Has Jomtien Made any Difference? Trends in Donor Funding for Education and Basic Education Since the Late 1980s

The Education For All Conference, which was co-sponsored by three United Nations agencies (UNESCO, UNICEF and UNDP) and the World Bank, was held in Jomtien, Thailand in March 1990. In the Declaration which emerged from the conference, both developing country governments and donor agencies committed themselves to the goal of ensuring basic education for all children by 2000. This paper assesses the extent to which aid donors have responded to the challenge of Jomtien, in particular the degree to which the funding of basic education has increased since 1990. The two main conclusions of this assessment are: (i) in real terms, total aid for the education sector from bilateral donors was lower in the mid-1990s than before the EFA Conference; and (ii) that, while education aid from some education donors has been reallocated in favour of basic education, actual support for basic education among the main bilateral donors is very uneven and that, taken as a whole, the additional external resources that have been and are likely to be forthcoming will be insufficient to meet the basic objective of ’education for all’ by the year 2000.