By Tony Baker, Sr. Advisor for External Engagement – Education at World Vision International

Next week’s UN Transforming Education Summit comes at a time when the world is facing “a crisis on top of a crisis” in the words of IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva, referring to the double crisis of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine. Add to that inflation, debt, climate change, hunger, and crises in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and it is even more evident that concrete domestic and international actions are immediately needed if children and young people’s right to education is to be protected.

As global leaders make final preparations for the Transforming Education Summit, new data from UNESCO shows that 244 million children and young people – nearly 1 out of 5 worldwide – are still out of school. Of these, about 78 million are in crisis-affected settings. When additionally considering the nearly 144 million crisis-affected children and adolescents who are in school – though almost 120 million of them, or 83%, are not achieving minimum competencies in mathematics and reading – Education Cannot Wait estimates that 222 million crisis-affected children and young people are in need of education support. That’s more than the total populations of Germany, the United Kingdom, and Italy combined.

Meanwhile official development assistance (ODA) has been generally flat since the 1970s, remaining at roughly 0.3% of donor country gross national income despite the long-standing international target of 0.7% and record high increases in global wealth. In 2021, only 2.5% of global humanitarian financing was allocated to education, below the UN target of 4% and far below the better practice of 10% laudably being met by the European Union.

Three Transformations for Whole-Child Support in Emergencies and Crises

In response to the increasing threats on the education of the world’s most vulnerable children, nearly 100 organizations around the world are calling on governments and partners to make concrete commitments at the Transforming Education Summit to support education in emergencies and protracted crises.

Three Transformations for Whole-Child Support in Emergencies and Crises, released on International Day to Protect Education for Attack last week by World Vision International, 100 Million, and the Global Campaign for Education – United States endorsed by a total of 92 youth-, student-, refugee-, and teacher-led organisations and other global education stakeholders, outlines three transformations needed from the Transforming Education Summit:

1. Coordinated planning and response: Recognizing that national education plans and humanitarian responses are a two-way street if education systems are to be crisis-resilient and bridge the humanitarian-development-peace nexus, a more joined-up approach between humanitarian and development actors is needed to ensure that disaster risk reduction and emergency preparedness are integrated into national education plans and that education and the life-saving role it plays is incorporated into all humanitarian responses.
2. Intersectoral coordination: The barriers to education that children and young people are facing today are not just education barriers – they are health, nutrition, safety, protection, and economic barriers. Cross-sectoral needs like early childhood development, school feeding, mental health and psychosocial support, and protection from gender-based violence are even more essential to the continued education and learning of crisis-affected children and young people. Whole-child support requires whole-child solutions that can only be achieved by breaking down sector siloes and increasing coordination across the education, health, water, sanitation, and social protection sectors at the global and local levels.
3. Financing free education: School fees and other costs continue to be barriers to accessing education, with debt incurred from them even preventing some students from returning to school following COVID-19 closures. Children and young people are not the only ones in debt, with a growing number of governments now spending more on debt servicing than on education. It is more critical than ever to ensure that grant-based financing facilities such as Education Cannot Wait, the Global Partnership for Education, and the Global Partnership to End Violence Against Children are fully funded.

Accountability Takes a Village, and a World

The Transforming Education Summit has now developed a Commitment to Action on Education in Crisis Situations that answers civil society’s call for clear commitments to be made at the Summit and reflecting the priority areas outlined above. It is a fully welcomed step forward to ensuring that the Summit concludes with concrete actions to be taken by Member States and partners.

Like any commitment however, it is the beginning, not the end. The next task to make them meaningful will be monitoring and accountability, which is being framed in the latest call to action to follow up on the transformative commitments made at the Summit. The follow-up will be lead by the SDG4 High-Level Steering Committee and monitored by the GEM Report and UNESCO Institute for Statistics by building on the existing SDG4 benchmarking process.

A shift in accountability approaches and shared understanding across the landscape of actors is needed in order for commitments like these to be successful. Civil society has too often seen commitments fail to achieve their intended outcomes – reports showing empty promises left unfulfilled, civil society looking on in disappointment, and all being stuck on a treadmill of renewed pledges and re-reiterations of goals.

What may actually be lacking is the fuller role of civil society itself. Is the participation of civil society organizations, non-governmental organizations, youth-led organizations, children, young people, parents, and community members treated as an essential aspect critical to the success of planning and implementation equally alongside the roles of governments and agencies, or as a box-ticking exercise due to pressure or requirements? Does civil society utilize its place at the table to only criticize governments and agencies in the name of accountability, or as a contributing partner with shared ownership of success as well as failure?

Meaningful collaboration with children, young people, community members, and civil society can make or break development and humanitarian efforts in the current geopolitical landscape. Multi-stakeholder platforms like the Global Partnership for Education and Education Cannot Wait in particular have ingredients in place that can help ensure civil society’s active role with governments and agencies at the global and local levels in a shared, coordinated pursuit of achieving Transforming Education Summit commitments in the coming years.

This is the movement that the Transforming Education Summit promises and is in unique global position to take forward, with a heavy but essential task ahead to unite and coordinate. As Education Cannot Wait Director Yasmine Sherif recently stated, “It will take a global village to reach these children.” We at World Vision know well that It Takes A World to help children overcome the challenges they are facing today, particularly in education. As the Transforming Education Summit prepares to raise its official curtain, 92 organizations around the world stand ready to play their active part in making the Summit’s commitments to crisis-affected children and young people a reality.