What is the Fast Track Initiative?

At the Dakar World Education Forum in 2000, donors collectively promised to ensure that any country “seriously committed” to the goals of Education For All (EFA), receives the additional resources needed to meet the EFA goals. However, when it was seen that two years later very little progress had been made in the implementation of the Dakar Framework for Action, the World Bank stepped in to establish a concrete strategy to get the EFA plan ‘back on track’ - the Education For All Fast Track Initiative.

In April 2002, during the World Bank Spring meetings, the world’s finance and development ministers approved the Fast Track Initiative (FTI) as a multilateral initiative. It was clearly set out that governments would only qualify for inclusion in the Fast Track Initiative if they demonstrated their willingness to adhere to a normative framework for education sector reform developed by the World Bank - either the completion of a National Action Plan for education or completion of a Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) or an Interim Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (I-PRSP).

The FTI does not mean the creation of a global financing fund, as strict funding strategies and mechanisms have been put in place and must be complied with. The extra spending needed in each country to achieve universal primary education by 2015 is calculated according to a World Bank model that estimates the total cost of extending free public education minus the money available from government expenditure and efficiency saving reforms within the country’s budget. Thus meaning that donors are funding the “real financing gap” to achieve the EFA goals.

Donors are invited to contribute multilaterally, bilaterally according to their preference. Therefore, donors may choose to channel money through a centrally co-ordinated fund, or directly to countries in which they have pre-existing bilateral agreements - as long as the funds are filling all necessary financing gaps.

The invitation to participate in FTI is already having an effect on many developing countries, and accelerating action at the national level. Many governments have already begun implementing positive policy changes, and committing themselves to substantial increases in their own spending on education as well as difficult and ambitious system reforms. However, if the EFA targets are truly to be achieved, the FTI must be expanded to other countries and efficiency in receiving funds for those countries already committed needs to be secured.