Use education aid for recurring costs

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By Takafumi Miyake (China Daily)
Updated: 2008-07-10 07:34

Across the world, many children still cannot even receive primary education. According to the United Nations, one out of every eight school-age children in developing countries does not go to elementary school. I urge Japan to put particular emphasis on providing support in this area.

Behind the low school enrollment rate in developing countries is poverty. Even if tuition is free, parents need to pay for such expenses as textbooks, uniforms and transportation. Rather than sending their children to school, poor parents, against their better judgment, tend to have their children work or help out with chores.

Another major problem is the low pay for school teachers. The fact is that a quarter of teachers around the world are not even paid enough wages to support "minimum cultural living." For example, in Phnom Penh, a minimum of $150 a month is needed for the average household to make ends meet, but teachers are paid an average of $30 a month.

Furthermore, delays in payments are not uncommon. That is why there are many teachers who teach during the morning and engage in side businesses in the afternoon, such as selling ice cream to children in the schoolyard.

One of the eight UN Millennium Development Goals agreed upon by world leaders is to "achieve universal primary education" to ensure that "all boys and girls complete a full course of primary schooling" by 2015. To achieve that goal, $9 billion is needed every year in financial aid. But actually, aid from industrialized countries makes up less than one-third of that amount.

According to a trial calculation, if countries around the world put up slightly more than two days' worth of their military spending, they could come up with the needed money.

Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda had expressed his intention to focus on education as a major item on the agenda of the Group of Eight (G8) summit at Lake Toyako, Hokkaido, this week along with the environment, water and public health. However, Japan faces two problems in relation to official development assistance (ODA).

First, in addition to the fact that the total amount of Japan's ODA is declining, the ratio of the amount Japan spends on aid for primary education in total aid spending is small. In 2004, it was only about 3 percent, which is half of the average ratio of aid put up by industrialized nations.

Second, in many developing countries, personnel and other recurring expenses make up 90 percent of their educational budgets.

Meanwhile, Japan's ODA for education is mainly "project-based" and is used to support such projects as school construction, personnel development and capacity-building programs. It does not provide support for recurring expenses, such as teachers' salaries and textbooks.

I urge the Japanese government to publicly state at the G8 summit that in addition to project-based aid, it would provide aid for recurring educational expenses to countries covered by Fast-Track Initiative (FTI) system created in 2002.

The author heads the secretariat of the Japan NGO Network for Education The Asahi Shimbun

(China Daily 07/10/2008 page9)