Dialogue: Millions of children still have no schools

TERRI-ANN SCORER* says that President Clinton's placement of education aid on the agenda for the G8 summit should be the launching pad for a long-overdue global initiative.

When the leaders of the eight richest countries in the world get together in Okinawa today to talk about what President Clinton calls "globalisation with a human face," they would do well to remember the story of two teenagers from Guinea.

A year ago, Yaguine Koita and Fode Tounkara, 14 and 15 years old, set out to stow away to Europe. They recognised they were risking their lives but wrote that at home there was not enough education or training. "We want to study and we ask that you help us study to be like you, in Africa."

They reached Bamako, Mali, where they stowed away in the landing gear on a Sabena jet. Their note was discovered with their frozen bodies after landing in Brussels.

Exactly a year after the boys set out on their journey, the G8 leaders have a chance to redeem themselves and a generation of empty promises on education. They can address the living crisis among the 125 million children who never see the inside of a school.

In Tokyo, Timbuktu and Topeka, parents know the future of their children depends on education, but in far too much of the world education is too remote or expensive. In sub-Saharan Africa, the number of children out of school is even growing.

The solution to this problem lies within the countries themselves. They must ultimately decide that educating their citizens is a better investment than upgrading their armaments.

The nations that have benefited so lavishly from globalisation must also recognise that poverty is the greatest threat to prosperity, and that they have an interest in making education for all a reality.

The G8 is not a representative body. But the great international institutions have so far succeeded only in making promises. Oxfam started the Global Campaign for Education last year because it believed education was far too important to leave to the educators and education ministers who go to international conferences. Presidents and finance ministers need to be involved to have success.

We have reason for optimism. President Clinton has put aid to primary education on the Okinawa agenda as one of three efforts needed to allow the poorest countries and regions to share in increased prosperity. Britain's Tony Blair also supports the move for a breakthrough on school for all at Okinawa. But we have heard promises before.

In 1945, the United Nations affirmed that education is a universal human right. In Thailand in 1990, 155 countries promised to get every child in the world in school by this year. In 1995, two United Nations conferences supported that goal but pushed the date back to 2015.

Last year, international citizen and teacher organisations formed the Global Campaign for Education to stop the promises and demand results in the run-up to the 10-year review of the 1990 conference. We thought the review would be short.

The promise was "no children out of school"; the reality is the 125 million children who are out of school. The trend suggests that by the new target date of 2015, 75 million children will still be out of school.

Closer to home, there are parts of the Pacific where the need for basic education is acute. According to the reports released at the World Education Forum 2000, the overall rate of literacy in Papua New Guinea is just 45 per cent over the age of 10. In the Solomons, only 40 per cent of people over 15 are considered semiliterate.

Outside of the G8, the Government here is reviewing aid to education and civil society groups are pushing for a greater focus on basic education for New Zealand's aid programme.

A global action plan is needed to come up with the $8 billion more a year needed for a decade to achieve education for all. That is about the same as four days' world spending on arms.

Under a global action plan, each country would have its own specific strategy. International donors would coordinate to contribute to the programme, which would be developed and managed locally.

Half the money needs to come from poor countries, which have the greatest responsibility for the problem, and should give priority to schools over military spending.

The other half should come from the rich countries. While they should also give priority to schools over military spending, they could reach the goal by increasing education's share of their international aid budgets from 2 percent to 6.

Additional resources should also be committed from the World Bank and other multilateral agencies. If, as World Bank President James Wolfensohn says, basic education is the best investment you can make in a developing country, the World Bank ought to do more lending for education.

Global coordination is needed to ensure the resources go to where they are needed, and to governments which have also committed their own money and are prepared to use more better.

In Dakar in April, a Unesco and World Bank-sponsored conference reviewing 10 years of "progress" agreed that a global initiative was needed to get every child in school and to reduce adult illiteracy, but did not agree what it should be. They agreed that every country should come up with a plan to get there by 2002, but did not agree on a worldwide effort.

The G8 must do better.

Yaguine Koita and Fode Tounkara have so far died in vain. How many million more must live in vain before the world acts?

* Terri-Ann Scorer is the executive director of Oxfam New Zealand.