Achieving Education for All Goals: Does Corruption Matter?

Abstract

The Education for All (EFA) programme has received and continues to receive a great deal of attention since the convening of the World Conference on Education in Jomtien (Thailand, 1990). Several reports have been published over the past decade, especially by the UNESCO, to assess the progress being made by different nations and regions in moving towards EFA goals. A common finding of these reports is that achievement registered in many parts of the world was not as great as expected. The aim of this paper is to explore whether differences in corruption levels can explain differences in the progress towards EFA goals across countries and regions. Using the 2007 EFA Development Index which incorporates data on progress towards four EFA targets (universal primary education, gender parity, adult literacy and education quality), we show that countries and regions with high corruption levels are those who registered the worst progress towards EFA