Book Description
The coalition Government has committed to increasing the Department for International Development's total aid spending from £7.8 billion in 2010-11 to £11.5 billion in 2014-15. The Department aims to improve and expand state primary education, focusing on sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. It works largely by influencing and financing developing country governments to pursue Millennium Development Goals. The Committee supports these aims, but expresses concerns about its ability to assess the value for money of its spending. Fourteen of the 22 countries the Department supports are on track to meet Millennium Development Goals for primary enrolment by 2015. The Committee also expresses concern that the Department cannot adequately attribute impacts to its spending and its influence. Even for its largest programmes, such as India, it typically contributes a low proportion of the countries' education spend. For the Committee, the Department needs to place value for money as the primary focus when allocating resources or assessing the performance of its education programmes. It needs to focus on how many children attend and complete primary education, along with the literacy and numeracy they achieve.