By MARYANNE GICOBI

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Aid to education grew by $1.5 billion to hit a record high of $13.4 billion between 2015 and 2016 even as sub-Saharan Africa received the lowest share for the seventh year running.

In a policy paper written by Unesco entitled “Aid to education: A return to growth?” most of the funds were directed to basic education — with the US, UK and World Bank, who are the largest single donors, all channelling almost half of their funds to basic education.

“Yet, while aid disbursements to basic education have increased, they are still not allocated to countries most in need. The share of basic education aid to low income countries fell from 52 per cent in 2002 to 22 per cent in 2016,” notes Unesco’s Global Education Monitoring.

Total aid to secondary education in 2016 increased by 15 per cent to reach $2.6 billion, also its highest level since the data was first published on disbursements in 2002.

According to the report, in 2015 and 2016, sub-Saharan Africa received half the share it used to receive in 2002.

Not yielding results

However, according to analysts, donor nations have raised concern that support especially to education in Africa is not yielding actual results.

For example, UK aid of £1 billion ($1.4 billion) to support education in Rwanda, Tanzania and Ethiopia failed to improve children’s basic literacy and mathematics skills, though it boosted enrolment and reduced the gender gap in schools.

In Tanzania, children aged nine to 13 are unable to complete Standard Two work.

“The quality of education being provided to most children in these countries is so low that it seriously detracts from the development impact of DfiD’s educational assistance,” said the report. It also failed to find evidence of basic preconditions for learning such as student and teacher class attendance.

Many African governments struggle to pay teachers, build school infrastructure and equip schools fully with Unesco saying as much as 42 per cent of education costs need to be met by external financing.

The paper also finds that more than a third of aid allocated to lower middle-income countries came in the form of loans and that the cost of credit deters many countries from borrowing for education.

International facility

UN Secretary-General, Antonio Guterres and UN special envoy for global education Gordon Brown are advocating the establishment of an International Financing Facility for Education, to serve lower-middle-income countries.

“Donors need to focus further on basic and secondary education, as well as on the poorest countries, to fill the funding gap that is undermining progress in global education,” the director of the report, Manos Antoninis, said in a statement.

“However, this will not solve the considerable educational challenges facing lower middle-income countries,” it notes.

The share of education in World Bank loans to middle-income countries fell from 8.2 per cent in 2012 to 4.7 per cent in 2017.

Aid to basic education however increased by 17 per cent, from $5.1 billion in 2015 to $6 billion in 2016.