»Nur ein Drittel der Weltgemeinschaft erreicht die UN-Bildungsziele«

The 2015 EFA Global Monitoring Report provides a complete assessment of progress towards the Education for All goals established in 2000 at the World Education Forum in Dakar, Senegal. The report takes stock of whether the world achieved the EFA goals and whether EFA partners upheld their commitments. It also explains possible determinants of the pace of progress and identifies key lessons for shaping a post-2015 global
education agenda.

Taking stock of progress towards EFA

Goal 1 – Early childhood care and education

Expanding and improving comprehensive early childhood care and education, especially for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children

• Despite a drop in child mortality rates of nearly 50%, 6.3 million children under the age of 5 died in 2013 from causes that are mostly preventable.
• Progress in improving child nutrition has been considerable. Yet globally, one in four children are still short for their age – a sign of chronic deficiency in essential nutrients.
• In 2012, 184 million children were enrolled in pre-primary education worldwide, an increase of nearly two-thirds since 1999.

Goal 2 – Universal primary education

Ensuring that by 2015 all children, particularly girls, children in difficult circumstances and those belonging to ethnic minorities, have access to and complete free and compulsory primary education of good quality

• The primary school net enrolment ratio was 84% in 1999 and is estimated to reach 93% in 2015.
• Net enrolment ratios improved significantly, rising at least 20 percentage points from 1999 to 2012 in 17 countries, 11 of which were in sub-Saharan Africa.
• While some increases in enrolment ratios are evident, nearly 58 million children were out of school in 2012, and progress in reducing this number has stalled.
• Despite progress in access, dropout remains an issue: in 32 countries, mostly in
  sub-Saharan Africa, at least 20% of children enrolled are not expected to reach
  the last grade.
• By the 2015 deadline, one in six children in low and middle income countries – or
  almost 100 million – will not have completed primary school.

Goal 3 – Youth and adult skills

Ensuring that the learning needs of all young people and adults are met through equitable access to appropriate learning and life skills programmes

• Reflecting improved transition rates and higher retention rates, the lower secondary gross enrolment ratio increased from 71% in 1999 to 85% in 2012. Participation in lower secondary education has increased quickly since 1999. In Afghanistan, China, Ecuador, Mali and Morocco, the lower secondary gross enrolment ratio has increased by at least 25 percentage points.
• Inequality persists in the transition from primary to secondary school. For example, in the Philippines, just 69% of primary school graduates from the poorest families continued into lower secondary, compared with 94% from the richest households.
• A majority of the 94 low and middle income countries with information have legislated free lower secondary education since 1999. Of these, 66 have constitutional guarantees and 28 enacted other legal measures. As of 2015, only a few nations charge lower secondary school fees, including Botswana, Guinea, Papua New Guinea, South Africa and the United Republic of Tanzania.

Goal 4 – Adult literacy

Achieving a 50 per cent improvement in levels of adult literacy by 2015, especially for women, and equitable access to basic and continuing education for all adults

• There are about 781 million illiterate adults. The rate of illiteracy dropped slightly, from 18% in 2000 to an estimated 14% in 2015, which means the Dakar target of halving illiteracy was not achieved.
• Only 17 out of the 73 countries with a literacy rate below 95% in 2000 had halved their illiteracy rate by 2015.
• Progress has been made towards gender parity in literacy but is not sufficient. All 43 countries where fewer than 90 women for every 100 men were literate in 2000 have moved towards parity, but none of them will have reached it by 2015.

Goal 5 – Gender equality

Eliminating gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2005, and achieving gender equality in education by 2015, with a focus on ensuring girls’ full and equal access to and achievement in basic education of good quality.

• At the primary level, 69% of the countries with data are expected to have reached gender parity by 2015. Progress is slower in secondary education, with 48% projected to be at gender parity in 2015.
• Progress in tackling severe gender disparity has been made. Between 1999 and 2012, the number of countries with fewer than 90 girls enrolled in primary school for every 100 boys fell from 33 to 16.
• Amongst out-of-school children, girls are more likely than boys never to enrol in school (48% compared with 37%), while boys are more likely to leave school (26% compared with 20%). Once enrolled, girls are more likely to reach the upper grades.
• In sub-Saharan Africa, the poorest girls remain the most likely to never attend primary school. In Guinea and Niger in 2010, over 70% of the poorest girls had never attended primary school, compared with less than 20% of the richest boys.

Goal 6 – Quality of education

Improving all aspects of the quality of education and ensuring excellence of all so that recognized and measurable learning outcomes are achieved by all, especially in literacy, numeracy and essential life skills

• Pupil/teacher ratios declined in 83% of the 146 countries with data at the primary education level. In one-third of the countries with data, however, less than 75% of primary school teachers are trained up to national standards.
• At the lower secondary education level, 87 of the 105 countries with data have a pupil/teacher ratio below 30:1.
• In 1990, 12 learning assessments were conducted according to national standards, but by 2013 the number had increased to 101.

Financing education

• Many countries have increased spending on education. Between 1999 and 2012, 38 countries increased their spending by 1 percentage point or more of national income.
• Education is not a priority in many national budgets. As a share of government spending, expenditure on education has changed little since 1999 and at 13.7% in 2012, falls short of the recommended 15% to 20% target.
• Governments and donors have neglected to fund EFA goals outside of primary education. As a result, pre-primary education and adult literacy, in particular, remain underfunded.
• Donors have largely failed on their commitment to deliver aid more effectively, achieving just 1 of 13 aid effectiveness targets. Effective international coordination and distribution of aid to education have been almost entirely absent.

Were the 12 strategies from the Dakar Framework sufficient to contribute to the five key medium-term results expected of an effective EFA architecture? In assessing whether political commitment to EFA was reaffirmed and sustained throughout the period, it is clear that the EFA movement suffered once the MDGs became the dominant development agenda. The result was excessive emphasis on universal primary education. UNESCO proved cautious in its approach to high-level political engagement, so the forum of choice for global policy actors in education shifted away from the High-Level Group. The assumption that global and regional conferences are powerful enough to hold countries and the international community to account has not proved to be valid.

Since 2000, diverse types of knowledge, evidence and expertise have been communicated and used. Much new evidence and many policy initiatives and research advances were not necessarily related to EFA activities, and too often came from outside the education sector. While some of the new evidence did reach EFA coordination meetings, it did not appear to be used for policy-making.

Since 2000, there has been no shortage of national education plans. However, it is less clear that new knowledge or tools have helped develop appropriate capacity for evidence-based national policy-making or that they have strengthened national EFA policy and practice.

A key expected result of the Dakar process was that credible plans would help effectively mobilize financial resources for EFA. The rise in domestic education spending in low income countries was promising, but its main cause was increased domestic resource mobilization. International aid expanded considerably in absolute terms, yet its volume fell well short of the assessed need.

The decision to introduce an independent monitoring and reporting mechanism of progress towards the EFA goals may have been critical in keeping EFA high on the agenda. But improved reporting was only possible thanks to major improvement in data quality and analysis, often supported by EFA partners.

Efforts since 2000 to advance education around the world became almost synonymous with ensuring that every child is in school. As this EFA – and MDG – target of universal access to primary education was more applicable to the poorest countries, other nations found it less relevant. Meanwhile, the focus on universal primary enrolment meant less attention to other crucial areas, such as education quality, early childhood care and education, and adult literacy.

Overall, not even the target of universal primary education was reached, let alone the more ambitious EFA goals, and the most disadvantaged continue to be the last to benefit. But there have been achievements that should not be underestimated. The world has advanced by 2015 beyond where it would have been if the trends of the 1990s had persisted. And monitoring education progress since Dakar has also improved
and expanded.

In the end, the EFA movement can be characterized as a qualified success, even if EFA partners may have not collectively lived up to their commitments. But a lesson reemerging over the past 15 years is that, while technical solutions are important, gaining political influence and traction is of even greater significance, particularly to realize the scale of reform and action required to achieve EFA at the national level. The current discussions on the post-2015 agenda may be offering just such a chance.

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