Illiteracy is as imprisoning and cruel as the slave trade we voted to end 200 years ago. Education is a human right that should be granted irrespective of birth. Without that right, tens of thousands of children will never realise their potential and never bridge the gap between what they are and what they could become.
The utterly unfair waste of talents and potentials of millions of children who are excluded from chances we take for granted is entirely preventable. Yet every day almost 80 million primary school-aged children across the world are denied an education. There are moral, economic and strategic reasons why we must ensure that the poorest people in our world have access to such basic rights as knowing how to read and write.
Having the right skills and abilities are essential for long-term prosperity and economic growth. Education is vital in the fight against extreme poverty in developing countries. Knowledge helps combat the spread of diseases such as HIV and Aids.
Women who have had schooling are thought to be three times better able to protect themselves against HIV than those with no education. In Swaziland, two thirds of teenage girls in school are free from HIV, while two thirds of girls out of school have HIV. Girls’ education helps to reduce the rate of child mortality and improve the nutrition and prospects of future generations.
In 2005, Make Poverty History forced governments to make promises on aid. Now we must work hard towards keeping our promise that, come 2015, every one of the world’s children is able to go to school. In 2006, Nelson Mandela came out of retirement to say that, in the empowerment of people, no goal is more important than achieving what is perhaps the most important right of all – the right of every child to go to school.
At the heart of this is a commitment to empower people and invest in their individual potential. This will only be achieved by a partnership between rich and poor. What we need is nothing less than a global New Deal between developed and developing countries, as bold and as farsighted as the Marshall Plan of the 1940s.
In April last year, Hilary Benn and I committed the UK government to spending £8.5bn on aid for education over the next 10 years. The cost of universal primary education is not prohibitive. An extra $10bn a year by 2010 is probably the most cost-effective investment the world could make. Educating a child in Africa costs only $100 a year. So to give every child a primary education would cost only 2p a day for each person in the richest nations.
But it is not just about an aid package. We must also raise awareness about how schools in the UK can build links with schools in the developing world. A joint DfID/Treasury initiative, called the World Classroom, aims to encourage UK schools to build links with schools in the developing world. Through these links, pupils in the UK can begin to learn that children their own age in other countries have much the same hopes and aspirations as they do.
DfID’s global school partnerships provide support to schools wishing to participate in the initiative. And the funding for this support now stands at £7.5m from April 2006 over three years. I am very excited about this project. Exchanging ideas and understanding different cultures helps pupils both in the UK and in the developing world.
Although education may be limited in many countries, I hope that through this programme thousands of children will realise they are not so different from their colleagues in Africa, India and all over the world. When I visited Tanzania, I met a 12-year-old girl. Her brother was suffering from HIV/Aids and she told me that to help him her ambition was to be a doctor. But I knew there and then that this impoverished girl, no matter how determined she was, could not even enjoy a secondary school education, far less pay for a medical education.
This story is repeated daily across Africa: opportunity denied, potential thwarted, chances destroyed. As we look ahead, I ask that you think of the words of Nelson Mandela. He said: ‘Do not look the other way; do not hesitate. Recognise that the world is hungry for action, not words. Act with courage and vision.’ With each of us displaying just a small amount of courage and acting on it, we can make the difference that will change the world.
For more information visit www.dfid.gov.uk