Executive Summary
In this written evidence, Dr Yifei Yan responds to the International Development Committee's Parliamentary Inquiry about the Future of UK Aid and Development Assistance.
Despite unprecedented funding cuts to UK development assistance, evidence shows that grants alone are insufficient to address the education quality crisis affecting developing nations. This submission argues the UK's shift from 'grants to expertise' is timely but requires urgent capacity development within the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) to succeed. Specifically, the response demonstrates that to achieve greater impact with fewer resources, the UK should adopt a more evidence-driven, expertise-oriented, and partnership-based approach to development assistance; one that recognises the evolving needs of partner countries, invests in its own policy capacity, and embraces locally grounded knowledge as a vital component of effective global development, in addition to embracing South-North policy learning opportunities.
This submission proposes the following recommendations, drawing on existing empirical evidence and Dr Yan's own research focused on the school education sector:
- Flexibility to respond to development partner’s needs. I recommend that the Government acquire an accurate and up-to-date picture of such needs and how they have evolved over time. This helps ensure that policy interventions subsequently designed and implemented can match the policy ends or intentions and effectively solve the problems identified (1.1). The increasingly limited financial resources under unprecedented funding cuts can still be useful if closing the financing gap remains the most urgent need for some partners. Beyond that, I recommend that the Government diversify the policy interventions beyond monetary measures to help address partners’ more complex needs pertaining to the quality and equity of public services (1.2, 1.3).
- The Government’s pledge to move from “grants to expertise,” albeit welcome, represents a fundamental paradigm shift for policy works in international development. To understand whether the FCDO and other departments are sufficiently resourced and supported, I recommend that the Government take a comprehensive and systematic survey of their organisation-level capacity along analytical, operational and political dimensions (2.1, 2.2, 2.3). In doing so, it is crucial to underscore that for agencies dealing with international development, such policy capacity should entail the familiarity with both what the UK can offer on the supply side and local situations of the aid recipients, as well as the capability to conduct cross-cultural policy work. Hence, alongside taking inventory of the organisations’ existing capacity and identifying the gaps, it is recommended that the Government also pay close attention to capacity development by encouraging and working with social science programmes in the higher education sector who are the potential suppliers of the high-skill workforce demanded in the sector (2.4).
- To strengthen local aid delivery and development decision-making, the Government should promote an attitudinal shift that treats local stakeholders and communities as equal partners in building multi-contextual expertise (3.1) It should also draw lessons from successful equal partnership models emerging from the Global South to enhance South-to-North policy learning.
Authors
Dr Yifei Yan, Lecturer in Public Admin and Policy at the University of Southampton
