Oxfam reaction to UNESCO Global Monitoring Report 2015

Reacting to today's UNESCO Global Monitoring Report 2015: Education for All 2000-2015: Achievements and challenges, Oxfam education expert Sandra Dworack says:

“The fact that the world’s poorest children are five times more likely not to complete primary school than the world’s richest shows that efforts to achieve education for all have missed the poorest and most marginalized children. Education is supposed to be our most powerful tool to fight inequality -- it is unacceptable that disadvantages related to income, location, gender, group or disability hamper the chances of people to access quality education and live a life free from poverty.” 

“Governments and donors are not doing enough to ensure free, high quality public schools are available to all children, especially the most excluded. Instead, too many are turning toward so-called low-cost private education, which only increases inequality by forcing the poor to pay fees for profit-making schools of questionable quality. Poor girls and women are often the first to drop out if schooling is contingent on fees. 

“The way forward is to make strong political and financial commitments for quality, public education systems that offer schooling free of charge – in the context of the post-2015 Sustainable Development agenda. National governments must work to strengthen their tax base to raise more domestic resources to invest in quality education, especially sufficient numbers of trained and qualified teachers. Donors should support partner countries in building quality public education systems and increase the share of ODA for education to bridge the financing gap of $22 billion annually. The world must act now to end inequality in education.”