The Evolution of Corporate Social Responsibility

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has come a long way since the term was introduced back in the 1960s.

It’s no longer about setting lofty and idealistic expectations, which compete with financial business goals. The CSR program for the future-ready business works in harmony with these goals and is sustainable in all senses of the word: it ensures the future environment, customers, staff and profits of the company.

It is developed through careful consideration of the range of benefits that CSR can bring to a business, and it uses innovation and new technology to achieve a win-win-win for everyone involved.  

Planet, people, profit

By focusing on these three elements – often referred to as the ‘triple bottom line’ – innovative companies have made sure that a sustainability program is fully integrated into the business strategy, and is not an afterthought or a box-ticking exercise.

Business leaders across the company need to be committed to driving the program forward at every opportunity and this means they all need to understand the full spectrum of benefits it can bring.

At Innovation Group, a provider of insurance software solutions and business process outsourcing, the senior leadership team, including Chief Executive Andy Roberts, have all completed an advanced, in-house, three hour e-learning course in sustainability, so that they can help spread the word throughout the company.

Today’s marketers understand the importance of differentiating products and services to stand out in a crowded marketplace.

Differentiation based on a responsible outlook and an innovative and efficient response to the changing global climate is much more desirable than just price differentiation. 

Without increased volumes, price differentiation is unsustainable and will starve a business of future investment.

Investing in the future

Shareholders appreciate that by building a global infrastructure to accurately calculate and report carbon emissions it is an investment in the future.

Working with the Carbon Fix Foundation, who built the bespoke, online tool Smart Carbon™, Innovation Group is able to implement and track plans to reduce these emissions, which is great news for the environment, but also helps to achieve cost savings through a reduction in energy requirements.

The carbon reduction plan is estimated to have saved the company around 857.27 tonnes of CO2 equivalent in the first year of its implementation (FY2013). By becoming less reliant on limited sources of energy, a business is insuring themselves against future shortages and price rises.  

Helping others to do business

It’s not only customers who want to do business with a responsible partner, but suppliers too. By using Smart Carbon™ to assess the supply chain of one division, Innovation Group is helping other businesses to calculate and reduce their carbon footprint too.

The Group has invited suppliers of one division to attend a roadshow and complete an e-learning course to raise awareness of the importance of sustainability in corporate planning. There are plans to extend this to other parts of the business. 

All of this helps the company’s suppliers promote efficiencies across the entire value chain, leading to savings at key points in the process. These savings can then in turn be passed on to customers.

Preparing for what lies ahead

Operating within the global insurance sector, Innovation Group knows that the industry is set to be impacted by climate change – the existence of which there is now no doubt.

For its clients, climate change is increasing the number of insurance claims (caused by natural disasters), meaning they need to be more aware and more prepared for these climate events than ever before.

By demonstrating that they understand these issues, and are putting in place solutions to reduce their impact, suppliers, customers, and customers’ customers can feel confident in doing business with companies ready for the future. 

Content plus images from: http://www.businessrevieweurope.eu/

Empowering women is vital for Africa's development

The Deputy Minister of Home Affairs Fatima Chohan says the under-representation of women in social, political and economic spheres must be resolved if Africa is to develop.

Deputy Minister of Home Affairs, Fatima Chohan, says that women throughout Africa need to be promoted to senior positions so that they can contribute to economic growth and help alleviate poverty. Image: DHA
Chohan said creating opportunities for women to participate in the economy will improve their earning potential and assist families to fight their way out of poverty.

She was addressing a women's seminar organised by the Consortium for Refugees and Migrants in South Africa (CoRMSA) in Johannesburg. August is Women's Month in South Africa

"The participation of African women in the formal economy is under-used and under-valued," she said.

Chohan expressed concern at the few women in senior management positions, which according to the latest World Bank Enterprise Survey, shows only one in 26 salaried African women hold senior positions compared with one in every six men.

Women contribute to economic growth

"Several African countries have introduced laws that implement quota systems to increase the representation of women in legislatures and government. However, in countries where no such intervention has been done, the disparity is blinding," Chohan said.

She said to capitalise on Africa's predicted growth in the coming years, African leaders need to promote women to senior positions and ensure they increase their economic participation.

She said that in order to maximise growth opportunities in Africa, both men and women need to be able to reach their full potential.

CoRMSA Executive Director Sicel'mpilo Shange-Buthane said in every society, women play a crucial role and that it is irreplaceable in society.

"Women face different challenges, they struggle to survive," she said.

CoRMSA comprises a number of different organisations, including legal practitioners, research units, and refugee and migrant communities. Its main objectives are the promotion and protection of the rights of asylum seekers, refugees and international migrants.

http://www.bizcommunity.com/Article/196/524/118000.html

Techno Girl programme empowers girls in choosing the right career

When Sinenhlanhla Dlamini tells people that she is studying Radiography, most people assume that she will probably have a career in the radio industry one day.

“Most people don’t know what a radiographer does and when they say ‘oh, which radio station do you work at?’, I have to explain that I take pictures but very specialised pictures and radiography has got nothing to do with taking pictures for any newspaper or magazine,” Dlamini smiles.

While many matriculants study courses they have never heard of before and end up dropping out during their first year, the 20-year-old from Daveyton in Benoni, with a little bit of help, found the right study path.  

Thanks to the Techno Girl Job Shadowing programme -- which exposed Dlamini to the work place in 2010 -- she was able to make an informed decision about the career she wanted to pursue whilst in high school. By then, she knew almost everything about the course, and what to expect.

Dlamini is a product of the programme, which has seen close to 4 000 girls being exposed to the work environment.

The Techno Girl programme is a partnership between the Department of Women, Children and People with Disabilities, public and private sector institutions and UNICEF.

Through the programme, young girls are identified in underprivileged schools and placed in corporate mentorship and skills development initiatives.

Dlamini was placed at the Johannesburg Roads Agency for job shadowing, where she was placed at the electrical department since she was doing electrical technology as one of her subjects. This was a blessing in disguise, she says, as she immediately knew, when entering the department that she was not meant to do that particular job.

“I wanted to go into the medical field and change peoples’ lives. One day, I went to an open day and that’s where I discovered radiography and I said ‘bang, this is the way to go’.”

She admits that while she enjoys her course, it is also very difficult. “It’s the only course I can think of, where you have to study and do your practicals at the same time. You work like a normal qualified person, 9 - 5 or 8 to 4 and have to go back home and study.”

She thanks her father for his influence and for always telling her that education is the key to success, no matter what happens.

“I’m grateful that I’m the first from the family to go to university and hope that I’m setting a good example for my siblings. My father is the most inspirational dad. He would sit us down and tell us that he grew up like this and had to work in the garden at the age of 12 in order to pay for his school fees.

“Today, I go to school and study to be the best person I can be to change my lifestyle and where I come from,” an emotional Dlamini says.

Dlamini, who is passionate about helping people, says she would also like to be an oncologist and make a difference in the lives of people who are suffering from cancer.

She reminds her peers to take care of their parents, especially their mothers.

“Behind a successful man there is a woman. There is a woman who was nagging him to wake up, brush your teeth, do this and that. We tend to think that our mothers are nagging but they are doing the best they can. One of my friends said when we are children, our parents work towards helping us take the first steps of life, why can’t we help them take the last steps of their lives?”

In ensuring that more girls complete their tertiary education and get jobs, the Minister of Women, Children and People with Disabilities, Lulu Xingwana, officially launched the Techno Girl Alumni Association recently.

The programme -- a partnership between the Department of Women, Children and People with Disabilities, UNICEF, State Information Technology Agency (SITA) and UWESO Consulting -- follows the successful Techno-Girl Job Shadowing Programme rollout in 2009.

The Techno Girl Alumni programme aims to continue giving support to beneficiaries to ensure a higher completion rate at tertiary level. Through the alumni programme, the girls will receive support to access job opportunities in their chosen fields of study upon completing their studies.

Speaking at the launch, Xingwana said they wanted Techno Girls to run the economy, a move that would show “the struggle by women in 1956 was not in vain”.

She encouraged young girls to get an education.

“Whatever degree you take, it opens doors - it is a key. It gives you the ability to use logic, the ability to analyse any situation and the ability to think scientifically,” Xingwana told the girls. – SAnews.gov.za 

Youth Moving South Africa Forward

While unemployment among young people has remained stubbornly high following the 2008 recession, the National Youth Development Agency (NYDA) is beginning to see the positive impact of its varied interventions to ride out this socio-economic storm.

As South Africa commemorates Youth Month this June, NYDA chairperson Yershen Pillay says the youth agency, formed in 2009 after the merger between the National Youth Commission and the Umsobomvu Youth Fund, has helped millions of young people access some form of product – from education and training to mentorship and business finance support.

In an interview with SANews at the University of Witswatersrand (Wits), Pillay said the NYDA was trying its best to help young people – who constitute 40% of South Africa’s population of almost 52.98-million – get a decent livelihood.

According to Stats SA, unemployment hit 25.2% in the first quarter of 2014.

Similar to many developing countries, South Africa has a large population of people between the ages of 14 and 35, representing 42% of the total population in this country. Of this 42%, the majority is unemployed or out of school.

Pillay said after the first pebble was thrown into the water when NYDA was established five years ago, the first ripples have reached the shore.

“What people don’t know is that we have helped six million young people in the last five years with some form of product, service or enrolling them on a programme.

“And that ranges from loans to grants to vouchers to career guidance services, programmes for out of school youth to scholarships, bursaries, mentorship services. So it has really been five years of significant progress and great strides relative to other countries,” he said.

Pillay spoke to PSM shortly after the NYDA hosted a World Book Day event at Wits main campus.

The interview happened on the 2nd floor of the main library shortly after lunch time. On the lawns in front of the library, small groups of students – a part of the NYDA’s target market - were scattered under the sun, while most of them, clad in trendy clothing labels with assorted hairstyles, roved around with their backpacks going about their business.

Despite government’s efforts to increase the intake of varsity graduates in various departments through internships and apprenticeships, it cannot fight unemployment alone and most of these students could soon find themselves joining the long queue of job seeking in the near future.

Pillay said while the South African employment picture remained murky, it was not all gloom and doom as the assistance of the six million or so young people had gone a long way in denting poverty, unemployment and inequality.

He said the country had done well compared to others that had much greater financial muscle.

“I think we have done fairly well, especially when you compare our progress as a nation compared to the progress of other countries.

“For example, if you take the French with their so-called advanced democracy, they have an annual target of 70 000 young people that they need to meet on their National Youth Service programme and they have a budget of €30 million (about R420 million), which is more than the budget of the NYDA.

“Annually, we meet a target of about 138 000 young people on our National Youth Service programme with a far smaller budget.

“Small examples like that paint a picture of fairly good success,” he said.

NYDA’s rocky start, recovery

Shortly after the NYDA was formed, efforts to bolster youth development were overshadowed by media reports of its hosting of the World Youth and Student Festival in 2010, where, media claimed, youth delegates played kissing games instead of attending scheduled sessions.

The agency also had issues relating to its supply chain management, with the Auditor-General emphasising the need to fix irregularities relating to their supply chain management processes.

The reports that followed the festival remained a concern for government, and the NYDA board at the time tried to steer the ship from the storm.

Despite these reports, the NYDA continued with its work and exceeded most of its annual targets related to education, skills training and enterprise finance. This saw the NYDA being given unqualified audit opinions since its inception in 2009 till to date.

While a clean audit is what all government departments aim to achieve annually, an unqualified audit opinionis essentially a good opinion as the financial statements may be regarded as fairly reflecting the financial status of the department or entity.

Inside NYDA’s meetings with the Presidency

Despite obtaining four consecutive unqualified audits – and exceeding its annual performance targets - the Cabinet remained concerned on how the NYDA brand was perceived negatively in the public space since its inception.

After the term of the agency’s first board expired in 2012, a Parliamentary process was initiated to appoint a new board, which led to the appointment of the new board in March 2013.

From that board, Pillay was appointed as chairperson and in a media briefing, Obed Bapela, the Deputy Minister in the Presidency for Monitoring, Performance and Evaluation, introduced him to the country.

In the briefing, the Deputy Minister said while the NYDA was doing well with its internal controls and with youth work, what the agency needed to do was clean up its public image in order to restore its public confidence.

The Deputy Minister has held a series of meetings with Pillay and his colleagues since that briefing in April 2013.

Ever since the new board took over, the NYDA has since shifted its core business away from enterprise finance towards education and skills development.

The shift towards education and skills development is informed by the numerous studies indicating that most young people in the country actually derive their income from salaries and remittances.

Some of its intervention programmes related to education includes the National Senior Certificate 2nd Chance Project, which gave young people who failed matric a chance to enrol and complete Grade 12.

In 2013, the project successfully registered 3168 young people to sit and re-write their matric examination between November and December 2013 in Gauteng, Western Cape and North West provinces.

The project has seen a gradual improvement since its launch in 2011. The 2013 class achieved a 77% pass rate, an improvement from 73% in 2012 and 47% in 2011.

This year, President Jacob Zuma launched the R20-million Solomon Mahlangu Scholarship Fund for deserving matriculants who mainly come from disadvantaged backgrounds.

According to Pillay, the agency has received nothing but positive feedback from The Presidency over the past couple of months.

“In fact, Deputy Minister Obed Bapela said to me after one of our meetings that we really have done well…

“If there is criticism, it is really constructive criticism which is what we want. So the feedback from The Presidency is that we are doing well, we have re-positioned the NYDA from where it was, which was unfortunately that NYDA of festivals and parties and now one of grants and scholarships, which is what people want to hear – an NYDA that works for them,” he said.

He said that the Presidency has been so impressed by with the progress that the NYDA has made, that the highest office in the land has even encouraged departments to work with the youth agency.

“You are hearing more from the Presidency asking other departments, asking business, asking labour: ‘are you working with the NYDA? And if not, why not? Because you should be working with them.”

What gives Pillay headaches?

While the NYDA is making strides in youth development – backed up by encouraging audit outcomes since 2009 – Pillay says the one thing that still gives him headaches is a culture of self-entitlement amongst young people, those who expect that only government should do something to ensure that there is enough jobs to go by.

“The headache for me is the culture of entitlement which is really starting to erode what more progress we can make especially as young people in the country.

“So we need to displace that culture of entitlement of sitting at home, complaining and go back to our historical roots of actually organising ourselves, finding solutions for ourselves and going to government for support,” he said.

He said young people should instead, stop complaining, roll up their proverbial sleeves and replace entitlement it with a culture of service, responsibility and of leadership, for the better of the country.

He said, however, that there were moments that have brought a better taste to his mouth, and ones that gave him more of a reason to wake up.

“Just the other day, and Minister [of Health] Aaron Motsoaledi will not like the story because he wants us to maintain healthy lifestyles, I decided to get a McDonald’s [breakfast].

“The young person who was serving me saw my NYDA t-shirt and asked ‘oh so you are from NYDA’.

“I then said, yes, and asked him if she knew what NYDA does.”

Pillay said the young man then told him he was a student and knew NYDA because it had gone to his school and offered him and his fellow learners career guidance.

When he asked the young man if he was impressed with the progress the NYDA had made, “He said yes, at least you guys are sticking to your promises now.

“For me that is more powerful than the President acknowledging NYDA or even the media acknowledging NYDA because these are the people we serve,” he said.

Youth Day celebrations head for Kimberley

This year’s Youth Day official commemorations will be held in Kimberley under the theme “Youth moving South Africa forward”.

Throughout the month of June, the NYDA has numerous activities lined-up. This includes the launch of the National Youth Build programme, where young people from the Jan Kemp Dorp in the Northern Cape will hand over 76 houses that they have built to youth headed households. The NYDA has also donated solar-powered geysers as part of its efforts to promote the green economy.

In the same province, NYDA will launch the a township hub to allow entrepreneurs trading in a variety of skills to have facilities in a municipal property where they can polish their skills.

The NYDA will also use the month of June to invite ordinary South Africans to submit their applications in order to be considered for 10 vacancies in a soon to be established Youth Advisory Council, an apolitical body that will sit four times a year to advise the youth agency board on matters affecting young people.

Youth Month events are organised to commemorate the anniversary of the death of hundreds of high school students who lost their lives when they came under fire on June 16, 1976, after they took to the streets in a peaceful protest against the mandatory use of Afrikaans as a language of instruction in black secondary schools. – SAnews.gov.za

A day to recognise sacrifices made for freedom

On April 27, 1994, thousands queued outside polling stations for hours to ensure that they made their mark for the first time, to have their voices heard regardless of the colour of their skin.

On sunday, South Africa celebrated 20 years of freedom and the spirit of that first special voting day could be felt among the thousands of people who flocked to the Union Buildings to celebrate.

For some it was an emotional day as they shed a few tears reminiscing about the hardships they had endured.

Syswell Mahlanyana said that getting her freedom was the restoration of her dignity as a human being. She said: “I wouldn’t even know where to begin in telling what this day means to me. Young people today just don’t get what freedom means as it was never denied to them.

“We now have that freedom to do as we want to, to dream and aim as big as you want to, we have tarred roads, RDP houses, upgraded clinics, schools and so much more than we ever could have hoped for,” said Mahlanyana.

A woman cheers at the Union Buildings. The Freedom Day celebrations held a special poignancy as it was the first Freedom Day since the death of Nelson Mandela in December at the age of 95. Picture: Mujahid Safodien

Horst Seute, originally from Germany but resident in South Africa for 45 years, said: “It’s been a remarkable 20 years for South Africa. It has progressed so much and the next 20 should be even better considering the development thus far.

“I think the racial divide is no longer there as I’m involved with an Indian woman and it isn’t something strange. The only hurdle would be the cultural part that’s still a bit hazy,” said Seute.

Loud cheers and ululating rung out as three helicopters carrying national flags flew over the Union Buildings, a 20-gun salute was fired and thousands of balloons released.

Tshwane mayor Kgosientso Ramokgopa also joined in the festivities and said the day was not just about celebration. “Today is to record our appreciation for the sacrifices made by ordinary men, women and young people, but it is also to remind the youth that it is now up to us to bear the burden of ensuring South Africa progresses,” he said.

Gauteng Premier Nomvula Mokonyane said a lot still needed to be done to bridge the racial divide.

“We need to invite other people of colour as they too are enjoying the fruits of our liberation,” she said. 

Article and images courtesy of IOL: http://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/a-day-to-recognise-sacrifices-made-for-freedom-1.1681162#.U16G6_mSxZ4

Sharpeville remembered

South Africa's Human Rights Day, 21 March - declared International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination by the UN - is synonymous with an innocuous but historic township, Sharpeville, situated between the industrial cities of Vanderbijlpark and Vereeniging about 50 kilometres south of Johannesburg.

For many South Africans, the day will always remain Sharpeville Day, a commemoration of the 21 March 1960 Sharpeville massacre, when the police mowed down 69 unarmed people and injured 180 others who refused to carry the hated dompas identity document that was meant only for indigenous Africans.

An image from the Sharpeville Remembered Print Portfolio, a collection of 55 prints produced by 22 local artists in a collaborative effort between the Department of Visual Arts and Design of the Vaal Triangle Technikon in Vanderbijlpark and the Artist Proof Studio in Johannesburg

The day, sometimes also referred to as Heroes' Day, was a watershed in the country's liberation struggle, hence its inclusion in South Africa's post-apartheid holiday calendar.

What happened on that day?

More than 50 years on, the question still surfaces: what exactly happened on that fateful morning?

Joe Tlholoe, one of the country's most prolific journalists, who was a high school pupil at the time, wrote years later: "With hindsight, the story is simple. The PAC [Pan Africanist Congress], which was 16 days short of its first birthday, had called on African men to leave their pass books at home, go to the nearest police station and demand to be arrested for not carrying the dompas."

The apartheid pass laws humiliated African men in particular.

Every indigenous African male above the age of 16 had to carry the dompas on his person day and night and produce it on demand by the police. Failure to produce, forgetting the pass at home, or not having the right stamp, meant arbitrary arrest and jail.

"When the police in Sharpeville saw the masses marching towards them, they panicked and opened fire, killing the 69 and injuring hundreds," Tlholoe wrote.

"The country went up in flames as anger spread through townships across the country. More were killed in the days after Sharpeville."

An outraged international community turned against the Nationalist Party government. The struggle had reached a new level on the long road towards the country's democratic elections on 27 April 1994.

"That is the simple story that historians will relate," Tlholoe wrote. "The real story was a more complex mixture of pain and grief, suffering, anger and courage, that is best left to izimbongi, the African epic poets, to tell."

Pan Africanist Congress leader Robert Sobukwe, who led the anti-pass law protest march to Sharpeville police station on 21 March 1960 (Photo: Liberation Archive, University of Fort Hare)

Robert Sobukwe

March 21 1960 was the culmination of planning, public meetings and house-to-house canvassing by a young PAC that had broken away from the African National Congress (ANC) on 2 November 1958 and had its inaugural congress at Soweto's Orlando Communal Hall between 6 and 8 April 1959.

Robert Mangaliso Sobukwe, a 34-year-old lecturer in African languages at Wits University at the time, opened the congress and was elected president. He spelled out the PAC's policies and painted a picture of a South Africa after liberation that was non-racial, democratic and socialist.

In July that year, Sobukwe announced that the PAC would embark on a programme of "positive action" against oppression. In December he announced that the first target would be the pass laws.

Sobukwe led the march to Orlando Police Station, where he and the party's leadership were arrested, just after they learned of the massacre in Sharpeville.

The journey to the recognition of basic human rights, now entrenched in the Bill of Rights in South Africa's post-1994 Constitution, had begun in earnest.

Armed struggle begins

In the aftermath of the massacre, following the declaration of a state of emergency on 30 March 1960, thousands of black people were arrested throughout the country.

On 8 April 1960, the Nationalist Party (NP) government, under the premiership of apartheid architect Hendrik Verwoerd, banned the PAC and ANC, forcing the two movements to go underground and eventually into exile. The days of peaceful protest, so the ANC and PAC declared, were over.

What would follow was protracted guerrilla warfare, the armed struggle against the "regime" waged by the two organisations. This would last 30 years, with the NP eventually forced into negotiations for a new dispensation with leaders such as Nelson Mandela, whom it had branded "terrorists".

In December 1961, the ANC's armed wing, Umkhonto weSizwe, detonated its first bombs.

Sobukwe, who was first sentenced to three years' imprisonment on Robben Island for leading the anti-pass law protests, was kept in jail indefinitely under a special amendment to the General Laws Amendment Act – the Sobukwe Clause – which was rushed through Parliament.

Released from Robben Island and banished to Kimberley in 1968, Sobukwe was already ill, and died from cancer 10 years later. But the march for human rights and dignity continued.

In 1986, under heavy pressure, rightist president PW Botha repealed the pass and influx control laws which curtailed the movement of blacks in their country of birth.

New country, new Constitution

The ANC-led government chose Sharpeville as the venue to launch South Africa's new Constitution, signed by its first democratically elected president, Nelson Mandela, on 8 May 1996.

Since then, a number of laws have been enacted to protect basic individual rights in South Africa.

Among these are pieces of legislation that significantly provide for gender equality, and give citizens equal access to courts in the event of any form of discrimination.

Statutory institutions such as the Commission for Gender Equality, the Human Rights Commission, and the Commission for the Promotion and Protection of the Rights of Cultural and Linguistic Communities, also now exist.

The Sharpeville massacre of 21 March 1960 is regarded by many as the defining moment in South Africa's struggle for liberation (Photo: Literature Faculty, Utrecht University)

On 21 March 2001, South Africa unveiled the Sharpeville human rights memorial on the site outside the police station where the 69 men, women and children were shot - most of them in the back. Their names are all displayed on the memorial plaque.

SAinfo reporter and SAnews.gov.za

Read more: http://www.southafrica.info/about/history/sharpeville.htm#.Uy9FNvmSxZ5#ixzz2woudEXxp

Effective Investments in Education

The Challenge

Education is a fundamental right for everyone and key to the future of any country. Education has its price everywhere—but the only thing more expensive than investing in education is not investing in education. Inadequate education produces high costs for society in terms of public spending, crime, health, and economic growth. No country can afford to leave too many of its children behind and not to help them achieve the competencies needed for a self-fulfilled life in economic independence.

But the main challenges in education differ across countries and continents. The industrialized world faces the impacts of demographic change, such as a shortage of skilled labor and ageing societies. Emerging countries need to respond to increasing demand in education. And in some parts of the world, it is still not a given that every child has the right to go to school—and, hence, a big share of the population cannot read and write.

Despite these differences, there are common challenges. For example, the "inheritance of educational status" is a global problem: people's education achievement largely depends on their socioeconomic background and the educational status of their parents. Although some countries provide more equal opportunities than others, it remains a challenge everywhere to improve the chances of those children lost to inadequate education.

But education budgets are limited, especially in times of economic downturn. Thus, it is worth comparing countries that have decreased and augmented their education budgets during the crisis—and evaluating the consequences of these decisions. If, on the one hand, investments in education are vital and, on the other hand, budget constraints restrict the available resources, investments should be as effective as possible. The question then is: where does it make sense to invest most in education?


An alternative view of investments in education is that they should be higher where the problems are greatest: that would mean greater effort to tackle inadequate education and more money for programs for children who are lagging behind. Research shows that inadequate education is a problem for the whole of society—even the elites—and that everyone benefits from minimizing the number of low-educated people. Is it possible to invest in more quality in education? What form of qualification will produce the best teachers and pedagogues? And what mechanisms should be used to allocate resources?

Education remains one of the most important duties of any government: it is a public responsibility to provide access to high quality education for everyone. Therefore, public investments need to ensure a good educational infrastructure for lifelong learning. But can private organizations, companies and Nonprofit organizations provide additional supply. Could they become substitutes or should they instead function as supplements to public institutions?

Intelligent financing concepts for education should be based on needs and specific background rather than distributing untargeted subsidies. New concepts of resource distribution require greater transparency. But what should this transparency look like? Will external accountability enhance quality or should there be more focus on capacity-building and self-assessment to improve the education system? How can financing mechanisms provide effective and sufficient investments in education even in times of crisis?