In its annual global education report released Wednesday, UNESCO revealed that foreign aid donors remain off track in fulfilling their financial commitments to global education, including the second Millennium Development Goal of achieving universal basic education by 2015. Foreign aid to global education has fallen in the aftermath of the global financial crisis — widening the global financing gap for basic education to a staggering $26 billion each year.
But a Devex analysis of the recently released 2012 aid data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development shows that it isn’t all bad news in the education donor landscape.
Official development assistance for the education sector stood at $11.6 billion in 2012, down 7 percent from 2011. The World Bank and the Netherlands’ education aid programs were among the hardest hit by cuts.