“I cannot be very optimistic,” Koïchiro Matsuura, director-general of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), said at a press conference on 13 December in the Senegalese capital, Dakar, at the close of the three-day meeting of the High-Level Group on Education for All, which brought together education ministers, donors and development partners.
While developing countries agreed to allocate 10 percent of budgets to education, donor countries could not agree to include a specific percentage of budgets for education aid, instead pledging “to work to maintain and increase levels of funding to education” and to prioritise low-income, fragile and emergency and conflict-affected states.
