1. Bhutan, India, Maldives and Sri Lanka
Sri Lanka and Maldives EFA Mid-Decade Assessment Strategic Planning Meeting Colombo, Sri Lanka April 24-28, 2006 Coordination of International Partners
Akemi Yonemura
Program Specialist
UNESCO New Delhi
Cluster Office for
Bhutan, India, Maldives and Sri Lanka

2. The purpose of March Meeting
As a follow up to the 2005 Annual EFA Coordinators Meeting and EFA Mid-Decade Assessment Meetings where Ministry of Education officials (national EFA coordinators, education planners, education statisticians, and early childhood care and education focal points) from South, South-East and East Asia identified key EFA issues to be assessed at the country and regional level and began the plan and organize their in-country reviews.

3. Role of UNESCO and UNICEF in EFA
UNESCO - EFA has evolved through over the years, mainly by changes between the Jomtien goals and the Dakar goals. The current follow-up activities are much more systematic than Jomtien. The MDA has to be routed in national assessments, and UN agencies, INGOs and other concerned organizations will be providing coordinating and collaborative support to countries (Sheldon Shaeffer, UNESCO Bangkok).
UNICEF - Jomtien was linked to the World Summit on Children and Dakar was followed by the Millennium Summit with two of the MDGs related to education. There is also a growing focus on education in relation to countries facing a humanitarian crisis or in transition from relief to recovery development or from natural disasters like the tsunami. DevInfo is being adopted to support the MDA reporting process and Asia is taking the lead globally in using DevInfo. The MDA is an excellent example of partnership in action and UNICEF is committed to carry it out. UNICEF will give its full support in the follow-up to this meeting including technical resources, financial resources for the sub-regional workshop (Anupama Rao Singh, UNICEF East Asia and the Pacific Regional Office).

4. Common strategy agreed on to support countries’ EFA progress review
Representatives of international EFA partners, led by UNESCO and UNICEF, met in Bangkok from March to plan a unified approach to the national and regional EFA mid-decade assessment (MDA).
Commitments made: UN agencies, donors, NGOs, development organizations and other relevant stakeholders have agreed to extend a coordinated support to countries in the region undertaking an assessment of their progress in meeting in the EFA goals.

5. Expected outcomes of EFA MDA
An analysis of achievements and goals in progress towards EFA – and thus the MDG on Education – as a basis for mid-course adjustments of plans of action.
Results of these assessments are the basis for policy decisions made at the sub-national, national, regional and global levels.

6. Organizational Issues
The structural design for the regional support to the MDA and how to build and strengthen partnerships with international agencies in support of EFA.
Issues regarding the feasibility of the planned activity and consolidating input into a region.

7. Technical Inputs UNICEF support:
Contributions to the assessment report outline structure; the monitoring and evaluation; analysis at country, sub-regional and regional levels through DevInfo and the Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS) provide support to smaller countries in the region
Capacity building in analysis, evidence-based policy development and advocacy
Champion, fighting to ensure that voices of children and parents are heard in the assessment process

8. Role of UIS-AIMS
The UNESCO Institute for Statistics-Assessment Information Systems Monitoring and Statistics (UIS-AIMS) Unit in UNESCO Bangkok has been preparing countries for the past three years with the institutional capacity necessary for undertaking the national assessments. Together with subject specialists through the UNESCO Regional Bureau, the AIMS Unit will play a key coordinating and technical backstopping role in the assessment process.
The UIS-AIMS will lead a team in drafting technical guideline and supporting documents to share with country teams in the implementation of national assessments. These should be available for distribution by late may 2006

9. EFA GMR plans for the 2008 review
The 2008 report is related to the Dakar Follow-Up Strategy 11. It will focus on progress since Dakar. The GMR team sees the regional MDA and review as complementing the 2008 GMR.