Budget analysis: What Why How?

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Budget analysisWhat Why How?
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What is a Budget?

•  The budget is a plan outlining what to spend
  money on, and where to get the money from.
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• The budget reflects a governments social and
  economic policy priorities by translating
  policies into decisions on how funds should be
  collected and spent.
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• Understanding the budget is critical to
  understanding the planning choices made by the
  government and for holding governments to account
  over their policy commitments.

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The importance of budgets

• A governments budget directly or indirectly
  affects all citizens but particularly the
  poorest and most marginalised.
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• Even when funds are allocated to pro-poor
  policies, money does not always reach the
  beneficiaries due to poor management.
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• Budget work is an important tool for advocacy
  efforts to hold governments accountable
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Budget analysis intends to

• challenge education policy and budgets
• advocate for increased and efficient use of
  resources 
• improve transparency and accountability in
  educations systems
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• influence decision making processes and
  expenditure 

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Why this interest?

• Growing recognition that popular participation in
  budget processes can improve effective and
  accountability.
• Democratization and good governance agenda. 
• Decentralization has brought budgeting closer to
  the people.
• The new aid architecture with sector and budget
  support.
•  Donors need us!!

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What does the budget tell us?

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• Adequacy is it enough?
• Priority compared to other areas?
• Equity fairly allocated?
• Efficiency (spent and spent well?)
• Effectiveness (spent on right thing or better
  used elsewhere?)

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Budgets at different levels

•  Local level
• school budgets
• local government budgets
• district education office budget
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• National level
• national budgets
• sector budgets
• donor budgets
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Different levels.

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• International level
• donor budgets,
• IMF
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• We need to understand how budgets work at
  different levels the local, national and
  international level and between levels
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4 stages of the budget cycle.

•  1.Formulation Budget plan is put together by
  the executive branch of government
•  2. Enactment Budget plan may be debated,
  altered, and approved by the legislative.
•  3. Execution Policies of the budget are carried
  out by the government
•  4. Auditing Actual expenditures of the budget
  are accounted for and assessed for effectiveness
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What are the issues.?

•  Local Level Issues
• No capacity of school leaders, children,
  communities, PTAs and SMCs to plan, budget and
  manage resources
• SMCs not aware of their roles and
  responsibilities in relation to school finances.
•  Low capacity at district level for education
  planning.
• Disconnect between planning at school level and
  government at district level

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What are the issues.?

• School fees unaffordable
• Children have to work to pay school fees
• Poor families cannot afford to send their
  children to school
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• Decentralisation
• Schools do not have enough funds and teacher
  salaries are
• often delayed
• resources and capacities insufficient to meet
  needs of basic
• education.
• Local level disbursements are not timely and are
  unpredictable.
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What are the issues.?

• National level issues
• Education is given an insufficient share of
• the national budget. In some countries budget is
• in decline.
• Increased financing is needed
• to improve quality of education
• for particular sub-sectors (ECD, primary, sec)
• for particular inputs e.g. infrastructure
• TLMs teacher training teacher salaries

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What are the issues.?

• Need to hold government to account for its
  policies
• Access versus quality
• Bilingual education
• Commitments to increased financing
• Financing implications of Free Primary Education
• Funding from government is not sufficient.
• Fee subsidy is not sufficient to manage schools.
• Budget process is not transparent.

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• Uganda example from 20/80 to 80/20
• World Bank grant for school buildings and
  equipment to support UPE.
• Only 20 pct. reached the schools.
• Community budget monitoring reversed the trend
  80 pct. reached the schools.

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• Bangladesh

Medium Term Output Targets of the Ministry
Sl Indicator Base year (2003) 2006-07 2007-08 2008-09
1. Contact hour 768 h 843h 898h 923h
2. Teachers student ratio 155 150 150 146
3. Net enrolment rate 80 87 88 90
4. Ratio of C-in-Ed trained teacher 81 83 85 88
5. Competency rate of student 45 55 58 65
6. Rate of attendance 65 70 73 80
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• Session 2 How to get started
• Identify a problem you want to impact on think
  about your own capacity.
•  Understand the root causes of the problem.
•  Find out which policies are relevant for this
  problem.
• Identify the policy stakeholders.
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•  Identify whom to target with your advocacy.
•  Define what evidence you need.
• Build capacity of all partners at national and
  district level on budget work.
•  Analyze budget allocations to the policy. Track
  budgets.
• Document the process.
• Find out the right timing of your advocacy.
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• What can civil society do?
• Simplifying budgets and deepening the debate
• around budget policies and decisions
• Collating and disseminating budget information
• in user-friendly formats
• Providing independent critical analysis through
• monitoring of public spending
• Bringing new information to the debate

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• Providing training in budget analysis and
  advocacy
• Assisting to build a culture of accountability
• Advocating for more access to budget
  decision-making
• Mobilising stakeholders, interest groups and
  citizens
• Providing input into budget decisions through
  existing channels of access like submissions to
  legislature committees

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• Budget formulation
• In some countries there are consultation
  processes which can be used to influence the
  policy priorities
• Budget is very rarely drafted from scratch, CSOs
  can use the previous years budget to inform them
  on what the coming years policy and budget
  priorities will be.

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• Enactment
• Rapid post-budget analysis produced in a simple
  format once the budget is announced is valuable
  for legislative members responsible for approving
  the budget
• They can use this information to challenge the
  Ministry of Education/Ministry of Finance.

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• Execution
• Findings from budget tracking can be disseminated
  and shared with beneficiaries, service providers,
  policymakers and the media.
•  Auditing and assessment
• Findings from budget tracking can be used to
  compare against the findings of the independent
  audit office.

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• Uganda example
•  In Uganda education delivery is decentralised to
  the school level. SMCs and parents are involved
  in the school finances.
•  Child rights organisations trained children on
  budget monitoring skills.
•  Children developed budget monitoring tools and
  monitored budget expenditures, delivery of
  textbooks and other learning materials and
  teachers performances in the class.
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• The monitoring revealed corruption by teachers
  and has improved the school environment.
•  Children became part of the sub-committee on
  finance of their schools management committees
  and have influenced the budget to meet their
  needs (sanitary towels for girls, counselling
  services, and building of a boarding school for
  children who live far from the school).

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• Analysis primary education in Ethiopia.
• The analysis identified some bottlenecks which
  makes it impossible to improve the quality of
  teaching.
• No budget to hire new teachers.
• Budget for operational costs is 2 USD. pr.
  student pr. year. (covering blackboards, chalk,
  paper, supervision etc)

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