The Asia-Pacific Region Moving towards Adequate, Effective and Equitable Financing in Schools

Given the global focus on financing as an implementation modality of the Sustainable Development Goal 4 and Education 2030 and the growing trend in introducing school finance policies, it is important to guide governments and schools in the Asia-Pacific region in order to allocate and utilize available resources efficiently and effectively to deliver quality education. This will require strong efforts in data collection and analysis, decision-making, capacity development, implementation and monitoring of school finance. Unfortunately, at present, there is a lack of practical guidance on developing and implementing a successful school finance system.

In this context, UNESCO Bangkok held an Expert Meeting on School Finance in the Asia-Pacific Region to explore the topic on ensuring adequate, effective and equitable financing in schools in Bangkok, Thailand, on 31 March - 1 April, 2016. Meeting participants reviewed findings of nine country case studies from Cambodia, China, Bangladesh, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Nepal, Pakistan, Uzbekistan and Viet Nam and a regional synthesis report, shared their experiences in school finance, agreed on common issues and recommendations for strengthening financing in schools, and contributed to the consultation for the International Commission on Financing Global Education Opportunity.

Derived from the country analysis in the Regional Report, the recommendations for strengthening school finance policies and practices have been placed under four broad categories: resource mobilization and planning; budget execution and management; monitoring and assessment of resource use and skills; and capacity development for improved resource and budget performance in schools. While working in groups, experts discussed the categories and provided some ideas for the development of the learning module for capacity building in school budget management, which is a part of the UNESCO Bangkok’s objective to prepare a set of modules for the Education Microplanning Toolkit.  During the final consultation for the International Commission, the participants answered five questions posed by the Commission and agreed that the questions were provocative but might not have captured the complexity of the education financing situations in different country contexts.

The next steps of the regional meeting include: developing the learning module on school finance; publishing and disseminating the resource package containing the regional report and selected country reports; and establishing synergies of the resource package with national, regional and global meetings on Education 2030, the Global Partnership for Education and the International Commission to raise the visibility of strengthening school finance.

For more information, please contact Satoko Yano [s.yano(at)unesco.org] at the Section for Inclusive Quality Education.

Written by: Lina Benete [L.benete(at)unesco.org]