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There has been a significant decrease in the global funding in basic education over the recent years, Julia Gillard, chair of Global Partnership for Education (GPE) and former Australian prime minister, said yesterday.
Gillard was delivering the keynote speech at the high-level ministerial meeting of 16 countries, convened by Educate A Child (EAC) at the Student Centre of the Education City. EAC is a global programme of the Education Above All (EAA), an initiative of Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, chairperson of EAA, to significantly reduce the number of out of school children in different parts of the globe.
The GPE chair said: “There has been an alarming decrease of aid to education, a decrease of 6.3% between 2010 and 2011. The financing needed for education is huge. To make changes in the present basic education scenario, we need new resources to drift into education.”
She commented that the GPE is in the process of issuing an urgent and very clear call to step up new funding for education so that all children can realise their right to education. “I am very concerned in the current freefall in global funding in education especially to basic education. We need both donors and the governments to do more in education. There must be new commitments from every corner to invest in basic education.”
Gillard stated that GPE is organising a meeting in Brussels in June this year to discuss these issues. “The conference will seek new plans from 2015 to 2019 and we will be asking for commitments from the donor partners to invest their resources in basic education. We will also appeal to developing countries to increase their investment in basic education. It will be an important opportunity to reverse the trend of funds getting decreased in basic education.”
She also stated that a large number of children are still deprived of basic education as they are living in fragile and conflict ridden areas. “We need more partnership and perseverance to achieve the immediate goals. We also need good ideas and good resources to meet the goals of providing basic education for all the out of school children in a very short period.”
Gillard said there were many achievements in the whole process of providing education in different parts of the world and so many organisations had put their efforts together to achieve them.
“There have been many achievements in our journey so far. There is no point in saying that we have been successful in everything. It is an opportunity for being really frank about the achievements as well as the failures in the course of action. We should work harder to achieve more to champion the cause of education,” she added
