By: Mario Claasen

In 2000, governments around the world committed themselves to improving human development in the areas of health, education and gender equality. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and the Education for All (EFA) goals were key targets set and committed to by governments to ensure that their citizens had an improved quality of life by 2015 – and specifically that children would have access to quality education. These two international commitments hold all signatories, both developed and developing country governments, accountable for the achievement of these targets within the agreed time frame.

Over the last decade, budget work, or applied budget analysis, has become increasingly recognised as an important tool for holding governments and non-state actors accountable for their policy commitments, budget allocations and expenditure. Increasingly, CSOs have adopted budget work as a key part of their advocacy for changes in government policy or performance.

CSOs in developed and developing countries have recognised that the following three democratic principles are essential for the achievement of human development goals:
• Accountability
• Public participation
• Transparency

Education budget work plays a key role in ensuring that these three principles are adhered to by government. On accountability, the public has a right to know how the government spends public resources. Governments, in turn, need to justify education expenditures and, in most cases, seek legislative approval before spending from the annual budget. In this way, the legislature, which is entrusted with this duty through the electoral process, must hold the government accountable for the budget.

Since governments use public resources to finance education programmes, it is important that the public can participate in the process of deciding how those resources will be used. Citizens need to know when and how they can participate in the budget process. Transparency is essential, since without the necessary knowledge and information on the budget and the budget process, public participation is meaningless.

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