The fifth edition of NORRAG Special Issue (NSI 05)) entitled 'Domestic Financing: Tax and Education' aims to analyse tax justice and domestic resource mobilization, with a special focus on the global South.
NSI 05 consists of 25 articles which aim to highlight global and national-level experiences and perspectives. It calls for greater attention to issues that influence national resource capacities for education and how that funding may be used. Questions of financing education are even more pressing as we face the consequences of Covid-19 and the impact of lockdowns globally. This pandemic is radically changing school attendance and learning, as well as the amount of education spending available from a diminished tax base.
The issue is composed of six sections that showcase global perspectives as well as local case studies, discussing the links between tax justice and domestic financing for education from different standpoints.
- Part one features global perspectives on tax and education, why tax matters — particularly in times of a global health crisis — and the role of international instruments and actors.
- Part two sheds light on progressive and regressive national tax reforms with specific case studies from Ghana, India and Pakistan.
- Part three salutes local movements and activism to reform tax for equitable education provision.
- Part four calls for global reforms and greater attention to the impacts of corporations and philanthropic actors on tax justice.
- Part five addresses concerns regarding the increasing trend of privatization of education, illustrated by three case studies from the Dominican Republic, Peru, and Uganda
- Part six outlines the social movements and struggles surrounding education and tax.
Chapter 3 focuses on the obligations under international human rights law to resources public education through taxes.
NSI 05’s guest editor, David Archer, is Head of Civic Participation, Tax Justice and Public Services at ActionAid (UK), and holds extensive experience in education. He co-founded the Global Campaign for Education, is the Board Chair of the Right to Education Initiative, Chair of the Strategy and Impact Committee of the Global Partnership for Education and is a trustee of the UK Education and Development Forum (UKFIET).