Trends in aid to education, 2002-2009 : Despite increases, aid is still vastly insufficient and fragile

Abstract

While global spending on basic education increased from 2008 to 2009, to reach US$5.6 billion, it is still vastly insufficient for the 67 million children who are still out of school. Only around US$3 billion went to the poorest countries, which is far from the US$16 billion needed annually to reach the Education for All goals in these countries. Furthermore, more than half of the increase came from loans, largely as a response to the financial crisis. Such disbursements are unlikely to be sustained. This paper highlights findings by the Education for All Global Monitoring Report team on trends in aid to education from 2002 to 2009. It is based on analysis of the most recent disaggregated aid data on disbursements from the OECD Development Assistance Committee (OECD-DAC).