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Media releases > Hand up for girls' education
Across the world, voices unite for girls' education
(6 April 2003)
The Global Week of Action for Education April 6-13 2003A new world was opening out for me and I was quite excited. Suddenly I did not feel so hopeless.
(Safia, schoolgirl, Pakistan) Millions of parents, teachers and children around the world are calling on their governments to provide free, good quality, basic education for all the world's children. They are part of the Global Campaign for Education; we add our voice to their call.
(Nelson Mandela and Graça Machel
Today, Wednesday 9 April, 2003, as part of a Global Week of Action for Education, 750,000 children, in more than 100 countries, will attempt to break the record for the World's Biggest Lesson. In a bid to raise awareness of the vital importance of educating girls, the children will be joined by celebrities, politicians, teachers, parents and policy makers in venues across the world from New York to Delhi to London. The central UK event will be at 3pm in Wembley Grand Hall, London, where two thousand five hundred children will attend.
Education is a basic right and educating girls is a vital tool in the fight against poverty yet girls still make up more than half of the 115 million children out of school worldwide, and more than two-thirds of the world's 860 million illiterate adults, reveals a new report, launched today by the Global Campaign for Education (GCE) who organise the Week of Action.
'Getting girls into school is literally a matter of life and death,' said the directors of ActionAid, Oxfam, Save the Children and VSO, who are part of the GCE,
The children of women who have completed primary education are on average twice as likely to survive beyond the age of five, and half as likely to suffer from malnutrition. The benefits are enormous; the obstacles must be overcome.
The Global Campaign for Education (GCE) is an international coalition of development organisations and unions, which aims to hold rich governments to their promises to get an equal number of girls and boys into education by 2005, and all children into school by 2015.
It is vital that governments act now to ensure that all girls and women receive access to education. Educating girls is the way best of taking communities and families out of poverty. It is also the best way of improving health. There are no acceptable reasons for failing to meet the agreed goals,
said Eamon O'Kane of the NASUWT and Steve Sinnot of the NUT, who are also members of the coalition.
The GCE report highlights success stories from countries, such as Bangladesh, that have made real progress in getting girls into school. Using these examples as learning points it recommends that making schools safe for girls, hiring more female teachers, removing school fees, and encouraging families to see the benefits of educating girls, are among the possible solutions to the problem of fewer girls attending school than boys. Education for all would be affordable if rich countries spent $5.6bn per year on aid for education. This is the equivalent of less than 3 days average global military spending.
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