Two striking pieces in Canadian newspapers use the launch in Ottawa on Thursday March 25, of the 2010 Education for All Global Monitoring Report as a springboard to consider how the Group of 8 summit in Canada in June could make up the Education for All funding shortfall. In the Globe and Mail, Queen Rania of Jordan elaborates on the ideas that “educated children have slippery hands,” “educated children are like tree bark” and “an educated child is like a tugboat” to make her point that “Education isn’t just a social issue – it’s the social issue. It underpins everything we value: health, equality, sustainability and more.”

In the Toronto Star, Stephen Lewis, the former UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, and Kevin Watkins, the director of the Education for All Global Monitoring Report, argue that education is the G8’s chance to leave a lasting legacy: “If this is to be the last G8 summit, what better legacy to leave than a road map that will help put millions of kids into school, save lives and do away with the obscene inequalities that scar and destabilize our world?”