Introduction
International or foreign assistance is the largest component of the international affairs budget and is regarded by several educationists and researchers as a critical instrument of the foreign policy of United States. It is to note that education has recently gained development finances from the foreign donor community. Such a change has been concurrent with the “human investment revolution in economic through” that is initiated by (Donaldson and Nogee 2014). The government of United States is considered to be the ‘largest donor of foreign aid’ in the world as it has the farthest reaching impact and potential to improve the lives of human beings. Today, the foreign aid of United States has saves many lives since the government assistance programs started after the second the world war. One of the developing countries that have been highly benefitting from U.S. foreign aid in education is India. However, it is also to note that India, being a developing country, is also providing some significant military and economic aid to its neighbouring nations in the Southern Asian region since the 1950. It has been identified as one of the largest recipient of U.S. educational as well as economic assistance over the past sixty six year. This paper would elaborate on the exploring about the foreign aid to education policy along with the use of theoretical framework. This paper shall present a short literature review that would critically summarise the different positions in this topic from the perspectives of different scholars and educationists.
Foreign aid to education
Foreign aid to education is both focused on and contribute to some of the building blocks to the improved learning and at the same time, drawing direct casual relation in between the “learning achievements and foreign aid provides as they involve more than merely counting the number of pupils who are enrolled in the primary schools and assessing the progress towards the universal enrolment, one of the Millennium development goals” (Riddell and Nino-Zarazua 2016).
Literature Summary
Several educationists have continuously pointed out that it is very easy to show the influence of the aid-supported health interventions as compared to the education ones- the improvements in the rates of mortality are more vibrant in the short term as compared to the increased learning (Donaubauer, Herzer and Nunnenkamp 2014). Notwithstanding this fact, when the contribution of the aid to service –delivery is assessed, the aid to the sector of health faces similar issues and challenges just like the aid to education. It is due to the fact that attribution is multifaceted- speeding up the process of distribution of textbooks, providing the textbooks, will undoubtedly aid to the overall impact but at the same time, determines and try to quantify its individual contribution to the broader results is way easy when it is set along different other contributory factors. It is to note that from the year 1995 to the year 2010 the total aid to education has been increased in the real terms by 360%, that is, it increased from 2.9bn dollars to 13.3bn dollars in the year 2010 (Kitano and Harada 2016). With the same, over the same period of time, the total aid to the basic education has been increased by 630% and to that of the secondary education, by 294% (Sellar and Lingard 2014). While the recent studies suggest that this policy has aided to positive educational achievements in the last decades, it has remained very difficult to quantify the influence of the policy on the outcomes of education for different reasons. “Part of the problem has been the focus of impact on school enrolment and attainment rather than on measurements of education quality.” To a significant extent, this has rectified by the development of the data on the indicators of educational achievement like the PISA (“Programme for International Student Assessment”), TIMSS (“Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study”) and the PIRLS (“Progress in International Reading Literacy Study”) and at the same time, from the studies of the regional learning achievement like the SACMEQ (“Southern and Eastern African Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality”) and the PASEC (“Programme on the Analysis of Education Systems of the Conference of Ministers of Education of Francophone Africa”) (Bray, Adamson and Mason 2014). Notwithstanding this fact, the main focus of several development agencies have still been figuring out the contribution of this foreign aid policy towards the attainment of the Millennium Development Goals and this is why, on the attainment, increased enrolments and the gender parity.
Moreover, it is also to note that the Foreign aid policy has been channelled in different types of interventions like the classroom construction, the school feeding programmes, the scholarships of the girls, the teacher education and different other programmes for reducing the student drop-out, targeting the different levels of education and using different modalities of foreign aid policy (Reynolds et al. (2014). It is also to mention that the evaluations of project impact by the development agencies have tend to create a positive result as compared to the studies of the impact of this policy using the panel data from the education statistics and international aid statistics. According to Heyneman and Lee (2014), “When focused on the impact of aid to education on outcomes such as access to education or years of completed education, studies have found very small impact. For instance, it has been found that there is an increase in the primary completion rate of 2.5 points for an increase in aid to education of 1 per cent of GDP.” This study makes use of the sectorial aid data that are drawn from the ‘UNESCO Institute of Statistics data base’ for the year 2006 and this encompass a total of 120 low and lower middle income nations.
Body
It is to note that title of “foreign aid donor” is no longer only exclusive to the richly developed nations. There are also many developing nations that have lately transformed themselves form the aid recipients into aid donors and one of such nations is India. According to Rao and Vakulabharanam (2018), “India is an example of such a transformation”. Despite of receiving aids for many years, the country has extended the technical, humanitarian and the development assistance to number of countries in several different parts of the world. Being a developing country, India is also providing some significant military and economic aid to its neighbouring nations in the Southern Asian region since the 1950. According to Yu (2017), “South Asia is one of the major recipients of aid from India. It is important to explore India’s interests in providing aid to her neighbours.” In context of providing assistance in terms of education, India has also reached a significant number and its contribution is notable. It has emerged as a notable donor for her neighbours with the total foreign assistance, comprising of economic, technical and educational cooperation and at the same time, loans to the foreign country governments, maximising the demands significantly in the last five years. At the time of 2009 to 2010, within a year of time period, as claimed by Haris et al. (2018), “India have provided US$ 383.01 million in aid and loans to South Asian countries (except Pakistan), which has expanded to US$ 1,149 million in 2015-16. Out of India’s total foreign aid budget in 2015-16, about 74.6 percent was pledged for Bhutan, followed by 9.1 percent for Afghanistan, 6.6 percent for Sri Lanka, 4 percent for Nepal and 2.8 percent each for Bangladesh and Maldives.” Notwithstanding this fact, it is to mention that the patterns of the allocation of aid in the South Asian region has remained constant at the time of 2010 to 2016, with Bhutan being continuing its reign over the budget of aid.
According to the recent reports by Yang and McCall (2014), India is also funding several school and educational infrastructure development projects in Bangladesh, Nepal. Sri Lanka and Maldives. It can be stated that there are the aid for trade projects as such types of aids are aimed towards developing the trade capacity of the nations and the educational infrastructures like airports, sea ports and roads that notably alters the costs and times of trading. Because of the limited numbers of transport arrangements in the countries like South Asians, the costs of trades are high for the traders in this type of reguions. Hence, the main intention of India to do this is to make a significant reduction in the cost of trading by means of ensuring directing the aid towards the improvement of regional connectivity of transport, particularly in between the north and the eastern states of India as well as the land-locked nations like Nepal. Bhutan and Bangladesh. It is to note that improving the connectivity among the nations in the Southern Asian region helps in fostering the prosperity and growth of the region.
Moreover, it is also to mention that in terms of receiving education aid from the foreign countries, considering the population of Israel, it is less than of ten million compared to the more than 1.2 billion of India’s, the state has received about hundred times more aid per capita as compared to India. The assistance from United States to India at present is only about 100million dollars after the Indian capital state called New Delhi, embarked on weaning itself away from the contribution to the trade during the nineties. According to Jenkins (2015), the main “difference between India and U.S client states such as Israel, Pakistan, Egypt, South Korea and others becomes all the more stark when one examines the American military assistance-negligible in case of India- to these nations”. Undoubtedly, the foreign aid has advanced the education process in India to a great extent. India, being a developing country, has struggled long in this area of education for a long time. For example, “even in the late 1980s, in between 40 million children of the primary school age were out of school. Foreign aid to India, as a result, proves to be an effective investment in this arena, and there are many ways foreign aid has advanced education in India.” It is to note that one of the ways in which this policy has advanced the education process in India is by means of initiating the projects that are focused on the improvement of the sector form the very core. For example, according to Haris et al. (2018), “one of the three major goals of USAID’s Global Education Strategy is improved reading skills for 100 million children in primary grades.” Moreover, Jenkins (2015) in this context have also claimed that “India spends about 3% of its GDP on education and this further makes the foreign aid geared towards the development of educational sector important. The foreign aid policy has advanced the education process and level in India over the passage of years. For example, the rate of literacy has increased to 65.4% in the year 2001, and at present, sits at 74.04%”. This shows that the foreign aid to education policy is helping the nation to a great extent by means of improving the lives of people.
Conclusion
Hence, from the above analysis it is clear that this paper has discussed about the different perspectives of the educationist on the policy of foreign aid to education and its positive contribution in improving the lives of people. It has been identifies that this policy has played positive role as being an aid to the education in the aid-recipient nations, the most tangible result of which is the contribution that this foreign aid makes for expanding the enrolments of the basic education. Despite of receiving aids for many years, the country has extended the technical, humanitarian and the development assistance to number of countries in several different parts of the world. Being a developing country, India is also providing some significant military and economic aid to its neighbouring nations in the Southern Asian region since the 1950. India, being a developing country, has struggled long in this area of education for a long time. However, it is also to note that this discussion indicates that there is a significant gap in between what this policy does and what it can potentially attain, particularly in terms of its contribution the improvements in the quality of educational.
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