Especially on this day honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement, it is vital to recognize that unequal access to quality education violates children’s rights and affects all of our futures. Dr. King said, “I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality, and freedom for their spirits.” This is the day to rededicate ourselves to the cause of education and equality, and to do everything we can to level the playing field for children throughout the world.
Just over a year on from the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its associated 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the Brookings Center for Universal Education, the Global Campaign for Education-US and the Global Education Monitoring Report team hosted the launch of the Global Education Monitoring Report (GEM Report) and Gender Review. The GEM report – hosted and published by UNESCO – provides an analysis of SDG 4 targets and respective indicators (inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong learning opportunities) as well as a consideration of the interaction of SDG 4 with all other SDGs on the sustainable development agenda.
Early childhood development can sound technical or overly complicated, a jumble of dozens of interventions across all sectors. Really though, it’s quite simple: giving each child all of the things he or she needs to grow up strong and healthy, feel secure, learn and succeed. ECD interventions are critical for ensuring that all children are given a fair start in life and an equal chance to reach their full potential, no matter who they are or where they were born.
The remote Kenyan village I called home from 1999-2001 had just one reliable phone line located in a Catholic Church. The Priest there allowed me to accept incoming calls from my parents in New York every other Sunday at 7 p.m. If I missed that call, which happened on occasion, two long weeks would pass before that phone would ring again.
As children all around the United States are in their last days of school, counting down to summer vacation, there are refugee children across the world who are desperately hoping to get back to school and learning.
In April and May 2015, two earthquakes of magnitudes 7.8 and 7.2 respectively devastated much of Nepal. The sudden loss of family members and homes shattered countless people’s lives. The sudden loss of thousands of schools, while understandably not people’s immediate focus of concern, made itself felt as the weeks passed and the desire to get “back to normal” strengthened.
At sixteen years old, Cecelia, a young woman from Chiunda Village in Malawi, has already confronted countless barriers to receiving her education.
As early as primary school, Cecelia remembers watching her friends drop out – a fate that is all too common in the country of Malawi, where less than 6% of women hold a high school diploma. Throughout her adolescence, she has seen firsthand the problems of early marriage. One in every two girls nationwide is married or raising children by the age of 18.
The problem is not just the amount of funding for education, but how the available resources are being spent. In the past decade, tertiary education consistently received the highest proportion of education aid of any education sector, beating out even primary education year after year. Moreover, during this period, seven of the top fifteen donors to education increased the portion of their aid allocated to higher education and consequently decreased the portion to basic education.
Further, this aid to tertiary education isn’t being spent sustainably. A large percentage of growing funds to higher education have been used not to strengthen university systems in recipient countries but rather to provide scholarships for students to attend higher education institutions in donor countries. In 2012, for example, “for every US$1 disbursed in direct aid to early childhood care and education, the equivalent of US$58 went to support students from recipient countries at the post-secondary level in donor countries.”
Can you remember your first day of kindergarten? Or even preschool? Chances are, you were excited beyond words.
Chances are, your first classroom greeted you with colorful drawings on the walls, 27 letters on the chalkboard, and even a cozy reading corner filled with stacks of books, waiting patiently to take you on an adventure.
Education is a human right. More than that, it is a lifesaving humanitarian response. School provides stability, structure and routine that children need to cope with loss, fear, stress and violence. Being in school can keep children safe and protected from risks, including gender-based violence, recruitment into armed groups, child labor, and early marriage. In periods of crisis, parents and children identify education as one of their highest priority needs.
