Financial barriers can greatly limit access to education for the poor. The key financial burdens of schooling are direct costs (school fees), indirect costs (uniforms, stationary, other learning materials and transportation) and opportunity costs (time for household tasks and foregone wage labour). Macro-level barriers in situations of conflict and fragility (lack of capacity or will to provide primary education and underinvestment in education) overlay financial and other barriers to accessing education.
The goal of ‘Education for All’ and the Millennium Development Goals have raised the profile of efforts to alleviate financial barriers to schooling. Such efforts have taken place in a range of contexts, from middle-income countries to low-income conflict-affected and fragile states. They include a variety of social protection measures such as cash transfers programmes, abolition of fees and school feeding programmes. Some of the key lessons emerging from these efforts are:
- the need to integrate supply and demand-side interventions
- the need to embed social protection measures in comprehensive reform programmes
- the need to move beyond access to assessing outcomes
- the need to address gender barriers
- the importance of sustained political commitment.
