REASON #8: Demand for the Global Partnership for Education is on the rise

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. This week's post is by Camilla Ryberg at RESULTS Australia. You can read about reasons number 1,  2,  3,  4,  5,  6 and 7. 

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.

What difference can the Global Partnership for Education make - Lao PDR

This week I had the pleasure of meeting Hon Lytou Bouapao, the Vice Minister of Education of Lao PDR. He spoke frankly and enthusiastically of the difference the support by the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) is making in his country.

Lao PDR joined the Global Partnership for Education in 2009 and its children has benefited significantly as a result. For instance, the percentage of out-of-school children decreased from 11.5%  in 2009 to 4.1% in 2012.  The primary completion rate rose from 78% in 2009 to 95% in 2012, with the rate for girls rising from 74% to 93% over the same period. (Source: UNESCO Institute for Statistics)

With challenges such as  a large disperse rural population encompassing many different languages and ethnic groups, an unwillingness by many parents to send girls to school and few qualified teachers, it is clear that a locally-specific and flexible approach to education is imperative.

GPE’s current project in Lao PDR reflects this need by focusing on community-based school construction, non-formal education, community-based school readiness programs, and a mobile teacher training program. The innovative School Meals Program that combines local food production, community trainings, and school interventions in health, sanitation, and hygiene was piloted by the Ministry of Education and Sports in 66 schools in 2012. It’s success has resulted in plans to expand it to nine districts in five provinces.

Not surprisingly Mr Bouapao and his government colleagues in Lao PDR are currently preparing another grant application.

Demand from citizens

The demand for education support is not just coming from high level ministers and governments. During a recent trip to Pakistan, the Global Partnership for Education CEO Alice Albright attended an event in Islamabad titled "Girls of Pakistan for Education", where hundreds of Pakistani girls and young women called on their government to support their education.  According to estimates by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics there are more than 3 million girls of primary school age who don't go to school in Pakistan, and 3.4 million adolescent girls who don't go to secondary school.

As citizens of low-income countries are becoming increasingly aware of their right to an education, they will continue to put pressure on their governments to deliver. When governments do not have sufficient funds implement their education plans, it makes sense they turn to the Global Partnership for Education for support.

Funds are urgently needed

With the proven effectiveness of GPE’s approach, it is no wonder that demand for the Global Partnership is on the rise. In 2013 alone, low-income country partners requested over US$1 billion from the Global Partnership for Education to support their national education plans. GPE anticipates that by the end of 2014, it will have provided over US$4 billion since its establishment in 2002 to support education in nearly 60 countries.

However, even this significant amount seems like a drop in the ocean if considering all anticipated program implementation grants over the 2013-2014 period. If GPE was to approve them all, a staggering US$585 million in additional funds may be required beyond existing inflows.

The Global Partnership is growing

Due in part to the Global Partnership for Education’s support, countries such as Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and post-conflict Afghanistan are now rolling out their first national education plans.

But not only has existing demand for GPE support exhausted the GPE Fund but the Global Partnership will likely grow over the 2015-2018 period. Having multiplied from 7 developing country partners in 2002 to 59 in 2014, the Global Partnership for Education today remains open to a total of 68 eligible countries.

Issues such as an increasing youth population, growing economic inequalities, and the impact of climate change will put increased pressure on low-income country governments. The currently high demand for GPE support will likely only increase.

In the Indo-Pacific region we have several eligible countries such as Tuvalu, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu which are not yet partners but who are likely to apply for GPE support in the near future.

As demand increases donor partners need to step up support

As we saw in last week’s blog post Reason #7, global support to basic education is drastically declining. It is now time for donors to step up to reverse this trend.

Australia saw brutal cuts to our foreign aid budget last week. However, we can still afford to pledge generously to the Global Partnership for Education for the period 2015-2018. Indeed, we can’t afford not to.

Australia, Canada, the UK, and the US are front-running proponents of global education and leaders in the development community writ large — a successful GPE replenishment and the education progress it promises depends on their ambitious commitment. In addition to the critically important bilateral support these countries will provide from now until 2018, the governments of Australia, Canada, the UK, and the US must seize the GPE Pledging Conference as an opportunity to provide the Global Partnership for Education the resources it needs to build strong, sustainable national education systems, end the learning crisis burdening much of the developing world, unlock education’s transformative powers, and deliver prosperity and stability to the world’s poorest populations in a post- 2015 world.
 

Reason # 7 to invest in the Global Partnership for Education: Global support to basic education is drastically declining

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. This week's post is by Julie Savard-Shaw, Campaigns Officer at RESULTS Canada. You can read about reasons number 1,  2,  3,  4,  5, and 6.

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.

Reason #7 addresses the drastic decline in global support for basic education. As the pledging conference for the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) approaches, it is essential to highlight the large financial gaps that exist in the education sector and reiterate the importance of education in eliminating poverty.

Following the global financial crisis, overall official development assistance levels declined significantly with the latest figures showing a 4 percent reduction in 2012 from a 2 percent reduction in 2011.[1] Of the remaining development assistance budget, commitments to education overall dropped by 27 percent from 2009 to 2011 and commitments to basic education dropped by 35 percent over the same period.[2]

Evidently, reduced commitments are being translated into reduced disbursements. Aid disbursements to the education sector declined by 9 percent between 2009 and 2012. Most alarmingly, basic education funding dropped 16 percent (or US$1 billion) between 2009 and 2012 at a time when there are still 57 million children of primary school age out of school.

Source: OECD CRS (using UNESCO definition of “education” and “basic education”)

What is more, basic education aid actually available to GPE developing country partners was cut by 23 percent from 2009 to 2012. Even though domestic spending on education is slowly increasing (see Reason #4) and remains the most important source of financing for the sector, aid for education is central to support low-income countries in achieving the Education for All goals.

During a recent multiparty delegation with Canadian Members of Parliament in Tanzania, I witnessed first-hand the dire conditions in which children study every day as a result of insufficient funds.  The Principal noted that due to the limited budget for education, priority is given to providing the necessary school supplies and paying teachers’ salary. The school had a good graduation rate and an almost equal girl to boy ratio. On paper, the school is faring well; however, that fails to represent the immense hole in the sunken ceiling because of mold or the absence of running water, electricity and classroom doors. That day, with the rain and wind, children were visibly shaking from the cold.

Education is currently underfunded by US$26 billion a year.[3]  Donors have the chance in June to reduce the education financial gap and pledge generously to reach the GPE’s replenishment target of US$3.5 billion to give millions of children the chance to receive quality basic education.

[1] http://www.campaignforeducation.org/docs/reports/GCE_EDUCATION_AIDWATCH_2013.pdf p.7
[2] http://www.results.org/uploads/files/Greater_Impact_Through_Partnership_-_8_Reasons_to_Invest_in_the_Global_Partnership_for_Education_Now_More_Than_Ever.pdf
[3] http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0022/002256/225654e.pdf p.3

Reason #6: The Global Partnership is Taking Innovative Steps to Enhance Performance

Over eight weeks, RESULTS affiliates in the U.K., Australia, Canada, and the U.S. are delving deeper into 8 key reasons to invest in the Global Partnership for Education now more than ever, outlined in our joint report Greater Impact Through Partnership. This blog about Reason #6 is by Allison Grossman, Senior Legislative Associate at RESULTS US. You can read the previous blogs written by staff from Australia, Canada, the U.K., and U.S., here.

"Good value for money"

In its Multilateral Aid Review, the UK Department for International Development (DFID) called the Global Partnership for Education "good value for money for UK aid." In a 2013 update of the review, DFID noted the progress that the Global Partnership had made against all of its reform priorities, such as increasing efficiency, transparency, and predictability in financial management. This rating put the Global Partnership on par with other major multilaterals like the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, and the GAVI Alliance.

A year before, the 2012 Australian Multilateral Assessment rated the Global Partnership "strong" in the seven areas it analyzed, including delivering results and transparency and accountability.

Even more impressive, the Global Partnership for Education was the sole multilateral organization called out for its strengths in A New Global Partnership: Eradicate Poverty and Transform Economies through Sustainable Development – The Report of the High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda, which said, "The Global Partnership is getting quality education to marginalised children, coordinating education's many players, offering aid without wasteful replication and following local leaders…Similar models might prove useful in other areas."

Driving progress: a stronger funding model for the next four years

Even with these positive assessments, the Global Partnership for Education is continuing to improve its model and increase efficient use of resources and outcomes for children around the world. During the 2015-2018 replenishment period, the Global Partnership will implement a new funding model that guides the process for countries to apply for grant funding. This new model will drive results while continuing to strengthen the capacity of the current country-led processes that make the Global Partnership's model so compelling.

The new model starts by implementing a more nuanced view regarding countries' eligibility for grant funding. It will take into account poverty, education vulnerability, and fragility to ensure that the Global Partnership is truly reaching the poorest countries with the greatest education needs.

For eligible countries, there are now three requirements to access funding:

1. Countries must have an education sector plan endorsed by the Local Education Group, as in the past.
2. Developing country partners will also need a data strategy for planning, budgeting, managing and monitoring (or a plan that will allow them to begin gathering this data if they are not currently doing so). This piece is critical given the lack of strong data in the education sector, particularly around learning.
3. Finally, there is a requirement for financial commitments from developing country partners to increase their own financing for education as well as financing from donors that is aligned with the priorities identified in the national education plan – ensuring mutual accountability.

The revised funding model also aims to incentivize GPE's developing country partners to address the biggest challenges in education related to equity, efficiency, and learning. This model will make additional funds available to countries that commit or meet benchmarks to overcoming the biggest bottlenecks in their education system, allowing rapid progress toward quality education for all.

What do these innovations mean for June?

With the exciting innovations that the Global Partnership for Education is currently undertaking, donor support at the June pleding conference, particularly from Australia, Canada, the U.K., and the U.S., is needed more than ever to allow developing country partners to benefit from these developments and to give them the support needed to build strong, sustainable national education systems for their children.

Check back next week for Reason #7!

Saving Lives - How RESULTS advocates help fund the Global Fund

Reason #5: The Global Partnership for Education gets results

Over eight weeks, RESULTS affiliates in the UK, Australia, Canada and the U.S. are delving deeper into 8 key reasons to invest in the Global Partnership for Education now more than ever, outlined in our joint report ‘Greater Impact Through Partnership’. This blog about Reason #5 is by Dan Jones, Campaigns Manager at RESULTS UK and it was originally published on RESULTS UK blog.  You can read the previous blogs exploring Reason #1 to #4 by clicking on the links at the bottom of the page.

 “The Global Partnership for Education is getting quality education to marginalised children, coordinating education’s many players, offering aid without wasteful replication, and following local leadership… GPE is single-sector (education) but shows how collaboration can bring better results. Similar models might prove useful in other areas.”
    - The Report of the High Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post-2015 Development Agenda

As RESULTS and our partners ramp up our advocacy in advance of the Global Partnership for Education’s replenishment conference in June, we know a crucial part of the case we need to make in order to persuade our Governments to invest in the GPE is being able to demonstrate the results GPE can, and has, achieved.

Thanks to the efforts of many, including our Governments’ own aid programmes and the work of the GPE, dramatic progress has been made over recent years. For example, since 1999 the number of children out of school around the world fell almost by half.

Yet, as UNESCO recently reported, “by 2015, many countries will still not have reached the Education For All goals”. Globally, 1 out of 10 children still cannot go to school. Nearly 40% of children of primary school age (250 million) either do not reach grade 4 or, if they do, fail to attain even minimum learning standards – a “global learning crisis”, according to UNESCO.

If donor Governments like ours make total pledges of US$ 3.5billion in June to ensure that the Global Partnership is fully-funded, GPE has pledged in turn to support 29 million children over the next four years to receive a primary and lower secondary education. They plan to reduce the number of children not completing primary school by more than a third between 2014 and 2018.

So what results has the Global Partnership for Education achieved so far, and why are they a good investment of our money?

Since it was established in 2002, the Global Partnership has grown from 7 developing country partners to 59 in 2013 and has become the 4th largest donor to low and lower middle income countries. GPE highlight that with their help, low income countries have enrolled nearly 22 million more children into school, including 10 million girls. In 2011, 72% of girls in GPE countries finished primary school compared to 55% in 2002. GPE has helped train 300,000 teachers, built or rehabilitated 53,000 classrooms, and distributed 50 million textbooks.

GPE’s system-strengthening partnership approach of supporting plans led by the governments of their partner developing countries means that these improvements cannot and should not be attributed solely to the Global Partnership. Ultimately, it is the developing countries themselves that should take proud credit for these achievements. These are their results, and this nuance is absolutely fundamental to the success of GPE’s model and the reason why they received the praise I’ve quoted above from the UN’s High Level Panel on Post-2015 Development.

The Panel, which was brought together by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and co-chaired by UK Prime Minister David Cameron, sees GPE’s model as the kind of powerful, innovative approach that ending poverty needs. The bottom line is that collaborative planning, coordinated aid, increased oversight, and bolstered commitment – the strengthening of whole education systems that GPE specialises in – may not sound sexy or simple to communicate – but is absolutely fundamental to getting results for the world’s poorest children.

You can read more in our report about how developing countries that are part of GPE are clearly demonstrating accelerated progress that is seeing these low income countries catch up with the levels of education enrolment and completion shown by the mostly upper-middle income countries that are not part of GPE. Another tangible result for GPE – and more importantly for its partner countries – is that on average, domestic financing for education by GPE partner developing countries increases by 10% as a share of GDP after they join the partnership. A good demonstration of the national commitment needed, and which GPE is helping to deliver.

More tangible still is to look at some of the results achieved in GPE countries. In Cameroon, for example, a GPE grant was used during an economic crisis to pay teacher salaries as the country worked to address its teacher shortage. Over the grant period (2007-2011) 37,200 qualified primary school teachers were hired, 60% of them women. With this increased presence of female teachers, the ratio of girls to boys in school rose from 63 girls to 100 boys in 2007 to 89 girls for every 100 boys in 2011. That’s a result.

As June’s replenishment conference approaches, RESULTS Affiliates in Australia, Canada, the UK and the U.S. will continue to highlight these results to our Governments as a clear demonstration that we believe this is our money, well spent. That they should invest in the Global Partnership for Education now more than ever.

Check back next week for another reason!


You can read the blog about Reason #1, by RESULTS Australia’s Camilla Ryberg, the post exploring  Reason #2, by RESULTS UK’s Dan Jones,  Reason #3, by RESULTS U.S. Allison Grossman, and looking at Reason #4, by RESULTS Canada's Julie Savard-Shaw.

Immunisation in the Indo-Pacific: Is Australia up to date?

by Samantha Chivers, Global Health Campaign Manager (Maternal, Child and Neonatal Health) with RESULTS Australia

On World Immunisation Week this year, RESULTS Australia is celebrating the work of the GAVI Alliance, a public-private partnership that has had phenomenal success in getting underused vaccines to children in the poorest countries in the world.

It is clear GAVI is a worthwhile investment for Australia, as it aligns very strongly with Australian foreign policy priorities in several ways.

Here are five reasons why:

1.
GAVI was rated extremely highly in a 2012 Australian Government evaluation, as it “[saves] lives through cost-effective and evidence-based interventions”. Australia’s Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has recently publicly praised GAVI, calling it “the kind of thinking we need”.  GAVI also strongly emphasises results-based financing, which aligns with Australia’s interest in linking aid spending to performance benchmarks.

2.
In 2011, Australia pledged $200 million to the GAVI Alliance. This funding alone vaccinated an estimated 37 million children against a range of childhood diseases, including 3.3 million children vaccinated against pneumococcal pneumonia. These vaccinations will avert over half a million future deaths.

Our investment has also supported the development of stronger health systems in over 50 countries, including Indonesia, Myanmar, Vietnam and the Solomon Islands. This will not only provide the foundation for successful immunisation programs, but also prioritise strong and sustainable health system financing within recipient governments.

3.
Australian partnership and leadership in the Indo-Pacific region is vital. GAVI has a large influence in the Asia-Pacific region: seventeen of the countries that have received GAVI support are also Australian aid priority countries.

It also shows the strength of Australian research: GAVI focuses on rolling out new and underused vaccines, and this has most recently included human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine to protect girls and women against cervical cancer, an Australian-developed vaccine. In two years, 21 of the poorest countries in the world have been approved to introduce HPV vaccine with GAVI support, including Laos and the Solomon Islands. Through negotiating a new record low price of $4.50 per dose of HPV vaccine, GAVI hopes to reach more than 30 million girls in more than 40 countries by 2020.

4.
The GAVI Alliance works to improve global vaccine markets to ensure adequate supply of appropriate, quality vaccines at low and sustainable prices. This involves working with private pharmaceutical companies in countries such as Indonesia, to support their access to global vaccine markets, so they can make new and underused vaccines for their own regions. GAVI has had great success in creating jobs in vaccine production. In 2001, there were 5 vaccine suppliers to GAVI, 1 based in an emerging market. By mid-2013, there were 12 vaccine suppliers to GAVI, with over half now based in Africa, Asia and Latin America. One outstanding example is the rollout in late 2013 of the locally produced pentavalent vaccine in Indonesia: protecting children against five diseases in one shot, this will now be produced by the Indonesian pharmaceutical industry.

GAVI is also very conscious to introduce regional-specific vaccines. Japanese encephalitis (JE), for example, is a serious mosquito-borne viral disease that kills over 15,000 people per year. Late last year, Chinese manufacturers obtained qualifications from the World Health Organisation to begin producing JE vaccines. This vaccine will be going to eight countries in Asia at risk of JE transmission.

5.
Consistent with recent trends in Australian aid, GAVI will be investing more time and resources in strengthening health systems, especially in fragile and conflict-affected states. Considering the intense focus of the Australian military and the foreign policy department on building the governance and resilience of countries like Myanmar and Afghanistan, developing strong policies to ensure equitable access to immunisations will assist in building strong health systems.

The countries that make up the Indo-Pacific are diverse and complex, and so are their needs. Extreme poverty co-exists on the same streets as comfortable families and the megarich, more so than anywhere else on earth. RESULTS Australia works to ensure the poorest countries in the world benefit from evidence based health policy.

Vaccines decrease poverty. There it is. GAVI works with the poorest countries to get new and underused vaccines on the ground to the families that need them. GAVI is on track to immunise half a billion children by 2015, and save more than nine million lives by the end of the decade. Although Australia works with a smaller aid budget than in previous years, GAVI is an excellent investment for Australia, and for the world.

This post was originally published on the ACTION Global Health Advocacy Partnership blog