To Solve the Global Education Crisis We Need More Funding
During the UN General Assembly, GPE worked to secure more funding for education in conflict countries and highlighted the importance of getting more children in school.
September 26, 2013 by Alice Albright, GPE Secretariat
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6 minutes read
© GPE/Livia Barton

GPE action during the UN General Assembly

This is the week of the 68th United Nations General Assembly. It’s the week when global leaders come together in New York to discuss important questions on peace and security and other crucial development issues.  Education is one of them and that’s why the Global Partnership for Education plays an important role during this week. Let me highlight just two events that struck me as pivotal for the global education agenda.

Education Cannot Wait in conflict countries

On Monday, along with several other partners such as UNICEF, Save the Children and the International Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE), the Global Partnership organized an important gathering with global leaders highlighting the need to ensure that 28.5 million children affected by conflict and humanitarian crisis can go to school and learn. Going to school gives children a sense of normalcy when their life as they knew it has been turned upside down. The Global Partnership helps these children and has approved nearly $ 500 million in education grants for 11 fragile and conflict-affected states over the past 12 months. In a Call to Action the leaders now request urgent action for these children in crisis countries who currently don’t receive an education. Read the press release

GPE action to get more children in school and learning

Yesterday, I participated in the Learning for All Ministerial Roundtable which was chaired by U.N. Special Envoy for Global Education Gordon Brown and World Bank President Jim Yong Kim. This event – under the umbrella of the United Nation’s Global Education First Initiative – helped to renew the political momentum for global education and highlighted the need for education financing.

Prior to the Roundtable – together with Gordon Brown and representatives from donor countries, private foundations, multilateral organizations, civil society organizations, non-governmental organizations and the private sector – I met individually with the ministers of education from Afghanistan, Chad, Myanmar, Pakistan, Timor-Leste and Somalia.

All of them are GPE developing country partners (we are working in 59 countries in total) with millions of out-of-school children.  Colleagues from the GPE Secretariat had organized intensive in-country workshops in these six countries over the past months to identify the best ways to accelerate progress in getting all children in school and learning. This was the basis for our discussions in the bilateral meetings this week in which we all committed to get these nations’ children in school and learning by the expiration of the Millennium Development Goals at the end of 2015.

During the World Bank Spring Meetings in April 2013, the GPE Secretariat had participated in the first round of the Learning for All Ministerial Meetings, which had focused on Bangladesh, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Haiti, Nigeria, Yemen, and South Sudan. Then and there it had been agreed that GPE would help convene global-level follow-up meetings to drive for progress and bring additional countries into this process. We are on our way.

More education funding is crucial

I have been struck by how committed our low-income partner countries are toward education and how passionate their leaders are to ensure a quality education for all of their nations’ children.

Unfortunately, the global education crisis is exacerbated by a significant reduction in financing for basic education. External aid to basic education is dropping faster than any other sector – down 14 percent between 2009 and 2011. This is not acceptable.

The Global Partnership will work with all partners to mobilize billions in additional funding to educate children in some of the world’s poorest countries. It is our role to drive the mobilization of additional resources for basic and secondary education through the GPE Fund, bilateral and domestic funding. In 2013 alone, we received requests for US$ 1.2 billion in education grants which points to growing demand and strong commitment to education. We are now gearing up for our second replenishment and we are thankful to the European Union for hosting our replenishment conference in June 2014 in Brussels.

It is our expressed goal to help our nearly 60 developing county partners and every new member country that will join us to get every child in school for a quality education so they can be healthier, have higher incomes later in life, and have an opportunity to change their lives for the better. That’s why we have to treat the global education crisis with utmost urgency.

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Comments

Please advise whether you give grants or scholarships to individuals who can't complete their education

H Fortune:  GPE does not provide funding to individuals. Instead, GPE supports governments to strengthen their education systems and ensure that all children can go to school and learn.  Chantal, GPE Secretariat

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