A significant proportion of our funding will contribute towards the development and implementation of 10 year education sector plans, which will mainly focus on investment in schools, including recruiting and training more teachers, getting more pupils—including girls and disadvantaged children—into and completing school, and improving the quality of education. Whether the schools supported are run by governments or include private and voluntary sector schools depends on the countries’ individual plans.
We also encourage the involvement of civil society in developing national education policies, and provide financial assistance to UK non governmental organisations through Public Partnership Agreements, and to both international and local non-governmental organisations, through support from country programmes.
DFID also supports the Education for All Fast Track Initiative (FTI) as it has the potential to provide a pivotal role in achieving universal primary education by 2015. We have committed £150 million to the FTI. DFID will also continue to provide support for education through our partnership with United Nations agencies such as UNESCO and UNICEF and through the UK share of European Community support to education.
DF1D supports a number of schemes to develop capacity in countries to ensure growth and development, including investment in secondary, tertiary and vocational education and lifelong learning and skills. These include the Development Partnerships in Higher Education programme (£15 million from 2006-13) and Scholarship programmes (£14 million per year).