Transcript Role of International Aid Agencies in Educational

Role of International
Aid Agencies in
Educational
Development in India
Dr Michael Ward, Senior Education Adviser, DFID India
NUEPA M.Phil/PhD Programme,
www.schoolofeducators.com
What is Aid?
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What is Aid?
• A transfer of resources on concessional terms
– on terms that is more generous or softer
than loans obtainable in the world’s capital
markets – from rich countries to poorer
countries.
• Aid is Official Development Assistance (ODA)
and is monitored and reported on by the
Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of
the Organisation for Economic Cooperation
and Development (OECD)
• For the DAC, aid qualifies as ODA on three
criteria: must be undertaken by official
agencies, such as DFID; must be for
economic development and welfare; and
must have a grant element of 25% or more –
i.e., 100% grant or soft loan.
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How much aid
does India
receive?
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Aid to India
Aid Flows in India in constant prices,
1999=100
120000
Rs. crores
100000
80000
60000
40000
20000
0
3rd plan- 4th plan- 5th plan- 6th plan- 7th plan- 8th plan- 9th plan - 10th plan
1961-66 1969-74 1974-78 1980-84 1980-85 1985-90 1992-97 -19972002
Aid agreed
Aid receipts
Repayments (principal & interest)
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Sector Shares of Aid?
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Sector shares of aid
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Who gives aid to
India?
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Who gives aid to India?
• Multilaterals, such as the World Bank,
•
•
•
•
just over one third
Bilaterals – mainly Japan and the UK, but
also Germany, just over one third
Smaller bilaterals
Foundations, such as the Gates
Foundation
International NGOs
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History of aid to India
•
Foreign aid has for the most part been used for partfunding Plan development expenditures.
•
During the 1980s, external flows covered about 18
percent of India’s total Gross Budgetary Support for
central government ministries’ development
programmes and assistance to the states, and were
around 10% of the total public sector investment per
annum, though this has been declining in the 1990s
•
Total external aid as a percentage of GDP fell from 1.4%
in 1991-2 to less than 0.5% in 2001-2, amounting to
USD 3.57 billion.
•
With the continued rapid growth of the economy, aid had
fallen to little more than 0.1% of GDP by 2006/7.
•
Accordingly, although aid initially made an important
contribution to the government’s investment
programme, over the past ten years this has become
much less significant, and in GDP terms its quantum is
now tiny.
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Aid to Education Priorities
• Post-independence and during 1960s and
70s, focus on skills – ‘manpower
development’
• US and UK support for IITs and
Universities
• During the 1980s growing recognition
that poor quality and partial coverage of
basic education was robbing millions of
people in India access even to literacy
and numeracy
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Changing education aid
priorities
• World Conference on Education For All in
Jomtien, Thailand, 1990 was a watershed
for aid to education and developing
countries
• It pledged the attainment by 2000 of
Universal Primary Education
• Following Jomtien, international
community, led by World Bank increased
emphasis and funding of primary
education, most, but not all, major
donors followed suit
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Changing education aid
priorities
• Dakar EFA, April 2000
• Millennium Declaration and
Millennium Development
Goals, September 2000
• Paris Declaration on Donor
Harmonisation, 2004
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Primary Education in India
• National Policy on Education 1986
•
•
•
•
•
renews commitment to have all children
in school
Operation Blackboard
Jomtien, 1990
Programme of Action in 1992
Aid to education in India increased
greatly after 1990 and focused on
primary education
GoI changed its views regarding aid for
primary education and developed APEP,
BPEP and ultimately DPEP
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Primary Education in India
• DPEP supported by World Bank, EC, UK
and Netherlands focused on the most
educationally backward districts:
- Increased access;
- Improved equity – gender, SC and ST
- Improved quality
At its height DPEP covered half the country.
85% of DPEP costs funded from aid.
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Elementary Education in India
• 86th Constitutional Amendment Act
(December 2002) making education a
fundamental right for all children aged 6 to
14 years
• Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan designed to make the
Act a reality
• Right to Education Bill (December 2008?) to
secure the gains of SSA and make states
accountable for free and compulsory
education
• World Bank, DFID and EC $2billion for SSA
(10% of the total expenditure 2001/02 to
2009/10)
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Why does India want aid for
education
• In the 1980s and 1990s, India faced real
financial constraints
• India wanted to learn from other
countries
• Technical assistance was necessary for
key areas such as curriculum, materials
development, assessment
• Joint supervision of education
programmes, with external scrutiny,
helped to increase the rigour of
programme management and
implementation
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Benefits of aid to education in
india
• GoI is responsible for policy, but aid
funded programmes have helped to
shape the direction and enrich this,
particularly in terms of programme
design.
• APEP, NFE (UNICEF), Shiksha Karmi
Project (1987) and Lok Jumbish (1992)
in Rajasthan (Sweden and UK), Mahila
Samakhya (Netherlands and now UK),
Bihar Primary Education project have all
contributed to the design of DPEP and
SSA
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Benefits of aid to education in
india
• Financial support in the 1990s made
expansion of primary education possible
• International support for Jomtien, Dakar and
MDGs have impacted on priorities in Indian
education
• Joint Review Missions are effective vehicles
for policy dialogue, supervision and reflection
on what is working, involving the Centre and
States
• Focus on access giving way to emphasis on
quality, technically supported by donors – aid
accelerates the pace of change
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Changing modalities of aid to
education
• Early years: stand alone
•
•
•
•
projects, such as development
of a single institution (IIT)
Broad-based projects: teacher
training and textbooks
Programmes
Sub-sector programmes
Sector Wide Approaches
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CHARACTERISTICS OF FINANCIAL AID
Aid Form
Conditionality
Earmarking
Accountability
BoP Support
Macro
None or nominal
None or nominal
Debt Relief
Macro and budget
None or poverty
virtual fund (e.g.
Uganda)
Government
systems
General Budget
Support
Macro and budget
None or nominal
Government
systems
Sector Budget
Support
Sectoral
To sector or within
sector
Government
systems
Projects using
Govt systems
(Sector and)
Project
Project
Government
system
Projects using
parallel systems
Limited by low
ownership?
Total
Donor
www.schoolofeducators.com
Future of aid to education in
India
• India is an aid paradox: it has lots of
poverty and a low quality basic education
system, having high rates of non
attendance and low achievement levels
but aid is tiny relative to the
Government’s own fiscal effort and
economic growth and middle income
status will make it hard for donors to
justify aiding the country.
• India is a country where aid to education
is effective, much more so than many
other developing countries
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Some research questions: a
PhD in aid to education?
• What has been the impact of aid to
education?
• How is it that primary education has
been prioritised and now secondary
education, but not literacy or early
childhood?
• What international experience and best
practice has been brought in and
adopted by developing countries through
aid?
• Has aid been able to influence or enrich
India’s education policy?
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Some research questions: a
PhD in aid to education?
• Has aid helped to leverage allocations to
education?
• Has aid helped to improve the quality of
education?
• Between the tax payer in a rich country
and the poor child in India there stands
two enormous bureaucracies – the aid
agency and the recipient government –
how much of the tax payers’ dollars have
benefited the poor child inside or outside
a school in India?
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