Education aid set to decline due to Covid recession

A new policy paper by UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report shows that total aid toward education reached its highest ever levels in 2018, the year on which the report is based.

However, it estimates that global aid is likely to decline by up to $2 billion from 2018 to 2022 as a result of the recession caused by Covid-19, entailing a 12% drop in international support for education.

This means that without new measures, aid for education would only reach 2018 levels in 2024, which poses a serious threat to the recovery of education from the unprecedented disruption caused by the pandemic.

Manos Antoninis, the director of the GEM Report, said “an estimated $8 trillion has been committed to pandemic responses by governments so far, helping secure their health systems and economies. But prospects for aid are linked to the impact of the crisis on donor budgets. Previous financial crises have impacted the allocation of aid for several years after the crises were over. We should therefore not underestimate the ricochet effect this pandemic could have on social services for years to come.”