Developing Countries: Schools

(asked on 11th February 2019) - View Source

Question to the Department for International Development:

To ask the Secretary of State for International Development, with reference to oral evidence by the Minister of State at the Department for International Development to the International Development Committee on DFID's work on education: Leaving no one behind, HC 367, on 18 October 2017, what methodology was used to establish that 95 per cent of his Department's education funding goes to public state school services.


Answered by
Penny Mordaunt Portrait
Penny Mordaunt
Lord President of the Council and Leader of the House of Commons
This question was answered on 14th February 2019

DFID’s education policy “Get Children Learning,” launched in February 2018, sets out that the state is the guarantor of quality basic education for all, but need not be the sole financer or provider of education services. In financial year 2016/17 we carried out a one-off exercise to calculate the proportion of DFID’s education spend going to public education. Our conclusion was “DFID invests overwhelmingly in the public sector with over 95% of education funding going to public education”. This was a snapshot of the education portfolio at the time. This calculated education spend on DFID’s bilateral and centrally-managed programmes including those operating in Pakistan, Kenya and Nigeria that provided funding to low cost private schools. To repeat the exercise and provide a year on year breakdown would incur a disproportionate cost. We continue to take a pragmatic approach in our support to education, using a range of delivery partners to provide children with the education they deserve. In some cases this includes for-profit organisations who deliver services through the public education system.

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