Introduction

In 2009, UNESCO wrote ‘the aftershock of the global economic and financial crisis in 2008–09 risks depriving millions of children in the world's poorest countries of an education…With 72 million children still out of school, a combination of slower economic growth, rising poverty and budget pressures could erode the education gains of the past decade’ (UNESCO, 2009b). Although there were significant increases in enrolment, notably throughout Africa, the global community enters 2017 with the goal of universal primary education (UPE) – the second Millennium Development Goal (MDG 2) – still not being achieved. Despite gains in primary school enrolment from the time of drafting the MDGs until its finalising, UPE was not achieved. In studying the trends and focus of education, it is clear that the momentum gained in the education sector between the time of the Education for All (EFA) policy in 2000 and 2008, declined following 2008. This coincides with the global financial crisis. Although the crisis cannot be blamed in full for declining aid and stagnating enrolment rates, the proximity of these dates is telling. In the years immediately following the financial crisis, funding to education, particularly basic education, changed, resulting in decreased availability of funds. This chapter does not argue that the economic crisis is the sole reason that MDG 2 was not achieved by the end of 2015; however, this chapter seeks to highlight the significant role financial crises can play in achieving international goals. As the world now turns to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), it is important to reflect on lessons learned during the MDGs to attempt to overcome mistakes of the past. As the United Nations stated in its final MDG report in 2015, ‘Despite enormous progress during the past 15 years, achieving UPE will required renewed attention in the post-2015 era’ (UN, 2015, 28).

The 2008 global financial crisis set us with a very important caution to consider especially when creating future global initiatives like the MDGs: global initiatives are only as good as their global conditions. The global financial crisis did create very real consequences for the education sector, particularly through the reduction of adequate funding. This chapter first sets out to demonstrate and explain these consequences to education and how the financial crisis explains in part these ramifications.