EI has welcomed the decision by the Board of Directors of the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) to raise US$3.5 billion over four years from donor nations for the GPE Fund. This will provide indispensable support for basic education in developing countries for the period 2015-2018.
GPE is the alliance of nearly 60 developing country governments, as well as donor governments, civil society/non-governmental organisations, teacher organisations, international organisations, and the private sector and foundations. Their joint mission is to galvanise and coordinate a global effort to provide a good quality education to children, prioritising the poorest and most vulnerable.
Significant progress has been made in ensuring more children complete primary and lower secondary education in GPE partner developing countries, which include some of the poorest countries in the world. However, much more resources are needed to maintain this progress, the GPE Board of Directors stressed on 27 February.
In addition to seeking resources for its own fund, GPE will also leverage significant increases in government education expenditures in developing countries as well as bilateral and multilateral donor funding for the world’s poorest countries.
Significant support for girls’ education
With its US$3.5 billion in fundraising, 16 million children of primary and lower secondary school age will be supported and will be educated, the majority of them girls.
“A strong GPE replenishment is critical to seizing the momentum and keeping the progress in global education,” said Julia Gillard, recently appointed GPE Board Chair and former Prime Minister of Australia. “Donor nations, developing country partners, civil society, teachers, multilateral organisations, and the private sector alike must intensify their current commitments to ensure that the right to education becomes a reality for all children.”
New funding model’s principles
The GPE Board of Directors also approved the principles for a new funding model that will be launched in June 2014. At its core, the new model will offer developing countries powerful incentives to:
- Improve the efficiency, effectiveness and equitable allocation of all finances within the education sector, both external and domestic
- Make systemic and more durable reforms to ensure more children have access to school and learning, in accordance with the goals and objectives of the Global Partnership
- Invest more of their own domestic resources into education, deepening ownership of their education systems
- Collect more and better data to increase accountability and effectiveness of education outcomes
EI: A positive step concerning quality education
“We commend GPE for its new funding model focusing on the poorest countries of the world with the biggest education needs,” said EI General Secretary Fred van Leeuwen. “This new funding model favours girls; it favours children in fragile and conflict-affected states and it favours learning. It is a positive step towards the final mile on meeting the Millennium Development Goals and driving an ambitious post-2015 development agenda, with quality education and equity in access to it.”
He also acknowledged that GPE is in the middle of its 2015-2018 replenishment campaign that will culminate in a pledging conference with all major donors and other development partners on 26 June, hosted by the European Union in Brussels, and in which an EI delegation will participate.