NEW YORK, September 22, 2024 - In this time of profound global transformation, the Pact for the Future has missed a critical opportunity to commit to reversing the dire education crisis facing children in lower-income countries.
GPE welcomes the Pact’s statement of support for developing countries to increase investment in education and skills. However, it falls short of setting out concrete actions to increase global investment in inclusive, equitable and quality education as the foundation for building a better future.
This is a missed opportunity. An educated population can fuel innovation, foster inclusive and equitable growth, and find solutions to our greatest challenges to harness the opportunities of the future. Yet a devastating education crisis is leaving a generation of children and young people in lower-income countries without the knowledge and skills they need to thrive in the economies and societies of tomorrow. Around the world, one in five children are still out of school, and in lower-income countries seven out of ten 10-year-olds cannot read and comprehend a simple story.
Despite the scale of the education crisis we are living in, global education spending remains insufficient. In nearly half of lower-income countries education budgets have been reduced in the last four years, while aid to education declined by $2 billion between 2020 and 2021.
In an increasingly interconnected world, leaving the majority of the world’s children behind will have global consequences. Almost 40 percent of employers worldwide already struggle to find workers with the competencies they need. Without significant investments in education, 880 million children and young people in low- and middle-income countries will be left without the skills they need to successfully enter the job market by 2030 – threatening to add to youth unemployment and further widen inequalities.
Two years on from the Transforming Education Summit, momentum around education has stalled, and the progress the Sustainable Development Goals aimed to accelerate is backsliding. In the year ahead, we have two crucial opportunities to commit to tackling the learning crisis and unlocking the transformative power of education.
The Financing for Development conference must lay out a viable pathway for countries to be able to fund education, including by relieving the burdens of debt. The World Social Summit can reposition education at the heart of sustainable development and present a bold vision to address the learning crisis, recognizing an educated population as a foundation for progress.
The Global Partnership for Education, as the largest multilateral fund and partnership for education, looks forward to working with Member States to help integrate education into these discussions.
We must not miss these opportunities to increase investment and nurture a skilled and empowered generation that will drive the economies of the future and build a more peaceful and sustainable world. Without urgent action, we are putting that future on hold.