Aid cuts to education, and in particular foundational learning of reading and maths for young children, will have a major impact on the futures of children across the developing world, new research suggests.
The UN has projected that global aid for education will fall by a quarter between 2023 and 2027. The US and UK —until recently the largest bilateral donors for foundational education—are both expected to almost entirely cut their education spending.
That news comes just as groundbreaking new research from think tank the Centre for Global Development, which has been shared exclusively with The Independent, shows that children with better foundational skills tend to perform much better in later life.
Specifically, the new paper finds that young children who score well in reading and maths, after accounting for family background, go on to earn roughly 11 per cent more as adults.
The paper also finds that children with better foundational skills tend to stay in school for longer, and also are slightly less likely to have had children themselves by early adulthood, indicating a potential link between early learning and reproductive choices.
According to Lee Crawfurd, the researcher behind the paper, research on the impact of foundational learning on later life has been largely missing until now, due to difficulties adults would have in assessing their reading and mathematics when they were younger.
The new working paper reaches its conclusions using “longitudinal” data from the Indonesia Family Life Survey. Longitudinal surveys, which are surveys that follow individuals over long periods of time, are generally rare in low- and middle-income countries, but provide information on long-term policy impacts
“These findings provide a strong economic rationale for prioritising foundational literacy and numeracy interventions. But aid donors are doing the opposite,” Mr Crawfurd told The Independent.
“This research shows it’s not just going to school that matters—it’s whether children actually learn to read and do basic maths. That’s what helps them earn more as adults. Just because the payoff comes years down the line doesn’t make it any less real,” he continued.
“The returns are so high that even spending five or ten times as much on foundational learning could still be great value for money. Policymakers should protect and prioritise these investments—because they work.”
The UK has ppreviously spent more than $1bn a year on education, but it has slipped to less than $500 million a year in recent years and is set to fall further. On foundational learning in particular, the UK spent just under $100m in 2021, data shows.
With Prime Minister Keir Starmer slashing UK aid from 0.5 to 0.3 per cent of Gross National Income (GNI), UK aid towards education is expected to drop to near-zero.
A separate analysis from the Centre for Global Development has shown that once costs of UK asylum seeker accommodation, commitments to fund multilateral institutions like the World Bank and EU, and humanitarian aid for conflicts like Gaza and Ukraine are accounted for, then the aid budget is effectively used up.
According to Mr Crawfurd, UK aid was mostly “well targeted” at countries with the greatest need, such as Ethiopia, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Pakistan. Multilateral institutions like the World Bank tend to be less focused on cost-effective approaches, he added.
The US was also spending just over $1 billion a year on education aid before 2025, with a large chunk of that on foundational learning, data shows.
This piece has been produced as part of The Independent’s Rethinking Global Aid series
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