The UK must not walk away from its commitment to education
Visitors to the Education World Forum in May were reminded of the serious negative impacts of cuts to education aid.
Appearing before the International Development Committee, the UK Minister for International Development, Baroness Chapman stated that UK support for education would be deprioritised.
IPNEd members Bambos Charambolous MP and Lord Michael German, who co-chair the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Global Education urge the government to affirm the UK's commitment to and funding for global education.
They argue that education is central to solving our pressing global challenges and the cornerstone to economic growth and prosperity, which the Minister says will drive decisions about how UK aid is allocated.
Whilst all eyes are on the EU Summit, the UK is hosting the world’s largest annual gathering of education and skills ministers, the Education World Forum, 18-21 May.
The popularity of the event is testament to the leading role that the UK plays in global education.
Overseas students come here to attend our universities. British companies export education services around the world. And UK aid has been central to getting millions of children from the poorest countries into school.
However, in preparation for cutting the aid budget to its lowest level in 25 years, education is on the chopping block.
Appearing before the International Development Committee on 13 May, the Minister for International Development, Baroness Chapman, stated that UK support for education would be deprioritised.
The result of this would be to trash our reputation as a long-standing supporter of education around the world and, worse still, have devastating consequences for millions of the world’s poorest children who will be denied the opportunity to go to school.
Girls like Mapenzi from the Democratic Republic of Congo who. because of the DRC’s brutal civil war, was sent to her grandparents in another part of the country for safety.
Unable to afford to send her to school, Mapenzi’s education would have stopped if it wasn’t for the UK-funded project that allowed charity, Save the Children, to step in, pay her schools fees and provide her with the basic supplies she needed to study.
This was made possible by the UK supported Girls Education Challenge, which for twelve years transformed the lives of 1.6 million marginalised girls across 17 countries by providing the funds and know-how to give them an education.
Mapenzi’s story is a real-life example of what would be lost if the UK steps away from education. From Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, there are millions of other boys and girls who will miss out on learning if the UK turns its back on the sector.
We understand the reality of the difficult choices that now need to be made as a result of the swingeing cuts imposed on the aid budget: The world is grappling with multiple, overlapping crises—climate change, unprecedented conflict, record levels of displacement, and growing inequality.
Our appeal to the government to rethink its decision on education isn’t because we think it’s more important than the other challenges we face. It is because education is central to solving them.
It is also the cornerstone to economic growth and prosperity, which the Minister says will drive decisions about how UK aid is allocated.
She can still make good on that by affirming the UK’s commitment to the two global funds that support education—the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) and Education Cannot Wait (ECW), the fund for education in emergencies.
Since 2021, GPE has supported the education of 253 million children, trained 1.9 million teachers, and constructed or improved 36,000 classrooms.
ECW, meanwhile, ensures the growing number of children caught up in conflicts and crises also get an education. The UK helped establish ECW in 2016. Since then, it has directly supported 11.4 million children in places like Sudan, Yemen, and Bangladesh.
If the UK stops bilateral investments in education, continuing to support these two global funds will help ensure that children living in poverty and affected by conflict have a chance to go to school.
Crucially it will also mean that they will acquire the skills needed to build a better future for themselves, for their families and for their communities.
Faced with the task of implementing the cuts to aid, we now urge the government to make the best use of the funds that remain.
Working with other governments, both developing and developed, through continued membership of and support for the education global funds will do exactly that.
Doing so will also send a message to the world that we still believe in the potential of children and in the importance of allowing them to learn and develop through access to a quality education.
The education ministers the UK is hosting in London this week face enormous challenges—70% of ten-year-olds in low and middle-income countries cannot read or understand a simple sentence.
These ministers need to know that they have our political and practical support as they work to deliver the global promise that every child will be in school and learning.
If the government is serious about its commitment to growing opportunity and improving lives abroad, albeit with much less money, it must minimise the harm caused by the decision to cut aid and affirm its commitment to education.
Bambos Charambolous MP is the Labour Member for Southgate and Wood Green, and Lord Michael German is a Liberal Democrat Peer. They are Co-Chairs of the APPG on Global Education.
A version of this article appeared in The House magazine on 21 May.
