ICEVI - International Council for Education of People with Visual Impairment

The Global Task Force of the EFA-VI campaign has suggested that the countries covered under the Fast Track Initiatives of the World Bank may be considered for inclusion in the first phase of the EFA-VI campaign in order to achieve faster results. The write-up below describes the concept of the FTI and how it can be used effectively at the country level by the National Task Forces of EFA-VI to augment services for children with visual impairment.

What is EFA-FTI?

The Education For All – Fast Track Initiative is a global partnership between developing countries and international donors in order to ensure universal completion of quality primary education by 2015. Though the term disability is not mentioned in the objectives, the word ‘equity’ is mentioned in the EFA-FTI, which includes children with disabilities too. Therefore, the EFA-VI campaign can work well with the EFA-FTI as both work with the common ideology of increasing educational opportunities.

Target group:

The FTI document states that more than 100 million children are out of school of which 58 million are girls. The EFA-VI document states that approximately 6 million children with visual impairment are not having access to education of which 4.5 million are from developing nations. As the target projected by the EFA-VI is 6% of the target of the EFA-FTI, there is ample scope for collaboration between these two initiatives. Both the initiatives have laid special emphasis on education of girl children.

Key indicators of success

While international donors and a few governments raise resources for the EFA-FTI campaign, the partner countries are expected to develop good education programmes and demonstrate results on performance indicators, which are similar to the EFA-VI campaign. Government spending on education, pupil-teacher ratio, average repetition rate, and annual hours of instruction are listed as some of the key indicators of the EFA-FTI campaign whereas the EFA-VI campaign lists increased enrolment, provision of support, reduction of dropout rate and academic performance as the main indicators of success.

National level agency

The EFA-FTI is suggesting nomination of a Coordinating agency at the national level to coordinate with the Ministry of education and other government agencies, which is similar to the concept of a National Task Force (NTF) suggested by the EFA-VI campaign. The EFA-FTI expects that the country has prepared a poverty reduction strategy and an education sector plan whereas the EFA-VI campaign suggests nine criteria for a country to qualify for the implementation of the campaign. Therefore, both initiatives follow similar strategies for country selection.

Resource mobilisation

Once the resource-requirements of the countries are known in the EFA-FTI initiatives, the donor agencies will mobilise resources. The EFA-VI campaign is also adopting the same strategies. The EFA-FTI emphasises adequacy of the knowledge base, strategy towards achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, ownership by the stakeholders, and financial sustainability, which are similar to the EFA-VI approach. The EFA-FTI contemplates on identification of key areas for capacity building, strategies for monitoring and evaluation, etc., which are similar to the EFA-VI campaign. Therefore, both initiatives adopt similar strategies for identifying key areas, major performance indicators, etc., and therefore, the EFA-VI campaign can make use of the EFA-FTI initiative wherever it is present.

Catalytic Fund

In addition to resources generated from the donors present in the country of implementation and inviting new donors to join the initiative, the EFA-FTI also has a Catalytic Fund, which is a multi donor trust fund operated by the World Bank. This fund is used for providing grants to countries where donor presence is limited. Many countries from Europe have pledged for the catalytic fund, which amounts to nearly 680 million US dollars. There are plenty of opportunities for EFA-VI campaign to work with the EFA-FTI in specific areas such as research, creation of centres of excellence, local production of assistive devices, etc. Proposals may also be sent through the National Task Forces for specific grants under these categories.

Countries covered under Fast Track Initiatives:

Many countries in the developing world are included under the Fast Track Initiatives. At present, the following countries have endorsed programmes with education sector plans.

Expected to endorse plans in 2006

Expected to endorse plans in 2007

Countries whose dates of endorsements are yet to be made

Therefore, 59 countries are likely to be brought under the Fast Track countries within two years and the EFA-VI campaign can make use of the EFA-FTI initiatives in these countries. Using EFA-FTI programme is going to be beneficial for the EFA-VI programme in terms of capacity building, resource mobilisation, achieving the indicators of success, emulating examples, and research.

Education for all – Fast Track Initiatives