Education

Snapshot

Off to a good start. Pre-schoolers and first and second year students are getting the education they deserve in Timor-Leste.

Ensuring children have access to a good education is central to NZAID's mission of achieving a secure and prosperous world. Approximately one third of NZAID's total annual bilateral aid has historically been allocated to the education sector.

NZAID regards knowledge as the key to a better life, helping people to earn more, enjoy better health, be more secure and live longer.

While most of New Zealand's education aid has traditionally gone into tertiary education in the form of scholarships, since 2000 the focus has shifted towards increased support for the provision of basic education in order to achieve the internationally-agreed Education For All (EFA) goals by 2015.

NZAID's Education Policy, passed by the New Zealand Cabinet in 2003, sets the strategic framework for the agency's education development assistance. Around half of the budget allocation now targets basic education. This framework is reinforced by NZAID's Education Strategy, which outlines how NZAID will work with its partner countries to improve access to and quality of education. NZAID's Education Policy is mainly focused on the Pacific region, where the majority of NZAID's education assistance is directed.

Education For All (EFA) Goals

NZAID's Education Strategy 2005-2010 focuses the agency's priorities on supporting partner countries to achieve the EFA goals, which are:

expanding and improving comprehensive early childhood care and education, especially for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children
ensuring that by 2015 all children, particularly girls, children in difficult circumstances and those belonging to ethnic minorities, have access to and complete free and compulsory primary education of good quality
ensuring that the learning needs of all young people and adults are met through equitable access to appropriate learning and life skills programmes
achieving a 50 per cent improvement in levels of adult literacy by 2015, especially for women, and equitable access to basic and continuing education for all adults
eliminating gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2005
achieving gender equality in education by 2015, with a focus on ensuring girls' full and equal access to and achievement in basic education of good quality
improving all aspects of the quality of education and ensuring excellence of all so that recognised and measurable learning outcomes are achieved by all, especially in literacy, numeracy and essential life skills.

NZAID priorities

Basic education

Basic education encompasses the first 10 years of education, which includes early childhood through to junior secondary education.

NZAID recognises that a quality basic education is both a fundamental human right and a critical tool to reduce poverty. Basic education enables people to participate more effectively in society, to access support services and to make a productive contribution to development in their country.

NZAID will maintain education's share of total Official Development Assistance (ODA) at approximately one third and, within this share, work towards increasing the funding for basic education to 50 percent of the total education budget.

Post-basic and tertiary education

NZAID also prioritises post-basic and tertiary education and recognises that these are essential for a country to reduce poverty, to develop leadership and to provide technical, analytical and strategic capability.

Post-basic and tertiary education refers to education provided beyond the first 10 years of learning. This includes senior secondary, technical/vocational education, distance learning and training provided by institutions such as universities, teacher colleges and higher-level professional schools.

Scholarships

Many lessons have been learnt from New Zealand's support for scholarships over the past decades. It is clear that scholarships need to be integrated with country programme strategies, local labour markets and human resource development needs.

NZAID's support for post-basic and tertiary education includes financial and technical assistance to strengthen existing higher education institutions and systems and the provision of scholarships for study in home country, regional and New Zealand institutions.

NZAID supports these initiatives through approaches and aid delivery mechanisms that strengthen local leadership of education sector development and achieve a greater integration of funding agency and partner government effort. For example, sector-wide approaches.

NZAID on the ground

Education for all in the Solomon Islands

Education, especially of girls and women, is recognised as one of the most successful means of enabling countries to achieve sustainable development. NZAID is supporting the Ministry of Education to achieve its goal of providing a quality basic education for all children and eliminating gender disparity at all levels of education.

NZAID is a lead donor in the education sector in Solomon Islands and has been working with other donors and the Ministry of Education on a comprehensive Education Sector Programme since 2003.

Since 2003, the Education Sector Programme has:

strengthened the Ministry of Education’s management of the formal education system
developed a programme to upgrade school infrastructure and a grants policy to increase access to education and the quality of education. In 2009, support has been provided for fee free education to improve access
revised the curriculum and distributed text books and teaching aids to primary schools
by working with Waikato University, progress has been made to ensure that trained teachers are available in every classroom (in 2007/08, 340 untrained teachers received in-service training and 250 new teachers graduated).

With support from New Zealand, the Solomon Islands government has introduced fee free basic education, allowing more children to attend school and gain the education they need.

Off to a good start in Timor-Leste

Developing an effective education system remains a major challenge for the Timor-Leste government. Widespread illiteracy, lack of infrastructure, a shortage of qualified teachers and a multiplicity of languages are all hurdles to overcome.

In response to the poor quality of early childhood education in Timor-Leste, NZAID has sent a team of consultants to work with Timor-Leste officials to assess the feasibility of developing community-based, low-cost early childhood education. The team is looking at professional development options for teachers of pre-school and grades 1 and 2 children, and an awareness campaign to ensure teachers are supported by parents.

return to | NZAID's priorities