Contact: Alexandra Humme, ahumme@globalpartnership.org
Washington, D.C. – December 16, 2014. Today the Board of Directors of the Global Partnership for Education approved US$260.2 million in grants to six developing countries, providing critical funding and momentum toward quality education for all children.
This new financing reflects the Global Partnership's top priorities: increasing access to basic education in fragile countries, improving the quality of education, improving teachers’ effectiveness, generating measurable results and championing girls' education.
"This is critical funding at a time when 58 million children of primary school age are still not in school,” said Julia Gillard, Board Chair of the Global Partnership for Education. “All children should have access to a school with effective teachers and be able to learn so they can contribute to the development of their community and nation," she said.
“If we want to reach the Education for All goals, we need to ensure that adequate funding is available from both domestic and external sources,” said Alice Albright, Chief Executive Officer of the Global Partnership for Education. “While donor funding to education has dropped by 10 percent since 2010, the Global Partnership has consistently increased its education funding, particularly for children living in the poorest and often fragile and conflict-affected countries.”
The six new grants build on prior achievements and will help implement the national education plans of Central African Republic, Guinea, Guyana, Kenya, Lao PDR and Nigeria.
Central African Republic’s grant of US$15.5 million will focus on restoring the country’s education system, which was widely damaged during the recent conflict. The grant will ensure that more marginalized children get schooling and more support is provided to community teachers. The grant will also improve the learning environment through the recruitment of new teachers, provision of textbooks, reestablishment of basic governance, building and repairing of schools and provision of school equipment.
Guinea’s grant of US$37.8 million will focus on improving access and learning in basic education for marginalized children and on strengthening the management capacity of the education ministry.
Guyana will receive a grant of US$1.7 million to improve and strengthen early literacy and numeracy outcomes for children at nursery level and primary grade 1. The grant will improve the quality of services for the poorest and most disadvantaged children in remote regions.
Kenya’s grant of US$88.4 million will help enhance learning quality, particularly for the most marginalized children in rural and nomadic communities. It also aims to strengthen governance, management and accountability at the school level and support policy development to enhance education access, equity and quality.
Lao People’s Democratic Republic will receive a grant of US$16.8 million to improve education quality through a combination of support to school-based management and the introduction of a new pedagogical approach to teaching reading in the Lao language.
Nigeria’s grant of US$100 million will support the five northern states of Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina and Sokoto where most of the country’s disadvantaged children are located. The grant focuses on improving schools and learning outcomes, inclusion of girls in basic education and robust education sector monitoring and evaluation.
The Board of Directors also started the process of developing a new Strategic Plan for the Global Partnership for Education. The new plan will focus on how the partnership can best achieve measurable education outcomes for children in low-income countries. The current Strategic Plan covers the period 2016 to 2020. It is expected that the next strategic plan will be launched in late 2015.
In view of the attack on a school in Peshawar in Pakistan, the Board of Directors issued a statement deploring the attack and the violent death of many innocent students, teachers and other school employees.
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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$3.9 billion over the past decade to support education reforms in some of the world's poorest countries. Almost half of its funding in 2014 went to fragile and conflict-affected countries.