FINANCING EDUCATION IN SUB-SAHARAN AFRICA: Meeting the Challenges of Expansion, Equity and Quality 6 November, 2012 Olivier LABE Regional Education Workshop for Southern and Eastern African countries Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), 6 Nov., 2012

2 Outline  Financing Education in Sub-Saharan Africa, Progress during the 2000s  Financing Teachers in Sub-Saharan Africa  Private financing of education in Sub-Saharan Africa  Financing Quality of Education and Policy Trade-Offs

3 Significant progress during the 2000s  Since 2000, there has been remarkable progress in educational development in SSA  Growth in the number of students ( )  Primary: 86.8 million to million (+48%)  Secondary: 22.0 million to 36.3 million (+65%)  Tertiary: 2.5 million to 4.5 million (+80%)  Increased access to school  Increased primary school completion

4 Increased primary school completion ( )

5 Increased commitment: Robust growth in investments in public education  Education expenditure in SSA grew by 6% each year on average since 2000.

6 Increased public education expenditure as a percentage of GDP  Education expenditure grew at a faster rate than GDP in many countries since 2000.

7 Education expenditure grew at a faster rate than primary enrolment 1999-PPP$257, % of GDPpc PPP$683, % of GDPpc – PPP$43, % of GDPpc PPP$83, % of GDPpc – 21.1

8 Prioritizing universal primary education  Case of Burundi  Increased total education budget – from 3.2% to 8.3% of GDP since 1999  Shifted resources to primary education 38% (1999) - 53% (2009) School fee abolition in 2005  As a result, primary enrolment tripled since 1999 GER: 49% in 1999 – 147% in 2009 Out-of-school children dropped from 723,000 to 10,000 during the same period.

9 Disbursement of ODA needs to be improved  In SSA, ODA increased from 11 to 33 billion between 2002 and 2008 (from 1 to 2.6 billion for education ODA)  Increases to ODA for education are unlikely in current economic climate. Need to focus on rationalizing use of all available resources.  Between , 9% (or US$221 million) of committed ODA went unspent on average.

10 However, still a long way to EFA…  Region faces persistent external constraints:  Demographic pressure 32 million primary school-age children are out of school Fast population growth rate - 2.4% annually 77 million additional student places needed by 2030  Economic constraints Recent economic downturn Weak domestic resource mobilization  Increased and diversified demand for education Increasing demand for post-primary levels of education Increased demand for good quality of education  Prioritization and policy choices are required

11 Financing teachers in SSA  In SSA, the number of teacher is increasing :  Primary : 2,8 million teachers in 2008 ; 620,000 in 1970  Secondary : 1,4 million teachers in 2008 ; 180,000 in 1970  Yet, teachers needs remain high :  Increasing primary enrolment  Need to reduce the average number of pupil per teacher which has risen from around 37 in 1990 to 45 in 2008  UIS estimates that at least one million additional teachers will be needed in order to provide sufficient quality education at the primary level between 2008 and 2015  A financial and management challenges for SSA education systems :  Train, Recruit, Deploy and Manage a huge number of teachers  Ensure a level of remuneration that attracts quality teachers and maintains their motivation  Ensure the sustainability of teaching costs in the overall context of budgetary constraints

12 Spending on teaching personnel: a key expenditure whose weight varies with the level of education… Teacher salaries as a proportion of all recurrent spending on education (%) in 35 SSA countries, by education level (2008 or most recent year)

13 Remuneration of teachers: average teacher remuneration varies greatly from one country to another Average salary of public primary teachers in 36 SSA countries, in unit of GDP per capita, by GDP per capita in $US (2009 or most recent year)

14 Trend of teacher salaries : the case of primary education Decreasing trend in average teacher salaries as a multiple of GDP per capita in public primary schools in Africa,

15 Trend of teacher salaries: factors explaining the decrease in the average teacher salary in primary schools in Africa  The economic downturn between 1980 and 1990 accelerated the decrease in teacher salaries :  structural adjustment programs prescribed by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank ;  some countries chose to freeze recruitment of civil servants and/or freeze their promotion, and/or the revision of salary scales.  A voluntary policy of resuming recruitment in recent years :  In the ’s, certain countries started a voluntary policy of lowering average salaries, in order to allow for massive teacher recruitment ;  three types of responses were commonly identified during : non-francophone countries : adjustments were made (1) by lowering the level of qualification required to teach and (2) by recruiting teachers without professional training, at a salary lower than that of their colleagues who had training. francophone countries (and few other countries): (3)subventions from the government to paid part of community teacher salaries and/or creation of a new teacher status.

16 Sustainability of teacher remuneration policies  Government financing of community teachers  Increased teacher salaries in order to better respond to their needs, to ensure the provision of education of better quality, for equity reasons, etc  Ex. Uganda (salaries of qualified and non qualified teachers at the beginning and at the end of their career, )  The attractiveness of salaries re-examined

17 Role of household expenditure Household and government expenditure on education as a percentage of GDP and household expenditure as a proportion of all expenditure on education, most recent year

18 Role of household expenditure (2) Households contribute the equivalent of 30% of all primary education resources compared to just 22% for the tertiary level.

19 Conceptual framework of private household expenditure on education

20 Increasing demand for quality of education  More evidence about low quality of education through learning achievement  Awareness and demand for quality is growing

21 EFA without quality is an hollow achievement  EFA target says “Ensuring that by 2015 all children…have access to and complete free and compulsory primary education of good quality.”  There is a need for an indicator that measures quality EFA

22 Cost-effective approach to improving the quality of education  Improving quality is an urgent issue  Need to rationalize resources by focusing on cost-effective interventions  Low cost and high impact interventions: Assign best teaches to 1 st grade Assurance of time-on-task Enforce official length of school year Enforce school attendance policies Provision of learning materials (high impact if currently not available)  Despite resource constraints, efficiency gains are possible without compromising the quality of education.

23 Evidence-based planning  Education finance data is often very limited in SSA  An acute need for credible education finance data for planning and monitoring, especially to: Strategically shift resources to the most needed and priority areas; Allocate resources to ensure equity; Identify cost-effective interventions; and Monitor the effectiveness of the education policies.  Data on costs and financing is the key to provide answers to these trade-off questions in each country.  Resource allocation by sector  Remuneration policies  Private expenditures (especially household spending)  Expenditure on quality inputs

24 For more information… To download the report, see: For print copies, contact UIS publications: To find more finance data, visit the UIS Data Centre: