This is the third publication in our series of IDA21 commentary. See our first brief on a bigger and better IDA21 here, and our blog on the role of IDA for hunger and nutrition here.
"I've seen girls achieving amazing things when they're educated; I want that for all my friends." These are the words of a fourteen-year-old boy from Jamshoro in Pakistan, who is not going to school.
Millions of children just like this boy from Pakistan are missing out on their right to education. Given this reality, and the fact that funding for the sector is scarce, leaders must take full advantage of every opportunity to raise resources for education – including the World Bank's International Development Association's 21st replenishment (IDA21) happening this year.
Covid, conflict, and the climate crisis are crippling governments’ ability to fund education
250 million children are currently out of school.
70% of children in low- and middle-income countries are unable to read and understand a simple text.
40 million children have their schooling disrupted by climate change every year.
The reality is stark. Governments around the world are struggling to fund their education systems after years of pressure on their finances. A combination of the Covid-19 pandemic, increasing frequency and intensity of climate disasters, growing unsustainable debt burdens, and shrinking aid for education has meant that governments are having to make impossible decisions about what to fund with shrinking budgets. Right now, half of the world live in a country that is spending more on debt interest payments than they are on education or health.
The future isn’t looking any brighter. Low economic growth projections mean it will remain difficult for lower income countries to raise domestic revenues for education. Further, pressures on aid budgets – for example, costs to host refugees in donor countries – are expected to remain elevated, threatening the level of assistance that will actually reach lower income countries in coming years.
IDA: not a silver bullet, but a critical piece of the puzzle
IDA is the world’s largest concessional fund, offering grants and zero/low interest loans to 75 of the world’s poorest countries. It provides crucial financing for the realisation of children’s rights including for education, health, nutrition and protection.
For many countries - including Pakistan, for example - IDA is the biggest donor to education. In fact, IDA is the biggest donor to education across the entire continent of Africa and the second biggest donor to education in the world (the biggest in the world if you remove scholarship costs that are spent within donor countries).
In 2022, IDA delivered over $2.5 billion worth of grants and concessional loans for education, with the majority of that funding dedicated to supporting basic and secondary education. In comparison, many other major donors - such as Germany and France - spend a disproportionate amount of their aid to education on tertiary education, most of which is spent on scholarship costs within their own countries.
Figure 1. Priorities for the Top 10 Donors to Education
Source: OECD CRS Database 2022
IDA focuses on the most marginalised
In 2022, 75% of IDA funding for education went to Sub-Saharan Africa. The region is home to over half of the world’s primary-age-out-of-school-children, has the lowest level of government education spending per capita, and has the highest level of learning poverty in the world (89.4% of children cannot read or understand a simple text, compared to the global average of 70%). The third largest recipient of IDA education funding is the Democratic Republic of Congo, where 97% of children cannot read or understand a simple text.
It is difficult to overstate IDA’s role in supporting access to education across Africa. In 2022, around a third (34%) of all aid to education delivered across the African continent came from IDA. According to the OECD Creditor Reporting System, it was a top 3 donor to education for 33 out of 54 African countries (61%), and the single largest donor to education for 16 of these countries. Given the returns from every additional year of schooling in Sub-Saharan Africa are 13.5% (the highest in the world), investment in education through IDA is crucial to ending extreme poverty in Africa.
IDA is complementary to other global education funds
IDA plays a unique role in the education financing architecture and can help mobilise funding from the other global education funds.
For example, in Yemen, IDA and the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) have partnered to ensure continued school functioning in both the North and South of the country in collaboration with Save the Children, UNICEF and the World Food Program (WFP). With over 600,00 children reached, this transformational project also provides support to the Ministry of Education for the development of a National Alternative Learning Strategy. It is crucial that these major funders continue to work together to ensure alignment and deliver change for children.
Hope on the horizon: A bigger and better IDA21
2024 marks the 21st replenishment round for IDA. Given the scale of the challenge to meet our global development objectives – including for education - it is clear that the world needs a bigger and better IDA that is fit for the future. Save the Children support calls from the World Bank for donor contributions to increase by a minimum of 25% for IDA21 – an important step towards the longer-term ambition of significantly scaling up IDA.
But a bigger IDA alone is not enough. Quality is just as important as quantity, and we must ensure IDA21 delivers a better IDA for children around the world, including for their education. This requires:
- Ensuring education is prioritised within the ‘people’ special theme. The five ‘special themes’ (i.e. focus areas) for IDA21 were announced at the World Bank Spring Meetings in April: people, prosperity, planet, digital, and infrastructure. As more detail is developed under each of these special themes over the coming months, the World Bank and government shareholders must ensure education retains a strong focus under the ‘people’ pillar with ambitious policy commitments.
- Maintain support for refugee communities via IDA's Window for Host Communities and Refugees (WHR). The WHR is a crucial source of funding to support both refugees and host communities in IDA countries, including for education. The number of school aged refugees has nearly doubled from 7.5 million in 2018 to 14.8 million in 2022 - half of which are out of school. It is therefore crucial that the World Bank continue to support access to education for refugee children through IDA's WHR.
- Improving the quality of IDA reporting. The World Bank are exploring changes to IDA reporting, including via the new corporate scorecard and the results measurement framework. There is an opportunity to improve both transparency and spending efficiency via these changes by ensuring (1) IDA reporting focuses on outcomes rather than inputs; (2) real-time impact data is published to ensure effective and responsive spending; (3) data is disaggregated by age to assess outcomes for children specifically.
- Improving the speed of disbursement of IDA funding, particularly in fragile and conflict-affected settings. Around a third (38 out of 103 projects) of IDA education projects are in fragile or conflict-affected settings where it is especially crucial that funds are delivered quickly. However, disbursing funds from the World Bank can be a lengthy process. The Bank should implement reforms to allow for more efficient disbursements by reforming the eligibility criteria and trigger points to access different windows.
Throughout this year, Save the Children will continue to call on governments to step up and deliver a bigger and better IDA for the realisation of children’s rights around the world.
