Respond to the Education Emergency Today

SAVE OUR FUTURE: RESPOND TO THE EDUCATION EMERGENCY TODAY

BY THE RIGHT HONORABLE GORDON BROWN

It’s said that you can survive for 40 days without food, eight days without water, and eight minutes without air—but you cannot survive for a second without hope. Hope dies not just when a food convoy can’t get through to a beleaguered town, and not just when there are no ventilators for someone who is suffering from the most extreme form of COVID-19. Hope can die when young people don’t feel they have the chance to plan and prepare for the future.

Although we are in the midst of the most devastating health emergency of our lifetime, we must also face the fact that the current education emergency threatens the hope and life chances of millions and millions of young people around the world.

Here are the harsh facts: 1.6 billion children—90% of all students in the world—have had their education disrupted. One billion are still locked out of schools now. And sadly 50 million children are forcibly displaced, some as a result of the pandemic. Most are not in school and have little hope that even when schools reopen, they will ever step foot in a classroom.

The suspension of education is not a temporary setback, with schooling and learning returning to normal once the pandemic subsides. For many, it is a permanent loss of potential. A child who is out of school for more than a year is unlikely to ever return, and girls are 2.5 times more likely to drop out than boys. Some 20 million adolescent girls may never return to school and lost schooling could mean $10 trillion in lost earnings for this generation of students.

The worst impacts are not being felt equally among children. The most vulnerable populations face a double-blow—they are shut out from schools and the digital divide shuts them out from online learning efforts. Prolonged periods without education put young people’s childhoods at risk of being lost to child labor, early marriage, violence, recruitment by extremist groups, and discrimination. The compounding effect threatens to widen and entrench inequalities, with damages reverberating for generations.

World Bank estimates suggest that government budgets for education could drop globally by more than $100 billion below previously projected levels for 2021. In sub-Saharan countries, only $188 is spent per year to educate a child—roughly $3 dollars a week. To cut this already meager budget is a recipe for disaster—for our children and for our future.

So massive is the crisis that a coalition of more than 180 local, national, and global organizations have joined forces on the Save Our Future campaign to amplify the voices of children and youth. They are calling on world leaders to protect and reimagine education in a post-COVID world. Building on the UN Secretary-General’s statement on Education and COVID-19, campaign partners are developing a joint white paper which will be launched at the Global Education Forum in September with concrete proposals to support countries to build back more equitable, resilient, and sustainable education systems.

As global health, economic, and social protection expenditures crowd out funding for education, we must remember that education is vital to lifting people out of poverty, ensuring healthier families, advancing racial and gender equality, increasing security, and creating a more just, peaceful, and sustainable world.

Investing in education unlocks opportunities for employment and higher levels of economic growth. Education also leads to better health outcomes because an educated mother is far better equipped to take care of her children and less infant and maternal mortality is the result. So, we must urge countries not to cut their education budgets.

And the international community and all countries should support four initiatives that, taken together, recognize and measure up to the scale and urgency of the education emergency and build back better for a more equitable and resilient future.

First, national governments must protect their education budgets and reaffirm that they will not cut them to meet other priorities.

The second is ensuring poorest countries have the funds to invest in education by granting them debt relief: this is the quickest way we can get more money into education as well as health. In the 76 poorest countries of the world, $86 billion must be spent in debt servicing payments over the next 18 months. If we put a moratorium on these debt interest payments until the end of 2021, this $86 billion from private creditors, public sector creditors, and the multilaterals could be reallocated to fund critical education and health needs.

The third is calling on the IMF to issue $1.2 trillion in Special Drawing Rights—its global reserve asset—that would be available to the countries who are most in need of funds to spend on education.

And the fourth is urging the World Bank to increase support for low-income countries through a supplementary International Development Association (IDA) budget. And for lower-middle income countries—countries that house the largest numbers of out-of-school children and refugees—donors should follow the lead of the UK and the Netherlands and support the International Finance Facility for Education (IFFEd) which will in time, generate up to $10 billion of additional resources for education. This is in addition to—and complements—the replenishment over the next two years of the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) and Education Cannot Wait (ECW) and continued support for the UN agencies focused on education and children led by UNESCO and UNICEF.

A human tragedy is unfolding if we do nothing and leave education completely underfunded without the resources necessary for children to flourish in the future. We must work together to ensure that education—and the hopes of our young people—are not shortchanged.

We must all use our voices to remind decision-makers that education is the best buy for a robust recovery and long-term growth. The COVID-19 crisis has demonstrated in the most stark terms that we are all truly connected and interdependent. Let’s hope this crisis can galvanize global efforts to reimagine and reinvigorate learning systems so that the fundamental human right of educating every girl and boy around the world is fulfilled. This is the silver lining we must commit to—for the health of our children, our planet, and to #SaveOurFuture.

About the author: The Right Honorable Gordon Brown is the UN Special Envoy for Global Education and Education Commission Chair. He is the former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.