Mali is one of the poorest countries in the world, and, despite indisputable improvements in getting more children into school in the last two decades, the goal of guaranteeing a quality education for all Malian children by 2015 is still far off.

Nearly 900,000 Malian children aged seven to 12 are out of school, most of them girls. Moreover, those children that are in school often get a poor education because of large classes, poor infrastructure, lack of materials, and, in particular, a lack of trained teachers. Oxfam estimates a current gap of more than 45,000 trained teachers. The result is that less than one quarter of Malian young people and adults, can read and write, the lowest adult literacy rate anywhere in the world.

The government has made efforts to improve the education system, but needs to go further to develop and implement a relevant and publicly-supported curriculum; to improve financial management; and to make the system of local government control of education work effectively and equitably. 

Key recommendations from this report:

• Mali’s government should increase financing for education to at least 20% of its budget, and prioritise scaled-up teacher recruitment and training.
• Donors need to rapidly scale up their aid to Mali, and give more as general budget support or education sector budget support. In particular, EU donors, Japan, Norway, the US and Canada should improve aid to Mali.
• Donors should stop attaching economic policy conditions to their aid to Mali, and both official and INGO donors should align with the government ten-year plan for the education sector (PRODEC).
• The government and donors must guarantee a substantive role for Malian civil society in Poverty Reduction Strategy review process, in discussions about the new curriculum and other aspects of education policy, and in reviews of budget support.
• Malian civil society should maintain and expand their work around budget-tracking and improving governance in the education sector.