EFAPHIL

New education policies and partnerships for EFA in the Philippines

Main investigator: Toni Verger

Reference: AP/035711/11

In the World Education Conferences celebrated in Jomtien (1990) and Dakar (2000), governments, international organizations, donors, and civil society organizations committed themselves to provide quality and relevant Education for All (EFA) by 2015. However, the 2015 deadline is getting closer and many developing countries still count on thousands of children out of school and insufficient levels of education offer. Because of these reasons, a number of governments are experimenting with new models of funding and provision of education in which the private sector plays a bigger role. Under the label of public-private partnerships (PPPs), a range of quasi-market policies in education including vouchers, contract schools or school choice are being implemented in different parts of the planet. This is the case of The Philippines that, despite the increasing education funding efforts of its government, is one of the countries with more out-of-school children in the world (with one million out-ofschool children accordingly to the last EFA monitoring report). The Philippines, as a way to address this access problem and to accelerate its path towards EFA more broadly, is implementing large-scale PPP programmes. The effects of these policies in education quality and equity are still uncertain and, consequently, to which extent they may contribute to the EFA strategy needs to be rigorously evaluated and discussed. This project aims at developing a solid research and teaching line on education policy analysis to study education reform in The Philippines with a focus on the current PPP trend in education in the country. At the same time, the project will contribute to strengthen the formulation and implementation of public policies designed to provide quality education with an equity focus.

Project Length: 2011-2012

Founding Source/s: AECID

Type: Competitive Project