Budget analysis: What Why How?

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

The importance of budgets: A government’s budget directly or indirectly affects all citizens – but particularly the poorest and most marginalised. Even when funds are allocated to pro-poor policies, money does not always reach the beneficiaries due to poor management. Budget work is an important tool for advocacy efforts to hold governments accountable

Budget analysis intends to: challenge education policy and budgets advocate for increased and efficient use of resources improve transparency and accountability in educations systems influence decision making processes and expenditure

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!!

What does the budget tell us? 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?)

Budgets at different levels: Local level –school budgets –local government budgets –district education office budget National level –national budgets –sector budgets –donor budgets

Different levels…. International level –donor budgets, –IMF We need to understand how budgets work at different levels – the local, national and international level and between levels

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

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

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 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.

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;

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.

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.

Bangladesh: Medium Term Output Targets of the Ministry SlIndicatorBase year (2003) Contact hour768 h843h898h923h 2.Teachers student ratio1:551:50 1:46 3.Net enrolment rate80%87%88%90% 4.Ratio of C-in-Ed trained teacher81%83%85%88% 5.Competency rate of student45%55%58%65% 6.Rate of attendance65%70%73%80%

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.

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.

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

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

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 year’s budget to inform them on what the coming year’s policy and budget priorities will be.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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)