UNESCO global education meeting

Heads of State and Government, ministers from over 70 countries and international partners met online in an extraordinary Global Education Meeting and adopted a Declaration expressing strong commitment to protect education financing and outlining measures to be adopted over the next year to safeguard education from the devastating impact of the disruption caused by COVID19.

The Declaration defines priority actions that are essential for educational recovery in the coming 15 months:

1. Taking every measure to reopen schools safely and inclusively;
2. Supporting all teachers as frontline workers and paying serious heed to their training and professional development;
3. Investing in skills development from the socio-emotional dimension to gaining competences for new jobs;
4. Narrowing the digital divide that has shut out education for one third of the world’s students.

In the Declaration, governments and partners state their commitment to:

1. Maintain or increase the share of public spending on education to at least 4-6% of GDP and/or 15-20% of public expenditure;
2. Ensure that stimulus packages support measures that will mitigate learning losses and get the most vulnerable back to school;
3. Increase the volume, predictability and effectiveness of international aid, and
4. Target aid to countries and populations most in need including those who are not reached by government programmes.

This echoes the Declaration to examine and propose strategies in order to recover and accelerate progress and to strengthen the SDG-Education 2030 Steering Committee to steer and coordinate global cooperation in education.

Click here to read the complete article and Declaration.