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A Eurostep briefing paper on gender[1] and education

Summary

The systematic failure, in many countries, to educate women and girls on equal terms with boys and men is a human rights violation on a massive scale. It is also a huge waste of potential for economic, social and political development. Whilst this paper finds examples of donor interventions impacting positively on women and girls’ access to education, others have had the opposite effect; since the introduction of Structural Adjustment Programmes, the quality of education has declined in both Africa and Latin America.

This paper examines some of the macro-economic and immediate causes of gender inequality in education and highlights some of the strategies that donors have identified to address them. Paying particular attention to European Union policy and European Commission practice in gender and education, it makes recommendations for mainstreaming gender more effectively in EC aid to education policy. The absence of any detailed, specific systematic monitoring or evaluation by the Commission in this area is identified as a key barrier to more effective policy and practice as are ‘institutional’ shortcomings. The institutional structures and culture of the Commission do not facilitate the narrowing of the policy—practice gap as regards the integration of a gender focus into co-operation in the education sector. The Commission is not well organised either to share examples of good practice or to transfer gender expertise and experience.

The paper recommends that the Commission:

1. Evaluate the extent to which its support to the education sector in Southern countries contributes towards achieving policy goals and international commitments on gender and education;
2. Incorporate, or has access to, a thorough gender analysis of education systems that it supports;
3. Support a more holistic approach as a deliberate development co-operation strategy;
4. Build on existing gender expertise and awareness among its staff at all levels and include a requirement for gender expertise in the TOR of all external consultancies;
5. Develop relevant, realistic gender indicators for planning, monitoring and evaluation purposes.

Gender Inequality in Education

Introduction

Gender mainstreaming in education, as the definition suggests, requires policy makers to analyse all aspects of an education system to ensure that it contributes towards achieving gender equality. In some cases (e.g. where gender-disaggregated enrolment statistics suggest that the underachievement of boys is an issue of concern) this will mean focusing on boys’ education. In the vast majority of countries the focus will be mainly on women and girls.

Two thirds of children not in school are girls. Drop-out rates for girls are higher than for boys, and girls are less likely to go on to higher education. The next generation of illiterate adults, like the last, will be predominantly female. The systematic failure, in many countries, to educate women and girls on equal terms with boys and men is a human rights violation on a massive scale. It is also a huge waste of potential for economic, social and political development.

These figures mask the extent to which even when girls are enrolled in school they face a harder struggle than their male counterparts, in many places recording higher drop-out rates, lower levels of educational achievement and fewer places in secondary and tertiary education.

The macro-economic context

The macro-economic framework of a country has a decisive impact on access to education. Crippling debt repayments and the imposition of structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) have a devastating effect on the national budget available for investment in basic social services such as education.

IMF and World Bank policies have tended to exacerbate gender disparities in education by putting public education itself under pressure. Education sector budgets tend to account for a very large share of total public expenditure, so they are obvious targets when governments are required to reduce budget deficits and cap public spending. Structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) have also been shown to undermine governments’ capacity to implement reforms and to design and implement suitable policies of their choice. Financial and management reforms initiated under SAPs pay scant attention to quality and equity in education. Indeed, at the very time when SAPs advocate increased household investment in education through cost sharing, the broader effects of SAPs lead to decreases in income available to households (and countries) to meet the additional costs. The drive towards privatisation of education provision not only diminishes the opportunities for education system users to influence the education they receive but also tends to ensure that where there are low incentives for private service providers to invest in education, access will be denied to women and girls in rural populations and amongst the urban poor. Recent research (Subrahmanian, 1999: 20) indicates that since the introduction of SAPs, the quality of education has declined in both Africa and Latin America. The World Bank has recently proposed a new tool for poverty eradication; Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs). These papers are intended to be developed by and for each country with input from the World Bank and the IMF, in consultation with civil society. Funding and debt relief will only be available once the PRSP has been approved by the Boards of the Bank and the IMF. Given these institutions’ track record on poverty eradication up until now, this new process will need careful monitoring to ensure that the SAP effect on education is avoided.

Why is the education of women and girls more at risk?

Economic, social and cultural factors, in complex interrelation, all play a role in determining access to and duration of education, both for males and females. However, the impact of these factors is greater on females than on males in most contexts.

Economic factors

In addition to the macro-economic influences resulting in lower levels of participation for females in education, there are a number of proximate economic factors, including direct costs, indirect costs and opportunity costs, which can combine to deny girls and women their right to education.

Indirect costs of education, such as contributions towards the maintenance of school buildings, the requirement to wear school uniform and the expectation that pupils will perform domestic tasks for teaching staff, all have a greater impact on girls than boys. Inadequate water and sanitation, long distances between home and school, and poor transport facilities are also barriers to girls’ attendance in schools. Parents may decide it is not cost-effective to send girls to school. A report by the British NGO Christian Aid into British and EC aid to Ethiopia (Van Diesen and Walker, 1999) found that parents keep children, and particularly girls, out of school because there are no job opportunities for them once they leave school, despite the qualifications they have gained.

At the household level, the decision as to how many children, and which children, are to receive schooling varies greatly with socio-economic level. Those in the poorest quintile in Nepal, for instance, spend over 40% of an average household income to send one child to primary school; those in the richest quintile spend only 20%. Education is thus out of reach for most families and out of reach for most girls in particular. In this context, raising the income of poor families and/or lowering the costs of education is likely to have a positive impact on girls’ enrolment rates.

Social and cultural factors

Girls are required to spend a far greater proportion of their time on household tasks than boys, reducing the time available to them for education. In India girls aged under 13 work on average 5.5 hours a day compared with 1.8 hours for boys. In India, Bangladesh and Nepal, girls assume responsibility for collecting firewood, water and caring for siblings by the age of five. Inconvenient timetables which are not designed around other tasks children are expected to perform and curricula irrelevant to girls’ socio-economic context contribute to their lower attendance rates. Even where girls’ enrolment and attendance is relatively high, the time and space available to them for homework and extra-curricular education activities tends to be limited in comparison with that available to boys, particularly in poorer households and rural areas.

Other cultural factors impeding girls’ education include early marriage, early pregnancy, and the perception that investment in a daughter’s education will be lost to her future husband’s family; traditions and customs arising from ethnic and religious background; fear of sexual or other violence towards girls outside the home.

Finally, gender bias in the teaching profession is a highly variable factor influencing whether girls are sent to school and how long they stay there. In some countries/regions there is a lack of female teachers, while in others, for example, in much of Latin America, primary teachers are overwhelmingly female, with a sharp drop in the proportion of women teachers in secondary and higher education.

A complex interplay of these economic, social and cultural factors accounts for girls’ absence from education in any given situation. For example, in Nepal, the enrolment rate for girls is 40% lower than for boys. Whilst poor families are less likely to send either boys or girls to school, the enrolment rate for girls is over 70% lower than for boys[2]. Ethnic origin can add to this formidable list of hurdles; indigenous people in Guatemala receive an average of 1.3 years of schooling compared to the national average of 4.2 years; but indigenous females receive on average only half as many years of schooling as indigenous males[3].

EU Policy on Gender and Education

Policy statements

Education is one of the twelve Critical Areas of Concern identified as priority areas for action at the Fourth World Conference on Women in 1995. The Beijing Platform for Action emerging from that conference states that education is both a human right and an essential tool for achieving equality, development and peace. It recognises that girls continue to be denied quality education, especially at higher levels and in science and technology, and recommends action on ensuring equal access to education, eradicating illiteracy among women, and developing non-discriminatory evaluation and training.

The European Union’s commitment to meeting the objectives of the Beijing Platform for Action is reflected in the December 1995 Council Resolution on integrating gender issues in development co-operation. This represents the culmination of a long process in the EU of acquiring a gender analysis of development and a policy on promoting gender equality in development cooperation. The Resolution outlines the principles which should guide European Community and Member State development co-operation as regards both policy and implementation. It highlights the need to mainstream gender analysis:

“at macro-, meso- and micro-level … in the conception, design and implementation of all development policies and interventions as well as in monitoring and evaluation … Analysis of differences and disparities between women and men must be a key criterion for assessing the goals and results of development policies and interventions”.

EU policy statements on education routinely recognise the need to promote gender equality in support to education in the South. A series of policy documents acknowledge that women and girls form the majority of unreached learners in the South and attest to the importance of education to improving the status of women in society. The Commission Communication on the state of education and training in the developing countries (1993) states (para 4.2 (f)):

“access to education is also tending to become more unequal, with girls suffering the most. This phenomenon is clearly exacerbated by structural adjustment policies that have often been implemented …”.

This Communication also notes (para 6.2) that education - and particularly basic education - has a demonstrable impact on reducing gender inequality in society and on promoting women in society.

Similarly, the 1996 Commission Communication on incorporating equal opportunities for women and men into all Community policies and activities recognises (section 3) that:

“Education and training are powerful springboards towards obtaining equal opportunities for women”,

and states (section 5) that the Community is supporting:

“large-scale positive action programmes with a view to eliminating the major disparities between women and men in developing countries, particularly in the fields of health and education”.

EU policy to address gender inequality in education and development is specifically referred to in three separate Council Resolutions, those on education and training in the developing countries (1994), gender (1995) and human and social development (1996). Indeed, such is the importance that the Commission attaches to eliminating gender disparities in education that a recent briefing on education and training issued by DG Development (but not necessarily reflecting the official position of DG Development or the Commission) observes that whilst education policies must be determined by Southern governments and whilst donors must respect local cultural choices, the question of gender is an exception to this rule. As a result, in its support to education and training the Commission will ensure:

“a determined and powerful support to the promotion of the political, economic and social status of women and girls.”[4]

However, despite this frequent and explicit recognition of the importance of increasing female access to education, it is far from clear that the EC’s efforts to increase access to education for females have been successful in practice. Indeed in the absence of any detailed, specific systematic monitoring or evaluation in this area it is hard to make any assessment, other than a preliminary one, at all.

Instruments for programme and project implementation

The Council’s Gender Resolution gives general but clear guidelines on integrating a gender perspective into development intervention strategies, recommending that:

“at project, programme and country strategy level, external assistance should ensure that gender analysis will orient all development interventions from the planning to the evaluation phase (mainstreaming). In addition, special attention should be given to positive actions addressing major gender disparities. … Both mainstreaming and positive actions should be considered as complementary strategies …” (emphasis added)

It is important to note here that the Resolution does not consider mainstreaming alone to be a sufficient guarantee of equality.

At a more practical level, a number of instruments have been produced, both for co-operation with the ACP countries (DG Development, formerly DG VIII) and with the ALAMED countries (DG External Relations, formerly DG I), which are intended to guide the integration of a gender perspective into EU development co-operation in practice. They include manuals for programme and project administration, gender manuals, guidelines for elaborating project financing proposals and agreements (e.g. ‘Dispositions techniques et administratives: “Guidelines”’), and a gender impact assessment form which must be completed and accompany every ALAMED project proposal.

The draft General conditions for the cofinancing of development co-operation undertaken by NGOs in developing countries (B7-6000) states (paragraph 3.3) that particular attention must be paid to ensuring that “gender inequalities have been assessed and addressed” in proposals although no further details are provided in this draft as to how NGOs should ensure that this requirement is met.

The Practical Guide for the Elaboration of Programmes of support to the education and training sector under NIPs and RIPs[5] for the 8^th EDF (1998) includes guidelines for Commission desk officers which are designed to ensure that gender issues are addressed in support programmes in ACP countries. The guidelines on gender are in the form of a standard questionnaire and require that the following six questions be addressed:

1- Does the project explicitly target women for the main component of the project?

2- Have women of the target population been consulted during the project design?

3- Will women from the recipient country be involved as active participants[6] during the implementation of the project?

4a- Have barriers to female participation in the project activities been identified?

4b- Have measures been designed to overcome these barriers?

5- Will WID/gender expertise be made available throughout the project cycle to ensure female participation in the project activities?

6- Are women the primary and main target group of the project?

Some of these questions appear to be of limited use in assessing the extent to which gender considerations have been integrated into EC support to education and training, particularly in the context of sector-wide support. The questions are too perfunctory to elicit the detailed information necessary to analyse the extent to which support contributes to the elimination of gender disparity in education. Whilst this questionnaire indicates to geographical desk officers that it is important to consider gender aspects of education, it is not clear that it provides a useful guide to the kind of assessment that is required. This is not to say that gender issues are not explicitly targeted in such support programmes but that it is impossible to assess whether or not this is the case on the basis of these questions. Within the context of education sector support, the Commission needs to ensure that its support contributes towards eradicating gender disparities overall. An analysis with this aim in mind would reveal more (and more useful) information than a series of yes/no answers to the above-listed questions.

A similar checklist or questionnaire is included in the Gender Manual published in 1993 by the then DG I, Women and Development: Cooperation with Latin American, Asian and Mediterranean countries. Management of the project cycle, and forms the basis of the Gender Impact Assessment form to be submitted with all project proposals. The DG I Gender Manual also contains guidelines to incorporating gender considerations into the Logical Framework on which project planning is based. However, unless gender awareness is guaranteed at the project identification and design stages, for instance by using only consultancy teams with demonstrable gender expertise, it is extremely difficult to integrate a gender focus into global and yearly plans for a project whose design has taken no account of differentiated gender needs and interests.

In 1999, in both ACP and ALAMED co-operation, revision of the guidelines for project elaboration and financing agreements was carried out to ensure consideration of gender-differentiated needs, use of gender-sensitive approaches, and gender expertise at all stages in the project cycle. However, it is unclear to what extent this revision has influenced recent project assessment and planning processes.

Monitoring and evaluation

In September 1999 the Commission (DG Development) carried out an initial analysis of its targeting of females in education. The study is based on evaluations of a number of supported activities in Guinea Conakry, Tanzania, Papua New Guinea and Vanuatu. The survey was drawn together from existing evaluations and was not commissioned specifically for the purpose of evaluating the Commission’s gender and education policies in practice. The gender and education issues paper deals only with selected countries eligible for support under the terms of the Lomé Convention and thus does not address EC co-operation with Asia and Latin America, which differs in several respects from co-operation with ACP countries under the Lomé Convention.

Based on the evaluations available the paper identifies eight key areas of gender disparity in education:

• Student enrolment and attendance
• Student performance
• Student subject choices
• School-leavers’ employment
• Staffing
• Community participation
• Representation in policy and management
• Limits to adult education

The paper goes on to describe the out-of-school and in-school factors that contribute to the gender disparities identified. These include - but are not limited to - cultural attitudes, domestic workloads, early marriage, student expectations, teacher expectations, distance to school, inadequate infrastructure (lack of water and latrines), the practice of expelling pregnant pupils, indirect costs on schooling and inappropriate teaching materials that reinforce gender bias. Based on this analysis the paper identifies the following recommendations for EU co-operation.

Commission practice/experience of mainstreaming gender in education

At a general level, both DG VIII and DG IB undertook evaluations of gender in their co-operation programmes in 1997 and have also undertaken external missions to several countries providing evaluation and support to the integration of a gender focus into projects. However, apart from the limited examples contained in the Commission’s gender and education issues paper, which serve to highlight the need to mainstream gender equality into support to education rather than analysing to what extent this has been done, there is no specific, comprehensive analysis available of how the Commission addresses gender mainstreaming in its aid to education in practice.

Nonetheless, some projects which explicitly address gender issues in education are briefly described in the Commission’s working paper “Integrating Gender Issues in Development Co-operation: Progress Report 1997” (SEC (97) 2067, 3.11.97, Annexes III, IV). They include:

• India: primary education project with Indian government, in seven states, focusing on the girl child and aiming to increase facilities for primary education, with a view to increasing enrolments and levels of learning in primary schools and preventing drop-out.
• Bangladesh: training and employment of women teachers in rural secondary schools. Aims to promote the transition to a more gender-equitable society in rural Bangladesh by promoting more girl-friendly secondary schools and gender-sensitive teaching; will support training of 7,000 women at teacher training colleges and their employment in rural secondary schools; project includes refurbishing of poor and remote schools and provision of residential hostels for women teachers.
• West Bank: vocational education and training facilities, providing for training needs of young people and adults and catering equally for men and women; curricula to be specifically designed with a view to active promotion of equality of opportunity between men and women in the labour market.
• Yemen: technical vocational training programme, with a special component focusing exclusively on vocational training facilities for women.

In Guatemala, the EC, together with the Guatemalan Ministry of Education, is supporting a six-year programme of reform of the education sector. Actions include positive discrimination to encourage girls’ attendance through the provision of bursaries to girl students. Other activities include revising course content and teaching materials and improving the treatment of indigenous girl children in the classroom.

These examples show that policy commitments are being put into practice in a number of different settings. Eurostep welcomes them and hopes that such initiatives will be multiplied. Eurostep considers, however, that these examples of good practice may remain isolated unless the Commission carries out a specific evaluation and analysis of gender mainstreaming and positive actions to address major gender disparities in education projects in all regions.

Institutional aspects

It is worth noting here that the institutional structures and culture of the Commission do not facilitate the narrowing of the policy—practice gap as regards the integration of a gender focus into co-operation in the education sector. The Commission is not well organised either to share examples of good practice or to transfer gender expertise and experience. At the general level there have been positive moves in recent years, such as the establishment of gender focal points in operational units of DG Development and DG External Relations and also in some delegations, and the series of evaluation exercises mentioned above.

On the other hand, heavy workloads, vertical management structures, a lack of institutionalised horizontal contacts between units and departments, limited transparency, and rapid staff turnover reduce the space for institutional learning and memory and limit the possibilities of multiplying good practice. Programme staff in the field (both national and European) are often poorly informed about the EU’s policy statements on gender. Finally, a perceptible gender bias in staffing persists at all levels, despite the advances made by the Commission’s positive action programme incorporating its equal opportunities policy into all areas of personnel management.

Strategies for increasing female access to quality education

The European Commission has already given consideration to how it could ensure that girls’ access to formal education is increased. The strategies it has considered are mainly focused on improvements to the education sector itself. However, research suggests that these are not the only issues that need to be taken into account. In particular, the importance of a holistic approach to development co-operation overall is emphasised. This section examines other strategies that have been successful that the Commission should consider incorporating into its own support programmes where appropriate.

A 1998 UNICEF working paper (Mehrotra, 1998) examines ten countries that have been successful in implementing the goals of the Education for All conference[7]: Sri Lanka and India (Kerala state) in South Asia; Republic of Korea and Malaysia in East Asia; Botswana, Mauritius and Zimbabwe in Sub-Saharan Africa; and Barbados, Costa Rica and Cuba in Latin America and the Caribbean. The paper focuses on girls’ enrolment in the formal sector at primary and secondary levels. As far as expanding girls’ enrolment is concerned it states (p.5):

“the expansion of physical facilities and proximity to schools laid the basis for the participation of girls. Moreover, an important underlying factor was the high proportion of female teachers in schools in the selected countries. Female teachers give parents of girl-children a sense of security as well as provide a role model for girls in the community.”

The other major factor identified was the absence of both direct and indirect costs.

A recent OECD DAC report, Reaching the goals in the shaping the 21^st century targets on gender equality and education (1999), examines a number of donor practices on gender mainstreaming in aid to education. The report identifies two “good practice principles”:

• The need to adopt a holistic approach;
• The need to address quality and universal access simultaneously.

The report notes the importance of addressing quality issues in education rather than simply aiming to meet the target of universal access to basic education in quantitative terms. However, despite some positive examples of donor efforts to mainstream gender, it finds that donor efforts have tended to focus on quantitative targets such as access and participation rates; “Quality in terms of girl-friendly schooling environments and gender-sensitive content and educational environments is usually unattended to” (p. 14) The report defines “quality issues” as relating to curriculum development, teacher training and the provision of textbooks as well as school management and administration (pp. 13-14). It suggests, for example, that quality in terms of curriculum development should mean that the curriculum is relevant to girls. Both the New Zealand Overseas Development Agency (NZODA) and SIDA, the Swedish International Development Agency, are involved in projects to ensure that teaching materials are gender-sensitive and relate to girls’ lives (p. 17).

The OECD DAC report highlights the difficulty, partly due to ignorance about the available tools and methodologies, of mainstreaming gender into education policy. With regard to promoting gender mainstreaming in education projects, on the basis of those donor policies that were examined, it identifies the following successful strategies:

• Making schools more accessible and safer, i.e. closer to the communities where girls live;
• Improving the quality of teachers, in particular through increasing the number of female teachers, through including gender awareness in teacher training and through in-service training;
• Lowering the costs of schooling, for example through stipends for girl children;
• Developing curricula relevant to girls’ lives;
• Changing community attitudes towards girls’ education through participatory approaches. In this regard the report notes (p. 17) that “Parents and communities’ involvement in planning, management, decision-making and advocacy efforts have a positive effect on girls’ education”;
• Promoting decentralisation in administration and management;
• Collecting gender-disaggregated data;
• Monitoring progress at local levels;
• Promoting advocacy and social mobilisation campaigns;
• Designing systems that meet students’ gender-specific needs, such as timetables that take account of students’ household or economic responsibilities;
• Supporting multiple delivery systems, i.e. providing support to non-formal as well as formal education delivery systems;
• Support through multilateral organisations;
• Supporting regional forums that are dedicated to promoting female education;
• Donor co-ordination.

The report also considers some examples of gender mainstreaming in sector-wide reform programmes. It considers (p. 21) that “because of its comprehensiveness, sector-programme support offers new opportunities for mainstreaming gender issues through a holistic approach which has the potential to induce profound quality changes in the education system.”

Sector-wide approaches, or SWAPs, are relatively new to the education sector. A 1999 policy document entitled Learning Opportunities for All: A Policy Framework for Education, from the UK Department for International Development (DFID), defines the characteristics of a SWAP as follows:

• Governments define a macro-economic framework within which medium term expenditure frameworks determine the resources available for individual sectors.
• Governments lead a consultative process with stakeholders and investors, including development agencies to define:

• An overall policy framework;
• Priorities, objectives and performance measures;
• Expenditu
• re programmes;
• Institutional reform and capacity-building;
• Jointly agreed management, reporting and accounting arrangements.
• Major donors jointly support the process and the practice of the sector programme, preferably using common procedures.
• Technical assistance is commissioned by governments rather than donor agencies.

Although this approach is too new to allow the OECD report’s authors to reach definitive conclusions about the best way to ainstream gender in SWAPs, the report makes the following seven recommendations:

Recommendations for future Commission policy and practice

This paper has highlighted a number of tried and tested strategies that have been used to mainstream gender in education successfully. However, the very fact that the research suggests that successful mainstreaming strategies are grounded in a thorough gender analysis of each national, regional or local context indicates that there is no blueprint that can be simply picked off the shelf and implemented.

These recommendations are limited to those that are specific to donor policy. Whilst successful strategies for gender mainstreaming have been highlighted throughout this paper, the direct responsibility for their implementation lies more often with Southern countries than with donors. Of all of the strategies that Southern Governments could implement, transparency and accountability are central. The research demonstrates that community participation in and ownership of education systems are vital to overcoming barriers to access.

Eurostep recommendations

1. As a matter of urgency the Commission should evaluate the extent to which its practice in the education sector contributes towards the realisation of its education and gender policy goals as well as its international commitments in that area.

2. Prior to agreeing to support reform in the education sector or specific projects within it, the Commission, together with its partners, should carry out a thorough gender analysis of the education system in the country concerned. This should include participatory consultations with female and male users of education systems. Community participation and local ownership are vital to the success of gender mainstreaming in education. However, in consulting communities, donors need to bear in mind that men and women in any given community may have different needs and should be consulted separately. The Commission’s existing case studies bear this out. Furthermore, there is also a need to separate out the categories of “women” and “girls”. Differences in class or caste and between urban and rural contexts also lead to different experiences for women and girls within regions and countries.

 3. Studies indicate that a holistic approach to support in Southern countries is required, in terms both of support to the entire education system and support to gender mainstreaming throughout society. The Commission, through the Lomé Convention, is particularly well placed to implement such an approach in ACP countries, since its support is contingent upon the agreement of a National Indicative Programme which identifies the overall developmental needs of partner countries. The trend towards SWAPs in the education system is to be welcomed, but it will still be insufficient if factors exogenous to national education systems, such as gender bias in national labour markets, are not also addressed.

4. The Commission notes the need to build on gender expertise in partner countries. It might also consider the same need within its own services. People with expertise in education and gender need to be involved in all programmes and projects during all stages of the project cycle, including identification, design, planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation.

5. It is crucial to develop realistic indicators. Whilst it is important to gender-disaggregate quantitative statistics on enrolment, drop-out rates and educational achievement, it must be recognised that the information such statistics provide is limited for the purposes of guiding and assessing policy. Indicators that record whether gender equality is taken into account in relation to the curriculum, educational materials, teacher training and leadership in schools and administrations are also necessary.

6. The Commission should play a more active role in ensuring that EU bilateral aid and the Community programme are more closely co-ordinated. A recent report into donor activity in Ghana commissioned by ActionAid highlighted a lack of donor co-ordination as the principle constraint to effective aid provision. It identified the long-term effects of fragmented project management as low disbursement of funds, delayed implementation, extended project implementation and inefficient procurement scheduling. The report points out that the move towards a sector wide approach to support in the education sector is likely to encounter difficulties unless greater co-ordination of donor activity can be assured since donors' budgetary related conditionalities create distortions in financing sector wide education reform processes.

Commitments to Gender Equality in the Education Sector (adapted table from Mainstreaming gender equality in the 21^st century goals on education, health and the environment, OECD, February 1999, ref no DCD/DAC/WID(99)11

Information Sources

• Bollinger, L., J. Stover and M. E. Palamuleni, Economic Impact of AIDS in Malawi, Futures Group International, Sept. 1999
• Caddell, M. and King K., 1999. Improving European Commission Development Co-operation: The Case of Education, ActionAid
• Commission Communication on the state of education and training in the developing countries, European Commission, 26 September 1994 in Collection Vol. 1 05/92 – 05/95 “RUN-UP TO 2000”
• Commission Européenne, 1999. ‘L’éducation et la formation dans la coopération au développement de la Communauté’. Questions de Développement Humain et Social, No.12.
• Council Resolution on education and training in the developing countries, of 25 November 1994 in Collection Vol. 1 05/92 – 05/95 “RUN-UP TO 2000”
• Council resolution on integrating gender issues in development cooperation, of 20 December 1995 in Collection Vol. 2 06/95 – 11/97
• Council resolution on Human and Social Development of 22 November 1996 in Collection Vol. 2 06/95 – 11/97
• DFID, 1999. Learning opportunities for all: A policy framework for education.
• "Draft General conditions for the cofinancing of development co-operation undertaken by NGOs in developing countries (B7-6000)”, European Commission, 1999, VIII/505/99-EN rev 3
• European Commission, 1998. Practical Guide for the Elaboration of Programmes of support to the education and training sector under NIPs and RIPs for the 8^th EDF
• Jellema, A., 2000. ‘Trends in Basic Education’, in The Reality of Aid 2000. Earthscan
• Leo-Rhynie, E., and the Institute of Development and Labour Law, University of Cape Town, 1999. Gender Mainstreaming in Education: A reference manual for governments and other Stakeholders Commonwealth Secretariat.
• Mehrotra, S, 1998. ‘Education for All: Policy Lessons from High-achieving Countries’. UNICEF staff working papers, Evaluation, policy and planning series, no. EPP-EVL-98-005.
• Mettle-Nunoo, R., and Hilditch, L., 2000. “Donor participation in the education sector in Ghana”. ActionAid. January.
• OECD DAC, 1999. Mainstreaming gender equality in the 21^st century goals on education, health and the environment ref no DCD/DAC/WID(99)11
• OECD DAC, 1999. Reaching the Goals in the S-21:Gender equality and education. Volume 1, DCD/DAC/WID(99)1. OECD.
• Subrahmanian, R., 1999. Gender and Education: New directions for social policy UNRISD
• Van Diesen, Arthur, with Karen Walker, 1999. “The changing face of aid to Ethiopia: Past experience and emerging issues in British and EC aid”. Christian Aid. January.
• Watkins, K., 1999. Education Now: Break the cycle of poverty. Oxfam International.

February 2000

[1] The European Commission defines gender as:

A concept that refers to the social differences between women and men that have been learned, are changeable over time and have wide variations both within and between cultures.

It defines gender mainstreaming as:

The systematic integration of the respective situations, priorities and needs of women and men in all policies and with a view to promoting equality between women and men and mobilising all general policies and measures specifically for the purpose of achieving equality by actively and openly taking into account, at the planning stage, their effects on the respective situations of women and men in implementation, monitoring and evaluation.

(Source: Commission Communication, “Incorporating equal opportunities for women and men into all Community policies and activities”, COM (96) 67 final, 21/02/96, section 1)

[2] Education Now: Break the cycle of Poverty, Oxfam International, 1999: 100.

[3]Ibid. p. 106

[4] L’éducation et la formation dans la coopération au développement de la Communauté, European Commission, February 1999 from a series on Questions de Développement Humain et Social, No.12, P. 8

[5] These abbreviations stand for National Indicative Programmes and Regional Indicative Programmes respectively.

[6] ‘active participants’ in the education sector is defined as women being explicitly targeted as direct beneficiaries of main project activities.

[7] The Education for All conference identified six goals in all. These were:

1. Expansion of early childhood care and developmental activities, especially for poor, disadvantaged and disabled children;
2. Universal access to, and completion of, primary education by the year 2000;
3. Improvement in learning achievement such that an agreed percentage of an appropriate age group (e.g. 80 percent of 14-year-olds) reach a defined level of necessary learning achievement;
4. Reduction of the adult illiteracy rate to, say, one-half its 1990 level by the year 2000, with emphasis on female literacy;
5. Expansion of provision of basic education and training in other essential skills required by youth and adults for improved health, employment and productivity;
6. Increased acquisition by individuals and families of the knowledge, skills and values required for better living and sound and sustainable development made available through all education channels including the mass media, other forms of modern and traditional communication, and social action.

[8] para 12

Updated on 27 March 2000
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