Ei-iE

Education International joins heads of state and government, along with major stakeholders in development, in Addis Ababa to agree on financing for the Post-2015 Sustainable Development Goals to be launched this September.

As the Third International Conference on Financing for Development gets underway in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from the 13-16 July, the focus is set on how to properly fund the Post-2015 agenda that launches next year.

The Financing for Development (FfD) process, which includes the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Trade Organization (WTO), the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development and the United Nations Development Programme, is the only UN process that deals with broader issues surrounding development financing, as well as providing follow-up to conference outcomes.

On the heels of the recently held Oslo Summit on Education for Development, which focused solely on financing the Post-2015 education goal, Education International (EI) is taking the momentum of the summit to Addis to see that specific issues are addressed.

For EI, at the top of the list is ensuring that education is not only adequately funded within the new agenda, but that funding must be dramatically increased within the Addis Accord in order to realise expectations. The financing boost is needed to cover the recruitment, development, training and retention of the education workforce in all countries.

As agreed in the Incheon Declaration, from the World Education Forum (WEF) held in May in South Korea, governments should allocate at least 6 percent of their GDP and/or at least 20 percent of the national budget to education. Donors should allocate at least 10 percent of ODA, or Official Development Assistance, to education, with particular attention given to education in emergencies.

To see that increased financing for national education systems is made possible by public revenue, EI is calling for the language on retaining progressive tax systems to be retained in the Accord.