Education Thematic Strategy

Promoting opportunities for all is one of the five strategic goals of Australia’s aid program. In education this means enabling more children, particularly girls, to attend school for a longer and better education so they have the skills to build their own futures and, in time, escape poverty. Education is an enabler of development and crucial to helping people overcome poverty. Education makes a significant difference to improving equity, health, empowering women, governance and sustainable development.

Australia has three pillars for our investment in education:

Improving access to basic education opportunities for all so that children and youth complete a basic education
Improving learning outcomes so that children and youth achieve the basic skills necessary for productive lives
Driving development through better governance and service delivery so that partner governments support quality education for all.

Students at Wadoi Primary School in Papua, Indonesia. Photo: Dian Lestariningsih

Australia will base its investments in education on what works, is effective aid and achieves results. Australia will provide a mix of support, enhancing partnerships with partner governments, multilateral organisations, NGOs, civil society organisations and the private sector. Our geographic focus will continue to be on Asia and the Pacific.

The education thematic strategy informs Australia’s program decisions in this sector:

Promoting opportunities for all—Education

The rationale for investing in education

Publications and research

Education is a great enabler. It helps people escape poverty through improving incomes, employment and enterprise opportunities. For girls, extra years of basic education are empowering. Education makes a significant difference to girls’ employment opportunities, marriage age, fertility levels and capacity to make decisions about their lives. It gives women the means to become leaders. For children with disabilities, education opens doors to social inclusion and independence. Education enables communities to make choices about their futures, and contributes to good governance and sustainable development.

The challenges

AusAID is helping the Government of Indonesia to raise the standards of teaching in both secular and Islamic schools. Photo: AusAID.

Achieving universal primary education and gender parity at all levels of education are Millennium Development Goals 2 and 3. While there has been some progress towards meeting these goals, globally at least 67 million children, including 35 million girls, remain out of school.

Of these around 27 million children are in Asia and the Pacific. On current trends there could be as many as 72 million children out of school in 2015.

Education quality is a pressing concern. Getting girls and boys to attend school is only part of the challenge. There is growing evidence that, even where enrolment targets are being met, children are not acquiring basic literacy and numeracy skills. The poor quality of basic education affects students by reducing their capacity to succeed in further education and the transition to skilled work. Many of Australia’s partner countries have large and growing youth populations, and in an age where higher levels of skill are increasingly important for employment, job security and a better income, improving education quality is an imperative.

Australia’s approach to access and a quality education for all

Education is the flagship of Australia's aid program. In Australia’s immediate region, appropriate to context, we will support the whole sector, from early childhood to vocational training, and in some cases, higher education. In other parts of the aid program, Australia will respond to local conditions in investing beyond basic education.

In 2011-12, Australia’s investment in education is expected to be $842 million (19 per cent of total Overseas Development Assistance). This represents a major increase over the 2010-11 estimated outcome.

Australia has three pillars for our investment in education:

Pillar 1: Improving access to basic education opportunities for all so that children and youth complete a basic education. Supporting opportunities for all means focusing on the poor, on girls, on children with disabilities and on the vulnerable at the level of basic education. In selected countries we will also improve access to non-formal skills development for youth.
Pillar 2: Improving learning outcomes so that children and youth achieve the basic skills necessary for productive lives. Australia’s investment in improving learning is a major focus of our education strategy. The emphasis is on ensuring children and youth acquire core skills, and on the key levers of quality improvement: development of good diagnostic systems, capacity building, and the policy frameworks to support high standard educators and institutions.
Pillar 3: Driving development through better governance and service delivery so that partner governments support quality education for all. Australia will support partner governments’ efforts to lift people out of poverty by helping to strengthen systems, policies and institutions. Australia will mobilise resources for equitable participation in quality education at all levels. To build sustainable local capacity, Australia will provide more development based scholarships and direct support to tertiary systems and institutions in selected partner countries.

Where Australia will work

Australia channels its education development assistance through bilateral, regional and multilateral programs. Australia’s investment in education will continue to primarily be in the Asia-Pacific region. Major bilateral partners are Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Pacific Island Countries, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.

How Australia will work

We will emphasise results. Australia’s aid program has a commitment to evidence-based policy, strategy, design and implementation. Programs must be able to demonstrate how Australian aid brings about change and improves the areas of education we target.

We will facilitate partner government leadership.

The Pacific Partnerships for Development provide a framework for Australia and Pacific island nations to achieve shared objectives and make more rapid progress towards development goals. Improved education was identified as a priority outcome in six of the partnerships signed in 2008 and 2009 (Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Kiribati, Vanuatu, Tonga and Nauru). This underlines the strong commitment of Pacific governments to improving education access and outcomes. In many countries we coordinate our assistance with that of other development partners, including civil society, to maximise effectiveness, transparency and mutual accountability.

We will enhance our partnerships. Australia will work with effective multilateral, bilateral and non-government, civil society organisations that operate in areas that are consistent with Australian priorities, and that deliver value for money.

Some achievements

In Indonesia, between 2005 and 2010, Australia built more than 2,000 junior secondary schools (Years 7–9) across Indonesia which has helped increase access to education with 330,000 new school places. More than 130,000 children are already enrolled and attending these schools; 50 per cent of these children are girls. Because there are now more schools in remote and rural areas, approximately 70 per cent of these students now travel less than three kilometres to get to them. Absenteeism and drop out rates at these schools are lower than the national average. Australia’s new education partnership will build on this success with a further 2,000 schools to be built across the archipelago. This construction program will see an additional 300,000 places created.

In PNG, in 2010 Australia funded 539,000 new textbooks for over 3,400 primary schools and eight teacher training colleges in PNG. Our support allowed for the abolition of school fees for the first three grades of basic education, supporting the Government of PNG’s aim to abolish all school fees by 2015.

In Bangladesh, Australia supported the operation of 31,670 primary and pre-primary schools, teaching over 945,000 children. Over 60 per cent these students at pre-primary and primary levels were girls.

In Samoa, Australian assistance has enabled over 105 pre-school, primary and secondary students with disabilities to access early intervention and support services, up from 11 in 2009.

Since 2007, more than 3,170 students have graduated from campuses of the Australian funded Australia-Pacific Technical College in Fiji, PNG, Samoa and Vanuatu. The college is producing ‘work-ready’ graduates with internationally recognised technical and vocational qualifications.

Since the Colombo Plan in the 1950s, Australia has provided over 100,000 scholarships to citizens from developing countries across the globe.

Global Partnerships

Partnerships with multilateral organisations, United Nations agencies and other donors extend the reach and impact of Australia’s support for education.

The Global Partnership for Education (formerly the Education for All Fast Track Initiative) is a global partnership between donor and developing countries to help more children enrol in school and receive a better education. It is the only multilateral mechanism focused on funding primary and the early years of secondary education. Australia has pledged AU$270 million over 4 years (2011-15) – we are now the fourth largest donor to the global partnership. Australia’s pledge strengthens our advocacy for increased support for countries in Asia and the Pacific, a stronger focus on fragile and post-conflict states, and improvements to education quality and girls’ education. Australia’s pledge builds on our earlier commitment of $50 million over four years to 2011. Since 2003, the partnership has helped put 19 million more children into school, 54 per cent of whom are girls, and supported the construction of over 30,000 classrooms and training of more than 337,000 teachers.

Australia will contribute to the reading outcomes for 100 million children in primary grades by 2015 under a new All Children Reading initiative as part of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Grand Challenge for Development program. A founding partner of the All Children Reading initiative, AUSAID will work in partnership with USAID and World Vision to address key global challenges in education, invest in innovation, and encourage private sector involvement. Australia will contribute $5 million dollars for All Children Reading over the next two years.

In October 2009 Australia signed a $180 million four-year Strategic Partnership Agreement with the World Food Programme. This includes $40 million for dedicated school feeding programs in Asia, Africa and Latin America to reduce the number of school children who suffer hunger, and at the same time improve school attendance and education results.

The Fourth High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness was held in Busan, Korea between 29 November and 1 December 2011. At the Forum, Australia and Indonesia co-hosted a side event on Effective Aid for Education with UNICEF, the Global Partnership for Education and the World Bank. One of the outcomes of the side event was a Statement of Principles on Effective Aid for Education, which was agreed to by participants, and reaffirms a commitment to the development effectiveness principles within the education sector. The Statement specifically acknowledges that results-oriented education partnerships are the best way to fully achieve Millennium Development Goal 2 (universal primary completion) and Millennium Development Goal 3 (gender equity in education), and the Education for All goals.

AusAID’s Education Resource Facility

In July 2009, AusAID launched the Education Resource Facility (ERF) to support staff by providing rapid and reliable responses to research enquiries, requests for advisory support and professional development. With established education networks both in Australia and internationally, the ERF provides access to a wide range of experts to give AusAID staff the knowledge base and technical support needed to design and manage effective education assistance programs and support engagement in policy dialogue.

Aid stories and people

Examples of Australia's aid program in action: