Education Factsheet

Education Factsheet (497 kb)

Millennium Development Goal 2:

To achieve universal primary education

• Target 3: Ensure that by 2015 children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling.

Millennium Development Goal 3:

Promote gender equality and empower women.

• Target 4: Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and at all levels of education no later than 2015.

Key messages

• Primary education is a right and should be made available to everyone . 
  
• Good quality education is essential for enabling developing countries to achieve the level of economic growth needed to tackle poverty and make sustainable development a reality. It enables people to transform their own lives and the society in which they live. 
  
• Quality education is crucial to the achievement of all MDGs, particularly the health and economic MDGs . 
  

Facts and figures

• Global enrolment in primary education increased from 596 million in 1990, to 652 million children in 2001. But there are still 103 million children worldwide who are not in school, more than half of whom are girls. 
  
• Almost three quarters of these children are in South and West Asia or sub-Saharan Africa, regions that are given priority by DFID.
  
• Between 1997 and 2001, DFID’s bilateral commitments averaged around £150 million per year towards basic education in developing countries. 
  
• DFID’s bilateral funding for education is set to increase to over £1 billion over the period 2005/06 to 2007/08, with a further £370 million through multilateral agencies, bringing our total expected education funding over the next three years to £1.4 billion. 
  
• In Bangladesh in 1990, one in three girls and one in four boys did not go to primary school. By 2001, the proportion was reduced to about one in ten for both boys and girls.
  
• In Malawi in 1990, half of all children did not go to school. By 2001 the proportion was less than one fifth.
  
• An infant born to an educated woman is much more likely to survive until adulthood. In Africa, children of mothers who receive five years of primary education are 40 per cent more likely to live beyond age five.
  

Obstacles to improvement

We are not on track to meet the 2005 MDG of gender parity in education. Without additional effort, the 2015 target of universal primary completion is unlikely to be met. The main obstacles DFID identifies are:

Cost – The education of children is costly for parents. Costs include; tuition fees, PTA fees, teachers’ fees, school construction and transportation. Costs have a significant impact on whether and which children are educated.

Failure to complete primary schooling – Getting children to school is one thing, keeping them there is quite another, with many children dropping out before they complete their primary schooling.

Poor quality education – The education received is often of a poor quality and fails to equip pupils with the skills and knowledge they need to lift themselves and their society out of poverty. 

HIV and AIDS – The prevalence of HIV and AIDS particularly in Sub Saharan Africa is affecting children both at home and at school, reducing the numbers of experienced teachers and forcing children to drop out of school to care for sick parents or look after family members. 

Fewer opportunities for girls – Girls are still given fewer opportunities than boys to complete primary school and enrol in secondary schools. 

Progress - What DFID is doing to help

DFID is providing bilateral support to education programmes in over 30 developing countries, mostly in Sub-Saharan Africa and South and West Asia. 

Where possible our bilateral support helps national governments to develop and implement education sector plans to get more children into schools by working towards removing school fees, providing books and equipment, building new schools, paying teacher salaries and providing training for teachers. 

In particular, our bilateral country programmes target countries with the largest numbers of children out-of-school, such as Nigeria, India and Bangladesh. 

We work with our international partners to accelerate programmes to achieve the education and gender MDGs. Examples include: Working with UNICEF as a part of the UN Girls’ Education Initiative (UNGEI) to ensure stronger collaboration and coordination among donors. This helps governments get more girls into school in the 25 countries where the differences are greatest . DFID also supports the education ‘Fast Track Initiative’ (FTI), a partnership of international agencies and developing countries designed to provide increased, better co-ordinated and more effective aid in support of countries’ national education plans. Thus far, we have committed £12 million to help countries that are off-track in meeting the education MDGs. 

DFID is investing up to £3m a year for Higher Education Partnerships which promote development collaboration between universities. The current programme, which will be phased out by March 2006, is to be replaced by a new scheme which will have a stronger focus on the MDGs, Sub Saharan Africa and Science and Technology. This new programme will continue until 2012. 

Case studies

In Bangladesh, more girls than ever before have access to education. DFID is contributing £100 million to a national primary education programme which will improve the quality of education for over 17 million children and tackle the widespread problem of children dropping out of school early. The government’s plan for economic growth gives priority to promoting gender equality in education. 

In India, the UK government supports the government of India’s Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) education programme and has committed £210 million to the plan. The programme aims to ensure that all of India’s estimated 190 million school aged children complete a quality eight year cycle of basic education by 2010.

In Kenya, in January 2003, the government introduced free universal and compulsory primary education for all children. Making education free has brought a dramatic rise in the number of children going to school, from 5.9 million to over 7 million – and still rising. We are supporting the Kenyan government to provide enough school places to keep up with demand and to ensure that quality is sustained. DFID has committed £10.8 million to the government of Kenya’s education plan.

In Nigeria, there are 7.3 million children of primary age out of school. Of whom, 64% are girls. The federal Ministry of Education in Nigeria is implementing an education programme with support from DFID and UNICEF to achieve the Education Millennium Development Goals of universal basic education and getting equal numbers of boys and girls into school. DFID is providing a £26 million grant to education in six northern states to help the government achieve this.



This guidance is part of the Policy Division Info series. Ref no: PD Info 049. © Crown copyright 2004. Any part of this publication may be freely reproduced providing the source is acknowledged.