By far, the largest source of funding for education in developing countries is national budgets. This is why we were so thrilled at GPE’s Financing Conference on February 2, when, one by one, more than 50 developing country heads of states and ministers announced their pledges to education, reaching a combined US$110 billion for the period 2018 - 2020.
This was a large increase over the previous 3 years, which had gathered domestic commitments of US$80 billion.
A process started a few months ago
Obtaining pledges from partner developing countries for the GPE replenishment campaign was an exercise over several months. First, the GPE Secretariat consulted with focal points from the ministries of education in each of the 65 partner countries to develop and agree a process for these pledges.
They were asked to complete pledge forms by providing data on their actual education expenditures for 2014-2017 as well as information on their forecasted spending on education from 2018 through 2020.
The requested data covered: total public recurrent expenditure (including debt and service payments), total public capital expenditure, interest and debt service, public recurrent education expenditure, and public capital education expenditure.
Although the pledge forms asked for data on both capital and recurrent expenditure targets, the pledges captured for GPE’s replenishment were based only on recurrent expenditure targets for education between 2018 and 2020, to capture the volume of a country’s domestic discretionary resources committed to education.
We felt that using recurrent spending would give a clearer picture of how government revenue is being channeled, as they typically exclude large donor-funded projects, which are usually recorded in the capital/development budget.
Ministries of Education were encouraged to work with their colleagues at the ministries of Finance in setting their targets, so that such targets were rooted in the country processes, involving the partners in the local education groups.
Arriving at a global figure in US dollars
On the day of the Financing Conference in Dakar, an aggregate figure including every developing country pledge was calculated (the US$110 billion). It was converted from national currencies to U.S. dollars at a fixed exchange rate date of January 31, 2018.
On the GPE website, we have posted the developing country pledges in domestic currency only, since partner countries do not have control over the exchange rate market and should be held accountable for the political commitments they made to their country’s citizens and advocacy partners in their local currencies only.
We have also included the detailed pledge forms submitted by the countries, and a methodology note developed by the GPE Secretariat detailing the pledge data collection, analysis, and aggregation.
Pledge monitoring
Over the coming three years, the GPE Secretariat will track progress against each country’s projected targets on an annual basis, in alignment with indicator 10 in GPE’s results framework, which tracks public spending on education as a share of total public expenditure.
This indicator aims to assess the proportion of developing country partners that have increased their public expenditure on education, or maintained sector spending at 20% or more of total public spending. The annual Results Report will include information gathered for indicator 10 and the other 36 indicators of the results framework.
Developing countries show the way for education financing
GPE encourages developing countries to increase their share of education spending to 20% of their overall budget.
Of the developing country governments who made pledges at the Financing Conference in Dakar, over two-thirds will be on track to achieve or maintain education spending at or above 20% of their total public spending by 2020.
These increased domestic commitments, along with resources from external partners, will go a long way in ensuring that more children can go to school and learn.