UNESCO report to stress lack of education for millions of children

14 January 2010 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: On 19 January, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will help launch the 2010 Education for All Global Monitoring Report, which is expected to highlight the stark lack of education for millions of children across the globe. The Secretary-General will appear alongside Irina Bokova, the Director-General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization, also known as UNESCO. The report, sponsored by UNESCO, will examine and highlight the impact of the recent global financial crisis on education, as well as the lack of progress in achieving the international goal of education for every child in the world. That goal has been encapsulated as a Millennium Development Goal, an international commitment to provide primary education for all boys and girls by 2015. Elizabeth Fordham, an Executive Officer of UNESCO, told MediaGlobal “the Secretary-General and Director-General will doubtless make a strong call for donors to significantly bolster their efforts to meet aid commitments and scale up the amount of aid allocated to basic education.” While the effects of the financial crisis have had deep implications for all areas of development, the impact on education has been particularly strong. For the world’s least developed countries and other countries struggling financially, funding education either becomes less of a priority or simply impossible to accomplish. Even as the world’s economy begins to recover, the goal of education for all is not guaranteed to get back on track. Fordham said that a financial recovery would make no difference “without the political will to make education a priority.” Prior to the beginning of the financial crisis, there were already concerns that leaders were failing to achieve their commitments to universal education. As Kevin Watkins, the Global Monitoring Report’s director, told MediaGlobal: “Even before the crisis, the world was off track to meet education targets. Now, in a context of slower growth and increased budgetary constraints, only determined political commitment to education at the highest levels will reset the course towards success.” Ryan Dicovitsky