National Education Accounts: a catalyst for change

02 September 2016

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IIEP-UNESCO
A classroom in Lao PDR during a mission for the NEA project.

A National Education Account (NEA) aims to draw a complete picture of how a country finances education.

Through implementing a structured methodology, the NEA organizes multiple data from key funding sources – public, private and external donors– in a compatible, sustainable way.

The information is then used to help identify gaps, overlaps or misuse in the ways in which education is funded, helping to better direct resources to policy objectives and assist in international monitoring of progress towards the fourth Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 4).

Over the past three years, a collaborative project (with IIEP Pôle de Dakar and the UNESCO Institute for Statistics) has supported eight countries worldwide in developing a NEA. Recently, three of these countries – the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Senegal and Uganda – held national launches, bringing to the forefront the powerful impact such information systems can have on improving educational planning and policy.

For more information on how NEAs are spurring change at the national level, read IIEP’s Ousmane Diouf’s recent blog on the Global Partnership for Education.

GPE also hosted a Webinar on 1 September on NEAs with experts from IIEP, UIS and the involved countries, providing an overview of the methodology and country experiences from building a NEA.

View the powerpoint presentation here: