Address by H.E. Pok Than,
Secretary of State, MoEYS
I welcome the opportunity to address this important Round Table on education. As we outlined in the ESSP, it is critical to put in place effective co-ordination mechanisms between MoEYS and MoEF. This will be very important in the coming years to ensure greater predictability of resources for education and act as an incentive for long-term education planning.
I would now like to provide a little more detail on the rationale and priorities for the financing of the Ministry's education reforms. I very much endorse the view that the budget is a tool for policy implementation. As part of my presentation, I will try to sketch out the measures to be taken to ensure that the budget process and structure is consistent with policy and program priorities.
The Ministry's fundamental policy goal for education financing is to guarantee that no potential student will be excluded from access to education or training opportunities for reasons of inability to pay. A related objective is to put in place fair and equitable financing mechanisms, taking account of affordability by Government, parents and other potential contributors. These policy objectives are central to implementation of our EFA policies.
Another associated goal is that sufficient information will be made available to all contributors to education costs in order that they can make effective judgement on the value of both current and future investment in the sector. In other words, the Ministry wishes to use financing policy as a way of broadening education choice (e.g. between public and private provision). At the same time, the objective will be to increase public accountability for the quality of education services at all levels.
A key question is what financing strategies to use in order to implement these policies?
As set out in the ESP and ESSP, our medium term policy priority is to increase overall spending volumes on education and reduce the cost burden on the poorest families. In the first instance, the focus will be on basic education. In addition, there is a need for specific interventions. Therefore, an associated strategy will be to provide targeted selective and merit-driven scholarships for the poorest in post basic education. At the same time, the Ministry is proposing greater private sector involvement in upper secondary, higher education and TVET.
How can the Government assure implementation of a pro-poor financing policy for education?
A key Ministry proposal is to re-direct an increasing share of public funding towards basic education. This will be accompanied by a reduced share for parents at this level. This is consistent with the evidence that the poorest families are better represented at primary and lower secondary school levels. I was pleased to hear that the Minister of Planning made this point earlier today.
This raises the question of why should parental contributions be reduced when they have shown their willingness to pay? It is important to realise that the Ministry's financing plans project that the total volume of parental contributions to education spending will be maintained in the medium-term. In fact, the Ministry estimates that parental contributions will gradually increased, as enrolment in lower and upper secondary education and further studies expands.
I would now like to summarise our broad policy and strategy targets for education financing. To ensure equity, our target is to secure an increase in overall Government spending on education to around Riels 540 billion by 2005, of which 70 per cent will be allocated to basic education.
At the same time, our target is to reduce the share of parental contributions to basic education costs from 50 per cent to 18 per cent per annum by 2005. In other words, education-financing policy is emphatically pro-poor and pro-rural.
Many of you will ask, what financing measures will guarantee improved quality? The Ministry's target is to increase recurrent public spending on quality improvement measures through higher share of non-wage operational spending allocations and disbursement. The target is a non-salary spending share of 48 per cent by 2005.
Another question is how can financing policy enable greater decentralisation of education planning and management. The Ministry's proposed strategy is a sustained increase in publicly funded school and institutional operating budgets. These annual grants will be set against agreed guidelines for school development and maintenance priorities. On a selective basis, the management of capital budgets for education facilities will also be gradually decentralised.
It is important to note that the implementation of the ESP and ESSP is based on the fundamental principle of a stable and predictable medium-term expenditure framework (MTEF) for the sector.
The sector planning process assumes that this MTEF will be reviewed and revised as part of the proposed annual sector performance review process, between Government, MoEYS, donors and NGOs, ahead of the annual Government budget planning process. In other words, the budget calendar will be used as a vehicle for enabling better strategic negotiations and management with our development partners.
Another important principle is that budget processes will be a vehicle to promote increasing use of Government systems to plan, channel, manage and report on donor and NGO support for education. In the medium-term, it is intended that these processes will form a basis to negotiate integration and eventually harmonisation of current and committed project assistance into the priority ESP and ESSP strategies and programs. MoEYS recognises that this will need to be a very gradual and incremental process.
Our experience over recent years suggests that traditional project assistance alone cannot achieve certain kinds of policy and strategy objectives. For example, more complex institutional reforms such as pay reform and staff deployment are difficult to implement through fixed term projects. Therefore, the Ministry wishes to promote the increased use of a mix of recurrent and capital budget support. This will also act as a transitional arrangement for covering any projected or actual shortfalls in Government education spending.
Finally, I would like to address the question of building up the financial planning, management and reporting systems. Our reform plans are based on the principle of using Government financial and budget management systems. We recognise that these systems need to be strengthened as quickly as possible. The Ministry therefore accords the highest priority to assistance with capacity building efforts at all levels.