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As the sole Asian country in the DAC donor community until South Korea joined in 2010, Japan has been struggling with the pressure to align with the norms and modalities of the community, while having a different history of aid from Western donors and desiring to be unique. This chapter untangles the domestic and international factors that have affected policy making and implementation of the Japanese Overseas Development Assistance (ODA), particularly in education, at different times in its history. The philosophical foundations of Japanese aid policies are examined in the changing political, economic, and social contexts from the 1950s up to the present.

As the Education for All paradigm took the stage, Japanese education ODA has shifted from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s to primary education from technical and vocational education and training (TVET) and higher education. However, in the post-2015 process, the policies have swung back to give equal emphasis to TVET and higher education as to basic education, reflecting the global trend to make the agenda more comprehensive. While the convergence with the global trend is clear in Japanese ODA, the hesitant desire to be unique always forces Japanese ODA officials and scholars to discuss and try to demonstrate the “Japanese model” of development and aid.

The chapter also points out that the increased presence of other Asian donors in recent years has made Japanese ODA policies driven more by national interests than by global humanitarianism, which is clearly seen in the Development Cooperation Charter adopted in 2014.

This chapter highlights the characteristics of Asia through the analysis of policy-related documents by five donor countries, namely Japan, South Korea, China, India and Thailand. It will also examine the roles played by regional bodies such as the Southeast Asian Ministers of Education Organization (SEAMEO) and ASPBAE (the Asia South Pacific Association for Basic and Adult Education) as the horizontal channels influencing aid policies in respective countries. Together with the analysis of the national and organizational policies, the regional process of building consensus on the post-2015 agenda is examined, with a particular focus on the Asia-Pacific Regional Education Conference (APREC) held in August 2014.

The analysis reveals that the region has two faces: one is imaginary and the other is functional. There is a common trend across Asian donors to refer to their historical ties with regions and countries to which they provide assistance and their traditional notions of education and development. They highlight Asian features in contrast to conventional aid principles and approaches based on the Western value system, either apparently or in a muted manner. In this sense, the imagined community of Asia with common cultural roots is perceived by the policymakers across the board.

At the same time, administratively, the importance of the region as a stage between the national and global levels is recognized increasingly in the multilateral global governance structure. With this broadened participatory structure, as discussed in the chapter ‘Post-EFA Global Discourse: The Process of Shaping the Shared View of the ‘Education Community’’, the expected function of the region to transmit the norms and requests from the global level and to collect and summarize national voices has increased.

This chapter will situate the global paradigm shift toward Post-Education-For-All (Post-EFA) not only in the policy trends in the field of international education development, but also in the academic context of international relations and comparative education.

The chapter highlights three dimensions which characterize the paradigm shift; namely, discourse on norms, diversifying actors, and the changed mode of communication and participation in the global consultation processes. The existing formal structure of the EFA global governance is based on multilateralism which recognizes sovereign nation-states, representing national interests, as the participants. However, such an assumption is eroding, given that there is a growing number of state and nonstate actors who influence decision-making not only through conventional formal channels, but also informally. Urging the revision of theories of multilateralism, the chapter introduces the attention given to nontraditional donors and horizontal networks of civil society actors in this volume.

The introduction also shows that that the widening basis of participation in the global consultation processes on post-EFA and advanced communication technology have changed the ways in which discourse is formulated. While the amount and the speed of exchanging information have been enhanced and different types of actors have been encouraged to take part, it also obliges scholars to adopt innovative methods of analyzing discourse formation.

The chapter also demonstrates the importance of the focus on the Asia-Pacific region, which is composed of diverse actors who often underscore Asian cultural roots in contrast to Western hegemony. By focusing on the discourse, actors, and the structure through which the consensus views on the post-EFA agenda were built, the volume attempts to untangle the nature of the post-EFA paradigm shift, at the global, Asia-Pacific regional, and national levels.

The Group of Twenty (G20) has substantial influence in global economic policy but has been peripheral in global education governance. There is intensification of education policy-relevant engagement within the Think 20 (T20), the “ideas bank” and official engagement group of the G20. The authors analyse the evolution of education as a policy domain within the T20, the ideas and discursive framing of education and global education policy “solutions” and assumptions about the G20 in education policy engagement.

The authors view the T20 as an external actor that can mobilise policy-relevant ideas to G20 actors responsible for internal policy selection and translation. The analysis covers the period 2018–2021 when education became an explicit T20 policy area. The authors screened all 461 T20 policy briefs across all domains. Of these, 32 briefs and four final T20 Summit communiqués were reviewed using critical discourse analysis. Data were supplemented via organisational websites and tacit professional knowledge.

Three assumptions on the G20 as an actor prevailed: (1) policymaker, (2) policy shaper and (3) knowledge mobiliser. The framing ideas on education were linked to assumptions on drivers of education system reform as intertwined with, or to enable: (1) economic adaptation, (2) technical adaptation and (3) socio-political adaptation of individuals and societies.

Accelerated education engagement within the T20 and its direct reach to G20 leaders makes it, and the G20, analytically unique and new unexamined actors of potential influence. The authors conclude that the T20 is positioned as a unique actor, both that can mobilise education policy-relevant ideas to G20 leaders, and legitimised as the actor from which G20 leaders and policymakers should adopt ideas.

This paper aims to explore whether there is a “low financing trap” that results in underfunding of education systems in low and lower middle income countries (LICs and LMICs). It shows public investment in education has not increased over the last two decades despite extensive advocacy and has equilibrated at about 4% of GDP. More than 6% of GDP is needed to achieve the sustainable development goals.

This research uses large scale data from the UNESCO Institute of Statistics and the World Bank to analyse patterns of investment across sub-Saharan Africa. The most recent data downloaded in 2022 are used for each country. The analysis uses time series analysis to show how flows of resources for education have evolved and illustrates the limits to growth.

The research develops a taxonomy of countries and identifies three bands of effort for investment in education. Individual countries tend to remain in the same band of expenditure level and only the highest band countries are likely to be able to finance their development goals from their own resources between now and 2030. Escape from the low financing trap is critical for future educational development.

Innovative approaches to external assistance are needed which recognise that domestic revenues are at the heart of sustainable financing and that greater efficiency and effectiveness are critical to sustainable solutions. The priority is to accelerate the development of fiscal states, which can finance public goods from domestic revenue and make good use of concessionary assistance.

This article examines why Universal Primary Education (UPE) has shifted from being a developing country challenge more broadly in the last half of the 20th century to become largely a sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) challenge today. It discusses a number of national and education sector system-wide challenges that have constrained the implementation of UPE in SSA more so than in other developing regions.

This article reviews the literature and policy documents on a wide range of developing country issues, and discusses why most SSA countries have faced unparalleled challenges in achieving UPE.

SSA governments should take the opportunity offered by their post-pandemic “build back better” efforts to fundamentally reset education policies to address the key causes of this major development failure. The overarching objective must be to develop education systems that are more inclusive, equitable and responsive to national development needs by better serving the large population groups, parts of society and economic sectors that currently derive little benefit from public education spending. This article highlights the urgency and challenges associated with achieving this objective.

Although the main responsibility lies with SSA governments, this paper stresses that the global community will be affected in many ways by how effectively this crisis is addressed. Therefore, this effort merits sustained global support including through more catalytic use of aid.

This paper critically aims to review existing monitoring strategies of Target 4.7 of the Sustainable Development Goals and proposes an alternative approach for reporting country progress on relevant Target 4.7 themes. Since this target constitutes one of the most ambitious and transformative education targets there is considerable value in developing a comprehensive reporting and monitoring strategy.

The paper draws on key policy documents to clarify processes leading up to the definition and measurement of a global indicator for Target 4.7. It also discusses limitations associated with the current reporting and measurement strategy.

The paper finds that the current monitoring approach to Target 4.7, based on an existing reporting mechanism for the 1974 Recommendation concerning Education for International Understanding, Co-operation and Peace and Education relating to Human Rights and Fundamental Freedom, is unfit for purpose and needs to be overhauled. The current process for revising the 1974 Recommendation is unlikely to result in a new monitoring strategy that would address existing weaknesses in the current strategy.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, a critical review of measurement, reporting and monitoring strategies of Target 4.7 has not been undertaken. Also new in this paper is the proposed global observatory of Target 4.7 policies, practices and initiatives, which, if established, would work to: (1) create a more dynamic and informative monitoring infrastructure; (2) foster peer learning among countries; and (3) identify notable strategies of national, regional and international action in relation to Target 4.7.