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New Education Model Can “Achieve Much More,” Says Education Envoy

About 518,000 primary school students have been unable to go to school in the last decade as due to Taliban's campaign against secular education. Credit: IPS

UNITED NATIONS, Apr 20 2017 (IPS) - UN’s education envoy has unveiled a new model that could provide every child with access to education by 2030.

Citing concerns about the neglect of children’s rights, the Special Envoy for Global Education Gordon Brown urged for more and better finance to ensure every child is in school and learning.

“We’re concerned that millions of children are out of school—some because of child labor, some because of child marriage, some because of child trafficking, some because of sheer discrimination against girls,” Brown told IPS.

The former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom particularly noted that girls’ education is one of the most “important civil rights struggle in our generation.”

Globally, over 250 million children and young people in the world are out of school, and the number of primary-aged children not in school is increasing. For children who are in school, many are not actually learning.

According to the Education Commission, over 800 million young people, or half of the world’s youth, will leave school lacking the basic and necessary skills for the labour market if current trends continue. Many of them will be from low and middle-income countries where only one in 10 young people will be on track to acquire basic secondary level skills.

Meanwhile, international donor contributions to education has decreased from $10 per child in 2010 to $8 per child in low and lower-middle-income countries which is insufficient to pay for textbooks, teachers or school infrastructure. The figures are even lower for education aid in conflict zones where countries like Chad and South Sudan received just 2 percent of their emergency request.

In its report, the Education Commission notes that the costs of such a “learning crisis” includes poverty, inequality, and instability which could be “irreparable.”

“When young people have no access to quality education, not only we deprive them of a right, but we also deprive society of their meaningful contributions,” they said.

In order to provide access and increase quality of education in low and middle-income countries, Brown proposed an International Finance Facility to help close the global funding gap for education.

The facility could create $10 billion for education investments through guarantees from donor countries which are leveraged by development banks. Guarantees, which help protect investors from the risk of non-payment, enables development banks such as the World Bank to mobilize more resources and transform them into affordable financing packages for developing countries who often cannot afford loans.

“By using the money more effectively, we can achieve much more,” Brown told IPS, adding that the mechanism could guarantee universal education within a generation.

In order to access the facility’s resources and further increase education aid, developing countries will have to raise their education outcomes to the level of the top 25 percent best performing countries. The proposal also requires developing countries to increase their own investments in education to 5.8 percent of their national income.

The proposed funding mechanism is similar to that of the International Finance Facility for Immunization which successfully turned government pledges into funding that provided vaccinations to millions of people.

Brown also stressed the need to better protect children against human rights violations more generally, pointing to the examples of the 2014 abduction of 270 girls from school in northern Nigeria and the recent suspected chemical gas attack in Syria which left almost 20 children dead.

He announced the creation of an inquiry that will assess existing international laws and enforcement mechanisms, including the case for an International Children’s Court to protect children’s rights.

“We have these abuses and these exploitations that show something more has got to be done to protect the rights of children,” Brown told IPS.

The Education Commission, headed by Gordon Brown, comprises of political, business, and civil society leaders from around the world who have joined to advocate for increased funding for global education efforts.

 
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