Here are three suggestions for activities based on the document: 1. Research and discuss the different approaches to foreign aid for education that have been tried over the past decades, from the "productivist" approach of the 1960s-80s to the "developmentalist" approach that followed. What were the strengths and limitations of each? 2. Examine specific education aid projects mentioned, like those led by USAID in the Philippines. Identify their goals and intended outcomes. Discuss how factors outside of schools could influence whether those outcomes are achieved. 3. Consider the complex challenges of assessing the effectiveness of foreign aid for education. Brainstorm strategies aid agencies could use to better evaluate the impact of their projects on educational and developmental

1. FOREIGN
INVESTMENT, AID
AND
DEVELOPMENT:
IMPLICATION TO
EDUCATION
CHRISTIAN A. DE GUIA
MAED - EA

2. THE EFFECTIVENESS OF
FOREIGN AID TO EDUCATION
• In recent years there have also been many new and different
approaches in the provision of aid to education. If that doesn’t
make an assessment of the effectiveness of aid to education
difficult enough, the challenges are compounded by the fact
not only that education serves many purposes, but educational
outcomes are influenced more by what goes on outside schools
than within.
• widening further the complexities involved in assessing the
effectiveness of foreign aid to education. It is at least as
challenging as assessing attempts to reform and improve our
own national education systems, without crossing international
boundaries.

3. • The basics of support to education comprise what could
be termed ‘first order’ educational requirements such as
classrooms, teachers and instructional materials. However,
educational outcomes are profoundly influenced by a
range of critical and less easily measurable factors such as
the nature of the curriculum, the effectiveness of teacher
training, the appropriateness of learning materials, school
location, school and teacher amenities, the mentoring,
supervision and leadership of heads and teachers, the
status and respect afforded them by the local community
and its involvement in the school.

4. • When countries near the goal of universal primary
education, many face huge challenges to include the final
five or so per cent, as these are the ‘hardest-to-reach’
often including those with a range of disabilities and
those from marginalized groups. Achieving anything near
to universal access also remains a huge challenge in many
fragile states,

5. • Against this complex backdrop, most aid agencies
take the ‘easy’ route in providing an account to
the public at home of the results of their
interventions in the education field—by focusing
mostly on reporting on the ‘numbers assisted’
rather than educating the public,

6. • the largest multi-donor funded education programme, the
Global Partnership for Education (GPE, formerly known as
the Fast-Track Initiative or FTI) claims that ‘countries
receiving support from the GPE perform better in all basic
education indicators than countries receiving no
Partnership support’ implying that ‘their’ foreign aid has
‘worked’.

7. WHAT WORKS IN FOREIGN AID
TO EDUCATION?
• Educationists have continually pointed out that it is far
easier to show the impact of aid-supported health
interventions than education ones: improvements in
mortality rates are more visible in the short term than
increased learning. However, when attempting to assess the
contribution of aid to service-delivery, aid to the health sector
faces quite similar challenges as does aid to education.

8. SCHOOL EFFECTIVENESS
RESEARCH
• School effectiveness research was first undertaken within
the industrialized world, and hence by donor countries
themselves, and subsequently used within developing
countries, primarily by industrialized country researchers,
focused on production functions that were termed
‘determinants of achievement’, isolating individual inputs
and trying to assess which would give the most ‘bang’ for
each aid ‘buck’ contributed to an education system
(see e.g. Lockheed and Verspoor, 1991).

9. • Though the research in aid-recipient countries mirrored
that carried out in industrialized countries, surprisingly,
the early conventional wisdom from this work made out
that developing countries were different from
industrialized countries because the school rather than
family background factors mattered more in influencing
learning achievement differences—reinforcing the view
that providing aid to schools was an effective way of using
aid resources.

10. RANDOMIZED CONTROL
TRIALS
• In recent years, donors have given less attention to aid
inputs and tried to focus more on results and impacts and
outcomes of the aid provided.
• RCTs have emerged as a ‘gold standard’ of impact analysis,
though serving a donor's interest far more than that of a
recipient country, which will always have to focus on the
education system as a whole, and not merely the individual
interventions, which like the research, typically, are financed and
directed externally.

11. RANDOMIZED CONTROL
TRIALS
• In recent years, donors have given less attention to aid
inputs and tried to focus more on results and impacts and
outcomes of the aid provided.
• RCTs have emerged as a ‘gold standard’ of impact analysis,
though serving a donor's interest far more than that of a
recipient country, which will always have to focus on the
education system as a whole, and not merely the individual
interventions, which like the research, typically, are financed and
directed externally.

12. • For example, conditional cash transfers (CCTs) given to
poor female students in rural Cambodia have had positive
effects on their attendance, though not on their learning
(Ferreira et al., 2009). Eighteen months into the
programme, recipient children did no better in maths and
vocabulary tests than the control group.

13. • A more complex scholarship programmed devised in
Bogota, Colombia impacted positively on attendance rates,
pass rates,
enrolment, graduation and matriculation (Barrera-Osorio,
2008) with the largest impact on children who were paid
only if they matriculated high school.

14. • The evidence from research into CCTs in education by the
World Bank (Fiszbein and Schady, 2009) predominantly
underlines the impact of such interventions on enrolment
and attendance rather than on learning achievement.
Similarly, the impact of deworming treatment in Kenyan
schools studied by Kremer and Miguel (2004) is shown in
increased school participation rates, but not in relation to
greater learning achievement.

15. • Other types of interventions studied through RCTs include
different approaches to accountability in schools, increasing
the information available to parents and local communities
on school and student performance; increasing teacher
accountability, through performance incentives and
monitoring, as well as the employment of non-civil service
‘contract’ teachers; and school-based management. The
World Bank reviewed some of the available evidence on
these interventions in (Bruns et al., 2011) and found more
mixed impact on learning achievement, as opposed to
attendance. Masino and Niño-Zarazúa (2016)

16. • In this Issue conducted a systematic review on experimental
and quasi-experimental evidence of what works to improve
education quality in developing countries and found that
education policies are more successful when implemented
with a combination of multiple interventions.

17. AID, EDUCATION POLICY, AND
DEVELOPMENT
• Since the World Declaration on Education for All, adopted
by UNESCO, UNICEF, the World Bank and other
multilaterals, as well as by 155 countries and 150
governmental and non-governmental organizations
(NGOs), much work has been undertaken to improve the
effectiveness of aid to education (UNESCO, 2007).

18. • Over the past 15 years, aid to education, in particular
higher education but also primary education, has
increased steadily. Donors and actors participating in the
sector have also increased. More actors and larger aid
budgets have, however, created costs for recipient countries.
• Issues of lack of harmonization and alignment of donors with
domestic policy priorities have dominated the discussions
around aid effectiveness, first captured in the Paris Declaration
on aid effectiveness in 2005, and then reaffirmed in the 2008
Accra Agenda for Action that aimed to accelerate progress
towards ownership, harmonization, alignment, results and
mutual accountability (OECD, 2008, Wood et al., 2011).

19. SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
GOALS
• Goal 4—ensure inclusive and equitable quality education
and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all—a
more complex set of policy strategies will be needed to
achieve the much more ambitious targets of SDG4 by
2030.
• The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are the
world’s shared plan to end extreme poverty, reduce
inequality, and protect the planet by 2030.

20. SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS
TARGETS
 Ensure that all girls and boys complete free, equitable and
quality primary and secondary education leading to relevant
and Goal-4 effective learning outcomes
 Ensure equal access for all women and men to affordable and
quality technical, vocational and tertiary education, including
university
 Substantially increase the number of youth and adults who have
relevant skills, including technical and vocational skills, for
employment, decent jobs and entrepreneurship
 Eliminate gender disparities in education and ensure equal
access to all levels of education and vocational training for the
vulnerable, including persons with disabilities, indigenous
peoples and children in vulnerable situations
 Ensure that all youth and a substantial proportion of adults,
both men and women, achieve literacy and numeracy

21. SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS
TARGETS
 Ensure that all learners acquire the knowledge and skills needed to
promote sustainable development, including, among others, through
education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human
rights, gender equality, promotion of a culture of peace and non-violence,
global citizenship and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture’s
contribution to sustainable development
 Build and upgrade education facilities that are child, disability and gender
sensitive and provide safe, nonviolent, inclusive and effective learning
environments for all
 Substantially expand globally the number of scholarships available to
developing countries, in particular, least developed countries, small island
developing States and African countries, for enrolment in higher education,
including vocational training and information and communications
technology, technical, engineering and scientific programmes, in developed
countries and other developing countries
 Substantially increase the supply of qualified teachers, including through
international cooperation for teacher training in developing countries,
especially least developed countries and small island developing states

22. ‘PRODUCTIVIST’ APPROACH TO
EDUCATION AID DURING THE
1960S, 1970S, AND EARLY 1980S.
• First, education aid was largely concentrated on building
physical infrastructure, and providing equipment and
technical assistance to developing countries, many of
which had recently gained independence from colonial
rule.2
• Aid efforts concentrated in strengthening the supply-side
capabilities of countries to enhance labour productivity,
and economic growth. These activities included the
support of workforce development plans, which
emphasized vocational training, and engineering education
(Heyneman, 2004).

23. ‘PRODUCTIVIST’ APPROACH TO
EDUCATION AID DURING THE
1960S, 1970S, AND EARLY 1980S.
• The second feature of the productivist approach was its
strong focus on secondary and post-secondary education,
including vocational training (World Bank, 1980). In fact,
nearly 50% of bilateral aid went to secondary and nearly
one-third to tertiary and technical education (OECD,
2012). Reiff (1983) also points out that training
programmes for teachers, and learning materials were
largely supported by the World Bank in the 1970s, while
basic education absorbed only 5% of its education budget.

24. DEVELOPMENTALIST
APPROACH.
• Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which
highlights the right of everyone to have free access to
‘elementary education’ (United Nations, 1948).
• Rawlsian principles of social justice, which suggest that the
marginal utility from additional units of aid money would yield
larger welfare enhancing outcomes if they focus on the poorest
(Rawls, 1985). (Prioritarians also argue that priority should be
given to help the worst off because an improvement in their
wellbeing as a result of policy has greater [ethical] value among
societies with a shared sense of justice (Parfit et al., 1991, Parfit,
1997).)

25. USAID
UNITED STATES AGENCY, INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
• To support broad-based and inclusive growth, USAID works
with partners to improve the quality of both basic and higher
education across the country. USAID invests in the next
generation’s ability to sustain growth by improving early-grade
reading skills, strengthening education governance at the
community, helping universities align research and curricula
with industry demands, and strengthening the science,
technology and innovation ecosystem.

26. USAID
UNITED STATES AGENCY, INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
• PROJECTS
ABC+ (Advancing Basic Education in the
Philippines)
This project identifies innovative and sustainable
ideas on how to address the continuing
challenges in literacy, numeracy and socio-
emotional learning for children in the Philippines,
with a particular focus on systems strengthening.

27. USAID
UNITED STATES AGENCY, INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
• PROJECTS
Education Governance Effectiveness (EdGE)
Poor education governance constraints effective
delivery of basic education services. EdGE addresses
this by building the capacity of stakeholders to advocate
for local level policy reforms in education. Since its
inception, more than 9,000 school administrators and
local government officials from 91 cities and
municipalities nationwide have been trained on fiscal
management and utilization of local education funds.

28. USAID
UNITED STATES AGENCY, INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
• PROJECTS
Gabay (Strengthening Inclusive Education for Blind, Deaf
and Deafblind Children)
The Advisory Council for the Education of Children and
Youth with Disabilities estimated at least 13 percent or
5.49 million Filipino children have special needs, of
which 2 million are with disabilities. Though efforts to
improve the system and increase the number of Deped
SPED resource centers are being undertaken, less than
five percent of children with disabilities are actually in
school.

29. USAID
UNITED STATES AGENCY, INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
• PROJECTS
Science, Technology, Research and Innovation for
Development (STRIDE)
USAID launched STRIDE to strengthen the Philippines’
capacity for innovation-led, inclusive economic growth.
The project focuses on disciplines that contribute to
high-growth sectors, including electronics, chemical
industries, alternative energy, agribusiness and
information technology, with cross-cutting themes of
manufacturing and new product development.

30. USAID
UNITED STATES AGENCY, INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
• PROJECTS
YouthWorks PH
YouthWorks PH is a five-year partnership between USAID and
the Philippine Business for Education that engages and
mobilizes the private sector to address the education needs
of youth, as well as the skill requirements of employers. This
partnership will improve access to training and employment
opportunities for at least 40,000 youth through an innovative
work-based training approach. This approach allows youth to
earn a competency certificate from a university or training
institute, while working in partner companies.

31. USAID
UNITED STATES AGENCY, INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
• PROJECTS
All Children Reading (ACR)-Philippines
The two-year ACR project seeks to support reading outcomes
for primary learners, with a focus on increasing impact, scale
and sustainability. This activity builds on the capacity of the
Department of Education to support high impact early grade
reading programs through evidence-based actionable
research. USAID assistance includes conduct of the National
Early Grade Reading Assessments (EGRA); four separate
language studies in Mindanao, and Educational Exchanges.
This activity also supports education exchanges, ICT for
education research and capacity building activities for
monitoring and evaluation.

32. • The effectiveness of foreign aid to education:
What can be learned? – ScienceDirect
• Aid, education policy, and development –
ScienceDirect
• Education | Philippines | U.S. Agency for
International Development (usaid.gov)

33. • ACTIVITY
• 1. What are the recent Aid and Development in
your workplace ?
• 2. How can this Aid and Development affect your
occupation ?
• 3. In the future, What can you suggest other Aid
and Development that can help our Education
system?