This op ed from GPE CEO Alice Albright and Save the Children Norway CEO Tove Wang was published in Norwegian in BistandsAktuelt
We have both seen how parents everywhere in the world – regardless of their culture, wealth or political structure – share a universal impulse: they all want their children to grow up healthy, prosperous and happy. Moreover, most parents believe that, without education, their children will almost certainly lead lives that fall far short of such fulfillment.
It’s therefore shocking to us how many parents around the world will never see those basic hopes realized. While the number of children who are not in school globally is almost half what it was in 2000, there are still more than 260 million children and adolescents who get no education at all. And there are another 130 million who have completed four years of school but still have not learned to read and write.
Those falling behind in education are often the most marginalized, excluded because of their gender, ethnicity, religion, of where they live or whether they have a disability.
Unless these children get the schooling they need and are entitled to, their communities will keep struggling to become more prosperous, participative, stable and peaceful. For developing countries in particular it will be crucial to build the skill base and talent that’s necessary to drive inclusive economic growth and reduce inequalities in the 21st century.
For these and other reasons, education is a human right, and world leaders have pledged – through the UN Sustainable Development Goal for education (SDG4) – to educate all the world’s children and youth by 2030.
Unfortunately, based on current trends, we will reach this goal 50 years too late. Developing countries must therefore increase their revenues and spend a larger share on education. Many countries are stepping up to that challenge, and to support them, it is key that donor countries follow up on their international commitments to help support tax management and curb illicit capital flows out of developing countries.
But to build strong and sustainable education systems, developing countries also need external financing.
How much? The Education Commission estimated last year that international financing for
education will need to increase fivefold, from $16 billion per year to $89 billion per year by 2030. To mobilize this level of resources, bilateral donors to increase education’s share of aid from 10 percent to 15 percent.
Financing every girl’s and boy’s right to an education will require the international community – with continued leadership from the Norwegian government – to turn the trend in aid to education, as well as to seize at least three big opportunities this year.
First, we must help the Global Partnership for Education (GPE), the only global fund dedicated to basic education in the poorest countries, to replenish its fund successfully later this year. Norway is one of the top three funders of GPE and is well positioned to use that champion role to mobilize others to support GPE.
GPE is uniquely equipped to help countries do the hard, patient work of creating strong education systems that enable all children to go to school. GPE helps to address the worst barriers to education: fragility and conflict, one of the leading reasons why children aren’t in school; scarcity of early childhood care and education programs to prepare children to perform well in school and in later life; poor quality of education preventing children from actually learning, discrimination against girls and other minorities in the learning environments and the costs of education which continue to keep the poorest children out of the classroom.
Second, in 2017, there’s greater opportunity than ever to educate the large number of children caught in the maelstrom of humanitarian crisis. Historically, education in emergencies has been grossly underfunded. But the Education Cannot Wait fund, which was initiated at the Oslo Summit for Education in 2015 and launched last year, is already making great strides to inject more resources for education into countries affected by crisis.
Third, there are efforts to establish an international financing facility for education through multilateral development banks that could leverage significant amounts of affordable loans for education to support developing countries’ education plans and existing financing mechanisms.
If we are to keep our promise of every child learning by 2030, education finance must be firmly geared towards reducing disparities in education. Otherwise the learning gap will continue to rise, and those excluded from learning will fall further behind.
Norway’s extraordinary commitment to global education and its G20 guest status this year give it the credibility and clout to persuade other donor countries to rally around education. We strongly welcome Prime Minister Solberg’s leadership on this issue and hope that she and Foreign Minister Brende will do all they can to ensure that education remains at the core of Norwegian development aid in the long term.
Norway’s contributions will not only help fulfill the hopes and dreams of millions of children and parents around the world. Norway can also play a major role in enabling the entire world to benefit from an enormous pool of human capital. We cannot afford to let the opportunity for such progress pass by.