GPE Board of Directors also approves a new ground-breaking funding model for development

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Alexandra Humme at ahumme@globalpartnership.org

Washington, D.C. – February 27, 2014. The Board of Directors of the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) agreed to raise US$3.5 billion over four years from donor nations for the GPE Fund to provide indispensable support for basic education in developing countries for the period 2015-2018.

Significant progress has been made in ensuring more children complete primary and lower secondary education in GPE partner developing countries, which include some of the poorest countries in the world. However, much more resources are needed to maintain this progress. In addition to seeking resources for its own fund the Global Partnership for Education will also leverage significant increases in government education expenditures in developing countries as well as bilateral and multilateral donor funding for the world’s poorest countries.

With the US$3.5 billion the Global Partnership is requesting for its own fund,16 million children of primary and lower secondary school age will be supported and will be learning, the majority of them girls.

“A strong GPE replenishment is critical to seizing the momentum and keeping the progress in global education. Donor nations, developing country partners, civil society, teachers, multilateral organizations and the private sector alike must intensify their current commitments to ensure that the right to education becomes a reality for all children,” said Julia Gillard, recently appointed GPE Board Chair and former Prime Minister of Australia.

The GPE Board of Directors also approved the principles for a new funding model that will be launched in June 2014.

“The new GPE funding model is exciting and ground-breaking. It focuses on the poorest countries of the world with the biggest education needs. Every dollar incentivizes good performance in the countries receiving GPE funding,” said Alice Albright, Chief Executive Officer of the Global Partnership for Education. “The new approach is a unique model for 21st century collaborative development. Our new funding model favors girls; it favors children in fragile and conflict-affected states and it favors learning. The Global Partnership is committed to going the final mile on meeting the Millennium Development Goals and driving an ambitious post-2015 development agenda,” she added.

The Global Partnership for Education is helping countries strengthen their entire education systems, not just the individual elements that make them up, leading to more sustainable and effective approaches that improve learning for more children. The partnership has a powerful multiplier impact that bilateral initiatives cannot offer by themselves.

At its core, the new GPE funding model will offer developing countries powerful incentives to:

• improve the efficiency, effectiveness and equitable allocation of all finances within the education sector, both external and domestic;
• make systemic and more durable reforms to ensure more children have access to school and learn, in accordance with the goals and objectives of the Global Partnership;
• invest more of their own domestic resources into education, thus deepening ownership of their education systems;
• collect more and better data to increase accountability and effectiveness of education outcomes.

The Global Partnership for Education is in the middle of its 2015-2018 replenishment campaign that will culminate in a pledging conference with all major donors and other development partners on June 26, 2014, hosted by the European Union in Brussels.

The Board of Directors also condemned the fatal attack on the Federal Government College of Buni Yadi in Yobe State in eastern Nigeria and noted with concern that attacks on education occur globally and have grown in number and impact.

-----------

The Global Partnership for Education is made up of nearly 60 developing country governments, as well as donor governments, civil society/non-governmental organizations, teacher organizations, international organizations, and the private sector and foundations, whose joint mission is to galvanize and coordinate a global effort to provide a good quality education to children, prioritizing the poorest and most vulnerable. The Global Partnership for Education has allocated US$3.7 billion over the past decade to support education reforms in developing countries.