End Poverty & Educate All Children: Save the Children Proposes Bold New Strategy

JANUARY 9, 2013 BY ALEXANDRA HUMME

(c) Save the Children

Around 120 million children either never make it to school or drop out before their 4^th year. Another 130 million fail to acquire basic skills while in school. Save the Children is responding to these challenges by proposing a bold new global education goal: “By 2030, we will ensure children everywhere receive quality education and have good learning outcomes” while articulating a strategy to achieve it.

Their framework, entitled “Ending Poverty in Our Generation,” proposes goals, targets and indicators across all areas of human development. Giving every child a chance to learn—particularly the poorest—is a central part of their strategy.

Four education experts from Save the Children (Desmond Bermingham, Gerd-Hanne Fosen, Will Paxton and Dan Stone) explain their new framework in a post on the World Education Blog. See below.

Ending the learning crisis: education and equity after 2015

Global education debates are now abuzz with discussions about what will replace the Millennium Development Goals in 2015. You would be forgiven for thinking, however, that at this stage these debates are generating more heat than light. That is why today Save the Children has published its proposals for a post-2015 development framework. In Ending Poverty in Our Generation we have set out proposed goals, targets and indicators across all areas of human development.

We believe passionately that our generation is the first that can realistically talk of ending a series of global injustices. A world without poverty and without preventable child and maternal deaths is within our grasp. Education is no different. It falls to our generation, to ensure that no child is denied their right to education and no child’s life chances are cruelly limited by poor quality schools and limited opportunities to learn new skills.

That is why for education the global goal we are proposing is that “by 2030 we will ensure children everywhere receive quality education and have good learning outcomes”.

To underpin this goal our framework has three targets. The first, and most critical, is to “ensure that girls and boys everywhere are achieving good learning outcomes by the age of 12, with gaps between the poorest and the richest significantly reduced.” The second focuses on the early years and the third on young people. They are to “ensure that the poorest young children will be starting school ready to learn, with good levels of child development” and to “ensure that young people everywhere have basic literacy and numeracy, technical and life skills to become active citizens with decent employment”. We propose indicators for each target.

Running through this proposed framework are two key principles: learning and equity.Around 120 million children either never make it to school or drop out before their 4^th year, and another 130 million fail to acquire basic skills while they are there. A good education is richer and broader than being able to read, write and do basic maths, of course. In a changing world, skills such as critical thinking and creativity are becoming more important. But basic skills provide the platform from which children can access and benefit from a broader education. It is a scandal that millions of children are still learning little or nothing.

The most deprived children continue to be denied access to school, are failed even if they get into school and have the fewest resources (material and human) in the home to support learning. That is why a focus on learning must be combined with one on equity.