 RESOURCES FOR EDUCATION

Public expenditure on education

Government spending on all levels of education together as a share of gross national product (GNP) rose slightly during the 1980s for the world as a whole. The following graph shows that sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean were the two regional exceptions to this trend.

Furthermore, in these two regions as well as in OECD/Europe, the proportion of government budgets allocated to education generally declined during the 1980s, indicating that education was accorded less priority for funding. Still, despite enormous economic difficulties, sub-Saharan Africa spends a greater proportion - on average some 15 per cent - of the government budget on education than does any other region. Some countries such as Ghana, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda have devoted as much as one-fourth of their government budget to education.

Unfortunately, it is too early to see if the jomtien Conference has induced increased government spending on education.

Of course it should be borne in mind that public expenditure on education is only part of the story, especially with regard to primary schooling and other forms of basic education. In many countries, local communities construct and maintain school buildings and cover other costs of schooling. Private associations and religious groups also provide basic education programmes of various kinds. Families, too, no matter how poor, often make a significant financial sacrifice to pay fees and purchase uniforms, books and materials for family members to attend educational courses - and then forego the income their labour could have earned.

Soldiers versus books

The UNESCO Constitution states that "it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed." This affirmation by the world community in 1945 is still valid today: real security requires a well educated world population. Yet one-third of the 116 countries for which 1989/1990 data are available spent more on the military than on education. It is still too early to see to what extent the "peace dividend" arising from the end of the cold war may be used to strengthen education and other aspects of human development.

The growing priority of primary education

Primary education accounts for about one-half of all financial resources that governments invest in education. The regions are relatively similar in this respect; the shares range from 43.7 per cent of educational spending in OECD/Europe to 52.2 per cent in the Arab States. During the 1980s, spending on primary education grew relative to spending on other levels of education.

While the annual cost of educating a primary pupil is sur- prisingly similar the world over (between 1/7 and 1/10 of GNP per inhabitant), there are tremendous disparities in how Much countries spend on primary school pupils in relation to secondary and university students. For example, in OECD/Europe, educating one university student costs as much as educating three primary school pupils, while the corresponding figure in Latin America and East Asia is six or seven primary school pupils, and in sub-Saharan Africa forty primary school pupils. This imbalance of resources devoted to university education weakens the foundation of the educational pyramid at the expense of primary

education. Nevertheless, it is encouraging to observe that the disparity between expenditure on primary education versus higher education diminished in the 1980s.

Percentage distribution of recurrent expenditure on primary education by purpose

        
                                                                                         ALL
        Purpose          Sub-Saharan    Arab     East Asia/   South   Latin America/   DEVELOPING
                            Africa     States     Oceania      Asia     Caribbean      COUNTRIES
        
        No. of countries:    14           3         2           2           10             31
        
                                                    
        
        Scholarships         0.2         0.3       0.2        0.6          0.8            0.4
        
        Teaching materials   3.7         1.3       0.8        0.1          1.3            1.4
        
        Administration       2.5          0       17.6       22.8          8.4           10.2
        
        Teacher emoluments  92.3        95.4      74.7       72.8         82.3           83.6
        
        Other                1.3          3        6.7        3.8          7.2            4.4
        
                                                    
                             100        100        100        100         100            100
        
        Source:   Los  depenses  d'enseignement dons le monde: evolution passee et  perspective  a 
        moyen terme, Division of Statistics, UNESCO, Paris, 1992.

Donor support for basic education

As regards external funding for basic education, in the past only about one cent of every aid dollar was spent on basic education. Moreover, development assistance to education has often taken the form of compartmentalized projects, relying heavily on foreign exchange, imports of materials and technical assistance, and shying away from long-term commitments and funding of recurrent costs.

A critical question in monitoring Jomtien follow-up is whether, and to what extent, the expected mobilization of international support to basic education is actually occurring.

It is still too early to give a definite answer, but the information available so far is encouraging. A recent study supported by UNESCO and OECD examined the response of major bilateral and multilateral donors to Jomtien and found that aid disbursements for basic education by many bilateral donors have significantly increased in comparison to assistance levels of the mid 1980s. Some bilateral donors have been encouraged by the Jomtien Conference to support basic education for the first time. Moreover, the Conference also prompted changes in the policy of many donors with regard to basic education; for example, Germany and Netherlands have drawn up new education sector policy papers favouring more resources and the use of new mechanisms for support to basic education.

Multilateral agencies have led the shift of aid to education generally, and to basic education particularly, even before the World Conference, and seem to be influencing other donors through the visibility of their activities. Between 1987 and 1991, the volume of aid committed to all levels of education by five major multilateral organizations increased four-fold. Support for basic education is less easy to identify. However, UNICEF and the World Bank raised their commitments to basic education (UNICEF from US$46.1 million in 1989 to US$79.3 million in 1991; the World Bank from US$370 million in 1989 to US$849 million in 1991), although the increases in actual disbursements to date are less spectacular. Provisional UNDP data indicate significantly greater allocations to basic education by many countries in the framework of UNDP's 5th programme cycle beginning in the early 1990s.

UNESCO, while not a funding agency itself, disbursed some US$26.2 million in 1991 on basic education, as compared with US$20.3 million in 1989. Moreover, the volume of UNESCO's extra-budgetary activities in basic education rose from US$10.9 million for 62 projects in 1988- 89 to US$28.5 million for 137 projects in 1990-91, the majority of them in Africa.