GPE | In July, world leaders will gather in Addis Ababa at the Financing for Development Conference to discuss the cost of post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals. To help inform the discussion, UNESCO’s Education for All Global Monitoring Report (GMR) has released a new paper revealing that an annual US$22 billion external funding gap must be bridged if low and lower middle income countries are to achieve quality, universal pre-primary and basic education by 2030.
This new figure, released today in the paper Pricing the right to education: The cost of reaching new targets by 2030 reveals that, even if governments significantly increase domestic funding for education, the new global UN education targets are unlikely to be met before 2060: 30 years too late.
This projected finance gap already assumes a considerable increase in national public expenditure in low income countries on pre-primary and basic education, from 2.3% to 3.4% of GDP between 2012 and 2030. It also assumes an increase in the share of their budget allocated to education to 19.7% over the period. If governments fail to increase domestic resources in line with these projections, the external funding gap would more than double, leaving education targets even further out of reach.
GMR analyses calculate the cost of one year of universal pre-primary education, in addition to a full cycle of primary and lower secondary education. The total projected cost is US$239 billion per year between 2015 and 2030 – more than double what it cost in 2012. For low-income countries, the annual total cost is due to more than triple, from US$10.3 billion in 2012 to US$36.3 billion between 2015 and 2030.
This increased cost takes into account the rise in the number of children entering schools, as well as the need to spend more per pupil in order to improve the quality of education as per the new post-2015 targets. The amount spent per primary school student in low-income countries, for example, will need to grow from US$65 to US$199 per year by 2030. This increase will allow for lower student/teacher ratios, competitive teacher salaries, new classroom construction and the instructional materials necessary to provide a good quality education.
Equitable education progress has a cost as well. The paper assumes that, given the interventions needed to address the disadvantages faced by children living in poverty, per-student costs will need to increase by up to 30%.
With ambitious targets, we must be ambitious about our fundraising too. Aid will need to continue playing a crucial role in financing education over the next 15 years if targets are to be achieved. The current perspective on aid is bleak, with annual contributions to education in low income countries standing at just over US$2 billion. Even so, the $22 billion annual funding gap equates to just 4.5 days of global military expenditure. Even without reallocating funds from other sectors, a part of this enormous gap could be bridged by redistributing aid to education from upper middle income countries and reallocating the aid currently funding post-secondary education objectives.
The GMR makes the following recommendations:
- Low and lower middle income countries will need to spend 3.4% of GDP on pre-primary, primary and lower secondary education or 5.4% of GDP across all education levels.
- Donors must allocate at least four times the current aid budget to basic education in low and lower middle income countries.
- Aid must be reallocated away from upper middle income countries and post-secondary education if post-2015 basic education targets are to be achieved.