Sophie Edwards :
As the Global Partnership for Education gears up for a record replenishment, education advocates are predicting 2018 could be a “pivotal year” for global education which could see the sector enter a “golden era” of support, as experienced in global health.
However, questions remain as to whether key donors will come up with the cash; if the financial ask is ambitious enough to create meaningful change within the sector; and whether the GPE in its current form is the best mechanism for the job, with some suggesting it should consider divorcing itself from the World Bank, where it is currently housed.
Former prime minister of Australia and current chair of the Global Education Partnership, Julia Gillard talks to Devex about why she thinks the United Kingdom will keep funding education, efforts to raise new billions, and the importance of country-led models.
GPE’s leadership team, which includes former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, is on the fundraising trail. They were in Europe for high-level meetings earlier this month in the run up to the GPE financing conference, set to take place in Senegal in February, and co-hosted by France, where the partnership hopes to raise a record $3.1 billion to fund its activities up to 2020, and help it become a $2 billion a year fund.
That has led education advocates to speculate that 2018 could be a pivotal year for global education funding, which has long languished behind global health. The GPE, which was established in 2002, is the only global multilateral funding platform dedicated to education. By comparison, the Global Fund’s most recent replenishment raised $12.9 billion.
Speaking to Devex, the GPE’s Chief Executive Officer Alice Albright talked about an “education crisis,” warning that if it remains unsolved “it will have ripple effects in many larger areas” of development. She went on to describe the upcoming conference as a “litmus test moment” for global education.
“We are putting every single ounce of energy we have into making the Dakar event a success, not just because of the GPE’s replenishment but [because] it is a litmus test moment for the leadership of the world … to come together and say we must solve this problem, much the same way leadership came together in the early 2000s around some of the health challenges,” she said.
An estimated 260 million children and young people are still not enrolled in school. According to the recent World Bank education report, a further 330 million may be in school but are learning little. Yet global funding for education is falling woefully short: The United Nations has estimated an annual spending gap of $39 billion in what is needed to reach the Sustainable Development Goals’ education targets.
The United States’ recent decision to defund UNESCO, the U.N.’s cultural, scientific, and educational organization, has also put the spotlight more firmly on the GPE as the education sector struggles to establish leadership as well as finances.
But experts disagree on whether the GPE is likely to reach its fundraising target in Dakar – and whether, if it does, it will be enough to create meaningful change for the sector.
Momentum on education
The GPE, a multilateral global partnership initially called the Education for All Fast Track Initiative, first emerged in response to commitments made by governments at the World Education Forum in Dakar in 2000 to provide quality basic education to all children, youth, and adults.
In contrast to global funds in other sectors, it was set up as a “compact,” working in close partnership with developing countries to support credible plans for their education sectors. It maintains a strong emphasis on in-country donors and governments to mobilize resources.
Its model has won attention from a number of quarters. GPE’s membership now consists of 65 developing country partners and 22 donors, alongside hundreds of regional and national civil society organizations, around 30 international NGOs, and about a dozen private foundation and private sector partners. According to a GPE press release, by 2015, the partnership’s funding had enabled 72 million more children to attend primary school and increased the completion rate from 63 percent in 2002 to 76 percent. Furthermore, as of 2015, nearly 80 percent of GPE partner countries had kept their national education budgets at or above 20 percent of total public expenditure – the level recommended by the partnership – or increased their education budget.
Momentum around the education agenda has been growing in recent years in relation to what experts describe as a crisis in global education.
As the only international mechanism dedicated to the issue, the GPE has been growing in visibility, boosted by the endorsement of major donors including the United Kingdom, and now France.
The 2015 independent interim report on the GPE, carried out by the Universalia Management Group and Results for Development Institute, warned of a lack of clear definitions of “what constitutes ‘success’ in view of its broad and ambitious mission,” and also found “considerable disconnect between the Global Partnership’s ambitious mission and its narrow financing base.”
(To be continued)
