What are the best strategies for supporting education programmes in fragile states? This newsletter from the UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP) reviews recent educational reform projects in fragile situations, concluding that rebuilding state resilience is the most effective means of improving education outcomes. It recommends that donors tailor their interventions to specific contexts and commit to engaging longer and more predictably with developing country governments to achieve greater stability and educational performance.
‘State fragility’ is a complex circumstance. Although ‘fragile’ countries make up only 9 per cent of the world’s population, they account for over half of the children not attending a school. In fragile contexts, education provides opportunities to increase social and economic stability and is vital for achieving economic growth and recovery, reducing poverty, and improving health, living conditions and livelihoods. Yet, ‘fragile’ states face distinctive challenges in planning for education and poverty reduction and are furthest away from attaining the MDGs.
Experiences from Afghanistan, Angola, DR Congo, and Palestine provide examples where positive changes in planning and implementation have occurred. Embracing the hybrid nature of developing country political processes has allowed for innovative adaptation and ingenuity. However, in spite of this progress, many challenges remain for the education sector in fragile states:
- In many humanitarian crises where education is consistently demanded as one of the top priorities by communities, it is among the least funded sectors.
- In efforts to respond rapidly in crises, education practitioners commonly fail to collaborate with communities and governments to determine their specific needs and implement pre-defined, standardised activities.
- Rapid and large injections of resources can render a state vulnerable to corruption if it is unable to absorb the funds.
- Many education strategies focus only on the central level and last only one to three years.
When considering education aid, fragile situations require donors and other external agencies to adopt a context-specific approach to financial support rather than transplanting models and ways of working. In education, as in other sectors, overly complex processes increase the transaction costs of disbursing funds, increase the risks of delay, and result in unpredictable financing. Financing mechanisms need not only fit the current fragile contexts, but also work towards more stable ones.Policy development for educational planning should focus on what can be done to rebuild resilience, embracing the following recommendations:
- Base capacity development on identified needs at community and central levels;
- Commit to 10-20 year projects for capacity development;
- Provide long-term input and investment for building transparent and accountable governance systems; and
- Engage with flexibility and creativity to support the transition from fragility to stability.
Also available: further IIEP resources on education in emergencies and reconstruction.
