Submission to the International Development Select Committee’s Inquiry DFID’s work on education: Leaving no one behind?

Evidence Submitted by Malala Fund, January 2017

About Malala Fund

Malala Fund is working for a world where all girls can learn for 12 years and lead without fear. Malala Fund advocates for resources and policy change needed to give all girls a good quality secondary education, invests in developing country educators and activists and amplifies the voices of girls fighting for change. We support education and advocacy programmes in Afghanistan, Kenya, India, Nigeria and Pakistan, as well as the refugee hosting countries neighboring Syria (Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey).

Summary

Given Malala Fund’s goal to secure 12 years of free, safe, quality education for all girls, this submission will concentrate on DFID’s work on girls’ education. The evidence presented below supports the following headline recommendations:

●        In line with its own commitments to “leave no one behind,” DFID’s education programming should reflect the commitment of the SDGs to secure a full 12-year cycle of education for all girls, with a particular focus on the most marginalised. This will also require a shift in policy emphasis to cover upper secondary education.
 

●        In order to meet the ambitions of SDG 4.1 for all girls, Malala Fund calls on DFID to support the refinement of the SDG indicator framework for this target to measure cost, quality and completion through upper secondary education, disaggregated by sex, location (including in humanitarian emergencies), wealth, disability and other exclusionary factors.
 

●        The UK Government should maintain its commitment to spending 0.7% of GNI on overseas aid, increasing its overall spend on education to a minimum of 15% of ODA with an indicative benchmark of 75% of education aid to support basic and secondary education to realign funding priorities in support of the 12-year ambition.

●        Recognising the global funding crisis in education, DFID and HMG should lead efforts to secure new financing, including through supporting greater mobilisation of domestic resources and identifying and capitalising on new funding sources.
 

●        DFID’s education in emergencies framework should reflect the protracted nature of today’s refugee crises in line with SDGs and give every refugee child access to 12 years of quality primary and secondary education.
 

●        DFID should allocate a higher proportion of its humanitarian funding to education in crises. Simultaneously, it must support the strengthening of national education systems in host-countries that are already weak and under-resourced through increasing both bilateral and multilateral aid to education.

1. Introduction

“The world can no longer accept that a basic education is enough. Why do leaders accept that for children in developing countries, only basic literacy is sufficient, when their own children do homework in Algebra, Mathematics, Science and Physics?”

Malala Yousafzai, Oslo

1.1. Sustainable Development Goal 4, Target 1 (SDG 4.1) sets a bold and ambitious new challenge to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all” by 2030. It proposes that by then, all girls and boys should complete free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education, recognising this as a right for young people everywhere.

1.2. At present, more than 130 million girls are out of school.[1] Without strong political commitment, careful planning and significant increases in funding, it could be at least another 100 years before all girls have the opportunity to complete 12 years of education.[2] Current financing and policy discussion are geared towards the achievement of education through lower secondary school, not a full course of primary and secondary education. This requires a change of approach and mindset.

1.3. In the field of girls education, DFID has made many welcome policy commitments and pledged significant financial resources. However, the recent ICAI performance report on DFID’s work with marginalised girls delivered an amber-red outcome[3] and this was only considering programmes for primary and lower secondary education. Set against the more ambitious objectives of the SDGs, therefore, it demonstrates that there should be no room for complacency on this issue. We urge the Committee to give particular consideration to DFID’s work on girls education in the course of its inquiry. 

1.4. In 2015, reflecting its commitment to the SDGs, the UK Government pledged to “leave no one behind” in its development assistance and to prioritise those who may not be reached by “business as usual” development programming.[4] In line with this commitment, Malala Fund recommends DFID’s education programming should reflect the renewed commitment of the SDGs to secure a full cycle of primary and secondary education for all girls, with a focus on the most marginalised. Education targets should not simply quantify the number of girls to be reached through DFID funded programmes. They should also articulate a desired quantitative narrowing of the gap between access and attainment of the least and most vulnerable girls across a variety of vulnerability factors such as wealth, disability and location.

2. Measuring Ambition

“If we say girls count, then we must count girls.”

Malala Yousafzai, World Bank

2.1. Experience from the Millennium Development Goals and Education For All processes indicate that most substantial progress on global targets is made when governments know their efforts will be publicly reported. Implementers and duty-bearers focus efforts on what will be measured. As such, the SDG Global Indicator Framework will define and drive action on the SDG commitments and, as a result, could de facto lower the ambition of the targets with which they are associated.

2.2. The current indicator for target 4.1[5] falls far short of the necessary level of ambition. It only measures half of the target (quality, not access) and restricts assessment of education quality to results in reading and mathematics, stopping at lower secondary level. There is now a live discussion ongoing within the UN as to how the indicators may be refined, and DFID can play an important role in increasing ambition.[6]

2.3. The issue of measurement is especially important for girls as gender disparity in education tends to increase at the upper secondary level.[7] This was starkly illustrated in new figures released by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics and the Global Education Monitoring Report which showed that by extending measurement to include the upper secondary cohort of girls, the figure for out of school girls jumps from over 62 million to over 130 million.[8] Under the current proposals, which largely focus on children of lower-secondary age, more than half of the girls out of school around the world would not be counted.

2.4. In order to meet the ambitions of SDG 4.1 for all girls, Malala Fund calls on DFID to support the refinement of the SDG indicator framework for this target to measure cost, quality and completion through upper secondary education, disaggregated by sex, location (including in humanitarian emergencies), wealth, disability and other exclusionary factors.

3. Mobilising New Financing

“Some will say this is impractical, or too expensive, or too hard. Or maybe even impossible. But it is time the world thinks bigger.”

Malala Yousafzai, Oslo

3.1. Education is a fundamental human right and all states have an obligation to invest in it in order to progressively realise that right to the maximum of their available resources.[9] The recent report by the International Commission on Financing Global Education Opportunity (the Commission) highlighted the huge global failure in meeting this requirement, but also makes a compelling case for investment as critical to meeting the economic, social and political challenges of the 21st century.[10] This is particularly the case for investing in girls’ education.

3.2. The world cannot hope to achieve the SDGs without unlocking the potential of millions of girls who have been locked out of education. If all girls had 12 years of education, child marriage would drop 64%, early births would drop 59% and child deaths would decrease by 49%.[11] An investment in quality primary and secondary education for girls is also an investment in overall development and growth for countries. A dollar invested in an additional year of schooling, particularly for girls, generates earnings and health benefits of $10 in low-income countries and nearly $4 in lower middle-income countries.[12]

3.3. Calculations commissioned by Malala Fund found that 12 years of universal fee-free primary and secondary education will cost an estimated US$340 billion per year through 2030. The current funding shortfall is $39 billion — equivalent to just eight days of global military spending.[13] Our report, Beyond Basics, proposes a concrete, phased approach to the introduction of fee-free provision of secondary education by 2030 with recommendations for donors and developing countries.[14]

3.4. In global terms, the UK is a leading education donor allocating an average of 11.5% of total bilateral ODA to education across 2012-2015 (see Appendix I for a full breakdown of figures). However, the allocation has been on a downward trajectory since reaching a high watermark of 13.4% in 2013. Additionally, 2015 saw a sharp decline in percentage allocation of funding to basic and secondary education. The UK Government should maintain its commitment to spending 0.7% of GNI on overseas aid, increasing its overall spend on education to a minimum of 15% of ODA with an indicative benchmark of 75% of education aid to support basic and secondary education to realign funding priorities in support of the 12-year ambition.

3.5. The Girls Education Challenge Fund is a welcome signal of commitment by DFID to girls’ education; but the recent ICAI report[15] outlines concerns about its efficacy. In the current context of discussions around aid effectiveness, Malala Fund is concerned that these criticisms do not lead to a curtailing of the fund or a narrow results-based focus, but rather to a reorientation of how funding is allocated to the most promising emerging practices. Specifically, we welcome the proposals in the revised business case to expand the coverage of the Girls Education Challenge Fund to include completion of a full cycle of secondary education. This is an area where DFID needs to increase its investment, ranking only 10th on spending on this stage of schooling.[16]

3.6. Additionally, we make the following recommendations with regard to DFID’s financial support for girls education:

●        While DFID has made a clear commitment to girls’ education and has backed this with significant resources, there is a danger that by moving away from budget support in the education sector and focusing on non-state actors, it will not achieve sustainable changes in national education systems. Echoing the findings of the ICAI[17], which found that impact is generally limited to the girls who are reached directly, we recommend that DFID strengthen the coherence of its approach to tackling the marginalisation of girls by doing more to promote their interests in national education policies and systems.
 

●        DFID should continue its backing for the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) and help to ensure the success of the organisation’s upcoming replenishment in line with the Education Commission recommendation that GPE’s funding grows to US$2billion per year by 2020. GPE’s focus on strengthening education systems and its reach across 65 countries increases the breadth and sustainability of DFID’s support to education. In light of DFID’s 15% burden sharing cap, support to GPE should include significant outreach to other donors to increase their commitments. DFID must also ensure it is consistently promoting girls’ education within the GPE at both global and country level.

3.7. Recognising the global funding crisis highlighted by the Commission, beyond fulfilling its own aid commitments, DFID should promote efforts to secure new financing, including through supporting greater mobilisation of domestic resources and identifying and capitalising on new funding sources.

3.8. The majority of the global education funding gap will be met from domestic resources. Low-income countries will, on average, need to pay around 6.5% of GDP, and lower middle-income countries around 4.3% of GDP, for universal fee-free education through upper secondary level.[18] Much of this cost can be met by both expanding the size of overall budgets and allocating a greater portion to education. In order to help developing countries achieve this, DFID and the UK Government should support their efforts to increase their domestic tax take, as well as supporting fair reforms of the global tax system and avoiding harmful tax practices that would undermine the tax base of developing countries.

3.8. A number of new financing mechanisms for education, with the potential to generate significant funds, merit further investigation. For example, it is estimated that an International Finance Facility for Education, based on similar initiatives in the health sector, has the potential to raise US$3–4 billion a year; and the introduction of mandatory corporate responsibility schemes in India is estimated to generate up to US$2 billion a year in additional revenues toward the country’s public services.

4. Leaving No One Behind: A focus on refugee girls’ education[19]

“We should not ask children who flee their homes to also give up their dreams..”

Malala Yousafzai, Dadaab, Kenya

4.1. Malala Fund welcomes DFID’s focus on fragile contexts and education in emergency, however there is a need to increase attention to education for adolescent refugees. Almost 80% of all refugee adolescents are out of school; those left behind are mostly girls.[20] By underfunding secondary education, there is an increased threat of conflict and instability in fragile host countries.[21] The 1951 Refugee Convention guaranteed “elementary education” to all children. In line with SDG commitments, DFID’s framework should reflect the protracted nature of today’s refugee crises and support access to a full cycle of 12 years of quality primary and secondary education for refugee children.

4.2 Education is a top priority for many of those affected by crises but it is neglected within the wider humanitarian system. A number of studies document how education continues to be seen as ‘high priority’ among conflict-affected populations, such as those surveyed in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Haiti, Sudan, South Sudan and Syria. Of 8,749 children caught up in 17 different emergencies (conflict, protracted and natural disasters), 99% of children see education as a priority. Similarly, UNHCR reports that amongst refugee communities surveyed, education remains a priority amongst the refugee respondents.[22]

4.3 In 2015, donors met just 30% of the funding requests for education in emergencies. This represents just 1.8% of overall humanitarian funding, though the recommended allocation of funding for education in emergencies is a minimum of 4% of overall humanitarian aid.[23] The UK has led on this agenda in some instances, particularly in relation to the Syria response and the establishment of the Education Cannot Wait Fund. However, DFID’s overall response to education in emergencies can be improved.

4.3. Malala Fund analysis shows that while the UK is overperforming on its overall humanitarian funding contributions, its allocation to education in emergencies falls short of the necessary amount. Using a fair share calculation of funding for 23 UN Humanitarian Response Plans in 2015 the UK contributed more than double its fair share of overall funds. However, of a total of over $1.5 billion, it committed just $16,500,881 to education (or 69% of a fair share total of $23,884,037). In 2016, using data correct as of August of that year, the UK had committed just 21% of its fair share to education ($4,657,631 of $22,212,710).[24] Malala Fund recommends that DFID should allocate a higher proportion of its total humanitarian funding to education in emergencies, particularly for adolescent refugees.[25] This must go hand-in-hand with support for the strengthening of national education systems in host-countries that are already weak and under-resourced through increasing investment in development aid for education as outlined above.

Appendix I: Analysis of education spend as a percentage of total bilateral aid