The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is pushing governments and global lenders to make greater use of debt-for-education swaps, warning that a deepening education financing crisis is leaving hundreds of millions of students without adequate resources.
UNESCO unveiled new guidance on the debt swap mechanism at a global education summit held in Paris on Friday, making the case that the tool could help financially strained nations redirect money toward classrooms, teacher training, and student support programs.
The way these swaps work: a country refinances or buys back costly debt and then channels the resulting savings directly into education spending.
The World Bank has recently begun supporting such arrangements. UNESCO highlighted several bilateral examples already in use, including a 2023 agreement between France and Ivory Coast that helped finance the construction of more than 30 schools, as well as a Spain-Peru initiative that funded 50 education projects over a ten-year period.
The urgency of UNESCO’s push is underscored by alarming new data. According to the agency, 113 countries representing 6.1 billion people currently spend more on debt repayment than on education. In low-income nations, debt payments run nearly four times higher than what is spent on education. In 18 of the most heavily indebted countries, debt payments outpace education budgets by at least five to one.
The crisis is compounded by falling international support. UNESCO’s Global Education Monitoring Report projects that worldwide aid to education could drop by as much as 30% between 2023 and 2027. Aid to education already fell 8% in 2024 compared to the prior year, while funding specifically for basic education dropped 15%.
Low- and lower-middle-income countries have already lost 21% of the education aid they received in 2023. Countries including Afghanistan, Liberia, Mali, and Niger have experienced declines exceeding 40%.
Education’s share of total global development assistance fell to 7.5% in 2024 — the lowest level recorded in twenty years, UNESCO said. The agency estimates that low- and lower-middle-income countries face an annual education funding shortfall of $97 billion.
UNESCO Director-General Khaled El-Enany issued a stark warning about the situation. “Education is the most powerful investment countries can make, yet it is being systematically underfunded,” he said, calling on world leaders to increase political support for scaling up new and creative financing approaches.
The data and guidance were released at the Transforming Education Summit+4, a gathering of government ministers, development banks, and international organizations focused on measuring progress toward the United Nations’ goal of delivering inclusive, high-quality education to all people by 2030.
