Dear Colleagues,

In the coming week, the EFA working group would be meeting in UNESCO and the World Bank fast track initiative would be an agenda item for discussion. I would therefore like to appraise you with the position of the GCE Board with respect to this specific item so that everyone is aufait with the issues to pursue during and even after that meeting.

In its meeting of the 29-30th June 2002, convened in Nairobi, the GCE Board discussed at length the issue of the World Bank fast track initiative and concluded as follows;

The GCE Board:

1. Welcomes the fast track initiative as a first concrete step taken in terms of resource mobilisation for EFA. However the amount committed so far fall short of what is needed to address the most urgent problems of EFA and therefore calls upon the international community to increase its contribution.

2. Called for a Global Initiative to realise the promise of Education For All, made at the World Education Forum in Dakar. Since then, progress, until quite recently, has been slow and the international community has not lived to its commitment to ensuring that no country seriously committed to EFA would have its plan thwarted because of lack of resources.

3. The World Bank fast track initiative, while considered a positive move towards the achievement of EFA has fallen short of the spirit of Dakar. Countries have already been earmarked for the fast track process even before the completion of the EFA National Plans. The GCE is aware of the fact that some of the identified countries have developed their plans without a genuine participatory process, which we consider a danger for local ownership and future sustainability. Moreover, the process by which the World Bank derived its criteria for the selection of countries was not transparent and inclusive enough to guarantee any genuine participation of civil society organisations in the entire process of EFA. Such a tendency would undermine the basic tenets of Dakar. Given the overarching dominance of the World Bank in deciding who gets what, the Board expressed reservations on the old habits resurfacing by using aid to reward political allies.

4. Moreover, the criteria and the conditionalities inherent in the fast track documents remain merely a new face of the Structural Adjustment Policies, which as we all know, had negative consequences on education, health and other social services in the programme countries.

5. It is the considered view of the Board that the elements of the fast track initiative are narrowly focused and would like to take the international community back to the six EFA goals.

The GCE is calling on its members engaged in the discussions on the fast track to pay greater attention to the process rather than the prevailing milestone approach. Concern was also expressed as whether the Bank has the moral and political authority to provide a ceiling for teacher's salary at the global level which denied in fact the teacher's rights for collective bargaining recognized by the ILO convention n° 98. This may have far-reaching repercussions on some of the countries whose current expenditure on teacher's salary exceeds an average of 3.5% of GDP per capita.

Cognisant of the above, the GCE board would like member organisations to give cautious reception to the fast track initiative, while waiting for the Bank to provide more information and adopting a more participatory process by which criteria is drawn and how national plans of recipient countries are assessed, as well as what the future holds for the remaining countries.

In the meantime, the GCE would make further investigations into the implications of the fast track mechanism and hold consultations with member organisations and would request an official meeting with the World Bank officials in Washington DC, early September 2002, before tacit support if any, is given to this initiative.

I sincerely hope that the spirit of the Board's position would guide our judgement and that we can as quickly as possible take a definitive position that would be acceptable to all our constituents. A summary decision of the Board meeting would be despatched in due course.

Yours Sincerely