Greetings from snowy Oslo, Norway, where government ministers, campaigners and education experts are currently gathered for the High Level Group meeting on Education for All. The conference is the eighth annual since the historic World Education Forum in 2000, which set forth the Dakar Framework for Action, a roadmap to achieve quality education for all by 2015.
 
Participants here in Oslo are acutely aware that halfway towards the target date set for achieving the goals set out in Dakar and the MDG targets on education, the world remains seriously off track: according to new statistics published a couple weeks ago in UNESCO’s annual Global Monitoring Report (GMR), there are still 75 million primary-school aged children out-of-school around the world, 35 million of whom are living in sub-Saharan Africa. 55% of these children are girls, and over one-third live in fragile states. If current trends continue, 29 million children will still be out of primary school in 2015.
 
Another common thread in many of the discussions here is that amidst the current global economic crisis, the case for expanding access to quality education is stronger than ever. Evidence shows that investments in education yield some of the highest returns in development. With its strong linkages to health, economic growth and gender equality, progress in education is central to progress on all the Millennium Development Goals. Take child mortality, the third MDG- the new GMR found that when mothers receive a primary education, the likelihood that their children will survive past age five increases by 25 percent. With a secondary education, this likelihood increases to 50 percent.
 
Also on high on the agenda here in Oslo is how to strike the balance between access and quality.  Many countries, especially in Africa, have made great strides in the past few years in expanding access to education- debt relief, for example, helped many countries  abolish school fees, opening school doors for millions of children in the world’s poorest countries. In both Ethiopia and Tanzania, for example, 3 million more children were enrolled in primary school between 1999 and 2006. However once these children are in school, the challenge is to make sure they are learning something.  A central component of this is ensuring that schools are equipped with trained teachers who have manageable class sizes. One startling finding of this year’s report is that 18 million more teachers will be needed by 2015 to achieve universal primary education (which calls for one teacher for every 40 students). This is a tall order for most developing governments, especially because donors are not doing their part to provide the long-term, predictable funding education ministers need in order to recruit and retain quality teachers. Currently only 17% of aid to basic education is available for teachers’ salaries, despite the fact that they account for 70-90% of education budgets.

Many are hopeful that strong language on what’s needed in teacher financing will be included in the Oslo Declaration, which will be finalized here later today. Check back here later for an update.

-Nora Coghlan, ONE Policy Analyst