The Civil Society Education Fund (CSEF) is a unique and ambitious global program that supports citizen engagement in education sector policy, planning, budgeting and monitoring in GPE partner developing countries. Specifically, it aims to help civil society organizations come together to build diverse national coalitions - and to hold their governments to account for commitments to education. 

The CSEF is funded through the Global Partnership for Education with civil society seen as having a critical role in holding governments accountable –  in education sector dialogue processes at national level, on national budget allocations, tracking budgets, and advocating for better spending in education.

Tracking education funds

Many civil society coalitions around the world have focused on tracking education funds to ensure they are reaching schools as allocated, or carry out analysis with communities on whether programs are being delivered as committed. This helps foster greater transparency and accountability.

For instance, in Benin, the national coalition CBO-EPT conducted an analysis of the resources allocated to education in deprived municipalities, and produces an alternative report on education financing in 10 disadvantaged municipalities.

In the Dominican Republic, Foro Socioeducativo (FSE) manages an Education Budget Watch project, which includes analysis of education budgets disseminated to government entities, civil society, parents, teachers, the media and international organizations. Through their engagement with the “4% campaign”, led by the Coalicion Educacion Digna, FSE called for the government to meet its commitment to spend 4% of the GDP on education – which was met in 2014.

In Cambodia, NEP conducted a public expenditure tracking survey which found that on average only 65% of allocated budgets were reaching schools. On the basis of this, and consultations with schools and local officials, they successfully advocated for school payments and teacher salaries to be disbursed through the banking system.

Successes in Vanuatu and Pakistan

The CSEF program has been able to hold governments accountable by tracking the local delivery of education programs.  PCE in Pakistan organized “social audit” hearings in different districts to review transparency and accountability in the education sector.

In Vanuatu, the Education Policy Advocacy Coalition advocated for free education until grade 10 and for the recognition of kindergarten teachers. Following the national elections, these demands were adopted as policy by one of the political parties forming the coalition government.

Reducing school fees in Kenya

Kenya is another example where funding for civil society organizations led to better policies for poor families.  When public secondary school fees significantly increased to up to $1,200 per year, poor families were unable to pay and many students dropped out. The Kenyan national coalition organized a petition with 2,000 signatures to force the parliament to revert this decision. A major demonstration with more than 1,000 parents eventually led members of parliament to demand that the education minister release guidelines to reduce fees or face a censure motion in parliament. In the end, the campaign goal of reducing secondary school fees by half was achieved.

These are just a few examples of the impact of CSEF-supported work. Successes tend to look different in different countries, depending on the priorities of that country. Our work with the CSEF has proven that policy processes will ultimately only be successful and sustainable if they are driven by actors and realities on the ground. Local ownership ensures the advocacy is truly relevant, both to stakeholders and communities, and to the government and other official actors with whom they engaged.

Moving forward: supporting CSEF coalitions with a new financing toolkit

Continuing to scale up our work on securing greater domestic financing in support of education is a major strand of GCE’s advocacy work moving forward.  In collaboration with ActionAid International and Education International, GCE has recently launched Financing Matters: a toolkit on domestic financing for education.  It aims to support civil society organizations and education activists across low- and middle-income countries to advocate and campaign on issues related to financing for education.

The toolkit is adaptable to different contexts, and is framed around GCE’s approach to domestic financing for education, founded on what we call the ‘4 Ss’ approach to domestic financing: share, size, sensitivity and scrutiny of budgets and finance. GCE advocates for countries to allocate at least 20% of their national budgets, or at least 6% of their GDP to the education sector – so this tool helps coalitions advocate for a greater share of the budget for education.

But we also know the sensitivity of budgets needs to improve and that increasing citizen scrutiny is key to ensure delivery and accountability. Finally, the toolkit has a module to help education activists understand how to better advocate for increasing the overall size of the overall budget, including the education share, through increasing tax revenues.

Funded by GPE, the CSEF was set up in 2009 to support civil society to campaign for the delivery of Education For All goals: it is coordinated by the Global Campaign for Education, which has worked for many years to ensure that citizen voices can help to shape education planning and delivery. It is delivered through regional agencies (ANCEFA, ASPBAE, CLADE, ACEA) which provide programmatic support to national coalitions, and which also receive technical support from ActionAid Americas, Education International and Oxfam IBIS.