[4th] Critical Review on Korea’s Aid to Education: Current Status and Challenges “Offering educational help in conflict zones or vulnerable countries is a must if children are to have hopes and dreams” President Park Geun-hye of the Republic of Korea, at the United Nations General Assembly in New York, 2014 [Date of publication] May 18, 2015 [Publisher] Thematic Working Group on Education of KoFID
General Aid Trends
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Since the 2012 4th Busan High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (HLF-4), the Republic of Korea, a relative newcomer to the global aid scene, has received considerable international attention. Rightly so, as Korea’s aid has experienced a steady increase from 0.05% of its gross national income (GNI) in
[Author] HONG, Moon Suk Director, Office of Development Research and Evaluation, Re-shaping Development Institute (ReDI),
2006 to 0.13% of GNI in 2014, while major donors have been decreasing the volume of their aid. 2011 marks an important turning point for Korea’s aid as it surpassed 1 billion USD for the first time. Several years of constant growth saw Korea’s ODA reaching 1,325 million USD in 2011 (equivalent to 0.12% of its GNI), compared to 455 million in 2006 (equivalent to 0.05% of
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ASPBAE (Asia South Pacific Association for Basic and Adult Education) OSF (Open Society Foundation)
its GNI). More importantly, the Republic of Korea seems to be politically committed to increasing its aid budget after joining the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Numerous Korean government officials repeatedly expressed their expectations that there would appear to be ample financial scope for the planned increases in its aid volume, in light of Korea’s expected rate of economic growth over the medium term of 3 to 3.5% (OECD, 2012a). 1) All international comparative statistics are from OECD statistics, unless specified (such as the data from Prime Minister Office and Korea National Research Foundation source).
Critical Review on Korea’s Aid to Education: Current Status and Challenges
Although the Korean government had officially stated its initiative to meet 0.25% of GNI allocated for aid by 2015, the confidence and hopes of increasing aid have been facing numerous challenges. Rather than making progress, the current government has been slowing down its pace in increasing aid budgets and in fact there is very little chance of reaching the target on time. In reality, Korea provided 1.7 billion USD in 2013 and is currently ranked 23rd among the 28 OECD Development Assistance Committee(DAC) member countries (2013) and is placed as providing one of the lowest percentages of aid to GNI in the world, at 0.13% of GNI(2013)(0.30% of GNI, OECD average),leaving it in fourth to the last place of the bilateral donors in the OECD DAC countries.
< Figure 1> Koreaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ODA Trends in Volume and as a Share of GNI
NET ODA: TRENDS IN VOLUME AND AS A SHARE OF GNI, 2003.13, KOREA Amount of ODA (left axis)
ODA as a % of GNI (right axis)
Constant 2012 USD billion
1.8 1.6 1.4 1.2 1.0 0.8 0.6 0.4 0.2 0
% of GNI
2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013p (OECD DAC Statistics, 2015)
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0.16 0.14 0.12 0.10 0.08 0.06 0.04 0.02 0
Korea’s Country and Thematic Focus
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In 2013, the top 10 recipient countries of Korea’s aidwere: Vietnam, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Sri Lanka, Tanzania, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Mozambique, the Philippines, and Mongolia. The top ten countries received 53% of the total aid. Korea has often been criticized forand for its strong trend of tied aid, and for distributing small amounts of its aid budget to a large number of recipient counties (especially to Middle Income Countries at 49%) resulting an ineffectiveness, as mentioned in various evaluations conducted in recent years. This issue opens up a discussion on how relatively little Korea focuses on the Least Developing Countries (LDCs). For instance, Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), one of Korea’s major aid implementation agencies, provided 111.66 million USD for aid in 2013. 40% of its total spending was allocated to 28 countries in Asia (21 from Asia and 7 from Oceania). By country, Afghanistan received the largest amount (23.88 million USD) followed by Vietnam, Indonesia, Mongolia, and the Philippines. A similar trend can be seen in Korea’s total ODA. KOICA’s total amount of aid to the top five recipient countries in Asia accounted for some 26.9%of KOICA's total project spending, or 67.3% of the total spending for Asia. Korea’s allocations through its two main bilateral to multilateral funding channels are mainly based on a ratio of overall “70 to 30 rules” (bilateral: multilateral) (e.g. 83:17 in 2006, 75:25 in 2013). Non-core funding to UN agencies is provided by more than 17 ministries and government agencies resulted in a high level of multilateral fragmentation in Korea. The Education sector is not entirely different when it comes to multilateral funding. One of the recent changes that were noticed in aid to multilateral education fund was Korea’s recent commitment tothe Global Partnership for Education (GPE). According to the recent announcement made by President Park Geun-hyea the United Nations General Assembly in New York in 2014, the Republic of Korea joined the GPE as a donor partner and announced its first financial commitment. Although its initial multilateral commitment to Basic Education is insufficient, contributing USD 5 million would be a small step forward for Korean government to show its commitments to multilateral commitment for basic education. 2) All internationally comparative statistics in this chapter are from OECD Statistics, unless specified.
KoFID Thematic Working Group on Education Issue Brief
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Critical Review on Korea’s Aid to Education: Current Status and Challenges
As for thematic and sectoral priorities, Korea is focusing its grant-funded development cooperation on the thematic priorities of education, health, governance, agriculture and fisheries, industry, and energy. Korea’s concessional loans are targeted at building the basic infrastructure for economic growth in partner countries (Ministry of Strategy and Finance, 2010). In general, education takes up a considerable percentage of the total aid spending – as much as 12.7 % of the overall aid budget in 2006 and 12.7% in 2013.
Aid to Education: overview The Korean government’s support for Education for All has varied in the last decade or so. From 2008 through to 2010, spending on education increased considerably. Direct aid to education has risen since 2000 from 4.5%, to 12.7% in 2013. Total aid to education in 2013 was 12.7% of the total aid budget. Both sets of figures show that South Korea invests a steady and sizable amount of its overall aid to education. Not only the overall budget on aid to education should maintain at minium level of 12-13% of total aid budget, but also a certain level of stability in budget size is necessary. It is worth noticing that Korea’s commitment to aid has fluctuated quite considerably over the last ten years. Total aid to education was 12.7% in 2013, but the previous year the 2012 commitment was 7.3% to education. The fluctuating budget commitments to education between 2003 and 2013 have resulted in an inability to forecast Korea’s aid commitment to education from year to year. It would be worthwhile to investigate the possible policy < Figure 2 > Direct Aid to Education as % of Total ODA
Direct aid to education as % total ODA (DAC) 18.8%
20.0% 15.0%
5.0%
11.6%
9.5%
10.0% 4.5%
5.2%
16.2%
15.2%
13.5% 6.5%
12.7%
10.4% 6.7% 7.0%
5.6%
0.0% 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
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(OECD DAC Statistics, 2015)
drivers that affect the aid to education budget allocation in order to better understand the political mechanisms that affect budget allocation in the hope of improving future forecasting of Korea’s aid to education budget allocation.
Searching for Basic Education in Korean Aid to Education
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While Korea’s overall percentage of total aid spent on education is relatively high, at 12.7% in 2013, it is important to emphasize that commitment to basic education is extremely low. When paying attention to the trends in the level of new commitments within subcategories of aid to education in the last ten years, there are a few notable concerns. Between 2000 and 2012, commitments to basic education were not increasing at the rate advocated by domestic education specialists and CSOs. The total budget of direct aid to basic education has risen considerably as the overall volume of ODA has increased since 2000. Until 2012, it is shown that Korean aid to basic education was never higher than 0.1% prior to 2012. In 2013, aid to basic education rose to 2% of total ODA, but it is yet uncertain whether such a rapid percentage increase will continue after 2015. In short, it is safe to say that Korea’s basic education only receives less than 2% on average from Korea’s entire aid budget. < Figure 3 > Direct Aid to Basic Education in Total
Direct aid to basic education total (DAC category) 60
USS constant 2012
50 40 30 20 10 0
2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
(OECD DAC Statistics, 2015) 3) All internationally comparative statistics in this chapter are from OECD Statistics, unless specified.
KoFID Thematic Working Group on Education Issue Brief
Direct aid to basic education as % total ODA (DAC def)
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US
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0 on Korea’s Aid to Education: Current Status and Challenges Critical Review 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
< Figure 4 > Direct Aid to Basic Education as % of Total ODA
Direct aid to basic education as % total ODA (DAC def) 2 2.5%
2.0%
2 2.0% 1 1.5% 0.8%
1 1.0% 0 0.5%
0.6% 0.1%
0.1%
0.1% 0.1%
0.1% 0.2%
0.4%
0.7%
1.0%
0.3%
0.6%
0 0.0% 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013
(OECD DAC Statistics, 2015)
Overemphasis on Postsecondary Education
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The direction of Korea’s funding of education shows that Korea’s ODA is highly focused on postsecondary education, which acocunts for 57.46 % of total of aid to education in 2013. In fact, almost half of its education budget was directed towards while basic education and secondary education made up only 15.55 % and 19.83 % respectively, of the Korea’s aid to education in 2013.Korea’s secondary and higher education in total consisted of 60.4 % from KOICA’s total education aid in 2013 as it is shown in the table below. The high level of spending on postsecondary education is due to the large amount of aid spent on TVET (Technical Vocational Training and Education) as well as high level of aid to scholarships, which is being counted in the official aid budget to education via imputed student costs. Moreover, it is important to note that a high volume of Korea’s total aid for education is known to have been spent on scholarships for foreign students studying in Korea, although figures and current status are not officially reported. Korea’s major grant aid agency, KOICA, for instance, has strong focus on secondary education. To some 4) All internationally comparative statistics in this chapter are from OECD Statistics, unless specified.
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extent, a working definition of ‘KOICA’s secondary education’ is often understood to be synonymous with the Technical Vocational Education and Training (TVET) Projects.
<Table1> KOICA’s Education Disbursement by Sector, 2013 Sub-Sector
Disbursement
Percentage (%)
Primary
17.83
29.6
Secondary(TVET)
29.20
48.5
Higher
7.18
11.9
Not Specified
6.01
10.0
60.22
100
Total
(KOICA Statistics, 2015)
Consolidated Education ODAStrategy in the Fragmented Aid System? In general, Korea’s education aid management architecture is heavily influenced by Korea’s fragmented aid structure. Korea’s aid system was developed based on two main pillars: grants and loans. The former are managed by Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA)Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), while the latter are managed by Ministry of Strategy and Finance (MoSF)-Economic Development Cooperation Fund (EDCF)/The Export-Import Bank of Korea (EXIM Bank). Since the first law in international development, The Framework Act on International Development Cooperation, was established in 2010, the issues of fragmentation have beenplaced at the center of heated debates in Korea’s development scene. In 2012, Korea’s bilateral ODA net disbursements were shown as 61:39% (grants: loans). In 2013, the proportion of loans further increased in comparisonto grants with distribution of 55:45% (grants and loans). Korea’s advocacies coalition such as the Korea Society Forum
KoFID Thematic Working Group on Education Issue Brief
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Critical Review on Korea’s Aid to Education: Current Status and Challenges
on International Development (KoFID) and advocacy groups such as ODA Watch and the People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy (PSPD) has constantly voiced their concernson the issues of transparency and accountability in increasing the proportion of loans. Also, the OECD has also commented on Korea’s ever growing loan contribution in comparisons to the general trend that only a few DAC members utilize loans to any real extent of Korea.
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In order to harmonize and coordinate various policies and institutional issues among governments, the High-level Committee for International Development Co-operation (CIDC) was established as the country’s highest decision-making body in 2006 to oversee and strengthen policy co-ordination and the strategic aspects of Korean ODA. Since 2010, the Prime Minister’s Office of Korea (PMO) has gradually expanded its involvement < Figure 5> Korea’s Aid Management Architecture
*Source: Adapted from GOK Memorandum for the DAC Peer Review Republic of Korea, GOK, in referred in the OECD Peer Review 2013.
5) For more information in Korean, read the monthly Magazine, OWL from ODA Watch ( www.odawatch.net) and homepage of KoFID (www. kofid.org). Also refer to the OECD Peer Review’s comments on Korea’s grant and loan division (2013).
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in coordination of major ODA stakeholders. On the surface, there seems to be more systematic cooperation between ministries and agencies being built. As shown in Figure 5, the latest OECD Peer Review report (OECD, 2013) somewhat shows more systematic that in the reality, there are numerous overlaps between ministries and government agencies. In reality, there are growing concerns about a proliferation in the number of ministries and affiliated institutes that are becoming directly involved in delivering development projects. The challenges of Korea’s inherent aid management system directly affectthe education aid system. Without prior consultations, education related projects are being formulated and designed by various ministries such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoF)-Korea International Cooperation Agency (KOICA), the Ministry of Strategy and Finance (MOSF)Economic Development Cooperation Fund (EDCF)/The Export-Import Bank of Korea (EXIM Bank), the Ministry of Education, and many other ministries. According to the Re-shaping Development Institute(ReDI) and the Korea Legislation Research Institute (KLRI)’s joint research “Korea’s Provincial Government’s ODA: Current Status and Challenges” (2015), more than 30 other ministries and agencies are currently engaged in ODA activities. The research reports that apart from central level ministries, at least 27 provincial and district level government bodies have provided more than 176 ODA activities between 2010 and 2013, which is only 0.68% of the Korea’s total ODA. Notably, provincial government commitment to education is relatively high at 35% (85 education projects) in relation to the overall percentage of total aid in 2010 and leads to the issues of harmonization and alignment. Strategic orientation in relation to Korea’s aid to education can be seen in various ODA policies and strategies such as the Strategic Plan, the Country Partnership Strategy (CPS), the Mid Term ODA Policy (2011-2015), and Consolidated Annual Implementation Plan. It is expected that a new ‘consolidated’ education ODA strategy – embracing the education issues from the perspective from the whole-of-government in principal – will be developed in late 2015. Nevertheless, there remains general scepticism regarding how comprehensive and consolidated Korea’s new strategy would be in practice.
KoFID Thematic Working Group on Education Issue Brief
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Critical Review on Korea’s Aid to Education: Current Status and Challenges
Who Benefits from Korea’s Aid to Education? As briefly explained earlier, 46.1% of Korea’s aid goes to Middle Income Countries (2013) and yet, it is not certain that which groups (income, gender, social groups, etc.) are benefiting from Korea’s aid. In addition, considering how Korea’s aid to education is heavily focused on postsecondary education including TVET, scholarship, and volunteer programs, it is not easy to find the evidence forwhether Korea’s aid to education is geared towards the most marginalized children and youth. Korea’s president Park stressed in UN General Assembly last year in New York that educational assistance in conflict zones or vulnerable countries is often perceived as ‘important’, there is no clear evidence to show whether Korea’s aid to education is reaching out the most marginalized areas and communities. Let us take an example of three key beneficiaries of Korean aid in the Basic Law. Vulnerable and marginalized populations such as women, children, and disabled people are mentioned as the three important beneficiaries of Korean ODA, but there are no mechanisms included to ensure support for those three groups. Also, there is no framework including indicators to measure the achievements of this principle, and there are no indicators to measure how many or what kind of marginalized populations are being supported by Korea’s aid to education. In short, Korea’s strategies for aid to education lack any measurable targets, meaning that there are no indicators for which the government can track progress or for the civil society organizations to seek accountability from. When closely examining the modalities of Korea’s education aid projects, there is another level of practical and technical challenges to be found. Only limited amount of Korea’s aid goes through budget support to its partner countries, which limits Korea’s role in strengthening partner countries’ overall system. Lack of budget supports once again limits Korea’s long term education supports including provision of support to recurrent expenditure in education such as teachers’ salaries.
Conclusions for New Aid Strategy to Education Korea’s aid to education is highly skewed towards postsecondary education, with far too little support for basic education. Aid quality to education needs to undergo reform 10
in order to ensure clear objectives and goals for strengthening education quality for partner countries and their people. Suggested meaures to be adpted by the Korean Goverments(PMO, MoFA, MoSF and MOE) are following: First, an increase in aid to basic education is required. At minimum, Korea should increase its average share of aid to early childhood education, primary education, and basic adult life-skills from the current 0.10 before 2012 and 0.2% in 2013 to the DAC average for 2013 of 2.8% and maintain the trend over the next decade. This implies an increase in the share of Korean ODA going to these levels of education, which needs a lot of political and technical will and expertise. Korea needs to increase the allocation of education aid to lowincome and fragile states and keep up with the DAC average. Second, at a program level, Korea, especially MoE needs toapply various education aid modalities in its aid giving from technology transfer, policy consulting, receiving students with aid scholarship to creating more opportunities for building education system, building education for humanitarian schemes, special funds for urban children and youth and many others. Korea now needs to re-consider moving away from infra-focused, technical and scholarship related aid but towards more mid-long term education system building and community focused outreach. This will improve the quality of Korean education aid in the long run, which meansless tied aid andgiving more budget supportand mid-long term programs to countries where Korea currently provides mostly stand-alone activities or short term projects. Third, there needs a consolidated aid strategy to education that is developed by various actors of international development education. Over the last 5 years of ambitious and intensive policy making since the Basic Law in 2010, there are growing concerns among people in international development that Korean international development is now swamped with policy papers that have little relevance to the actual beneficiaries in the field. Taking opportunity of new development goals, it would be critical to overview our philosophy and critical approach on why we are giving to education, whom we are serving and defining sensible ways of working together. With the introduction of the new development goals and their strong focus on Universality in 2015, it will be a critical year for not only developing and implementing new aid policies and
KoFID Thematic Working Group on Education Issue Brief
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Critical Review on Korea’s Aid to Education: Current Status and Challenges
projects, but also an important opportunity to reflect on the ways we have been working at home and overseas. While officially welcoming the World Education Forum here in Seoul, many Koreans feel uneasy about stressing the hopes and happiness of children of the world. It is ironic that Korean children and youth are known to be 'the most successful students', but 'one of the unhappiest' of the world. The Korean government and society are currently facing numerous challenges to ensure creatingsafe, healthy, and happy schools and community for All. This is the reason why the universal value of right to education should stand firmly at the heart of policy discussion at the World Education Forum.
Reference ■ OECD (2012) Development Assistance Committee (DAC) Peer Review 2012 ■ Prime Minister Office (2015) Home page. (http://www.odakorea.go.kr/oz.main.ODAMain.do) ■ KOICA (2015) Staticitical Services. (http://stat.koica.go.kr/) ■ National Research Institute for Law and Re-shaping Development Institute (ReDI)(2015) Korea’s Provincial Government’s ODA: Current Statues and Challenges. National Research Councile for Economics, Humaninities and Socail sciences (NRSC).
Note All International Comparative Statistics are from OECD, unless specified (such as the data from Prime Minister Office and Korea National Research Foundation source).
Notes on Data and Sources The data is derived from the OECD International Development Statistics (IDS) databases, which record information provided annually by all member countries of the OECD Development Assistance Committee (DAC). The figures for percentage of GNI to ODA is derived from the DAC 1 database. The remaining figures are derived from the Creditor Reporting System (CRS), and are based on disbursements. Disbursements figures for South Korea are only been available since 2002. All data accessed May 2015, here http://www.oecd.org/dac/stats/idsonline.htm
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