Since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights by the General Assembly of the UN on December 10th, 1948, every person has the right to an education. The right to free elementary education is enshrined in the Declaration’s 26th article. With the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which strove to bring Article 26 into practice, coming to a conclusion in 2015, many organisations and think tanks have made up the balance. As the Institute for Global Development Strategies has argued in a March 2014 policy brief, emphasis should shift from merely offering education to offering quality education. Two issues need to be tackled here: poor student achievement (123 million youth aged 15 to 24 lack elementary literacy skills, primarily due to a lack of qualified teachers, scarcity in teaching materials, and classroom sizes) and the tendency of many rudimentary educational systems to focus on knowledge rather than the critical thinking, global citizenship, and creativity tools needed for a swiftly changing world.
Improving this situation requires money. And, as usual, that is where things turn ugly. According to Transparency International’s latest report on corruption in education, some 21 million USD earmarked for education was lost in Nigeria over the past two years. Kenya, in comparison, lost 42 million USD since 2009. This trend has a couple of severe social consequences. Paid degrees lead to incompetent leaders and professionals, rogue scientists and bad doctors. It also undermines the dedication to increase the quality and reach of education. Ideally, quality education would lead to an economic shift away from dependency on primary resources, the development of a global citizenry aware of the tension between human development and planetary boundaries, and a reduction in child marriages and significant increase in the length and standard of living across the world.
Current approaches to combating corruption in education and creating accountability for governments and the education network may sometimes fail in their well-intended mission. A few weeks ago I attended the Replenishment Conference of the Global Partnership for Education in Brussels, where developing countries pledged 26bn USD and donor countries (the “West”) 2.1bn USD to financing education in the Global South. During the plenary session, I asked European Commissioner for Development Andris Piebalgs how to make sure governments would actually spend the money set aside for education on education– not on other projects, not on weapons, and especially not on themselves. His answer baffled not only me. “This does not happen”, he said, before drifting off into a monologue on an unrelated subject.
But it does happen. It happens most often in states that need education the most. It happens in the states torn by internal strife, like Yemen. It happens in states that have entered a relatively prosperous period in their existence, like Kenya. It happens even in increasingly prosperous economic giants, like China. It happens in the USA, too. And the start to combating this, Mr. Piebalgs, is acknowledgment of the problem.
Another starting point is understanding the reasons for corruption. One reason is the immensely complex administrative structure in many countries’ education system, where the money goes through many hands and each hand takes a dollar. Another is the prevalence of patronage systems in many countries developing their education system. With limited or no measures to ensure social security, taking the money whenever you can is a practical means to ensuring safety. In the third place, mechanisms of accountability are often non-existent, understaffed, unable to access the figures, or themselves corrupted.
A few simple measures would go a long way. Simplification of both administrative layers and rules concerning financing would be a great start. Government audits of education systems, although not always effective, would form another valuable contribution. Moreover, NGOs, and in particular the Global Partnership for Education, have increasingly called for civil society involvement in accountability. This is a very promising stance. The danger, however, lurks in the essentialisation of ‘civil society’. Some of these organisations are based on specific socio-economic, religious, and ethnic groups and therefore unable or unwilling to advance education for the more marginalised. Another trap is a vicious cycle in which only the educated would be able to hold educational institutions and government accountable.
Young people just might be the solution many policy makers do not immediately connect to the issue. Transparency International itself calls us ‘innovative’ and lauds the network youth can mobilise to push for change. But they forget the most important reason to engage youth: we are the perfect gadflies. Not tied to a government, and not always to an organisation, we have the energy and the liberty to make statements and calls for action that would compromise the positions of senior officials. We can be the perfect critics precisely because we have been in the education system so recently, and often still are. And we have the outspokenness to engage in policy discussions and, often, we still possess the like-mindedness to pursue a shared goal.
Take Connected Development’s Education Budget Tracker. Presented at the GPE Conference by youth advocate Ojonwa Miachi, this Nigerian initiative relies on crowd sourcing through smartphones, a texting service, and a digital form to check whether the money pledged to education institutions accomplishes what it was intended for. The wide availability of mobile phones, especially among the young, allows for a far more efficient control of the budget. Students can directly report anything they encounter in their schools. In addition, young volunteers raise awareness for the necessity of accountability and control in schools and do many of the audits themselves. So far, the system had had over 200 reports on the Budget Tracker and its supervision has led to the exposure of fund misappropriation in several projects.
Corruption and lack of accountability still are among the most important issues to be tackled for the provision of quality education across the world. As the perfect gadflies, youth can play a vital role. And putting a halt to corruption is beneficial to governments, too. Shifting their focus to the long term can gain them the honour of working for something greater than themselves. It helps build an engaged community and enhances popular support. In the long run, better education leads to a more powerful economy, a more prosperous population, and greater internal peace. And with that all comes what young people care most for: a future.