I am delighted to join the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) as the new Chair of its Board of Directors.

All my life I have been driven by my strong belief that every child should have access to a high quality education. Education changes lives. I know that it changed mine. No child should be denied the transformative power of a great education.

I first campaigned for better education when I was at university. As Australia’s Education Minister and ultimately as Prime Minister, I had the opportunity to deliver reforms across our entire education system, with the aim of making quality learning more accessible and affordable to more of our citizens.

Education is my passion

I’m proud of that record and consider it a tremendous privilege now to work with the Global Partnership and its vast network of dedicated people, institutions and countries who are just as passionate about the importance of education.

Together, we will embark on a critical journey to bring not just access but quality education to the 57 million children currently out of school around the globe. We will work to lift the quality of education for children already in school. These are daunting goals, but both are well within reach if the international community works together to deliver on our promise to provide education for all.

I am looking forward to working with Alice Albright, GPE’s Chief Executive Officer, and I am honoured to follow in the footsteps of former Board Chair Carol Bellamy and Geeta Rao Gupta, who acted as interim chair over the past few months.

Funding is crucial

My first and most important priority as GPE Board Chair over the next several months will be to reach out to all of the donor countries urging them to make a strong commitment to this year’s replenishment. As part of the appeal, I will stress:

• The essential value of education. Obvious as it may seem, everyone must recognize that basic education enables countries to make progress in most areas of human, economic and social development. Indeed, education is an essential ingredient for success in global development and nation building.

• The power of the GPE partnership. The Global Partnership for Education is the only global entity that brings all of the most relevant partners – donor nations, developing countries and experts in the education field — together around a single plan, focusing resources so they have the biggest impact, especially in fragile states and conflict countries where we risk entire generations of children receiving no formal education.

• The importance of systemic change. The Global Partnership helps nations strengthen their entire educationsystems, not just the individual elements that make them up. That translates into more sustainable and effective approaches that truly improve learning for more children.

• An innovative new funding model. Though we will have more details to offer about it in a few weeks, the Global Partnership’s new funding model represents a major breakthrough not just for the education sector but for many other aspects of global development. At its heart, the funding model provides incentives to countries to create more efficient and effective education systems, to prioritize learning outcomes, to increase domestic investment in education and to collect and use more and better data, which promotes accountability and efficacy. Stay in touch for more details on this exciting new development.

• The imperative to build on the current momentum. Many challenges remain to strengthen the education systems in some of the world’s poorest countries. But over the last decade, we have seen tremendous gains in GPE partner developing countries, particularly many that have increasingly invested their own domestic budgets into education. It is urgent that donor countries, through replenishment, encourage those countries to do more, lest we risk squandering the hard-fought gains. That’s why this year’s replenishment is an historic opportunity to turn the tide of success.

Let’s unite for education

With a proven track record of support that has delivered results in the world’s poorest and most fragile countries over the past decade, the Global Partnership has allocated $3.7 billion to improve education in developing nations. This is a major accomplishment and we have to enable the partnership to keep up the good work.

Let us unite for the mission of the Global Partnership to galvanize and coordinate a global effort to provide good quality education to all children, prioritizing the poorest and most vulnerable.