Sharp drop in aid to basic education jeopardizes school chances for millions

ASTANA. April 29. KAZINFORM A sharp decline in aid to basic education to developing countries threatens to reverse progress towards the international goal of universal primary schooling. This is the stark conclusion drawn by UNESCO?s Education for All Global Monitoring Report Team, Kazinform refers to the UNESCO News Service.
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According to the latest figures from the OECD?s Development Assistance Committee (OECD-DAC) for 2007, total aid commitments to basic education declined from US $5.5 billion in 2006 to US $4.3 billion in 2007, representing a decrease of nearly 22%. UNESCO?s Global Monitoring Report 2009 warned that the world will fall short of goals agreed by the international community at Dakar in 2000. There are currently 75 million children out of school; many millions more drop out before completing primary education. Projections indicate that the target of universal primary education by 2015 will be missed by at least 30 million children. ?Aid to basic education has played a vital role in getting millions more children in to school, in training teachers, in building classrooms and in other tangible results seen over the last decade,? said Koichiro Matsuura, UNESCO Director-General. ?The drop jeopardizes this and future progress towards the Education for All goals.? A huge fall in bilateral aid commitments to basic education between 2006 and 2007 is behind the drop, with a decline by 31% in real terms to below US$3 billion in 2007. Behind this striking downward shift are some important changes in individual donor commitments. While the Netherlands and the United Kingdom had registered sharp increases in 2006 to their aid to basic education, these commitments were significantly lower in 2007. Apart from the United States, whose aid to basic education rose substantially in 2007, too few bilateral donors stepped in to fill the financing gap. Aid to education from multilateral agencies did rise over the same period, but it was not enough to counteract the large drop, Kazinform cites the UNESCO News Service. See full story at www.unesco.org.
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