Save Our Future - a global campaign
23 October 2020
Education Development Trust works closely with agencies around the world to improve education outcomes, informing collaborations with partners, policymakers and clients to transform lives. The global education challenge was already vast prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, with 260 million children around the world out of school, and many millions further in school but learning very little. Now, the lives of the world’s children and young people have been impacted beyond imagination as 1.6 billion children and young people – 80% percent of whom live in developing countries – have faced major disruption to their education disrupted as a result of the pandemic.
We are proud to be supporting the Save Our Future campaign – a global coalition to amplify children’s voices, highlighting the biggest challenge now facing the world’s youth is: education. Education system leaders have high-stakes decisions to make and there is much that governments around the world can do to support education systems worldwide. Leaders need to be informed with the latest evidence to understand how their system has been, and will be, affected and how to build resilience for the future. At Education Development Trust, we have been producing rapid-turnaround research, examining the increasing evidence from around the world on what is working well, in order to inform strategies for education systems, leaders and teachers. This, alongside our longer-term research and programmes, underpins our expertise in education system change and helps us to understand the bright spots around the world and the impacts of previous emergencies. Our own work both pre-Covid and in pivoting our programmes in response to today’s unprecedented challenges further enriches our understanding of effective practice.
This global coalition of organisations has called for urgent investment in education today to prevent a generational catastrophe, and this week launches a whitepaper to this end: Save Our Future: Averting an Education Catastrophe for the World’s Children. The paper outlines seven recommendations, calling for governments and the international community to commit to:
- Protecting education budgets and targeting budgets to those left furthest behind
- Fully financing education as a key part of the Covid-19 recovery process
- Improving coordination and use of evidence to ensure education funding achieves maximum impact
- Prioritising safely reopening schools, resuming delivery of vital services (such as health and nutrition) to children, and protecting the education workforce
- Transforming education – making it more inclusive, engaging, and adaptive so that it can act as the desperately needed engine of sustainable development
- Strengthening the education workforce, so that teachers and other professionals are equipped to enable learning and well-being for all children
- Focusing education technology where it is proven to be effective and most equitable, and avoiding the risk that technology continues to exacerbate inequality.
Our own rapid reviews of policy response indicate a confused and chaotic situation in most contexts, with many countries not yet having plans for the reopening of schools. The aspiration must not be to ‘get back to normal’, as for many learners ‘normal’ was far from a good education. Policymakers now must strive to build back better, with new strategies in school systems that are sure to provide equity in access, with clear accountability across the whole workforce, instructional and transformational leadership, and teacher professional development to support them in successfully delivering new ways of working.
Save Our Future brings together like-minded agencies and organisations from around the world to work together in moving forward with this opportunity to transform education around the world, and we look forward to seeing the outcomes of this timely campaign. Read more about the campaign at: saveourfuture.world.
Download the full paper here.
Download the executive summary here.
About the Save Our Future Campaign
Save Our Future is a global movement of diverse voices uniting to amplify the voices of children and young people as they deliver a simple, yet powerful message amidst the COVID-19 crisis: Save Our Future. Find out more at saveourfuture.world. Save Our Future is led by a core hub of the Association for the Development of Education in Africa, the Asian Development Bank, BRAC, Education Above All, Education Cannot Wait, the Education Commission, the Education Outcomes Fund, the Global Partnership for Education, Save the Children, UNESCO, UNHCR, UNICEF, the World Bank, and the World Food Programme in partnership with over 600 organizations and youth.