Education

Australia's objective for education is to assist developing countries reduce poverty and achieve sustainable development by giving more girls and boys in the Asia-Pacific region a better education.

Our aim by 2010 is to help developing countries increase the number of children attending school by 10 million and to improve the quality of education for an additional 50 million children.

The challenge

Achieving universal primary education and gender parity at all levels of education are Millennium Development Goals. While there has been some progress towards meeting these goals, 77 million children remain out of school worldwide, of whom one-third are in the Asia-Pacific region. Most countries in the region are some way from providing all children with primary schooling and enrolments at secondary level are low.

Globally there has been an improvement in gender parity yet inequality for girls remains an issue - of the region's 26 million children out of school, 16 million are girls.

Getting girls and boys to attend school is only part of the challenge.There is also concern across the region that education systems are not providing students with the skills needed for productive employment. In some countries under-educated and unemployed youth may contribute to instability and violence, eroding development gains.

Australia's response

While the focus of Australia's support depends on the diverse needs of partner countries, the priorities of the Australian aid program are to:

Improve the functioning of national education systems to enable more girls and boys to complete primary school and progress to higher levels of education
Improve the relevance and quality of education, including in vocational and technical education, so students acquire the knowledge and skills necessary for life and productive employment.

International experience highlights the following lessons for donor support for education:

The full benefits of education are only realised if schooling extends to all children within the population
Weak education performance is generally due to underlying problems with resources, structures and incentives rather than simply a lack of technical capacity
The focus should be on improving learning achievements, as completing school will not necessarily provide children with the basic skills for poverty reduction
Aid will be more effective when coordinated with all other investments in the sector. Australia's approach recognises these lessons in improving the effectiveness of Australia's education assistance delivered through the aid program.

Australia's approach recognises these lessons and focuses on helping partner countries build effective education systems. There is an emphasis on improving the governance of the systems and on strengthening the quality and efficiency of service delivery.

Governance is critical to effective service delivery. Australia will work with key public and private organisations to improve policy capacity and strengthen administrative systems, such as government financial management systems.

At the community level Australia supports measures to increase family involvement in school management and raise demand for greater transparency and accountability in service provision.

Lack of resources for service delivery is a major constraint to improving education outcomes for children. Our support will contribute to filling the estimated US$7 billion financial gap needed globally each year to meet international education goals. Assistance will focus on increasing the availability and quality of teachers, classrooms and learning materials.

Australia will also collaborate with partners to meet specific regional education needs such as labour market skill shortages, English language skill development and improvements in education quality in Islamic schools in Indonesia, South Asia and the Philippines.

Policy framework

AusAID's policy for education provides the strategic framework for improving the effectiveness of Australia's education assistance delivered through the aid program.

This is in addition to the aid program's continuing support for tertiary scholarships through the Australian Scholarships program and the new Australia-Pacific Technical College.

Australia's policy on education in the aid program is described in detail in the following publications:

Better Education: A Policy for Australian Development Assistance in Education (2007) provides the detailed policy guidance for tripling Australian support for education systems through the aid program
Better Education (2007) - Executive Summary is a summary of the above document
Delivering Better Education (2006) [PDF 38KB] provides a summary of the White Paper initiative for education
Australian Aid: Promoting Growth and Stability - White Paper (2006) identifies investing in people through education and health as one of its four central themes.

Aid stories and people

Examples of Australia's aid program in action:

Further information

For further information on Better Education contact education@ausaid.gov.au

Related websites (external)

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2007