Johannesburg - The amount of money it would cost to provide a year’s education to the 58 million out-of-school children worldwide is equivalent to what governments are currently spending on military operations in six days.
This was revealed by the chief executive of the Global Partnership for Education, Alice Albright, addressing the 2014 World Innovation Summit for Education (Wise) in Doha, Qatar, this week.
During a panel discussion titled “Education Post-2015: The Unfinished Agenda”, Albright said that according to Unesco (UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation), it would cost $26 billion (R290bn) a year to put all out-of-school children in school, which is what some governments are spending on military operations in less than a week.
“We are in danger of losing progress. The number of out-of-school children used to be 57 million but it’s now back up to 58 million. That’s something that ought to be a real wake-up call,” Albright said.
“Donor financing in some cases has been quite generous, but generally it has been going down. Aid to education has gone down 5 percent a year since 2009.”
Graça Machel, a humanitarian and widow of Nelson Mandela, said more and more countries were resorting to conflict.
“We have many more countries that are in conflict now. I think it’s really an indictment of leaders of the world, particularly leaders who cannot accept that differences of ideas will always exist… The solution is not war! We can dialogue, we can negotiate, because at the end of the day, any conflict ends up at the negotiating table,” Machel said.
“The new post-2015 agenda is very specific - education cannot be compromised… it’s priority number one. We have to be aware that that means we need to invest much more than what we’ve been doing now because it’s not only the 58 million children who have to come into the system; there are new children coming in.
“I have to remind you, we have already more 700 million youth who are illiterate who also have to be brought into the system,” Machel said.
“In my view, every single country, every single region has to look at their needs. It’s going to be costly, it will require reform of institutions and it will require even methodologies, which we have been using to be adjusted. It’s not business as usual. Every country has to sit and do the work.
“I believe it can be tackled when there is political will and concerted efforts. How much money is being spent on these wars? If it were to be diverted into education, would there be so many children out of school?” Machel asked.
“It’s not like the world does not have the resources to educate our children, that’s not the issue. The priorities aren’t in the right place,” she said.
The Star