REASON #4: The Global Partnership for Education mobilizes developing country resources towards their own education systems

Over eight weeks, RESULTS affiliates in the U.K., Australia, Canada, and the U.S. delve deeper into 8 key reasons to invest in the Global Partnership for Education. Today, RESULTS Canada's Julie Savard-Shaw explores Reason #4.


You can read the blog about Reason #1, by RESULTS Australia’s Camilla Ryberg, the blog about Reason #2, by RESULTS UK’s Dan Jones, and the blog about Reason #3, by RESULTS U.S. Allison Grossman.

Click here to read the full RESULTS report Greater Impact Through Partnership: 8 Reasons to Invest in the Global Partnership for Education Now More Than Ever.

 

This week, I explore reason #4, which looks at how the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) mobilizes developing country resources towards their own education system. This is an especially critical piece in our broader campaign in the lead-up to the June pledging conference. It allows us to show our governments in Australia, Canada, the UK, and the US how the Global Partnership’s co-financing model can actually increase the impact of education programs, if donors reach GPE’s $3.5 billion replenishment target.

As education advocates, our goal is to see all children in the poorest and most remote regions of the world have access to quality basic education. Literacy is the necessary condition for a country to escape extreme poverty and to eventually reduce its dependency on aid. Indeed, the social rate of return from completing primary education in low-income countries is very high. This means that the benefits of having more education outweigh the costs of obtaining that education. For example, each additional year of schooling raises a country’s average annual gross domestic product growth by 0.37 percent and a child whose mother can read is 50 percent more likely to live past the age of five.

Achieving universal literacy requires that developing country governments be able and willing to assure the supply of quality education services. This often requires the assistance of industrialized countries. At the same time, many donors are skeptical of developing country governments’ willingness to monitor and maintain reasonable education standards, without which education investment achieves little.

The GPE builds the capacity of partner developing country governments to deliver quality basic education to their citizens through Local Education Groups (LEGs). Headed by partner governments, these groups also include international organizations like GPE, civil society and the private sector. Members of the group provide financial and technical assistance for the developing country partner to develop and implement their education plan.

By developing realistic policies and a feasible implementation plan based on the country context, education goals are more likely to be reached, which in turn motivates developing country partners to invest more in the education sector. Public expenditure on education in developing country partners has grown from 3.9 percent of GDP in 2000 to 4.8 percent of GDP in 2011. The GPE’s success to build the local government’s capacity through LEGs is even more apparent when we look at the resources invested in education for developing countries that are not part of the GPE. Between 2000 and 2011, of all the resources invested in education for one country, GPE developing countries increased their own investment by 15 percent whereas developing countries that are not part of the GPE only increased their spending by 6 percent.

The Government of Ethiopia joined the GPE in 2004 and received two GPE grants in 2007 and 2010 totaling US$168 million to support the country’s General Education Quality Improvement Program (GEQIP), an important part of its Education Sector Development Plan for 2010-2015. Since joining the GPE, the Government of Ethiopia has increased public expenditure as a share of GDP by 28 percent. The GEQIP is financed by national resources supplemented with pooled external funding, of which the Global Partnership contributed some 50 percent.

Through it’s partnership with the GPE, Ethiopia has made significant strides in getting more children in school. Enrollment in primary school increased from 75 percent in 2007 to 86 percent in 2011, with the percentage of children finishing primary school increasing from 48 percent to 58 percent over the same period.

With adequate financing, the GPE will support 29 million children to go to school in 66 GPE eligible countries. Moreover, drawing on a fully funded Global Partnership (US$3.5 billion) developing country partners will be able to leverage an additional US$16 billion for domestic education expenditures for 2015-2018 to further broaden access, boost quality, and ensure relevant learning for all children and youth.

Investing in the GPE is essential to ensure that developing countries break out of the vicious circle of extreme poverty and aid dependency. As Nelson Mandela said, “ No country can really develop unless its citizens are educated.”

Reason #3: The Global Partnership for Education Complements Bilateral Efforts in Global Education

Over eight weeks, RESULTS affiliates in the U.K., Australia, Canada, and the U.S. delves deeper into 8 key reasons to invest in the Global Partnership for Education now more than ever. Today, Allison Grossman, Senior Legislative Associate at RESULTS U.S., explores REASON #3.

This week, we explore reason #3, which looks at how donor government contributions to the Global Partnership for Education have the power to complement their bilateral efforts in global education. This is an especially critical piece in our broader campaigning in the lead-up to the June pledging conference. It allows us to show our governments in Australia, Canada, the UK, and the US how the Global Partnership's work can actually increase the impact of bilateral programs, if donors reach GPE's $3.5 billion replenishment target.

Enhancing Donors' Own Education Objectives

From focused, specific goals in the U.S. Agency for International Development's (USAID) Education Strategy (100 million children in primary grades by 2015 and increased equitable access to education in crisis and conflict environments for 15 million learners by 2015) to the three pillars of the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade's education thematic strategy (access to basic education for all, improved learning outcomes, and better governance and service delivery), each of our governments have their own programmatic objectives for their bilateral basic education programs.

But how are each of these donor country objectives addressed within the Global Partnership for Education?

The Global Partnership has its own set of strategic goals on access, learning, reaching every child, and building the future – goals that are widely seen as global priorities that we must address in order to truly achieve education for all. They then operationalized these goals through five specific strategic objectives: supporting education in fragile and conflict-affected states, promoting girls' education, increasing basic numeracy and literacy skills, improving teacher effectiveness, and expanding aligned funding and support for education.

When looking at the bilateral objectives of Australia, Canada, the UK, and the US, there is clear alignment – GPE's objectives enhance the specific goals of each of our countries, and do so through a partnership with a broad set of members all contributing together to support these efforts. As the report notes, the Australian government rated the Global Partnership as "very high" when looking at alignment with national interests and priorities – can't get much better than that!

Extending the Reach of Bilateral Education Programs

In addition to enhancing donors' own global education objectives, investments by Australia, Canada, the UK, and the US in the Global Partnership for Education extend the reach of our governments, getting to countries and issues not covered in our own goals and objectives.

For instance, the Global Partnership for Education's support for early childhood development programs in Moldova is outside of the USAID Education Strategy, but addresses the needs of Moldova and the context of their system –allowing the US to positively impact children in Moldova in a way they never would have been able to do without the Global Partnership.

The same is true geographically. As the report points out, DFID in the UK noted that by 2015, it and the Global Partnership for Education will be supporting nine of the 12 countries with the world's highest populations of out-of-school children. Of these, DFID will be reaching four of them solely through its contributions to the Global Partnership for Education.

With 59 developing country partners currently, and more if the June pledging conference is successful, the Global Partnership's geographic reach combined with their focus on national needs and priorities allows donor countries to extend their reach and impact in a way they are not able to do alone.

Building Government Capacity to Partner with Bilateral Institutions

Beyond specific education objectives, the Global Partnership for Education's systems approach actively seeks to strengthen the ability of their developing country partners to deliver education services to their own people. By working with governments and civil society to develop and implement national education plans, the Global Partnership is taking a long-term approach to building strong national education systems that countries will need to sustainably educate children well into the future.

Not only is this the most effective approach to education development, but it also fills in a gap that donors are seeking. USAID, for instance, has agency-wide goals to channel more of its funding directly through effective local institutions, including government-to-government assistance and local organizations. But at the moment, USAID invests an extremely low percentage of its education funds through partner country governments or local institutions, especially when looking at investments in sub-Saharan Africa and in comparison with other sectors.

Clearly USAID and other donors want to invest directly in government systems and local institutions – and the Global Partnership's approach is building the partners they're seeking. Donor governments need to benefit from GPE's comparative advantage in this area and can do so by more greatly support GPE’s efforts to foster environments with strong national systems capable of effective, independent delivery of quality, essential education services.

Supporting Civil Society to Hold Governments Accountable

The Global Partnership for Education doesn't stop with strengthening developing country governments, though. It also has a separate fund to support the development of civil society organizations and coalitions across 45 developing countries, called the Civil Society Education Fund. Donors are looking for effective local institutions with which to partner on the delivery of services. By supporting the Global Partnership for Education, donors will allow the Global Partnership to utilize its comparative advantage in working with these coalitions across the world to strengthen their capacity, eventually allowing them to partner directly with donors.

Further, this support also builds the accountability and oversight capacities necessary to ensure that developing country governments are using their education dollars effectively. Organizations like the Elimu Yetu Coalition in Kenya exemplify how civil society organizations can positively influence the education systems in their countries when supported by the Global Partnership. Just as we advocate to our governments to direct resources to the most effective programs and to improve their policies for the poorest and most vulnerable, we need advocates around the world watching their governments and ensuring that donor and developing country funds are going to implement national plans and are having the impact needed for their children's education.


As Australian, Canadian, UK, and US governments consider their roles in the Global Partnership for Education's replenishment campaign, the role that GPE can play in moving ahead their own education and development objectives is a key consideration. But strong commitments from our governments that help reach the $3.5 billion replenishment target are necessary to ensuring the Global Partnership and our own governments can fulfill our collective goals for children around the world.

• RESULTS report Greater Impact Through Partnership: 8 Reasons to Invest in the Global Partnership for Education Now More Than Ever.
• Reason #1, by RESULTS Australia’s Camilla Ryberg
• Reason #2, by RESULTS UK’s Dan Jones

Don’t forget to check back here next week for Reason #4!

REASON #2 to invest in the Global Partnership for Education now: THE GPE REACHES THOSE IN THE GREATEST NEED

Over eight weeks, RESULTS affiliates in the UK, Australia, Canada and the U.S. will delve deeper into 8 key reasons to invest in the Global Partnership for Education now more than ever. Today, Dan Jones, Campaigns Manager at RESULTS UK, looks into REASON #2.

“Everyone has the right to education”
– Article 26, The Universal Declaration of Human Rights

This week, we look more closely into Reason #2 of the eight reasons from our joint RESULTS report “Greater Impact through Partnership: 8 reasons to invest in the Global Partnership for Education now more than ever”.

This reason is close to the hearts of everyone who campaigns with RESULTS around the world, because it is about reaching the most marginalised and vulnerable people in our world.

Education is fundamental to ending poverty and to tackling the inequalities that leave some children behind, unable to fulfil their right to education. Put simply, the world cannot achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) without ensuring education for all, including the most marginalised people.

Dramatic progress has been made in expanding access to primary education. For example, since 1999 the number of children out of school around the world has fallen almost by half. We should be proud of the part our Governments, as major donors to education, have played in that. Yet despite progress, 57 million children of primary age remain out of school around the world. The UN recently reported that 250 million children are failing to learn even the basics of reading and writing – a “global learning crisis”.

It is clear that marginalised children, particularly girls, those living in conflict-affected and fragile states, and children with disabilities, make up a very large proportion of the children either out of school or receiving such poor quality education that they are unable to learn.

The Global Partnership for Education specifically prioritises these children and aims to support them to receive a quality basic education. Nearly three-quarters of the world’s 57 million primary-school-aged children who are out of school live in GPE’s partner developing countries. Of the 250 million children estimated by UNESCO to either not be reaching grade 4 or reaching grade 4 without mastering minimum levels of learning, 100 million (40%) of them are in GPE countries.

Children in conflict-affected countries are estimated to make up half of the world’s out of school children. Yet despite general agreement of the importance of reaching these children, only 1.4% of global humanitarian assistance was allocated to education in 2012. That’s why the Global Partnership for Education has such a crucial role in these difficult circumstances. As one tangible example, on our most recent RESULTS UK grassroots conference call, our speaker was Chernor Bah, a former refugee from war-torn Sierra Leone and now a powerful advocate for education. Chernor told us about the vital role GPE has played in helping the people and government of Sierra Leone to re-build their education system from the rubble of the civil war. More recently, as the world has just begun to pay attention to the violence in the Central African Republic (CAR), the Global Partnership were among the first to respond, allocating US$3.7 million in accelerated funding to support an emergency education plan and restore education for nearly 120,000 children in the most conflict-affected areas.

The GPE strives to ensure that the humanitarian community works in a coordinated way, assisting national governments to establish emergency education plans that help countries recover from war or natural disaster. 61% of GPE funds have gone to conflict affected and fragile states, higher than most other donors. If the GPE’s replenishment this year is successful, then 23 million of the 29 million children that they will support from 2015-2018 will live in fragile and conflict states.

Girls’ education is another headline priority for the Global Partnership for Education. Girls are still more likely than boys to be out of school, and yet the evidence clearly shows that educating girls and women is a bedrock for development. An educated girl is less likely to marry and to have children whilst she is still a child; more likely to be literate, healthy and survive into adulthood; and more likely to reinvest her income back into her family, community and country. Since 2003, GPE has helped to get nearly 10 million girls in school, and 28 GPE countries have achieved equal numbers of girls and boys completing primary school. I met with the Minister of Education from Afghanistan earlier this year, and he had powerful words to say about the GPE’s work in that fragile country. Top of his list was GPE’s funding to support the recruitment and training of female teachers in hard-to-reach regions, and the impact that was having in encouraging girls to return to school.

Children with disabilities are perhaps the most invisible, and marginalised, group of children of all. Data about this group at the global level is so poor it is hard to know how many are in, or out, of school, but for example, in Nepal it is estimated that 85% of out of school children are those with disabilities. RESULTS grassroots advocates have campaigned passionately for greater support to these children. Here, again, the Global Partnership for Education is playing a key role. Working closely with key donor governments represented on its Board of Directors, like the UK and Australia, the GPE has committed to ensure that more of their country partners improve access and learning outcomes for children with disabilities. By 2018, GPE has said that it aims for 80% of its developing country partners to have explicit policy and legislation on education for people with disabilities.

It is clear that investing in the Global Partnership for Education is a crucial way for donors to ensure that they are reaching those children in the greatest need. Investing through GPE also complements and multiplies the reach and influence of each individual donor’s efforts, ensuring that more of the most marginalised children are supported.

But as our report makes clear, the GPE can only have this vital impact if donor countries like the UK, U.S., Canada and Australia step up in June and make ambitious pledges to ensure that the Global Partnership for Education’s four-year replenishment target of US$3.5 billion is met. With that money, the GPE can support 29 million children to receive a good quality education. With that money, the world can demonstrate its commitment to ending poverty and to a vision of prosperity for all that ‘leaves no-one behind’. With that money, there is real hope of a future where every child, no matter what their circumstances or where they are born, can have the future they deserve.

Don’t forget to check back here next week for REASON #3!

Click here to read the full RESULTS report “Greater Impact through Partnership: 8 reasons to invest in the Global Partnership for Education now more than ever”.

Click here for REASON #1 WE CANNOT END POVERTY WITHOUT INVESTING IN EDUCATION

Diseases with bite

by  Sam Chivers, Global Health Campaigns Manager

Reflecting on World Health Day , that falls on 7th of April, I thought it a perfect time to talk about a few of my favourite subjects.

First up is worms. Worms that enter your skin as eggs through a bite from a fly, and make their home in the vessels under your armpits. Worms that burrow into your blood vessels and block the flow of your lymphatic system, slowly causing the liquid to permanently build up in one of your legs. Far from a Crichton-esque fantasy, lymphatic filariasis (LF) is a daily threat for over a billion people around the world. Although the infection itself is easily treatable, the physical disability elephantiasis is permanent, and many patients suffer daily discrimination in their communities.

Figure 1: Elephantiasis in Haitian patients

Now, let’s talk about parasites. A tiny parasite is injected into your bloodstream by the bite of a brown mosquito, and swims into your liver to set up a colony. When they’re mature enough, the parasites re-invade your bloodstream and take up residence of your red blood cells. They grow and multiply so fast inside your blood cells that they quickly burst, releasing thousands of baby parasites back into your blood stream. Every time your blood cells explode, your fever spikes to an extreme level, and your energy plummets. This is especially dangerous to small children, as they cannot regulate their body like adults can, and much more easily develop the brain infection that kills most sufferers of this condition.

This disease is malaria. Still causing more than 200 million illnesses around the world, malaria has been the cause of more than half of all human deaths since the Stone Age.

Malaria remains a major health problem in our region, especially in Myanmar. While there has been a very effective cure available for a decade, careless use of the treatment means that drug-resistant parasites have cropped up in Myanmar and Cambodia three years ago, and, as of last week, Angola. If the drug-resistant form spreads across to Africa as it did in the fifties, the only effective cure against malaria will be useless.

 Figure 2: Malaria bursting through a red blood cell

Thirdly, let’s talk about bacteria. A bacteria that spends some of its life in the warm squishy gut of a sandfly, before invading the soft warm squishiness of your skin. As it invades your soft tissue, it causes a large open sores in its the softest parts, including your nose, lips and cheeks. Other variants of the disease cause your skin to blacken and develop lesions, and weaken your ability to fight opportunistic infections such as pneumonia, TB and diarrhoea. Another horrifying dystopian nightmare, leishmaniasis is a scourge making a recurrence in India, as risk factors include poverty, malnutrition, deforestation and urbanisation. Some types of leishmaniasis make their home in areas of drought, famine, and high population density, such as Sudan and Somalia. Around 12 million people are infected with leishmaniasis right now, and another two million are infected every year.

Figure 3: Cutaneous leishmaniasis

Now for the last infectious agent, the virus. A disease that used to be known as breakbone fever for its excruciating joint pain, you catch this agonising disease through the bite of a huge black-and-white-striped tiger mosquito. The virus breaks micro-holes in your blood vessels, and you bleed into your skin, causing it to itch like nothing else. Your mouth is bone dry, and you feel like you can’t drink enough; I’ve seen people drink two-litre jugs of water in ten minutes and then ask for more. This disease is known as dengue haemorrhagic fever. Dengue has swept around the globe in an extreme outbreak over the past five years Malaysia alone has experienced triple the amount of deaths this year than it did last year. Without cure, treatment, or vaccine, people just have to suffer through it.

Figure 4: The tiger mosquito, Aedes spp.

What do all these diseases have in common?

They are all transmitted by insects, known as vectors. A vector is an organism that transmits a disease or parasite from one animal to another. Unlike diseases like influenza, diarrhoea or polio, one must be bitten by an insect to contract the disease; you can’t catch it from another person.

This World Health Day brings attention to the often-neglected vector-borne disease. More than half the world’s population is at risk of a vector-borne disease. They kill more than a million people each year, and disproportionately kill children. For most of them, there is no cure. For most, there is no vaccine. Prevention takes the form of long sleeves, insecticides, and bed nets.

The Senate recently released the results of its enquiry into Australian aid effectiveness. For me, one of crucial parts was the recognition that Australia must contribute more to research and development in diseases that affect our region. A vaccine against dengue haemorrhagic fever is one of the most crucial. The epidemic is close to doubling every year in Asia. Dengue also seriously threatens Australia’s health security (dengue outbreaks occur constantly in Queensland).

These diseases cause massive suffering and unnecessary death. Now is the time to invest, and finally the time to end it.


For the story of my experience with dengue, check out our latest media release!

Check out the World Health Organisation’s World Health Day video!

Tuberculosis - NOT an artefact of the past

By Sian White OAM, Researcher at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and 2014 recipient of an Order of Australia Medal for her service to international relations, particularly through TB prevention programs in the Pacific. You can hear Sian speaking on RESULTS Australia’s February Fact & Action Call here.

Growing up in Australia one could be forgiven for thinking Tuberculosis (TB) was an artefact of the past. It is a disease which feels comfortably distant to us; only being idealised every now and again through period dramas.

Of course, in reality TB is far from glamorous and has certainly not yet been assigned to the history books of our time. I was fortunate to be woken up from this rose-tinted reality while in Papua New Guinea (PNG), our nearest neighbour and a country where every 2 hours someone is still dying from this entirely curable disease.

Working for World Vision on the National TB Program of PNG I began to realise why the story of TB is not in our headlines. For so many years scientists and health professionals have been talking only in clinical terms and statistics about TB bacteria. But the story the public really needs to know is how TB affects the lives of individuals and communities.

TB is a disease which can strip a person of all it is to be human. First of all you lose your physical strength and mobility; becoming just a frail reminder of your former self. Due to the stigma of the disease, many individuals face extreme and unjustified discrimination. I have heard too many cases of individuals being fired from their workplaces, expelled from their schools and, perhaps worst of all, disowned by their families.

On too many occasions I have found myself lost for words as patients describe the inconceivable challenges TB had imposed on their lives. One such individual was Solomon. I remember seeing him from across the hospital ward and even though I had chatted to many patients that day his harrowing story stayed with me. Solomon had drug resistant TB and had been sitting on that same bed for a year. Every day he took a concoction of 23 tablets and for the first 9 months he had received daily injections. Yet for patients like Solomon this is normal – the best modern medicine can do.

Solomon spoke remarkably calmly as he described what TB had stolen from him. First he lost his wife. The TB drugs she was prescribed had caused her to experience horrible hallucinations and she never got better. Before her death she unwittingly passed TB onto their 11 year old daughter. Since there are no special paediatric TB drugs Solomon’s daughter received crushed adult tablets which, as with many drug resistant TB patients, caused her to lose her hearing permanently. When I met Solomon his daughter had died just a month before.

Not surprisingly Solomon asked me why he should continue his treatment. It was hard to find words of encouragement. For patients with standard TB almost all cases can be easily cured through 6 months of treatment but for drug resistant patients the odds are much more slim with only half of patients globally surviving treatment.

It was hard for me to look Solomon in the eyes and explain that the toxic regimen of drugs he must take for 2 years is the best we have. All the while knowing that the drugs we use to treat TB were invented more than 40 years ago. It is hard to explain to someone like Solomon why our main mode of diagnosing TB is the same diagnosis that was used 130 years ago when Microbacterium Tuberculosis was first discovered. And for the loved ones that remain to support patients like Solomon it’s hard to explain that we don’t have a vaccine efficacious enough to protect them.

Australia’s responsibility to TB control is twofold. On the one hand Australia must take action because it is a dereliction of our humanitarian duty to sit idly by while our neighbours suffer needlessly. However, with more than 60% of the world’s TB burden occurring on Australia’s doorstop, in the Asian and Pacific region, we need also need to act in our own selfish national interest before our citizens are also affected.

The key to TB control is sustained financing. We cannot stand by and allow our government to continue to scale back the aid budget and revoke our commitments to the Millennium Development Goals. Instead we must lobby for the sustained and increased financing of multilateral agencies such as the Global Fund to support TB, HIV and Malaria.

We must capitalize on our strengths as a nation and utilize our world renowned scientific expertise to fund innovative research into new TB drugs, new diagnosis tools and a new vaccine.

In the 1960s many eminent political figures believed that TB was already on the path to eradication. The decades since have shown this expectation to be overly optimistic but it is now up to our generation to make this goal a reality - while we still can.