Millennium Development Goal 2: Education for All

Presentation in the context of the minor “International Development”, Hogeschool Rotterdam, 29 March 2009

Millennium Development Goals

MDG 1: End poverty and hungerMDG2: Universal educationMDG3: Gender equalityMDG4: Child HealthMDG5: Maternal HealthMDG6: Combat HIV/AIDSMDG7: Environmental sustainabilityMDG8: Global partnership

Education MDG

MDG 2: Every child should be able to complete a full cycle of primary education by 2015

MDG 3: Gender parity in primary and secondary education by 2015 (gender parity: number of girls divided by the number of boys)

What have we achieved?

Since 2000, 40 million more children in school. Still, there are 75 million children out of school

MDG3 was missed: only one third of all countries have gender parity, though more girls are going to school than in 2000

Netherlands and MDG2 +3

Ministry of Foreign Affairs: 13% of development budget: € 690 million in 2009

Different ways of fundingBilateral: directly to country (55%)Multilateral: World Bank and UNNon Governmental Organisations: in Netherlands and abroad

Case study: Zambia

Education in Zambia

Zambia has made good progress in primary education

Enrolment grades 1-72000: 1.6 million pupils2008: 2.9 million pupils

On track for MDG2: universal primary education

Challenging the average

Although Zambia does well on average, there are disparities

Regional: rural - urbanGender: boys - girlsPost-primary education: as from grade 9

Quality: a concern

Children are at school, but there is insufficient learning.

National Assessment Test: only one third of the children in grade 5 meets minimum requirements for maths and English

Causes: shortage of teachers, classrooms and textbooks, shift system, poor inspection

What does Zambia do?

In their national education plan focus on:

Recruitment of teachers in districts with a high pupil/teacher ratio (sometimes over 100:1!)

Distribution of textbooks Construction of classrooms Reviewing the curriculum

Change is difficult

It is not easy to get results: Lack of capacity and motivation:

low salaries, limited career options and nepotism (“knowing people”)

Finance: Zambia is a poor country: unit cost per pupil is € 60 – in Holland over € 5000

What does the Embassy do?Financial support to the Ministry of

Education: € 20 million in 2009

Lead donor: consultation with MoE and donors; field visits; research; managing funds for other agencies

Policy advice

No Dutch experts: there are qualified Zambians