STATEMENT: Response to education financing at today's GPE Summit
In response to education financing at the Global Partnership for Education Summit Bidisha Pillai, Save the Children International’s Global Campaigns and Advocacy Director said:
“Today’s announcement pushes the learning and wellbeing of millions of children across the world further into jeopardy. Leaders raised just over $4 billion at the Global Education Summit – dangerously short of the $5 billion target – signalling a refusal by leaders to invest in the next generation. Ultimately it is children who will pay for this decision with their futures.
We stand side by side with children in the world's toughest places.
While governments of developing countries have committed $192 billion in domestic financing, some of the richest countries in the world have failed to match this level of ambition and deliver what is needed to tackle the learning crisis and get children safely back to school in the wake of the pandemic.
This is a blow to the millions of children impacted by inequality and discrimination who have missed out on school due to the pandemic to help protect our public health, up to 16 million of whom may never return on top of the 258 million children already denied their right to education.
We know the impacts are worst for the poorest children in low-income countries, who have lost 66% more of their lifetime schooldays during the pandemic compared with their peers in richer countries.
Now is not the time to turn our backs on them. If we are to recover from this crisis, leaders must urgently step up to meet the full $5 billion replenishment or risk losing a generation to the pandemic”.
For more information and to arrange media interviews, please contact:
- media@savethechildren.org.uk / +44(0)7831 650409
