Role%20of%20International%20Aid%20Agencies%20in%20Educational%20Development%20in%20India

1
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

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What is Aid?
3
What is Aid?

• A transfer of resources on concessional terms
  on terms that is more generous or softer than
  loans obtainable in the worlds 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
6
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

10
History of aid to India

• Foreign aid has for the most part been used for
  part-funding Plan development expenditures.
• During the 1980s, external flows covered about 18
  percent of Indias 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 governments
  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

13
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
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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
  Governments 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 Indias
  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?