Innovative Financing for Education: Arguments, Options and Implications

The 2010 Global Monitoring Report estimated that achieving the current global education mandates would require an additional $16 billion per year.  This estimated funding gap is widely viewed as inadequate when the additional costs associated with quality improvements are considered.  The combination of the funding needs and the need to both continue to expand access and increase quality and learning outcomes has prompted the education community to follow the examples of other sectors and explore options that can be referred to as ‘innovative financing’.  Interest in innovative financing for education has evolved largely in response to the global economic crisis, the increasing demands on national government budgets, and the decreasing allocations to the education sector from bilateral and multi-lateral donors through Overseas Development Assistance.  Multilateral organizations such as UNESCO and the Global Partnership for Education have recognized the need to expand the variety of resources that can be mobilized to finance national education systems and are actively exploring options and mechanisms that have been used to generate and advance funding in sectors such as health, agriculture, and climate change.  

The course will introduce participants to the complex political economy of financing for education and explore the current discourses and funding mechanisms and their implications for equitable access to quality education opportunities globally.  After a detailed look at the traditional sources of funding and the dynamics determining their current limits and future prospects, the course will move to introducing broad ideas for possible and non-traditional sources of finance for education. It will then examine in detail some specific instruments that have been or are being developed and how they have been or can be, deployed. These will include; Diaspora Bonds for Education, Education Venture Funds, and Debt Conversion Development Bonds. Participants will develop a much deeper appreciation of the political economy in which education finance issues are embedded, the current dynamics regarding traditional sources of finance, current and underdevelopment possibilities from non-traditional sources, and future directions in which this work can develop.
 
Participants will be encouraged to read prior to the course, as well as during. They will also be expected to be actively involved in exploring ideas, and in offering their own experiences and reflections on the theories and issues being examined.