22 June 2008: The Global Campaign for Education (GCE) today welcomes the European Council's Agenda for Action on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which lays the foundations for substantial and sustained increases in aid to basic education in the count-down to 2015. The plan states that aid to education should grow to $4.3 billion per year by 2010, which would almost double the money currently available to ensure universal primary education. It also links aid increases to the achievement of specific targets in education, particularly the hiring and training of 6 million teachers by 2010, and emphasises the need to focus on hard-to-reach children and fragile states.
'These are very real challenges confronting developing countries' said Kailash Satyarthi, GCE President. 'Donors must work with governments to tear down the barriers that currently exclude children from school. Children who are forced to work, who are disabled, who are orphaned, sick, or who are enduring the horrors of war, all deserve the vital chance in life that they will get from a quality education taught by a qualified teacher.'
Other noteworthy aspects of the plan included a focus on Africa and the Education for All Fast-Track Initiative, and mention of the need to invest in quality and inclusion. But GCE campaigners criticised the plan for suggesting that the MDG target for education can be met if 25 million more children are in school by 2010.
'The MDG framework is clear - all children should complete school by 2015, and there are currently 72 million waiting at the school gates, 40 million in Africa. So they all should enter school by 2010. The lower figure of 25 million by 2010 is unacceptable. And of course, the MDG goals themselves are unsatisfactory we need to see progress on the full Education for All agenda in the next two years, to eliminate illiteracy in a generation,' stated Gorgui Sow, GCE Board member.
GCE also sounded a note of caution about the text's tentative wording on aid, which stops short of a firm commitment to allocate the aid increases specifically towards meeting the MDGs. The current pattern of aid spending in a number of the EU countries, notably France and Germany, means that money is not targeted at basic levels of education for those most in need but is spent on scholarships that benefit an elite few.
'The text is very carefully-phrased and avoids explicitly stating that the EU will put this money into basic education, which somewhat undermines the other positive aspects' said Lucia Fry, GCE Policy Advisor 'GCE coalitions in the EU countries will be continuing to lobby and campaign so that the leaders turn these warm words into hard cash for education.'
Anti-poverty campaigners shared this view, noting that the plan is promising but will be meaningless if EU leaders fail to fulfil their aid commitments. They called on EU countries, especially France, Germany and Italy to publish annual timetables, as encouraged by the Council, showing how they are going to meet their aid commitments.
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