Brookings: Experts - Justin W. van Fleet

Africa Learning Barometer

Justin W. van Fleet, Kevin Watkins and Lauren Greubel — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 09:42:00 -0400

The Africa Learning Barometer is the first region-wide survey of learning and education covering 28 sub-Saharan African countries. It estimates that 61 million children of primary school age – 1 out of every 2 kids – will reach their adolescent years unable to read, write, or perform basic numeracy tasks.

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The State of Learning in Africa

Mon, 17 Sep 2012 10:00:00 -0400

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September 17, 2012
10:00 AM - 11:30 AM EDT

Falk Auditorium
Brookings Institution
1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20036

Despite Africa’s progress in expanding school enrollment over the past decade, one in four children—30 million primary-level students—remain out of school. At the current rate, millions more will be out of school in 2015 than there are today. Africa’s education deficit has severe consequences for development and hinders opportunities for growth, innovation, and social and economic prosperity.

On September 17, the Center for Universal Education at Brookings (CUE) hosted the launch of the “Africa Learning Barometer”—a collaboration between CUE and This is Africa. The barometer is the first region-wide assessment and online interactive tool examining the state of learning in Africa. The program began with introductory remarks from Senior Fellow and CUE Director Rebecca Winthrop, followed by a short presentation by Brookings Fellow Justin van Fleet on the data and trends from the barometer. Afterwards, a panel discussed the implications for business and development in Africa. Panelists included Talya Bosch, vice president of Social Ventures at Western Union, and Senior Fellow Mwangi Kimenyi, director of the Africa Growth Initiative at Brookings. Lanre Akinola, editor of This is Africa, moderated the discussion.

Participants can follow the conversation on Twitter using hashtag #AfricaLearning.

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The State of Learning in Africa

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Africa’s Education Crisis: In School But Not Learning

Justin W. van Fleet — Mon, 17 Sep 2012 14:10:00 -0400

It’s unfathomable that of Africa's nearly 128 million school-aged children, 17 million will never attend school. Perhaps even more shocking is the fact that another 37 million African children will learn so little while in they are in school that they will not be much better off than those kids who never attend school. As a consequence, the prognosis for Africa’s future economic growth and social development is poor.

These numbers come from the new Africa Learning Barometer created by the Center for Universal Education at Brookings. Our objective was to identify a baseline assessment of learning in Africa by using the existing data. Using data from regional examinations, such as Programme d'Analyse des Systèmes Educatifs de la CONFEMEN (PASEC)and Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality (SACMEQ) , and national assessments of 4th or 5th grade students, the barometer provides a picture of the state of learning for 28 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. In each of these assessments, we identified a cutoff point at which students scoring below that level were learning so little that they had no value added to their education. While these tests do not even begin to scratch the surface on the values, knowledge and skills that children should learn in school to live healthy, productive lives, they do provide some basic indications about the state of learning in the region.

The findings are astonishing. There are seven countries in which 40 percent or more of children do not meet a minimum standard of learning by grades 4 or 5. In countries such as Ethiopia, Nigeria and Zambia, over half of in-school students are not learning basic skills by the end of primary school. Through the barometer we aggregate the total number of children not learning based on out-of-school children at the end of primary school, children who are likely to drop out by the 5th grade, and those in school but not learning. The results are distressing. Under the current model, half of sub-Saharan Africa’s total primary school population – 61 million children – will reach adolescence without the basic skills needed to lead successful and productive lives.

The barometer also points out the massive inequalities between the rich and poor. Looking at the rates of extreme education poverty in the region, the percentage of adults with less than two years of education show the disadvantages that poor, rural students face in accessing education in comparison to their rich and urban counterparts. For instance, in Ethiopia, 68.3 percent of the poorest quintile of the population lives in education poverty, compared to only 13.8 percent of the richest.

While there is much reason to celebrate the progress in education that Africa has made over the past decade, the barometer shows us that there is a deeper learning crisis that needs to be addressed. Unless African governments and the international community work together and act now to raise standards and improve learning outcomes, the potential of tens of millions of African youth will be wasted and Africa’s social and economic progress will stagnate.

Please explore the data and trends from the Africa Learning Barometer to learn more about the education crisis in Africa.

Authors

Justin W. van Fleet

Image Source: © Noor Khamis / Reuters

Putting Education First in Timor-Leste

Justin W. van Fleet — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 12:15:00 -0400

Last week, the UN Secretary-General, accompanied by his Special Envoy for Global Education, Gordon Brown and the Director-General of UNESCO, Irina Bokova, visited Timor-Leste on an education tour. The trip came in advance of a major announcement in September of the Secretary-General’s new global education initiative, Education First, which aims to raise the political profile of education and accelerate progress towards the 2015 education goals and beyond.

The scenario in Timor-Leste was all too familiar for UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon, who grew up during war in South Korea knowing firsthand the power of the international community’s support for education. “All I had for a classroom was the tree we gathered around. We had no chalkboards or textbooks. I know education deprivation first-hand. I also know the power of education to transform,” Ban said in his speech to school children during his trip.

At first glance, Timor-Leste’s 85 percent primary school enrollment rate would make it appear to be post-conflict education success. However, a closer look reveals the deeper challenges in the education system that will hold back social and economic progress if unaddressed, making the case for international support for education in post-conflict settings such as Timor-Leste.

Challenges Facing Timor-Leste’s Education System

With one out of every two adults unable to read and nearly two-thirds of children suffering from stunting, the early and most crucial years of a child’s development in Timor-Leste are not suited towards preparing a child to learn and thrive in society. Only one out of 10 children have the chance to go to preschool; the first time most children step into a classroom is at the age of six or seven. Upon entering school, chances are the language of instruction is different from the language they speak at home, further complicating the learning process.

For those who stay in school, the outcomes are not promising. Teachers are not adequately trained and face challenging circumstances ranging from poor facilities and materials to overcrowded classes. More than 70 percent of children cannot read a single word in Portuguese or Tetum at the end of first grade; 40 percent cannot read a single word after two full years of school. Repetition rates are high in the first three grades of school, comprising more than half of the children enrolled. And only 37 percent of children will continue on to secondary school.

New elections, new leaders, renewed commitment to education

There is hope for Timor-Leste. The country has made great strides since years of conflict when nearly 85-90 percent of the education infrastructure was destroyed. As a country that has just celebrated its tenth year of independence, the new leadership agrees that investing in human potential is essential to building a sustainable and prosperous future. The country has recently completed an education strategy through 2030. The newly elected president, prime minister, minister of education and others all pledged to strengthen their efforts to mobilize internal resources to support education and look at what policies can be put into place to reach the most marginalized, achieve universal access, expand preschool coverage, and improve teacher training and overall learning outcomes across the education system.

In the Secretary-General’s public announcement of Education First at the University of Timor-Leste, Director-General Bokova challenged youth to be part of the domestic development plan of the country. Special Envoy Brown encouraged the university students to consider going into the teaching profession to help build the human capacity of the country.

The Role of the International Community

Amidst the internal commitments of the people of Timor-Leste, there are questions about the role of the international community in supporting the post-conflict nation. Many international organizations have pledged and implemented support: UNICEF and UNESCO have active projects on the ground in fostering child-friendly classrooms and adult training and literacy, among other initiatives. Portugal and Australia are the two largest bilateral donors to the country, contributing $14 million and $9 million respectively, to education through official development assistance. Timor-Leste requested $5 million from the Global Partnership for Education and received a grant of $2.8 million over three years in December 2011.

But much more needs to be done in terms of international support and collaboration with the government in order to help Timor-Leste achieve its ambitious education strategy. Given the government’s agenda, commitment and readiness to increase domestic support for education, the international community should do the same to help accelerate progress. While the typical incentives for business engagement in emerging economies may not exist in Timor-Leste, the support of the business community could help catalyze progress in several areas of the country’s education agenda. Likewise, foundations and nontraditional donors could play a role in supporting Timor-Leste.

When announcing Education First, the Secretary-General referred to creating a “bold big push” for education. And a bold push is what is needed. Actors from across sectors and disciplines must come together to support countries like Timor-Leste who have developed strong national plans and demonstrate the political commitment. It is now up to the international community to step to the plate with the additional financial, coordination and capacity support necessary to help countries like Timor-Leste reach their ambitions.

Authors

Justin W. van Fleet

Image Source: BEAWIHARTA

Corporate Social Investments in Education in Latin America and the Caribbean: Mapping the Magnitude of Multilatinas' Private Dollars for Public Good

Justin W. van Fleet and Gabriel Sanchez Zinny — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 12:39:00 -0400

OVERVIEW

Multilatinas and Education

Latin America has seen sustained, robust growth over the past decade, even as most of the developed world struggled through financial crisis and recession. Many factors have driven this success story: high commodity prices, a growing middle class, solid macroeconomic management and increasingly sophisticated financial markets. One particular force behind the region’s growth has been the rise of multilatinas—multinational corporations based in Latin America with operations throughout the region and often around the world. Multilatinas are now responsible for 2.1 million employees in the region and approximately $780 billion in annual revenue. The multilatinas themselves, however, opt to invest most of their money elsewhere in the world. While there has been an increase in foreign direct investment inflows in the region, totaling $113 billion in 2010, Latin American foreign direct investment outflows have been on the rise. The total outflow quadrupled between 2009 and 2010, reaching an all-time high of $43.1 billion.

One of several hypotheses for a lack of regional investment is that the state of education and learning in the region constrains the ability of multilatinas to expand and reinvest in their own backyard. Despite relatively high enrollment rates in Latin American and Caribbean countries, numerous indicators demonstrate a drastic need for improved educational quality. Several international and domestic assessments and indicators highlight the extreme nature of the learning crisis in the region. The most recent OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) study measuring reading, science and math skills of fifteen year olds around the world ranked Chile the highest scoring country in the region at 44th out of 65 countries in reading and science. Uruguay ranked highest of all countries in the region in math at 49th place overall. Similarly, a survey of business leader perceptions found Latin American countries to have some of the lowest ranked education systems in terms of quality.

Despite increased government support for education in Latin America over the past decades, lagging commitments in national budgets and stagnant donor country aid resources have left many public systems underfunded. While some countries in the region make larger investments in education than others, government budgets for education are impacted by structural issues ranging from tax collection capacity to tax avoidance by small and large corporations. This year, as donor governments decrease, phase out or cut education aid to the region, the education budgets of over 20 countries in Latin America will be impacted.

There is no aggregate data about Latin American corporate social investments in education within the region. This study asked a simple question: What are the multilatinas doing through their social investment and philanthropy portfolios to support quality public education in the region?

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Justin W. van Fleet
Gabriel Sanchez Zinny

Image Source: David Mercado / Reuters

It’s Time for an Education Breakthrough: Coming Together for 2015 and the Agenda Beyond

Justin W. van Fleet — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 15:06:00 -0400

The stars of the global development galaxy infrequently align to provide the education sector with an opportunity to advance progress for girls and boys around the world. However, there is currently a unique opportunity to put forth a common vision to reinforce the Education for All (EFA) and Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), and to chart a forward-looking agenda for the post-2015 development goals that builds upon collective progress and lessons learned.

Three global policy windows are available to advance a common agenda:

Discussions and processes for establishing a new set of global development goals, following the expiration of the MDGs in 2015, are underway in the United Nations.
UNESCO has also started parallel conversations on the post-2015 EFA agenda.
The U.N. Secretary General will soon launch a five-year global education initiative that will span the time period leading up to and following 2015.

The Need for Action: Progress is Slowing

Recent numbers from the UNESCO Institute of Statistics and the Global Monitoring Report suggest that despite advances in improving access to and the quality of education since 2000, progress is stalling. In Africa, the number of out-of-school children is actually increasing – not decreasing – due to population growth. To address this challenge of access and completion, evidence suggests that quality may be more severe than we thought. For example, recent studies estimate that nearly 200 million children are still unable to read despite spending several years in school, and in some regions of the world poor quality education causes parents to take their children out of school before they complete primary school. Moving backward in the final stretch to 2015 would discredit the progress made up to this point in the name of the Education for All and Millennium Development Goals.

Status Check: A Lot of Uncoordinated Activity

Based on an initial, non-exhaustive assessment, there are over 20 current education-relevant global initiatives, campaigns, processes or opportunities organized by multilateral institutions, bilateral donor agencies, civil society and country actors. These activities have the potential to raise the profile of international education goals. Although the level of activity is exciting, the multiple activities run the risk of uncoordinated messaging and duplicative—or even contradictory—efforts. While debate is healthy and necessary, better coordination is needed to remain connected at a strategic and functional level. Otherwise, standalone activities may not galvanize the political and financial attention needed to meet collective challenges.

The Opportunity at Stake

Taking advantage of the three global policy windows could reposition education in the center of the global agenda and realize the broader set of development goals. The following opportunities should not be passed by:

Opportunity to define measureable, relevant goals. While recognizing the positive progress made as a result of the Education for All agenda, it is important to also reflect on where improvements could be made. Through healthy, targeted debate in this round of revisiting the EFA agenda, it is possible to add more specificity to the goals in order to move forward with measured progress.

Opportunity to link education to the broader development agenda. While engaged in conversations about EFA, the education sector must simultaneously have a common strategy for the broader post-2015 development agenda. It is important to be able to justify the importance of education to achieving other development goals and explain how it links to the potential post-2015 frameworks without being afraid to make the case for standalone education goals that articulate the outcomes important for productive societies, such as equity and learning. The education sector must also be prepared to develop a baseline for whatever goals we recommend to these discussions.

Opportunity to leverage support at highest political level. It is not often that the United Nations secretary- general decides to champion the cause central to the global education community. By calling his initiative “Education First,” the secretary-general indicates that he is ready to give the education sector increased political will for 2015. With numerous U.N. Special Envoys for health, climate change and conflict over the past several years, and with none devoted to education, the recent appointment of Gordon Brown as his special envoy for Global Education reinforces the secretary-general’s renewed commitment. The education community must now rally its networks, stand behind the secretary general’s vision and participate in the debates that stem from the initiative. Failure to follow his lead would lend poorly to the education sector and be a disservice to the millions of children – both out of school and struggling to learn – who could stand to benefit.

The Timeline

There is a limited timeline to seize these opportunities. However, given the high stakes of the policy windows, the education sector must organize and redouble its efforts to take full advantage of them.

The U.N. Post-2015 Millennium Development Goal Process: The process is already underway to develop the next set of goals led by a U.N. Development Program and U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs Task Force—with the next six months critical in the lead up to high-level discussions in September 2013. U.N. agencies are holding thematic consultations (including UNESCO, UNICEF, ILO, UNDP, OCHA and more) from now until January 2013. While some of these consultations will be education focused, others will not. It is essential that stakeholders link education to all areas of development in the consultations. There will also be national and regional consultations in 50 countries from Angola to Zambia as part of this process. National education partners must be mobilized and supported to ensure that a few key messages are present in these conversations.

The Education for All Framework: While the agency, regional and national MDG consultations are taking place, UNESCO will also convene on the post-2015 EFA agenda. Although discussions have started, the consultation and debate period may not take place soon enough to reinforce education’s presence in the post-2015 MDG consultation process. This is a sector-wide challenge that must be addressed and opportunities must be created to ensure processes are coordinated and discussions build off one another.

The Secretary General’s Education First Initiative: A high-level steering committee, technical advisory group and global heads of state champions group have been selected by the secretary-general to lead the new initiative, which will launch in September at the U.N. General Assembly in conjunction with global outreach efforts. The education sector has the opportunity to harness the five-year span of this initiative to position itself as a central priority for global development leading up to and beyond 2015.

What is the Education Sector’s Message? Moving Toward a Common Vision

The good news is that there is much the education sector has already agreed upon. Given the competing timelines it will be difficult, but not impossible, to engage in full debate within the education community while at the same time making recommendations to the post-2015 global development agenda. There are several steps that could be taken to advance a collective vision.

Embrace Education for All. First and foremost, the education sector must embrace the Education for All agenda as its foundation. A pledge by 164 countries in 2000, the agenda is a starting point of consensus for the global community.

Move forward with agreed upon objectives. While the education sector does not have to agree on everything – it can start to agree on some things, including the ideas that education is a basic human right and that all children deserve a quality education. Education can be defined differently based on context and relevancy, but quality education means that young people learn basic skills necessary to thrive in society. This includes both cognitive and non-cognitive skills. Additionally opportunities to learn should be equitable and not only available to a privileged few. Special attention should be given to achieving gender equity and addressing education in emergency and conflict settings, children with disabilities, and other marginalized populations who we have collectively failed.

Advance the discussions to include outcomes and critical transition points, and insert consensus moments into the broader development agenda dialogue along the way. The Education for All discussion should draw upon our collective success and lessons learned. The Global Compact on Learning report, developed by the Center for Universal Education in collaboration with more than 80 organizations, highlights some of the vital challenges the education sector has confronted in realizing EFA that deserve more attention: the provision of early childhood development opportunities, ensuring positive learning outcomes are achieved in the early years and focusing on transition to and completion of relevant post-primary education, particularly for the most marginalized. This can be a starting point for forging a common policy agenda on education and learning as we move toward 2015.

Do not be afraid of learning, but be afraid of a bad learning agenda. The next set of discussions must add specificity to Education for All, especially in regards to goal six’s call for measurable learning outcomes in literacy, numeracy and essential life skills. Learning is the essence of EFA; no child should to go to school and not learn. It is time for us to form a careful and thoughtful consensus, setting forth an ambitious vision for a learning agenda that can rally political and civil society support.

These broad discussions are important because we should be very afraid of learning done wrong. The counterfactual to a strong consensus on learning could be emphasis on high-stakes testing and pay-for-performance schemes without regard to critical contextual factors. The education sector knows these are not effective ways to advance the teaching and learning process at a national or global level.

Participate in global discussions about what constitutes learning. The education sector must have productive discussions about what it wants young people to achieve through education. Reading and math alone are a much too narrow way to think about education. There are many noncognitive skills and attitudes that are essential to global citizenship. It is time to have the following discussions: Are there learning standards that are collectively valued? If so, should they be measured? And if the answer is yes, how can this be done to support the teaching and learning process and allow policymakers to have enough information to identify issues of equity within and across countries? One process is the Global Learning Metrics Task Force, hosted by the UNESCO Institute of Statistics and the Brookings Institution and chaired by representatives from U.N. agencies, civil society and the private sector. The concept is to have an open forum for debate, starting now, to feed into the global agenda-setting processes before it is too late.

Many of the pieces that need to be in place are underway. However, they must become better aligned to not lose sight of the 2015 goals and make a significant impact over the next six critical months in influencing the post-2015 agenda to make sure that education and learning for all children and youth is central.

Authors

Justin W. van Fleet

Image Source: Noor Khamis / Reuters

A Patchwork Model Won’t Work: A Call for a Holistic Education Approach for Orphans and Vulnerable Children in Zimbabwe

Pamhidzayi Berejena Mhongera and Justin W. van Fleet — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 12:11:00 -0400

Zimbabwe is one of the countries hardest hit by the AIDS pandemic resulting in an increased number of orphans. About 1.6 million children are orphaned due to AIDS and other causes. These children are subject to a myriad of risks, are more susceptible to poverty, lack health care and formal schooling, and are more prone to psychological distress, abuse and neglect. Therefore, orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) are in urgent need of specialized social services to enhance their protection and development.

The Basic Education Assistance Programme (BEAM) is the largest government funded program providing school fees for OVC in Zimbabwe. However research shows that not all children access the government assistance programs. Other non-governmental organizations are also working to address the education barriers that affect educational attainment for OVC in Zimbabwe. While these organizations provide vital support for OVC, their programs are subject to funding availability and donor priorities. This creates a patchwork of support that is not consistent and fails to address the complex and interrelated needs of OVC.

One particular model sticks out in Zimbabwe for its provision of holistic, long-term education support spanning primary school through the tertiary level. Capernaum Trust offers a distinct education service delivery model for OVC in Zimbabwe. Established in 1996 by Strive and Tsitsi Masiyiwa, founders of Zimbabwe’s leading mobile telecommunications company, the organization seeks to transform OVC into what they call ‘History Makers’ by redefining their destiny through an all-encompassing model. This model uses a comprehensive approach, utilizing programs that address the physical, social, academic, spiritual and psychological well-being of children.

They have targeted interventions that include:

Scholarships covering school fees, levies and other related costs needed from primary to post- secondary education. The Trust provides scholarships to over 75,923 girls and boy in Zimbabwe, Burundi and Lesotho.
Life skills, career guidance and internship programs for students to equip them with social and employment skills.
Psycho-social programs, addressing challenges such as stigma, discrimination, low self-esteem and isolation associated with orphanhood in the era of HIV/AIDS.
Health care and nutrition.
eLearning opportunities, resource centers and libraries.
Solar lanterns to help rural and urban students in areas without electricity extend the period of study time.

Due to the multiple and complex challenges that OVC face in their education, a patchwork of short-term programs will not create transformational and generational change in the lives of young people. There is need for more organizations to use models such as that of Capernaum Trust, and to scale up these intervention models to move beyond the payment of school fees and addressing the developmental needs of OVC holistically.

Editor’s note: Berejena recently completed participation in the Brookings Global Scholars Program at the Center for Universal Education. Her research has focused on education service delivery approaches for orphans and vulnerable children in Zimbabwe, especially adolescent girls. This blog reflects some of her research findings.

Authors

Pamhidzayi Berejena Mhongera
Justin W. van Fleet

Image Source: Philimon Bulawayo / Reuters

What Businesses Can Do—Beyond Corporate Philanthropy—to Support Global Education

Justin W. van Fleet — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 13:45:00 -0400

The B-20, the private sector forum that feeds into to the G-20, has been quite active in developing thematic task forces and recommendations for government and business to contribute to global economic growth and social development. However, in the final set of top-line policy requests for the G-20, there is no serious inclusion of investments in education and learning to advance economic growth and social development. Given that quality education is a core component for sustained economic growth, I am surprised by the “light touch” attention it receives in the B-20’s recommendations.

Maybe businesses did not give these recommendations to the G-20 because they have a lot of work to do themselves. While evidence last year showed that corporate social investments and philanthropic contributions to education in developing countries are relatively small, short-term, uncoordinated and not directed to address the needs of the most marginalized, many companies are working to improve the effectiveness of these activities. In the past year alone, we have seen various efforts underway to improve business engagement in education, including a new Global Business Coalition for Education, incentives for corporate engagement in new bilateral donor agency initiatives, and a UNESCO task force on the issue.

At the same time, we cannot ignore the need to improve other corporate policies that have the potential for even greater systemic impact on global education. Inspired by the B-20 recommendations, I have five recommendations for what corporations can do beyond philanthropy to support education and therefore promote economic growth and social development.

Stop corporate tax evasion. Lost revenue in developing countries due to corporate tax evasion is estimated to be $160 billion per year. This excludes the hundreds of billions estimated to be lost through the offshore economy of high net worth individuals. In some Latin American countries, companies underreport by as much as 40 percent. While cracking down on tax evasion and instituting government anti-corruption and transparency measures must go hand in hand, directing just one-tenth of the estimated corporate tax evasion amount to education could fill the estimated financing gap and put every child in school.
Improve human resource policies to be pro-education and learning. With estimates showing that multinational corporations employ between 20-36 million employees in developing countries, pro-education human resource policies for employees and their families can have a huge impact. With adult illiteracy rates nearly at 775 million, companies could provide family literacy programs for employees and children. Early childhood centers for children of employees can also make a big impact on long-term learning in communities.
Be serious about combating child labor in supply chains. Child labor in supply chains in rampant, and the 2012 Child Labor Index indicated that 40 percent of countries are at extreme risk of including child laborers in supply chains, including fast-growing economies such as the Philippines, India, China, Vietnam, Indonesia and Brazil. Allowing children to engage in labor in the supply chain does not only have moral implications, but takes children away from learning foundational skills that can help promote social development and economic growth in the future.
Go beyond vocational training to support general education, starting early. Companies are quick to invest in vocational training to help bridge the talent gap and create a base of skilled labor. But firms actually project that soft skills — social skills such as communication, teamwork, problem solving and conflict management—will be in higher demand and harder to find than technical skills over the next three years. These skills are the basic values produced from a quality basic education system. If companies are serious about having these skills in a future workforce, the place to invest isn’t at age 18, but instead in early childhood and primary education when children acquire these non-cognitive abilities.
Put pressure on governments to meet basic education goals. Last week it was reported that the number of out-of-school young people in Africa actually increased by two million between 2008 and 2010. This is unacceptable for the global community and the business community should be equally outraged since these are their potential innovators, employees and consumers who, without going to school, will not be integrated into the social and economic sectors. Business leaders must remind governments to keep their commitments and go the last mile to get all children in school and learning.

Authors

Justin W. van Fleet

Image Source: © Nguyen Huy Kham / Reuters

It’s Time for a Development Wake-up Call: Sad News for Global Education and the Millennium Development Goals

Justin W. van Fleet and Anda Adams — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 14:52:00 -0400

The UNESCO Institute for Statistics and the Global Monitoring Report recently released new numbers for out of school children. According to the data, 61 million children of primary school age were not in school in 2010. At first glance, this seems like an improvement over the 67 million kids reported out of school in 2009. Unfortunately, that’s not the case.

If you take a look at the footnotes, you find that UNESCO used new UN Population Division data to calculate the number of out-of-school children. Using the new calculations, UNESCO had previously revised the 2009 statistic down to 61 million. While we should be outraged that we are only able to analyze education statistics that are two years out-of-date, we should be more outraged about what this says about our commitment to education: it is stagnating and declining.

Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent by governments and donors. There have been countless hours of meetings at the global, regional and local levels on education. And new policies, strategies and plans have been worked and reworked. Yet, 61 million children are out still of primary school. While the global number indicates that we may have made no progress from 2009-2010, regional numbers show an even worse story. While countries in South and West Asia have steadily decreased their out-of-school population over the last 20 years, in sub-Saharan Africa, increases in enrollment have not matched population growth. The number of out of school children has increased from 29 million to 31 million over the last three years, indicating that we are in fact moving in reverse.

With increasing youth populations and no prospects for a significant increase in resources under the current status quo, we are far off course for meeting even a basic development goal by 2015: getting all children into school. At his speech at Brookings on Wednesday, former President Bill Clinton stated, “No country can work itself out of poverty with aid alone." Education is everyone's responsibility— it's time for everyone to step up to the plate. The global community as a whole must prioritize education before the situation gets even worse.

Authors

Justin W. van Fleet
Anda Adams

Image Source: © Mukesh Gupta / Reuters

A Pathway for Education to 2015 and Beyond

Justin W. van Fleet — Wed, 06 Jun 2012 14:04:00 -0400

Despite more children enrolling in school around the world than ever before, education development progress has been uneven and millions of children and youth still do not have access to good quality education. The uneven progress has created a global learning crisis, which is hitting the poorest, most marginalized children and youth particularly hard. Latin America has not been spared in this epidemic. For instance, in Brazil, Mexico and Uruguay, children of parents in the top socioeconomic quartile achieved mathematics scores that are 25 to 30 percent higher than those in the poorest quartile. A recent study in Honduras demonstrated that nearly 30 percent of young people could not read a single word of connected text after two years of school.

Last year, the Center for Universal Education released a report calling for a renewed commitment from all stakeholders to reach the Education for All and Millennium Development Goals for education, while at the same time setting an ambitious post-2015 agenda. This agenda, referred to as the Global Compact on Learning, is a common set of concrete steps that will help developing countries achieve learning for all. To help inform the debates on education globally, the Center for Universal Education has written a new policy guide for the Global Compact on Learning, which is now available in Spanish and Portuguese.

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Documento de Política Traducido Provee un Camino a 2015 y Adelante para la Educación Mundial

Aunque más niños y niñas de todas partes del mundo acceden a la escuela por primera vez que antes, el progreso educativo ha sido desigual y millones de niños, niñas y jóvenes aún no tienen acceso a educación de calidad. El progreso desigual se ha creado un una crisis mundial en materia de aprendizaje, que castiga a los niños, niñas y jóvenes más pobres y marginalizados de una manera particularmente dura. América Latina no se ha librado de esta epidemia. Por ejemplo, en Brasil, México y Uruguay, niños de padres del cuartil socioeconómico más alto de la población logran un puntuación en matemáticas de 25 por cien a 30 por cien más alta que los del cuartil más bajo. Una investigación en Honduras demostró que casi 30 por cien de los jóvenes no pueden leer una sola palabra después de asistir a la escuela por dos años.

El año pasado, el Centro para Educación Universal de Brookings hizo una investigación proponiendo una nueva agenda para vigorizar los esfuerzos internacionales en educación, alcanzar los Objetivos de Desarrollo del Milenio de ONU y Educación para Todos de UNESCO, y establecer una ambicioso política de post-2015 para la educación. Esta agenda es lo que llamamos el Pacto Mundial sobre el Aprendizaje, un conjunto común de objetivos políticos y medidas concretas que ayudarán a los países en vía de desarrollo a alcanzar aprendizaje para todos. Para informar los debates en educación global, el Centro para la Educación Universal escribió una guía de política del Pacto Mundial sobre el Aprendizaje que ahora está disponible en español y portugués.

Guias de Política traduzidos apresentam o caminho a percorrer na educação até 2015 e os anos que seguem*

Apesar de o número de crianças matriculadas na escola ser maior do que nunca por todo o mundo, o progresso do desenvolvimento da educação têm sido muito desigual e há milhões de crianças e jovens que ainda não têm acesso a educação de qualidade. Este progresso desigual criou uma crise global de aprendizagem, que atinge, de forma particularmente difícil, os mais pobres, as crianças mais marginalizadas e jovens. A América Latina não tem sido poupada neste fenómeno. Por exemplo, no Brasil, México e Uruguai, os resultados atingidos em Matemática são entre 25 e 30 % mais elevados na franja de alunos cujos pais são de classe socioeconómica mais elevada do que na franja de alunos de classes mais baixas. Um estudo recente nas Honduras demonstrou que quase 30 % dos jovens, dois anos depois de dois anos de escola, não sabiam ler uma única palavra do texto usado no estudo.

No ano passado, o Center for Universal Education at Brookings produziu um relatório que apela à renovação do compromisso das partes interessadas para o alcance das metas de Educação para Todos e dos Objetivos de Desenvolvimento do Milénio que abordam as questões da educação. Ao mesmo tempo, esse relatório estabelece uma ambiciosa agenda pós-2015. O Pacto Global sobre o Aprendizado, é um documento com um conjunto de medidas concretas que podem ajudar os países em desenvolvimento a garantir a aprendizagem de todos. Para que este documento possa ser um contributo para os debates sobre educação por todo o mundo, o Center for Universal Education redigiu um novo guia de política para o Pacto Global sobre Aprendizagem, que agora está disponível em Espanhol e Português.

*The Portuguese version was translated by Andreia Soares at the Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies

Authors

Justin W. van Fleet

Image Source: Jianan Yu / Reuters

A Global Compact on Learning: Policy Guide

Thu, 24 May 2012 14:47:00 -0400

INTRODUCTION

Education plays a significant role in development and the dividends that result from investments in education are immeasurable. Quality education generates greater economic growth, creates a lasting impact on public health, and leads to safer more stable societies. Over the past two decades, major progress has been made in providing education to millions worldwide. Numerous global initiatives, significant increases in donor funding, and collaboration between developed and developing nations have allowed children everywhere to enter school for the first time and stay in school throughout their childhood and adolescence.

However, more needs to be done. Progress has been uneven and millions of children and youth still do not have access to good quality education. In addition, economic and gender-based disparities still prevent children from attending school and many who are in school are not actually learning the crucial skills they need for work and life. Getting into school is just a first step. It is time to refocus the global education agenda on learning through increasing access to good quality education for all.

Accordingly, the Center for Universal Education at Brookings is proposing a new agenda to reinvigorate international efforts on education and to build on the previous success of getting more children in school. This agenda, referred to as the Global Compact on Learning, is a common set of concrete steps that, if taken, will help developing countries achieve a vision of learning for all.

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Scaling Up Corporate Social Investments in Education: Five Strategies That Work

Justin W. van Fleet — Fri, 11 May 2012 15:58:00 -0400

Scaling up good corporate social investment practices in developing countries is crucial to realizing the Education for All and Millennium Development Goals. Yet very few corporate social investments have the right mix of vision, financing, cross-sector engagement and leadership to come to scale. Globally, 67 million children are not enrolled in primary school, over 200 million are in school but not mastering basic skills such as reading, and many millions more complete post-primary education without the skills needed to participate in society or the local economy. Overcoming these challenges will require swift and bold action by many actors, including governments, multilateral organizations, donors and civil society. Corporations can use their core assets to generate shared value for business and society by helping get children into school, setting a strong learning agenda and scaling up what works in education. This policy paper looks at what works and what is not working in corporate efforts to further education in developing countries.

The business assets of major corporations—such as innovation, financing, employee talent, labor networks, technology, and advocacy—have the potential to help developing countries make rapid advances in education. Smarter corporate social investments can be good for business operations. Investments in education can increase results-oriented outcomes, narrow the global talent gap, boost consumers’ disposable income, enhance the health and well-being of employees and their families, facilitate the ease of doing business in developing countries and improve government and community relations. However, the current “business as usual” model of corporate social investments in education will not realize this vision. Since the early 2000s, major efforts to bring collective corporate resources to support Education for All have demonstrated few results and little impact. In contrast to global health, this has been a lost decade of private sector engagement in global education. Research shows that in the aggregate corporate resources to support global education are deployed in an inefficient manner. They are small, short-term and disconnected from larger efforts, and fail to address systemic challenges or the needs of the most marginalized.

There is a window of opportunity to harness corporate support for long-term impact in education. In fact, the business community is demonstrating a renewed interest in improving engagement in education and taking initiatives to scale. Meanwhile, national governments, multilateral organizations, donor governments and foundations are expressing increased interest in collaborating with the corporate sector to help expand quality education. Companies should strive to adhere to five principles of business engagement in education to take full advantage of this opportunity and have a profound impact on scaling up what works in education. Drawing upon successes from education, health and other development sectors, this paper highlights how these five principles can be embraced by the business community to achieve practical impact in global education.

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Authors

Justin W. van Fleet

Image Source: Luc Gnago / Reuters

The Case for Local Business Support for Education in Nicaragua

Justin W. van Fleet — Tue, 06 Mar 2012 14:32:00 -0500

Approximately one-third of all Nicaraguan students either repeat or drop out of the first grade. On a test of basic math skills in grade three, 60 percent of students scored in the lowest level or below. Unsurprisingly, a survey of business leaders indicated that the perceived quality of Nicaragua’s primary schools education ranks among the lowest in the world: 134 out of 142.

Considering Nicaragua faces an education quality crisis, external public and private donor financing is relatively low. A Brookings study examining the implications of donors’ new education strategies revealed that five countries, the Netherlands, Denmark, Canada, Sweden and Finland, will pull or severely reduce education support for Nicaragua this year. From 2006-2009, these donors’ contributions averaged 35 percent of the country’s total basic education expenditures. In our assessment of corporate social investments, only 6 percent of U.S. Fortune 500 companies that invest in education direct resources to Nicaragua and less than 10 percent of the largest Latin American companies that invest in education direct support to Nicaragua.

Given this bleak assessment, the time for the Nicaraguan business community to step up and support the government’s provision of education could not be greater. The business case is simple: investing in education in Nicaragua is an investment in both current and future employees, the safety and stability of the communities where businesses operate, the potential purchasing power of consumers, and a company’s reputation.

This week, while visiting business-led education initiatives in Nicaragua, two companies stood out as examples of the private sector supporting education in the country:

Telefónica: The Aula Fundación Telefónica (Telefónica Foundation Classroom) program supports teacher quality in marginalized public schools. A participating school dedicates a classroom to the project and the foundation provides internet connectivity, computers, projectors, audio and a host of other technology resources. Professional development workshops for teachers focus on how to use technology to improve pedagogical practices within the existing curriculum. Teachers are also connected to a network of educators across Latin America and are able to share experiences and successful tactics with each other. While visiting a public school in Managua, Colegio Francisco Morazán, I observed a team of teachers using the Telefónica Foundation Classroom to teach a lesson about planet earth and the seasons of the year. The third-graders were highly engaged in the content and discussions. Primarily in urban regions of the country, Telefónica has committed to expanding the program throughout rural areas over the next several years.

Plasencia: In the town of Esteli, known for its 22 cigar manufacturing plants, one company, Plasencia, has piloted a full-scale education program for its employees. Across the street from a manufacturing plant, the company has built an early childhood development center for employee’s children up to age six. The program uses a project-based, active-learning curriculum, integrates nutrition into the curriculum, has courses for parents on child development, and provides an onsite psychologist for students and parents. For employees, the company pays university tuition, contingent upon good performance in the courses. The goal is for the program to expand to all of the companies’ factories, and through groups like Empresarios por la Educación, an association of businesses for education, expand the model to other factory-based industries throughout the country.

Despite the dire state of funding and the relatively poor quality of education in the country, there is already an understanding from some members the business community – as exemplified by Telefonica and Plasencia’s programs – that they have the opportunity to make a sustainable impact. A forum on best practices on corporate social investments in education, organized by Eduquemos Empresarios por la Educación and PREAL's Business Education Alliance Program (Programa Alianza Educación Empresa, PAEE), brought together business leaders, local think tanks, and the education community. PAEE invited the Brookings Center for Universal Education to present its recent research on corporate social investments in education. Leaving the meeting, there was a clear sense that greater engagement and investments in education by the business community could create a shared business and social value. While not without challenges, I left optimistic that if the business community works with each other and the government, they can be strong advocates for quality education for all young people in Nicaragua and catalyze systemic change.

Authors

Justin W. van Fleet

Good Corporate Social Responsibility Practices in Latin America

Justin W. van Fleet and Gabriel Sanchez Zinny — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 16:36:00 -0500

Working with the Formar Foundation, the Center for Universal Education is conducting research to understand the nature of corporate social investments directed toward education in a region of growing economic importance, Latin America. Last week, our research brought us to Argentina where we conducted interviews with companies, foundations and government education officials to better understand our new dataset mapping the investments of over 50 regional companies. Preliminary findings about the educational investments by the most influential companies in Latin America suggest:

Unlike American-based companies, companies based in Latin America make long-term social investments in education.

Similar to American firms, the contributions are made in isolation and not coordinated with any other donors or stakeholders, including governments, foundations and other companies.

But we did not have to look too far to find some promising examples going against the trend of working in isolation. We learned about several models that demonstrate working collaboratively with the private sector can be an effective means to take education interventions to scale. For example, Constanza Ortiz of Fundacion Bunge y Born, an Argentine foundation focusing on education, cultures, health and social science research, told us about how working with the provincial ministries of education and Bunge Argentina, a large agribusiness in the country, is improving the quality of education in rural schools. Together they are taking the Programa Sembrador to scale in rural Argentina, supporting 850 teachers and reaching 14,000 learners this year alone.

Telecom Argentina is working with Stanford University, in coordination with provincial ministries, NGOs and other companies, to pilot the use of mobile technology to promote learning in rural areas and with vulnerable populations. Based on the results of 10 pilots in primary and secondary schools, the company plans to build out partnerships to take successful mobile interventions to scale.

In a meeting with Fundacion Arcor, the foundation that carries out the philanthropic mission of a large consumer foods company, we discussed their investments in early childhood education in the communities where Arcor has business operations. In 2007, the company launched a program in Entre Rios, a province northeast of Buenos Aires. Working with provincial education authorities and a national research center, the project focused on linguistic and cognitive development and reached more than 20,000 kindergarten children and 1,300 teachers. Children participating in the project nearly doubled their vocabulary in one year and arrived in first grade more prepared to learn.

All of the corporate leaders we spoke to said that collaboration is difficult and requires time, energy and careful thought, but that when done thoughtfully and in coordination with communities and government, the benefits for business and society can be far greater than the sum of its parts.

Authors

Justin W. van Fleet
Gabriel Sanchez Zinny

A Lesson for Global Donors from the Susan G. Komen Fallout: Transparency is a Virtue

Justin W. van Fleet — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 10:37:00 -0500

The media craze surrounding Susan G. Komen for the Cure’s funding cut for Planned Parenthood serves as a strong reminder to the global donor community: it’s always better to be overly transparent. Whether the hype is a mischaracterization of accountability measures to safeguard donor dollars or a response to right-wing political pressure is irrelevant for the larger grantmaking community. The important reminder is that when supporting social causes, and especially when using public funds, donors must be overly transparent.

Susan G. Komen for the Cure did many things right. With public support and revenue amounting to over $400 million last year and $93 million in community grants, the non-profit makes its annual reports and audited financial statements publicly available online. However, the organization failed to proactively and transparently communicate to the public how their new grantmaking guidelines were about to strike a nerve in one of the most controversial social debates in the United States – public financing of abortion. And now the organization finds itself in the middle of a controversy and with a barrage of negative media attention.

This incident serves as a stern warning for foundations and companies with philanthropic arms, especially those that engage in developing countries: it’s time to be transparent and accountable about what you do and honest about your limitations.

Here’s why companies and foundation supporting projects in developing countries are particularly vulnerable. At the Center for Universal Education, we recently examined several organizations funding education in poor countries and found scores of annual reports with claims of large-scale social impact as well as photographs of children in schools thanks to these efforts. However, we found little information about how much money was going where. Of the 40 foundations we looked at, only half disclosed their total spending on education despite making it a priority in their social investment portfolio. And many of these disclosures were vague at best.

Companies are even less transparent. A recent survey of U.S. companies supporting education in developing countries found that over 60 percent do so for the positive brand identification and over 80 percent see it as a way to improve community relations. We also found that only one-quarter of the largest U.S. companies who make claims about helping children through their educational investments made public the amount they contributed. Even fewer shared where the money went.

In the age of fast-paced social media, companies and foundations must err on the side of being overly transparent about what they are doing and why. Global development also has controversial topics ranging from privatization of schools to reproductive health. To circumvent debacles and embarrassment from what may be very well-intentioned engagement in poverty alleviation, donors should aim to be publicly accountable and earn trust of the public through such transparency. Let this examples serve as a lesson for the global development philanthropy community.

Authors

Justin W. van Fleet

Bill Gates Gets Poor Marks for Ignoring Education

Justin W. van Fleet and Kevin Watkins — Wed, 09 Nov 2011 11:32:00 -0500

Editor's note: In a post to the Guardian's Poverty Matters Blog, Kevin Watkins and Justin W. van Fleet argue that the Cannes G-20 Summit was a missed opportunity to demonstrate how education is an essential component part of the development agenda, particularly with respect to reducing global poverty.

You've got to hand it to Bill Gates. The eurozone might be going up in smoke, financial markets are teetering on the brink, and international trade tensions are mounting, but the philanthropist gets prime time at the G20 summit in Cannes to present a report on global poverty. Pity about some of the content.

Education in the world's poorest countries does not figure high on Bill Gates's list of development priorities. The report to the G20 has just one throwaway sentence on education: "Evidence suggests that social enterprises such as private health clinics and schools have the potential to pay back the original capital invested — and sometimes provide market rates of return."

Read the full article on The Guardian »

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Publication: The Guardian

A Turning Point for Corporate Support for Quality Learning

Justin W. van Fleet — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 16:00:00 -0400

On the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly this week, the business community took bold action to put education front and center on the global agenda by holding a founding meeting of a Global Business Coalition for Education.

Former British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who recently called for more private sector engagement in his global education assessment, took this vision to over a dozen global CEOs during this inaugural meeting. Her Majesty Queen Rania of Jordan joined Gordon Brown and made the case as to how the challenges of education access, quality and financing affect the global business community.

In a previous policy paper by the Center for Universal Education, I outline what the Global Business Coalition for Education should look like and why investing in quality learning in developing countries not only benefits society, but has clear benefits for the business community.

In his call to form this new Global Business Coalition for Education, Gordon Brown challenged the corporate leaders at the meeting to recruit other CEOs to join during the inaugural year of the coalition. This should not be difficult because during the preparations for this meeting, many CEOs sent letters of support even though they were not able to attend. The former British prime minister reminded the CEOs of their strength as an advocacy constituency, reminding them from experience that when the business community speaks, leaders listen. In terms of next steps, Brown agreed to organize bilateral business leader delegations to meet with leaders of developing countries to discuss what assets they could bring to bear on improving learning opportunities and produce a summary of what we know works in education for the business leaders.

While companies have independently made significant contributions to education, the uncoordinated nature of corporate engagement has left the corporate sector without a unified voice in the global education agenda. Today’s meeting marked a turning point in a first step toward the bold leadership needed from the business community to be true partners with developing country governments and promote access and learning for all young people around the world.

Authors

Justin W. van Fleet

The Case for a Global Business Coalition for Education

Justin W. van Fleet — Thu, 15 Sep 2011 09:52:00 -0400

INTRODUCTION

We are facing a global learning crisis in developing countries. While there are tens of millions of children out of school, hundreds of millions more are in school, but receiving an education of such poor quality that they have little prospect of gaining the literacy, numeracy and life-skills that they need to be productive members of society. This crisis has economic and social benefits that are devastatingly high, stifling economic growth, perpetuating poverty, and creating unstable societies. This crisis has a direct impact on the business community and its bottom line. Corporations must come together under the united banner of a Global Business Coalition for Education to address the education crisis head-on for the benefit of both society and business.

As direct stakeholders in the quality of education of the world’s children and youth, the business community has tremendous assets to bring to bear on the global learning crisis. These assets include technology, innovation, financing, employee skills and talents, and a unified advocacy voice. While the business community does engage significantly in education, the impact of these interventions is minimal. In the aggregate, corporate resources are deployed in such an inefficient manner to support global education that these practices would never pass muster in the day-to-day business of a company. If the same tactics were used in product research, marketing and development, they would lead a company to a loss in market share.

A Global Business Coalition for Education would strengthen the business community’s engagement in education and allow it to serve as a force for results-oriented change in the education sector. Collectively, companies will benefit by:

Reducing the inefficiencies by spreading the investment risk, lowering startup and transaction costs, creating economies of scale, leveraging investments, and making investments strategic and results-oriented.

Narrowing the global talent gap in developing and emerging economies.

Educating consumers so they can earn higher incomes and accumulate more disposable income to spend on products and services.

Increasing the effectiveness, health and well-being of employees and their families.

Creating more competitive business environments for attracting and retaining labor.

Increasing the ease of doing business in developing and emerging markets.

Improving government and community relations.

Increasing profits from educational innovation.

This call to action is not far-fetched: In the last decade, the Global Business Coalition for Health (GBC Health) has effectively engaged a membership of over 200 companies to be a voice for change in the global health sector. Only through collective action can the global learning crisis be addressed and generate benefits that are not only positive for society, but for the business community.

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Authors

Justin W. van Fleet

Global Philanthropy: Where Is the Bill Gates of Global Education?

Lindsay Haslebacher and Justin W. van Fleet — Thu, 18 Aug 2011 11:23:00 -0400

This month marks the one year anniversary of the “Giving Pledge,” Warren Buffett and Bill Gates' challenge to other billionaires to pledge at least half of their wealth to philanthropy. When the Giving Pledge launched, our initial analysis found no champions for global education. One year and a total of 69 American billionaire pledges later, supporting education in developing countries still does not appear to be high on the priority list. American billionaire philanthropists supporting education tend to do so domestically. Therefore, in a search for philanthropic champions of education in the developing world, we looked at the philanthropy priorities of billionaires living in developing countries and emerging economies.

Education Champions in Developing Countries

Emerging economies hold the vast majority of individual billionaire wealth in developing countries. China leads with 115 billionaires, followed by Russia (101), India (55), and Brazil (30). While over one-third of the 1,210 billionaires in the world are in the United States, only six are from sub-Saharan Africa, a region with troubling education statistics. In examining the billionaires in developing countries and emerging economies, several individuals stood out as champions of education:

Latin America: Carlos Slim Helú, the richest man in the world with an estimated net worth of $74 billion, has given an estimated $4 billion to his foundation based in Mexico. While not exclusively focused on education, he has directed his financial support for digital education programs in Mexico and Fundacion Alas, an education organization in in Latin America founded by Colombian singer, Shakira. However, Slim declined to join the Giving Pledge as he felt there are other ways he could fight poverty.
India: Azim Premji established the Azim Premji Foundation in 2001, which over the past 10 years has reached over 2.5 million children in 20,000 schools across 13 states in India. The organization provides education resources and grassroots level support for local communities as they improve local public schools. Sunil Mittal, founder of the Bharti Foundation, and Shiv Nadar, founder of the Shiv Nadar Foundation, have both focused their efforts on improving education in India’s rural regions through establishing schools and delivering quality education to primary school-aged children.
Indonesia: Sukanto Tanoto and Tinah Bingei Tanoto formed the Tanoto Foundation, which has built a number of primary schools, trained over 1,300 teachers, and awarded scholarships to more than 1,000 undergraduate and graduate students in Indonesia.
Turkey: Husnu Ozyegin established the Hüsnü M. Özyeğin Foundation in 1990. The foundation has built approximately 50 schools and girls dormitories in areas with limited access to educational facilities and has provided about 10,000 scholarships to university students from disadvantaged backgrounds in Turkey.

Should Billionaires Drive the Education Agenda?

The concentration of billionaires in certain countries lends itself to the natural concentration of philanthropic resources in these regions. Of the few billionaires on the African continent, wealth is concentrated within two nations: Nigeria and South Africa. The remaining countries in Africa are left without significant sources of private high net worth philanthropy.

Some may actually argue that this is a good thing. While many may see individual billionaire champions as a way to catalyze a big moment in education, it can also distract attention from national priorities to narrow solutions and experiments. In the United States, some suggest that a few billion dollars from private philanthropy – a mere fraction of total education expenditures – has defined the national education debate. Even Bill Gates acknowledges that a lot of money he has invested into education has been experimental. “It’s been about a decade of learning,” he notes regarding the $5 billion the Gates Foundation has spent on education grants and scholarships since 2000 in the United States. While learning about the effectiveness of new policies is important, philanthropic education experiments are not the only type of support needed in developing countries at this crucial moment as we near the Education for All deadline of 2015.

Missing a Global Education Philanthropy Champion

The public nature of the Giving Pledge and much of American philanthropy is not a universally shared trait; many philanthropists do not publish their wealth and charitable activities, citing philanthropy as a private and personal matter. For this reason, there are likely many other philanthropists below the radar supporting education throughout the world. While billionaire philanthropists should not be driving the global education policy agenda, such a champion could help catalyze national discussions and mobilize investments from other actors, such has been the case in the global health sector. About one-third of 1 percent of the wealth from the world’s billionaires could fill UNESCO’s estimated annual $16 billion basic education financing gap. And while private giving from individuals to education in developing countries is taking hold at country and regional levels, the global learning crisis has yet to capture the imagination of a philanthropic champion.

Authors

Lindsay Haslebacher
Justin W. van Fleet

Image Source: ï¿½ Stringer Pakistan / Reuters

Increasing the Impact of Corporate Engagement in Education: Landscape and Challenges

Justin W. van Fleet — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 10:31:00 -0400

Editor’s Note: The Center for Universal Education co-hosted a side event with UNESCO and the United Nations Department for Economic and Social Affairs during the High Level Segment of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) at the United Nations Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. This meeting brought together business leaders from multinational companies and representatives from governments and ministries of education to discuss engaging the private sector in education. His Excellency Lazarous Kapambwe, President of ECOSOC and the Permanent Representative of Zambia to the United Nations, made opening remarks and Ms. Irina Bokova, Director-General of UNESCO moderated the discussion. Justin van Fleet discussed the challenges and opportunities with corporate engagement in education.

The Current State of Education is Nothing Short of a Global Learning Crisis

Despite progress made since the start of the millennium to refocus efforts on education, progress in education has been slow and uneven with government commitments wavering. The current state of education is nothing short of a global crisis: 67 million children remain out of primary school and resource mobilization to reach the 2015 targets has fallen short by over $16 billion. Just as alarming, yet rarely discussed, are the hundreds of millions of children enrolled in school but not learning. This global learning crisis is characterized by alarming statistics: in some countries after five years of schooling children still have a 40 percent chance of being illiterate. Three out of ten young people in emerging economies cannot do basic math. And despite the rhetoric, education has yet to create truly effective, sustainable and scalable partnerships with the private sector like we have seen in other sectors, such as health.

We’re Missing True Champions from the Private Sector

An examination of private sector philanthropy has demonstrated the lack of a strong continent of champions for education. In the initial "Giving Pledge,” a collection of billionaires who have committed to giving away a substantial portion of their wealth to charitable causes, an analysis by Brookings found no support for quality education in developing countries among the inaugural pledging community. In another study we have underway, we find that 31 percent of the world’s billionaires are in developing and emerging economies – which lends hope for new champions. For instance, an example is the leadership of Azim Premji, who has dedicated a significant portion of his personal wealth to supporting education in India.

In terms of private foundations, a recent analysis by the International Education Funders Group, a new collaborative of private funders of education in developing countries seeking to be a catalytic force in advancing Education for All, revealed that nearly half of the European and North American foundations making grants to education are newly formed. And while this offers hope for new actors in education philanthropy directed toward developing countries, data from the Hudson Institute's Center for Global Prosperity suggests that among U.S. foundations, less than 5 percent of foundation funding to development goes to education.

What We Know About the Corporate Sector

We have some emerging data coming out of the corporate sector to help us see the promises and limitations of corporate engagement in education. We are in the process of surveying global companies and have identified over 200 – nearly 55 percent of non-US based Global Fortune 500 companies – that are engaged in education in developing countries. Over 80 percent are based in developed countries and another fifth are based in developing countries. Of those based in developing countries, we find that over 30 percent make south-south investments in education, from one developing country to another. These south-south transactions in education are particularly interesting and merit further exploration. We are hoping to have some estimates regarding the magnitude of these investments in the coming months.

In the United States, our study projects a $500 million contribution to developing countries education systems each year. These contributions are led in scale by the energy and technology sector. We also find they are highly focused on career-centered education such as science, technology, engineering, math, entrepreneurship and workforce training.

The important thing to remember about corporate engagement in education – and what we must be clear about if we want to make partnerships successful – is that companies are not in the business of social outcomes. They are accountable to shareholders to make a profit and business goals must be consistent with any social goal in their philanthropy strategies. Understanding this notion can help set expectations and assess mutual interests that are compatible to leverage for increased social investment in education. Our research shows companies invest in education in locations where their employees live and work or where there is a strategic market interest. They invest in education where they have market and growth opportunities, where they would like to promote community relations and brand recognition or where they can engage their employees.

Corporate contributions have several limitations that can be summarized as highly fragmented engagement in global education with a limited impact at a systemic level. Contributions tend to be small, short-term and uncoordinated. We found that over 70 percent of corporate contributions are for less than three years of support; half of those are one-time contributions. We found that only one quarter of U.S. companies actually coordinate contributions with the host governments. And more than half of corporations in our research report not coordinating their contributions with anyone – this includes other companies, foundations, donor governments, or host governments at any level. Additionally, these contributions which fly below the radar of national and local education plans, focus significantly on acute labor needs and ignore systemic challenges endemic to the global learning crisis. Some of these neglected areas include early childhood development, early learning, and transitions to relevant post-primary education opportunities. On top of this, corporate contributions to education do not reach the most marginalized. We found that the higher the level of education poverty in a country, the lower the probability of corporate engagement in education. Corporate contributions favor emerging economies at the expense of those countries or regions in greatest need.

The Role of Governments and Multilaterals

But the disconnect is not just on the part of companies and the private sector. The corporate sector has identified several reasons why it may circumvent working with governments or multilateral organizations. Overall, the disconnect can be described as a lack of understanding of business culture. Companies expect partners to demonstrate specific and tangible uses of resources, provide direct and timely feedback about corporate contributions and facilitate additional connections for the business at the local level. Companies find that governments and multilaterals often lack clear plans and deliverables which make the investments difficult to justify. They also find that the high administrative costs make collaboration prohibitive and that visions of potential investments often lack opportunity to scale up successful projects throughout countries and regions.

Moving Toward True Collaboration

Collaboration within the private sector is not impossible and in fact, leveraging assets to have a real impact on education is not only possible, but taking place today. One example comes from the private foundation world. A few years ago, instead of starting a parallel program focused on global education, the Gates Foundation partnered with the Hewlett Foundation to develop a single strategy to promote quality education in developing countries. What emerged was a clear, five-year plan which jointly mobilized $90 million focused squarely on promoting learning in developing countries. This collaboration has allowed us to understand the scope of the global learning crisis by building evidence through programs such as ASER in India and UWEZO in East Africa and has also taken a deep look about what needs to take place in classrooms to really give children a chance to learn. And this is just one instance of leveraging resources and collaborating.

When I look around the table at the unique assets each of you bring to the table, I cannot help but think that if we get serious about leveraging each others' core strengths and collaborating in earnest, the potential for impact is enormous. So what does this mean for companies? Until companies see global education as a core business interest – not just social responsibility or philanthropy – the impact will not be significant. The global learning challenge has a direct impact on society and the bottom line. From the talent of current employees and future employees to the income potential of your consumers, learning is vital. Every CEO should be talking about the global learning crisis, and more importantly, making pledges about what the company brings to the table and is willing to do to support government efforts to cure this silent crisis eroding development potential.

I would urge companies to realize that the talent gap – or whatever the motivation is for your investment in education – cannot be solved by a band-aid approach. Education should be a corporate-wide strategy and priority for employees, communities, and consumers. And every CEO should be aware of how this global learning crisis is directly impacting his or her business’ bottom line and be aware that lack of investment or advocacy to other governments and leaders isn’t just hurting society, but business. Companies should focus on how they can invest in learning, particularly early childhood education, learning in early years and transition to post-primary that is relevant. These investments should pay particular attention to marginalized populations. I would also urge companies to become strategic and innovative with the way they think about deploying their resources and coordinate financing with governments and other corporations or foundations. I extend an open invitation for everyone here to join our Brookings Working Group on Corporate Philanthropy for Global Education and to be part of the Global Compact on Learning which is bringing together donor governments, multilateral organizations, foundations, NGOs and growing number of corporations and developing country governments to chart a new learning agenda leading up to and following 2015. Companies should also engage with the Education for All-Fast Track Initiative, which is taking the private sector contribution to education seriously in support of their mission through a constituency group for private foundations and private sector actors. There are opportunities for real change and not just more of the same.

While it is important to acknowledge that not every government or multilateral organization will find working with the private sector to be of interest, if you wish to engage more with the private sector, I encourage you to develop concrete opportunities for corporate engagement. Look at business interests and the potential for how contributions of cash, in-kind resources, or employee expertise could support you education plans and strategies. Commit to measuring the impact of programs and scaling successful innovations. By working successfully with the private sector, donor governments, host governments and multilateral actors can begin to develop track records of working with the private sector to support sustained learning.

In summary, there is a learning crisis and an education resource crisis. The two go hand-in-hand. And it is the challenge for everyone in the room – and our peers not present at other multilateral organizations, ministries, development agencies and corporations, to take the learning crisis seriously and instead of “more of the same,” really change the way we support education in developing countries to put learning front and center. I look forward to hearing from our other colleagues and then to having a substantive discussion about how we can increase the impact of our efforts.

Authors

Justin W. van Fleet