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Speech by International Development Minister Shriti Vadera at Education for All event on the Hill, Washington D.C., 24/10/07
24 October 2007
I
would like to start by congratulating our host, Nita Lowey, for her heroic work
as the champion of increased US appropriations for education in the world’s
poorest nations. I also want to congratulate her and Senator Clinton for
originally co-sponsoring the Education For All Act. Many of us were especially
excited to hear that the Act was re-introduced as a bipartisan bill this year
with Congressman Spencer Baucus and Senator Gordon Smith. Given Congressman
Baucus’ leadership on debt relief and Senator Smith’s commitment to Africa, you
could not have a stronger set of bipartisan co-sponsors.
I would also like to congratulate the Administration for its initiatives on
scholarships for girls’ education in Africa and for the President’s recent call
to expand efforts in several important African nations that have been endorsed
by the
Education
for All Fast Track Initiative. As First Lady Bush so eloquently stated on a
visit to Senegal:
"Education is vital in every time and place from Lusaka to La Paz, from the
United Arab Emirates to the United States of America. By improving education, we
can advance the goals that unite people in every country today: healthy lives,
and a more hopeful world."
The current situation
Today around 72 million children across the world - 33 million are in Sub-Saharan Africa - are not enrolled in primary school. Forty-one million of these are girls. And actual attendance is more than 10% lower than enrolment.
Why education?
And yet education is perhaps, to use the words of Nelson Mandela, the most
important right of all - the right of every child to go to school. But it is
more than a right and an end in itself. It is the means to break the
intergenerational cycle of poor development, disease, and aid dependency.
Education, particularly that of girls, has many profound impacts on the
development of a country.
It is key to individual opportunity and national growth and the dignity of self
reliance.
For every year of schooling in the poorest countries, incomes grow by more than
10%. For girls that can be even more - up to 20%.
There is an important link between education and growth:
- No country has lifted itself out of poverty without educating its people. Successful countries in East Asia - Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea - have singled out education as the key means of improving their productivity.
- One year of additional education, if accompanied by good policies, can raise growth by 1.2%.
I commend the
Millennium
Challenge Corporation's (MCC) focus on growth and high investment returns
from infrastructure. Its focus on physical capital should be complemented by the
development of human capital, also essential to growth.
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Education impacts on health, democracy and security
Education especially that of women and girls, also directly improves health outcomes:
- An educated woman is 50% more likely to have her children immunised. In Africa, children of mothers who receive five years of primary education are 40% more likely to live beyond age five.
- I would argue that the
PEPFAR
programme is one of the most important international actions from the
U.S. in recent times. It is the largest international commitment ever by any
nation dedicated to a single disease and the largest provider of ARVs
(antiretroviral drugs). But its outcomes would be more sustainable if it
were accompanied by education. Education is seen as the single most
significant factor in preventing the spread of HIV in the next generation.
It is like a “social vaccine” against HIV. But its outcomes would be more
sustainable if it was accompanied by education.
- A girl in Uganda who has secondary school education is four times less likely to be HIV positive. In Swaziland, two-thirds of teenage girls in school are free from HIV, while two-thirds of girls out of school have HIV.
- Educated girls are more empowered to say no, get married later and more able to persuade their partners to use prevention techniques. Also they are more likely to understand treatment of HIV and more able to access it.
Education is also central to democracy and the ability of people to hold
their governments to account. And it should be central to our own domestic
security agendas. There is evidence to suggest that where there is no schooling
available, or where costs are high, extremists can and do fill the vacuum.
Quality education is not just in developing country interests but in ours as
well.
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The cost of education
Education is therefore one of the best investments the world can make. And it
costs relatively little - in most countries over 70% of education costs are
borne by countries themselves. Filling the gap would cost $11 billion each year;
4 cents for every American and European per day.
That is why Gordon Brown last
year committed $15 billion over ten years, to support countries who planned
to put every child into school. In response, 25 African countries committed to
develop more ambitious, fully costed, long term credible investment plans. By
the end of the year, we expect 16 of these to be ready.
Performance and results
There will be many in the audience who will be converts to the cause of
education, but are concerned about the ability to implement and deliver,
particularly in countries where national systems are weak and corrupt. While I
share your concerns, the UK’s Department for International Development has long
developed different working methods in countries with wide ranging circumstances
to ensure the money goes where it is intended and leads to measurable
performance and results.
For example, in Kenya we channel money through the private banking system
directly to school committees comprised of parents and teachers who are
accountable for how the money is used. You can go to Kibera, Africa’s largest
slum, and see blackboards which publicly report what funds the head teacher has
received and where they are being used.
In certain countries, especially immediately after conflict, faith groups also
play a vital role in delivering education with their extensive networks and
roots in local community. Faith groups deliver almost 90% of primary education
in Lesotho, 80% in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and 70% in Sierra Leone.
Fragile states
I was particularly pleased to see the reference in Nita Lowey’s Bill on fragile states and the focus on support for countries affected by conflict or crises. One-third of the world’s poor people and some 28 million of the 72 million children out of school live in fragile states. It poses a special challenge but there are solutions. In Afghanistan, US and UK funding for the Afghanistan Reconstruction Trust Fund is supporting teacher salaries and school materials and helped get some 5.4 million children back to school. One-third of whom are girls.
Country plans, systems and predictability
There are certain characteristics that make funding education more effective.
The first is, whoever the deliverer is and however the funding is channelled, to
be a part of a country-owned plan - a characteristic recognized by the MCC, for
example. And to be coordinated with other donors so our impact is greater than
the sum of our parts. The Fast Track Initiative - which I hope we will hear more
about from Desmond - has established the framework for supporting country-owned
plans that donors can back in a coordinated way. This is why I’m very pleased
the Presidential Basic Education Initiative specifically mentioned the Education
Fast Track Initiative.
Another characteristic is the need for long-term, predictable financing.
Unpredictable aid can decrease utilization of basic school materials by 70%. The
most important cost in an education system is not the physical buildings, the
creation of the national curriculum or even school material, but training and
paying teachers year on year. A Government with uncertain funding can’t afford
the risk of investing in and taking on additional teachers on its payroll.
I know committing to long term funding is an issue for the U.S. system of
appropriations. I would only leave you with the thought that PEPFAR has
committed funds for five years. But when it offers a 20 year old HIV positive
person in Ethiopia ARV treatment, that is not a moral commitment for five years
but for the rest of that 25 year old’s otherwise natural remaining life. Which
in Ethiopia could be another 22 years. You cannot offer life saving treatment to
someone one day and not the next, especially knowing that the national
government may not be able to step in and fill the breach. Offering a generation
of children an education is a shorter commitment and will enable them to pay for
their children’s education and perhaps take on the burden of paying for HIV/AIDS
as well.
I applaud Nita, her fellow members of Congress and the US administration for the
commitment they have demonstrated to education. There is a real opportunity for
the U.S. to lead the world. And the leadership of the U.S. is more than about
money - the involvement of the U.S. could strengthen the focus of the whole
development community on results, performance and improved educational outcomes,
leading to employment and growth. And it could leverage more donors from all
over the world with convening power that only the U.S. has. Only a country like
the U.S. with its resources, values of equal opportunity and international
leadership could transform the prospects of the next generation of Africans,
with an American offer to the world of every child in school.
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