A new GEM Report policy paper released today shows that total aid to education reached its highest ever levels in 2018, the latest available year. However, it estimates that global aid is likely to decline by up to US$2 billion from 2018 to 2022 as a result of recession caused by COVID-19, entailing a 12% drop in international support for education.

This means that without new measures, aid to education would only reach 2018 levels in 2024, which poses a serious threat to the recovery of education from the unprecedented disruption caused by the pandemic.

The lost learning as a result of COVID-19 means aid to education will be more important than ever before. The paper, COVID-19 is a serious threat to aid to education recovery,  calls for donors to provide flexible funding so that support to the sector can be realigned and help countries get back on track.

Prior to the pandemic

Aid to education in 2018 reached a record US$15.6 billion, an increase of 9% from the previous year. From one year to the next, aid rose by 6% for basic education, 7% for secondary education and 12% for post-secondary education, providing each with the highest amount of aid ever recorded.

Despite these increases, more effective aid to the sector was required: Only US$7.4 billion, or 47% of aid to education, went to basic and secondary education in low- and lower-middle-income countries, the two sub-sectors and two country groups perceived as most in need.

The effect of COVID-19 on aid to education

In assessing the impact of COVID-19, the GEM Report estimates that the pandemic is likely to have a more damaging impact than the financial crisis of 2007-8 as the recession affecting the top ten bilateral donors for education is expected to be more than twice as severe. For instance, the United Kingdom’s GDP is expected to fall by 10.2% in 2020 which could lead to a drop of US$100 million in its aid to education.

An estimated US$8 trillion has been committed to pandemic responses by governments so far, helping secure their health systems and economies. But prospects for aid are linked to the impact of the crisis on donor budgets. Previous financial crises have impacted the allocation of aid for several years after the crises were over. The paper calls on donors not to underestimate the ricochet effect this pandemic could have on social services for years to come.

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A drop in aid to education could be something to celebrate if it looked like it was due to governments needing less, but this doesn’t seem to be the case. Governments in low income countries spend, on average, 16% of their budgets on education, far more than richer countries, and are off track meeting even the 2015 target of universal primary education.

There has been big talk about ambitions ever since 2015, when our new education agenda was set. However, efforts have focused on elaborating the financing architecture and not increasing the financing. A new multilateral mechanism, the International Financing Facility for Education, which aims to lower the cost of borrowing for education for middle income countries, is expected to be announced later this month. It adds to the Global Partnership for Education, which provides grants to low income countries, and the Education Cannot Wait fund, which focuses on emergency contexts. It seems that donors may be shifting money around, tinkering with different ways to spend a fixed sum, but not giving more.

Many donors have not kept the promise to allocate 0.7% of their gross national income to foreign aid. Doing just that and allocating 10% of that aid to primary and secondary education, would have been enough to fill the US$39 billion dollars annual financing gap. Yet, of the top ten OECD donors to education, the United Kingdom is the only G7 country dedicating the UN target figure of 0.7% of its gross national income to foreign aid. And of the cut to total aid to education this year, much can be explained by the United Kingdom whose aid to education fell by 29% in 2017. Most of it came from a drop in its allocation to basic education. From being the second largest donor to total basic education in 2016, it has fallen to fourth place in 2017 with US$ 517 million.

Overall, Germany tops the donor scoreboard for aid to education, allocating US$2 billion in 2017, followed by the United States with $1.5 billion and France with US$1.3 billion. France was the donor that increased its funding the most from 2016 to 2017, by a total of US$207 million. This is in line with the announcement that France would increase its official development assistance to 0.55% of its gross national income by 2022.

However, 58% of Germany’s and 69% of France’s aid is directed at scholarships and imputed costs for students from developing countries to study in their tertiary education institutions. If these items were excluded, aid to education would have decreased by 5% and aid to basic education by 8% between 2016 and 2017.

A full paper detailing this analysis will be available later this month.

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It is often said that 2019 is the year of education: SDG 4 is going to be reviewed for the first time at the High-level Political Forum, while major decisions are anticipated on the international education aid architecture. These prospects are creating a sense of momentum.

This week, celebrating the centenary of Nelson Mandela, Global Citizen with the Mostepe Foundation and the House of Mandela hosted a fundraising festival for multiple sectors, education included. Below are some of the largest commitments announced during the event.

New commitments were announced by Germany for GPE of 19 million euros, and by Canada for Education Cannot Wait of 50 million Canadian dollars. The government of Kenya committed to spend close to 30%, almost double the regional average, and Sierra Leone 21.5% of its budgets on education.

President of Kenya, His Excellency Uhuru Kenyatta said: “Today, I respond to the many global citizens who have called upon my administration to maintain its education budget above 20% of our total budget, but I want to go one step further, and this year, I pledge to you, my fellow global citizens, that in Kenya, our education budget will be closer to 30% of our total budget, making it probably the highest on the African continent.”

The 2019 GEM Report showed that low-income countries cannot rely upon donors to fund their education systems. As the graph here shows, almost 60% of spending on education in low- income countries comes from governments, with only just over 10% coming from donors.

His Excellency, Julius Maada Bio, the President of Sierra Leone said: “Official Development Assistance is welcome, but it is not infinite. We have to first rely on ourselves. By investing our own African resources in free, quality teaching and learning, we are investing in our human capital and empowering our youth to be the generation that will end poverty in our time.”

An announcement also came from South Sudan, which will be devoting an additional 5% of the annual budget to education in training for civil servants. The Minister present also announced that the country hopes to allocate more than 10% of its annual budget in 2019 – aiming to increase to 15% in the next five years.

“Going to school should not be a lottery. Education is even more critical in conflict-affected countries like South Sudan. Our President, H.E. Salva Kiir Mayardit, signed the Peace Agreement in September. Now, we can transform South Sudan. Let us take action to end poverty and to change the lives of the children of the world”, said Deng Deng Hoc Yai, Honourable Minister of General Education and Instruction, South Sudan.

Continuing on its positive announcement for funding Education Cannot Wait made at the global launch event for the 2019 GEM Report in Berlin, Chancellor Angela Merkel also announced via a video message to double Germany’s contribution to the Global Partnership for Education.

“We want to work with Africa in a spirit of partnership to offer its young population good prospects for the future. With this in mind, we have just launched the development investment fund here in Berlin. We hope to raise up to a billion euros through this fund. A person’s chances in life are determined above all by their access to education, to training, and to employment. For this reason, Germany has this year doubled its contributions to the global Education Cannot Wait fund to 31 million euros and to the Global Partnership for Education to 18 million euros. Next year, we will turn this 18 million euros into 37 million euros.” said Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany.

And, announced via a tweet to the moderating comedian, Trevor Noah, Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau also committed new funds to Education Cannot Wait, totaling CAD $50 million

Hey @Trevornoah – thanks for everything you’re doing to celebrate Nelson Mandela’s legacy at the @GlblCtzn festival. Sorry I can’t be with you – but how about Canada pledges $50M to @EduCannotWait to support education for women & girls around the world? Work for you? Let’s do it.

— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) December 2, 2018

Outside of governments, other announcements came from the World Bank, which announced an additional $1 billion next year for health and education in Africa. “The lack of investment in health and education is a global emergency and my generation has failed you…You have to call on your leaders to invest more in health and education. Raise your voice.” said Dr. Jim Kim, President of the World Bank

Private foundations also helped maintain the momentum. Managing Director of HP Inc., Nigeria Ify Afe announced that with partners like the UN Industrial Development Organization, it has established technology-enabled innovation centers in Africa so that entrepreneurs are able to learn the skills needed to build a business or to find employment. “We begin right here in Johannesburg, where we are building our next iHP LIFE Center,” he said.  “I am inspired by our common goal, by every one person who’s a part of the Global Citizen movement.” 

Cisco’s Networking Academy, which provides training on 21st century skills, committed to preparing 10 million people worldwide to work and thrive in the digital economy over 5 years. And the Trevor Noah Foundation pledged to match every dollar donated to the Foundation up until 2 million South African rand for a month.

It is just possible that the tide for education funding is turning. We hope so.

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The GHA 2018 report shows that humanitarian aid has been growing now for four years, albeit by only 3% from 2016 to 2017. Not only is humanitarian assistance growing in absolute terms; it is also growing as a percentage of overall aid budgets as a result of the growing impact of conflict and natural disasters.

The GHA 2018 report also tells us that over 200 million people needed international humanitarian assistance in 2017, a fifth of whom were in just three countries – Syria, Turkey and Yemen. The fact that Syria has been in the first place for five years is a reminder that crises are mostly protracted. No fewer than 17 of the 20 largest recipients of international humanitarian assistance in 2017 were either medium- or long-term recipients.

The increase of humanitarian aid levels in recent years has now finally trickled down to education, as our policy paper showed last month. Global humanitarian funding to education reached US$450 million in 2016, of which US$301 million addressed humanitarian response plans.

However, the GHA 2018 report reminds us that there has been a 41% shortfall in the funds requested in UN-coordinated appeals. Many of the calls made by the education sector have therefore been left unanswered.  The share of education in total humanitarian aid was extremely low at just 2.1%. This is far below showed that even had the 4% target for education been reached, millions of people would have been left without assistance.

Why education isn’t higher up the agenda is a mystery. Especially when you know, as we showed in 2011, that conflicts in low-income countries have been lasting for over a decade, longer than most children and youth in these countries would typically spend in school. And that education is far more than a first response in crises: it is also a strategic partner for fixing the root of the problem. Education is still not seen as immediate and life- saving and is downgraded as a priority. Life-saving interventions are typically funded first, as the below graph from the GHA 2018 shows. Nor have attempts to link humanitarian and development aid been anything more than timid.

We are two years since the World Humanitarian Summit, when donors agreed to find a new way of working. It was then that Education Cannot Wait was launched, a fund established to provide education to children in crises aiming to collect $3.85 billion by 2020. As of March this year, the Fund had invested $81 million in 14 crisis-affected countries. Welcome, but not enough.

The GHA 2018 report suggests that the humanitarian aid landscape is not changing apart from a few tweaks around the edges. But education cannot wait. Where will the response we need come from?

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Where has this change come from? The paper, ‘Aid to education: a return to growth?’ illustrates that two-thirds of the increase came from more aid to basic education, which covers pre-primary, primary and lower secondary education. The United States, the United Kingdom and the World Bank account for almost half of aid to basic education. By contrast, in terms of the share of national income allocated to aid to basic education, Norway is at the top of the donor scoreboard, for example spending twelve times more than the United States in relative terms.

While fewer than one in two young people finish secondary school, good results are within reach. If all developed countries and some emerging economies committed, like Norway, to allocate 0.7% of their national income to aid and 10% of their aid portfolio to education, then the funding gap for achieving universal secondary completion could be filled.

But why are the poorest children’s education still not being prioritised?

Nevertheless, these changes in aid levels still show few signs of prioritisation of education in countries most in need. Less than a quarter of basic education (22%) went to low income countries in 2016, in comparison to 36% in 2002. The share going to the least developed countries, meanwhile, has increased slightly from 31% to 34% – yet is still well below the peak of 47% reached in 2004.

The shortfall reflects the disappointing long-term decline in the share allocated to sub-Saharan Africa, which is home to half of all out-of-school children worldwide, and yet continues to slip down donors’ list of priorities. The region used to receive half of the total aid to basic education, but it has received a smaller and smaller share of the pot for seven years in a row, reaching just 24% in 2016. Part of the decline is explained by the increase in the share of aid that is unallocated by region. This includes aid channelled through the Global Partnership for Education.

There is also a need for more external financing for education in lower middle income countries

While much of the finance gap for low income countries could be bridged by reforming current aid allocations, and re-directing aid to basic and secondary education, this would not address the considerable education challenges facing lower middle income countries.

The paper finds that more than a third of the aid allocated to lower middle income countries comes in the form of concessional loans but that the cost of non-concessional credit deters many countries from borrowing for education. Indeed, the share of education in World Bank non-concessional loans fell from 8.2% in 2012 to 4.7% in 2017.

Reducing the cost of borrowing for education and expanding the capacity of development banks to lend is the crux of the proposal to establish an International Financing Facility for Education (IFFEd), which would target lower middle income countries, and which was recently supported by Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary-General, and Gordon Brown, UN Special Envoy for Global Education.

The GEM Report paper argues that while the IFFEd is an important mechanism, a lot more needs to be done to ensure that financing would be spent where it is most needed, and that the funds it frees up are new funds, and not old money renamed. It is also crucial that it operates in conjunction with the other multilateral financing institutions, the Global Partnership for Education (GPE), which targets low income countries, and Education Cannot Wait (ECW), which focuses on education in emergencies.

2016 onwards a turning point for education?

The 2016 increase in aid to education is welcome even if it is well below the level identified as necessary to cover the cost of reaching the ambitious SDG 4 targets as calculated by the GEM Report in 2015. What is critical now is that increased funding levels from donors need to be sustained for several years just to make up for the stagnation over 2010–2015.  We know that ODA in 2017 has decreased by the small amount of 0.7% compared to the previous year but hope that the share of education in total aid can continue on an upwards curve to keep it firmly on donors’ list of priorities.

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Faced with hugely ambitious education targets in the global goal for education known as SDG 4, and aware that we previously calculated the need for aid to increase at least six times if we’re to achieve them, stagnating aid to the sector right now is putting our commitments at risk.

Many countries, and particularly the poorest, rely upon aid, and may even have been expecting an increase in aid given the renewed energy behind the SDG agenda, and emphasis on education as a driver of sustainability and development. Unfortunately, thus far, the change in priorities, and a shift to more effective spending if new money can’t be found, has not happened. The share of aid to basic education in low income countries fell sharply in 2015, based on the most recent figures. These countries – heavily reliant upon aid – now receive 23% of aid to basic education, compared to 29% in 2014.

In addition, while overall aid to basic education – primary education, basic life skills for youth and adults, and early childhood education –increased by 8% in one year, it is still 6% lower than in 2010. In a worrying sign, the two largest donors to basic education – the USA and the UK – reduced their allocations by 11% and 9% respectively in the last year.

Need should be the driver of aid and nothing else, and yet sub-Saharan Africa, which is currently home to over half of the world’s out-of-school children, received in 2015 almost half the share of aid to basic education it had received in 2002. This amounts to 26% of total aid to basic education, only just more than the 22% going to Northern Africa and Western Asia, which house 9% of out-of-school children.

The new policy paper provides calculations at the country level to show that donors are not allocating resources effectively. For example, Burkina Faso, with a 49% out-of-school rate at the primary level, received just $17 million, while Zimbabwe, with just 2% of primary-school age out of school, received $31 million.

By contrast, the Global Partnership for Education (GPE), whose disbursements now account for 12% of aid to basic and secondary education in its partner countries, allocated 77% of its disbursements to sub-Saharan Africa, and 60% to countries affected by fragility and conflict. As a key donor of education aid, these allocation decisions are positive. We would all do well to support their replenishment campaign now underway as best we can.

Last, but by no means least, education still only receives a tiny amount – 2.7% – of all humanitarian aid going to conflict and fragile-states. This is a historic high, and 55% more than the year before, but it still leaves half of the requests the education sector made for assistance unanswered.

This news on international aid to education is not the news we want. That said, there are three potential turning points we can all rally around to reverse this move away from education:

1. The GPE Replenishment campaign this year is seeking to raise $3.1 billion for the period 2018-20, aiming to disburse $2 billion annually by 2020, or four times more than the level currently disbursed.
2. An International Finance Facility for Education proposed by the International Commission on Financing Global Education Opportunity could leverage around $10 billion in additional financing per year by 2020 for development banks to expand their education portfolio and target lower middle income countries.
3. The Education Cannot Wait fund established in 2016 aims to raise $3.85 billion by 2020, which would transform the delivery of education in emergencies.

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Humanitarian aid makes up only a small share of the external financing that countries receive for education. In 2014, compared with the US$13.1 billion of development aid that was disbursed for education, humanitarian aid to education was just a fraction at US$188 million.  

In 2015, out of a total amount of US$10.6 billion of humanitarian aid, the education sector received $198 million. This is less than 1.9% of total funding, despite a target set by the UN Secretary General’s Global Education First Initiative (GEFI) for education to receive at least 4% of humanitarian aid.

Education is suffering a double disadvantage because it is not only receiving the smallest proportion of humanitarian appeals, but it is also receiving consistently a lower than average share of what it requests.

In 2015 the sector received 31% of what it had requested in terms of humanitarian aid. This compares with an average of 55% across all sectors.

The World Humanitarian Summit in May 2016 where the new Education Cannot Wait Fund will be launched, and the publication of the report of the International Commission on the Financing of Global Education Opportunity, scheduled for September, should be seized as opportunities to increase aid for education, especially where need is greatest, such as in the immediate aftermath of conflict or emergencies, and in long-term crises. There is also a pressing need for a much better articulation of humanitarian and development aid. The impact of such crucial measures will not be felt for a few more years. There is no time to waste.

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The Fund, or what it represents, is something that has been campaigned for vivaciously by many education advocators for some time. Any improvement to the tiny fraction of aid in emergencies going to education would be welcome. The persistently low amounts of humanitarian aid, and the frustrating lack of coordination between humanitarian and development assistance led to the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for Education Gordon Brown leading the call for a new fund to be launched.

The time is soon upon us. The Fund will be launched at 3.45pm on the 23^rd of May at the World Humanitarian Summit in Istanbul. It will no doubt be hailed as one of the major outcomes of the Summit, an initiative pushed hard by the UN Secretary General. This blog lays out a few ways the Fund can ensure it is viewed as a success and welcomed by the education community as it develops. 

Who will host the platform?

The frustration seems to centre around a few, central points. Who will host the fund in the long term, is one key question, because where the fund lands will have big implications for how inclusive it may be, and what strategic direction it will end up taking. Initially, the fund is to be hosted at UNICEF. Whether that is to last for a year or more, and who decided that, and will decide on where it will sit afterwards is not clear, however. Some participants at the INEE meetings viewed GPE’s hosting of the platform preferable, since there would be greater chance for civil society participation, and because they have mechanisms already set up.

What will the fund do?

We currently have little information about exactly how much donors give to education in crises. Transparent reporting mechanisms related to the platform could help expose this, and allow for those affected by it the chance to voice their opinions and offer advice.

However, the fifth strategy of the fund, to ‘increase awareness of need and evidence’ for education in emergencies (EiE) seems separate from the initial rationale for having a fund in the first place, given that many are already filling that space. Some have mused that this strategy is there because of where the Fund is to be hosted, rather than because it fits within its initial purpose.

Where will the Education Cannot Wait funds come from?

For us to ensure that education is not still waiting in a few years time, the Fund must help clarify where finances generated are additional, rather than re-hashed, funds for EiE. Although the ODI brief specifies that the Fund will be designed “to protect against substitution”, genuine worries were voiced about the impact that a high-profile launch of the platform might have on GPE’s funding, which is still largely unmet since its last replenishment meeting. How many of the countries being targeted in the ODI plans, for instance, are GPE countries?  Among some, this is a reason to have the Fund attached more concretely to GPE, rather than seen as separate.

Where will the funds go?

The funds will be channeled through existing mechanisms, as far as is possible, with a multi-year support window allowing for funds to flow for up to five years.

If the Fund is to be regarded as a success, however it must reverse its current tendency to focus mainly on children, rather than on a broader spectrum including youth, TVET, and higher education. This is one of the loudest concerns voiced, a concern that become greater as consistent remarks along these lines are not reflected in briefing notes as they are updated and released. The recent briefing notes out by UNICEF and ODI confirm this point, with a strong emphasis on children in its introduction and main text, and visibly fewer references to youth. The main tangible target mentioned, for instance, is to “increase access to education in emergencies by 18% of crisis-affected children by 2020 and to 100% of crisis-affected children by 2030’.

In addition, the governance of the Fund and how its finances are spent must ensure that the focus on rapid onset emergencies outlined in the recent briefing is fairly balanced with the chronic needs of the most poorly funded protracted crises often pushed to the side. A recent GEM Report policy paper showed that at present some crises are prioritised over others especially if they have higher media visibility: Just 4% of the 342 appeals between 2000-2014 received over half of available humanitarian aid for education. The Fund must be sure to help balance this out.

How can we engage with it?

Given some of the above mentioned concerns, the Fund should also make it more obvious how people can engage with its design and governance. With the technical strategy group for the platform disbanded, ways of influencing seem to have been stopped.

Clarity for the Fund should come from the political group (Gordon Brown, Julia Gillard, Anthony Lake etc…) but is not forthcoming. Save the Children has set up an email distribution list where they share what information they have about the Fund, which anyone can join. This is a welcome initiative, but a shame it is not coming from the source.

The concerns noted above are not intended to suck the enthusiasm away from the genuine exciting potential offered by the new fund. Almost anything can be better than where we are now. There does seem to be some real hope for greater inclusivity found in the recent news that NGOs from international and local civil society organisations will sit on the Fund’s interim Executive Committee, and that INEE is being considered to run ‘constituency forums’ around it. All those involved in these groups must work to ensure its future governance is transparent, consultative and inclusive. This will help make sure the Fund can be warmly received, and supported to deliver real change and fast.

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The writing also dedicates two sections to education, giving it some of the prominence we might hope for, raising expectations in advance of the Summit. In particular, it underlines the following ‘Core Responsibilities’:

1. Commit to ensure safe, quality and inclusive access to primary and secondary education and vocational opportunities in and after crises, including for children and youth with disabilities.
2. Provide primary, secondary and vocational education and certification for those living in displacement, in line with national qualifications and standards.
3. Provide sufficient domestic and international funding to enable all children and adolescents to receive education and vocational training opportunities, including in crisis settings.

Education’s presence is also heard in the call for the military to stop using and targeting schools and other critical civilian infrastructure. And a further responsibility includes eradicating sexual and gender-based violence, which, as we showed in a policy paper last year, is frequently school-based, and amplified in communities in which poverty and conflict are pervasive.  Military use and targeting of schools and school-based sexual violence have clear detrimental effects on children’s and adolescent’s attendance and learning.

The Report has a strong focus on displaced populations and calls for “an appropriate international framework, national legislation and regional cooperation frameworks by 2025 to ensure countries … are prepared to receive and protect those displaced across borders without refugee status”. The discussion emphasises the need to support host countries and communities, providing long-term and predictable international, political and financial support, including for education.

The emphasis no doubt falls particularly sharply on leaders at present grappling with how and whether to incorporate the new wave of refugees arriving at their borders today. “Leaders must look beyond national interests and focus more on the interests of our common humanity” says the UN SG, delivering clear instructions on his opinion.

“Invest in humanity”, we are told, and ‘transcend the humanitarian- development divide’. Mirroring one of our own calls made last year, there is welcome push for far better needs assessment data on the ground. There is also a repeated suggestion of a new financing platform to “address protracted crises and ensure predictable and adequate resourcing of collective outcomes in protracted and fragile situations” with a starting base of $5-7 billion.

‘Invest in stability’ and ‘according to risk’, it continues: “Set a target to substantially increase the percentage of aid budgets allocated to fragile situations, including for strengthening national and local peaceful and inclusive institutions sustainably until 2030”. Education, as many of us know, plays a key role in creating equitable and sustainable societies, impacting on peace, and ultimately our planet’s future. This is a critical issue addressed in the 2016 GEM Report due out this September. We will be laying out the best evidence-based arguments for the potential of education to be one of the strongest “peaceful and inclusive institutions’ there is. We will revert back to the target set at May’s Summit with this evidence, and hope to turn heads.

Overall, the SG’s report contains many promising murmurs, and should pave the way for better coordination if the multi-layered suggestions are taken into account. However, it remains to be seen whether better coordination, and even additional funds might bring better financing for education. While the topic is given space in the SG’s Report, we know that in practice education is frequently shelved in favour of other sectors seen as being more of a front-line response.
In 2012, the education community began to advocate strongly for the percentage of total humanitarian aid earmarked for education to increase to at least 4% from the 1-2% it currently receives. The world has remained far from this target. Even if met, it may not have necessarily taken us closer to guaranteeing education for those in crisis settings. Our analysis last year showed that, had the 4% target been met in 2013, it would still have left 15.5 million children and youth without any education humanitarian assistance. Perhaps the time has come for an indicator that focuses on a result. It is a shame, for example, that the target written into the synthesis report for the global consultation run in advance of the WHS, ‘No one should miss a month of schooling due to conflict or disaster’ did not make it into the final text.

What we must celebrate, however, is that the Report is coloured by the broader sustainable development principle to ‘leave no-one behind’. In many ways, as the Report’s summary says itself, the World Humanitarian Summit is the first test of the real universality of the new Agenda.

But it is a test that moves beyond what countries signed up to less than six months ago.  It adds a level of ambition to the Sustainable Development Agenda. Without this added layer, to talk of universality would mean nothing; for years now the GEM Report has been showing that students in conflict-affected settings face harsh conditions and many overlapping disadvantages. It remains to see what happens in May, but the Secretary-General gets us off to a hopeful start.

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Syria, which no one can deny is in dire need of assistance, and where education has been flattened over the course of its recent conflict, had less than a quarter of its education requests for funding met last year, according to new GEM analysis. In total, of the funding that Syria received in its humanitarian appeal, only 4% went to education.

What does this mean for children and adolescents on the ground? The original requests that Syria made for finance in 2015 to help keep its education system buoyant through the crisis amounted to US$224 million for 4.5 million people. However, education only received 23% of the funding it requested, leaving around 3.5 million people with no education humanitarian assistance at all.

Perhaps more shocking, as we consider these figures, is that the small proportion of funds that education is receiving in Syria are not all going on schooling. Of the $51 million that was allocated to getting the education system back on track last year in Syria, 12% – or $6.1 million – of that was spent on school feeding.

It is deflating to see that the education needs of children and youth on the ground are being left unmet to such a large extent in Syria.

Our policy paper last year published jointly with UIS showed the extent to which armed conflict has taken its toll on the education system in Syria. In 2000, the country had achieved universal primary enrolment. Yet, as the civil war spread, UIS figures show that the number of out-of-school children and adolescents jumped from 0.3 million in 2012 to 1.8 million by the end of 2013. Enrolment in grades 1 to 12 fell by 35% between the 2011/12 and 2012/13 school years.

As a result, 1 out of 3 children of primary school age and more than 2 out of 5 adolescents of lower secondary school age were not in school, erasing all gains since the start of the century.

NGOs have called for at least $1.4 billion annually to ensure that all children and young people affected by the conflict are in education and learning. Our policy paper released last year, Humanitarian Aid for Education: Why It Matters and Why More is Needed, confirms the urgent need for increased funding for the sector, and shows how this funding should be spent.

Tomorrow, Heads of State and Government arrive in London for ‘Supporting Syria and the Region’, just one month before the 5th anniversary of the conflict. Let’s hope the enormity of the task is made clear to them as they gather around the table. Only a tremendous ground shift in will can now turn the situation around for children and adolescents out of school and displaced because of the crisis.

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The global momentum built up this year at the Oslo Education Summit, World Education Forum and the UN General Assembly has created a real urgency to finally position education up on the list of priorities in emergencies. This has resulted in a large amount of activity on the issue planned for 2016:

• The World Humanitarian Summit offers a great opportunity to have education’s voice heard with a different audience, and to position education centrally in any outcome document produced. Hidden within the synthesis report of the Summit’s global consultation is a target saying that “No one should miss a month of schooling due to conflict or disaster”. This is a target many in the sector would have formulated differently, no doubt, but it is a target nonetheless, and an ambitious one at that. This should be seen as good news for our sector, which has been singled out by having a target assigned to it in the text.
• The new Sustainable Development Document, Transforming our World, names refugees among those vulnerable populations needing to be addressed. The Education 2030: Framework for Action due to be adopted in early November underscores the need to address education in emergency situations. Both policy priorities give rallying calls for us all to use in our work.
• There is a vast amount of continuing media attention on Syria, and the resulting refugee crisis, within which education is more frequently mentioned than in many emergencies that have hit the press in the past. The convergence between the complexities of this crisis and the scope of the new SDG 4 could open up a conversation where the voices of advocates might finally be heard.
• There are also three important publications or pieces of research that will help build the arguments for education in crisis, notably the International Commission on Financing of Global Education Opportunity, the work being done by the Overseas Development Institute on the platform for education in crises, and the GEM Report 2016. It will be important for these publications to make the argument for investing in education early – either when conflicts are on the horizon, or immediately after a crisis, rather than waiting for the costly repercussions that arise from leaving it until the development stage.

Combined, these multiple dates on the calendar in 2016 make it a year full of opportunities that our sector must seize upon.

However, there are persistent, almost insulting remaining challenges that show this will not be easy. Only 2% of humanitarian aid is allocated to education. The proportion of out of school children living in conflict-affected areas is on the rise. Frustrations were aired by different INEE members present in Geneva about how deep the problem lies at the country level. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, education is excluded from pooled funds. In Iraq there are significant funding gaps still for education. Education is still not a priority sector in Yemen and there is no money for the sector in the humanitarian envelope in Afghanistan.

As a member of the INEE network said at the meeting, ‘Education is not only broke, but it is also broken’. Finding funds is not the only problem. We need to make sure they are not then assigned according to political priorities but are going to those people and those projects which need them the most. We need practical solutions to stop the artificial divide between development and humanitarian work from pulling the rug from any effectively delivery of aid to the sector.

The advocacy work of INEE used to be under the title of ‘Education Cannot Wait’. While this branding may change in the future, the sense of the title lives on. We must do all we can to come together as a sector next year to make a solid case for education as a vital part of preventing, and resolving crises.

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Our new paper, released today, one week before the Oslo Summit on Education for Development, shows that 34 million children and adolescents are out of school in war zones.  The paper shows that $2.3 billion is required to place them in school – ten times the amount that education is receiving from humanitarian aid right now.

One of the core reasons conflict is taking such a heavy toll on education is lack of financing. In 2014, education received only two per cent of humanitarian aid.

The paper determines that even the suggested target of at least 4%, championed since 2011, is grossly insufficient. Had this target been met in 2013, it would have left 15.5 million children and youth without any humanitarian assistance in education. In 2013, 4% of humanitarian aid would have left over 4 million children and youth in Afghanistan, nearly 1.6 million children and youth in Syria, and almost 3 million in Sudan without humanitarian support.

A new target for directing funds to education in areas affected by conflict has been required for some time. Present targets are grossly insufficient and are diverting attention from the true needs of children and youth on the ground.

To address the needs of every child and adolescent in conflict areas, the GMR proposes a new target for financing education in emergencies.

After accounting for projected domestic spending, a minimum of US$38 per child and US$113 per adolescent is needed to ensure all children and adolescents in conflict-affected countries have a chance to attend school. This equates to a total funding gap of US$2.3 billion; ten times what was given in humanitarian aid to education in 2014.

Such a target is necessary because the financing of education in conflict is not fair. Media attention unfairly prioritizes some countries in conflict over others:  more than half of available humanitarian aid to education was allocated to just 4% of the 342 appeals made between 2000 and 2014.

A fairer assessment of how many, and to what extent, children and youth require support in crises is urgently required. An appeal in Yemen calls for three dollars per child.  Another in the Central African Republic calls for $235 in similar circumstances. Such differences in appeals for humanitarian aid in education are unjust.

In addition, many appeals do not cover all those in need. In 2013, 21 million people in conflict-affected zones were identified as requiring education support.  Just eight million were included in appeals.  Of those, just three million actually received assistance once funding was distributed, thereby leaving 18 million without any help at all.

The paper proposes a new, evidence-based finance target, and makes recommendations for tightening the current aid structure for education in crises:

1. There should be a consistent and objective needs assessment to better capture the requirements of children and adolescents in conflict.
2. There should be better connections between humanitarian aid and development financing: The World Humanitarian Summit in July 2016 together with a High-Level Panel on Humanitarian Financing to be formed later in 2015 represent opportunities to make the architecture of humanitarian aid more relevant and realistic.
3. The $2.3 billion funding gap for education in conflict urgently needs to be filled. Responsibility for filling this gap must not solely lie with humanitarian actors; development aid donors also need to play their part to ensure that all those in need are being reached.
4. Any new global emergency education fund should ensure that resources for education in situations of crises are additional, flexible and predictable. Funding must be aligned to need. It should work closely with the Global Partnership for Education and Global Education Clusters.

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