children out-of-school get into classrooms, donor countries must make education funding a top priority.

The Education for All Fast Track Initiative’s Annual Report shows that FTI-endorsed countries are making progress. Key findings of the report are as follows:

• 12 million more children have gone to school in the 33 FTI countries between 2000 and 2005, a 26% increase in five years.
• If recent trends are maintained, all but three FTI countries will achieve the goal of gender parity in primary education by 2015.
• Seven FTI countries have participated in one of the major international education tests. Prior to 2003, no low income countries had participated in such testing.
• Seven countries – Benin, Cambodia, Ethiopia, Guinea, Madagascar, Mozambique and Rwanda have shown remarkable progress in improving their primary completion rate, increasing by at least 3 percentage points per year over the last five years. Four of these seven countries recently abolished user fees, whereas this was the case for only one of the five countries showing the least positive trends.
• Of the 14 low-income countries in which the share of GNP for education increased by at least one percentage point since 1999, nine are FTI countries.

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