As the Global Partnership for Education gears up for its replenishment, education advocates are predicting 2018 could be a pivotal year for global education, which has long languished behind global health for funding. GPE’s leadership team, including former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, was in Europe for high-level meetings in the run up to the GPE financing conference set to take place in Senegal in February.
Total global official development assistance has been increasing, but education’s share of this funding has been on the decline since 2010. Still, GPE has been able to mobilize funding to send millions of children to school in developing countries. GPE hopes to raise US$3.1 billion to fund its activities up to 2020, and some experts have argued that education is so underfunded that while setting this achievable target is wise, there is only so much it can do with these funds.