Global Education for the Most Marginalised

David Linden Excerpts

Tuesday 26th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[David Linden (Glasgow East) (SNP)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered global education for the most marginalised.

It is always a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Hollobone. I thank all hon. Members for their attendance this afternoon. These days—and today of all days—it feels like our focus is relentlessly on Brexit, yet there are other pressing issues on the agenda. I am particularly grateful to fellow members of the all-party parliamentary group on global education for their support and for being here this afternoon. I thank RESULTS UK for its excellent and informative briefing ahead of this debate. I draw hon. Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, specifically to the fact that I took part in a delegation to Tanzania in September 2017. It is largely my experience in Tanzania and the work of the Send My Friend to School campaign that motivated me to apply for this debate.

Some folk watching are probably wondering why the MP for Glasgow East was in Tanzania, not Tollcross, just a few months after a narrowly fought election contest during the general election. It was precisely because of my experience during the general election that I wanted to dedicate some of my time as an MP to international development and advocating for the most disadvantaged in our world. During the election campaign, I faced a number of relatively hostile questions about the 0.7% target. I was asked why we bothered with international aid. Some folk even reeled off soundbites such as, “Charity begins at home.” As a first-time candidate, I was faced with an instant dilemma: did I keep my head down and just nod along, agreeing with those uninformed, right-wing, reactionary arguments, or did I stand up and speak out, demanding that children in eastern Africa get the same level of education as my children in Glasgow East? During my time in Tanzania, my eyes were truly opened to the shocking educational inequality that the world faces.

Before I come on to the substance of my remarks, it will be useful to set the scene and provide a bit of context about my concerns and why I applied for this debate. We know from UNESCO data that 262 million children and young people are unable to access education; that 387 million children of primary school age do not achieve the minimum proficiency levels in reading; that twice as many girls as boys never start school; that half of all children with disabilities in low and middle-income countries do not go to school; and that refugee children are five times more likely to be out of school than their non-refugee peers. Crucially, many of the furthest-behind children experience several factors of marginalisation at the same time, in overlapping and reinforcing ways, which increases their exclusion.

Girls in conflict-affected countries are almost two and a half times more likely to be out of school than those in countries that are not in conflict. The poorest children are four times more likely not to go to school than the richest. That is an incredibly stark statistic. We all agree that education is a universal human right, but due to inequality, millions of children are still locked out of education simply because of who they are and where they live. Members of Parliament would not countenance the idea that the children in the poorest parts of our constituencies do not go to school while those in more affluent polling districts get an education, but on a larger scale that is essentially what is happening in the world today.

In 2017, I had the privilege of joining a parliamentary delegation to Tanzania alongside the hon. Member for Crawley (Henry Smith), the hon. Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods) and Lord Watts. I want to reflect on some of what I saw on the ground as I travelled through Dodoma, Sigita and Dar es Salaam. To understand better the challenges we face in global education, let us drill down and see why such inequality in education persists. First, unequal education systems around the world perpetuate and reinforce inequality, as the critical early years of education are neglected in development, humanitarian and crisis settings. Put simply, schools that serve disadvantaged communities, despite the fact that they have the greatest needs, have the poorest teaching and learning environments because they are under-resourced and under-supported. Disadvantaged communities are more likely to suffer from a shortage of schools and only have schools that are of the poorest infrastructure quality. Basic things such as a lack of sanitary provision at schools means that there are further consequences for young female students, in particular.

Secondly, inadequate domestic resources mean that education systems are under-financed. Far too many Governments still fail to meet the internationally recommended allocation of 15% to 20% of total public expenditure allocated to education. Education budgets are often spent without enough sensitivity and attention to reaching the furthest-behind groups. That often creates a situation in which households have to bear the significant financial burden of paying fees to send their children to school. Fees remain a major barrier to education for the world’s poorest. We need greater and more effective international financing, as aid to education is stagnating. In short, domestic and international education financing should be underpinned by progressive universalism and expanding provision for all, while focusing on the furthest behind.

Thirdly, many children are locked out of learning because their identities are culturally devalued or because of a lack of political representation. Discrimination can be explicit through laws and policies that exclude certain groups of children from learning, such as national education systems that prevent refugee children’s access to education, or implicit through social and cultural norms, such as taboos and myths about menstruation, which prevent girls from attending school, or the perception that children with disabilities are unable to learn.

I was appalled to learn that young girls in Tanzania miss at least one month of the school year due to menstruation. According to the Netherlands Development Organisation’s baseline survey report on schoolgirls’ menstrual hygiene management, about 84% of schools have no hand-washing facilities. Village girls either use inappropriate materials to manage menstrual flow or simply miss school altogether. We see period poverty on a massive scale, with hugely detrimental consequences. Many girls struggle to complete their studies because of teenage pregnancies. A 2010 reports from the United Nations stated that about 8,000 Tanzanian girls per year are forced to leave school due to teenage pregnancy. We know from experience how difficult it is for them to return.

I want to turn to children with disabilities. When I visited a school in the Bahi district, I witnessed a child with a hearing impairment sitting at the very back of the class with no hearing aid. I questioned the logic of that with the teacher. There are also issues relating to how we resource teachers, and the training and resources they get. For example, Bahi Makulu Primary School had 804 pupils and just 12 teachers, whose training was extremely limited, not least regarding additional support needs provision.

Fourthly, there are issues relating to accountability. Unless decision makers are held accountable for the progress of the most marginalised in education, the learning crisis will persist. Accountability for the most marginalised children in education is difficult, given that there are few countries that collect sufficient data to identify and track the children who are falling furthest behind. Too many children remain invisible in datasets, including children in conflict and crisis-affected contexts, and children with disabilities. Decision makers must commit to collecting more data and using it to map how inequalities intersect and overlap, and to plan interventions and investment accordingly.

Having comprehensively set the scene, I want to turn to the action we should take. I commend the schools in the east end in my constituency and those right across the UK that will be joining Send My Friend to School in its “Unlock Education for Everyone” campaign by creating paper keys depicting the inequality in education around the world. They will present those keys to Members of Parliament and will call on the UK Government to unlock education for everyone.

That brings me nicely to some of my asks of the Minister. I sent them to her in advance, so I am not just about to bombard her with lots of questions. What can the British Government do? I believe that they should reaffirm and champion the “leave no one behind” pledge in education and lead on its implementation. They should also use international meetings and events, including the G7, G20 and the High-level Political Forum on Sustainable Development, to press other Governments and international organisations to take action to address intersecting inequalities in education. In determining global policy, we should engage and collaborate with disadvantaged and marginalised children and their families at the grassroots level. That should include engagement with teachers and their unions, developing partners and networks, including the organisations that represent local people, and locally based community groups.

On our work with other countries, the UK Government should work with developing-country partner Governments and other key stakeholders to support inclusive gender and disability-responsive education sector plans and budgets, to ensure that no child or young person is left behind. For our part, we should ensure that all UK-funded education programmes, including development and humanitarian programmes, disaggregate data by age, socioeconomic status, gender, immigration and disability, and where possible, by ethnicity and locality.

We should also build measures for evaluating the impact and effectiveness of programmes in addressing intersecting inequalities in all education programmes. That should include specific measures to evaluate their impact in including and providing quality education to the marginalised. We should also promote the importance of holistic, cross-Government and cross-sectoral commitment and action to achieve Sustainable Development Goal 4, particularly across Ministries of education, finance, gender, health and child protection, in tandem with civil society.

When it comes to ensuring that we invest equitably, the Government should commit to increasing financing for education and ensuring that it reaches the hardest to reach. That can be done, for example, by renewing and increasing the UK’s commitment to Education Cannot Wait. We could support the inclusive education initiative and advocate for additional donors to support the fund. We should support the Global Partnership for Education financially and through critical engagement with its governance and operations.

We should encourage any new mechanisms in the education financing architecture that would deliver on the “leave no one behind” education pledge, including through adopting equity-based stepping-stone targets. We should accelerate progress for hard-to-reach adolescent girls through continued support for the girls’ education challenge and by strengthening its approach to addressing intersecting inequalities.

Having set out that long list of asks and questions for the Government, I will round off, not with clunky data or questions, but with a case study. Aquira is head girl at her community school in rural Zambia. She says:

“When I was younger, my uncle took me to Lusaka, the capital city of Zambia, and his wife made me into a maid. I did the housework, cooking, and looked after their children. After some time, I was 10 years old and I contacted my mum and said Uncle wasn’t taking me to school so she said she would come and get me. But my Uncle refused.”

Aquira was eventually able to return to school, after contacting her mother again, but she continues to face obstacles. She says:

“Sometimes, I stopped coming to school because of money.”

Aquira faces many barriers in her education journey, including a rural location, gender discrimination, employment and fees. None the less, she is supported by her family and her community to go to school, so she can realise her dream of becoming a nurse. That is Aquira’s story.

Hon. Members have perhaps noticed that I have been wearing a rather wonderful tartan tie throughout the debate. It is the school tie of Mount Vernon Primary School in my constituency. I have visited that school on a number of occasions and I know that the children there receive a first-class education, which they get because we as a society have chosen to invest in their education and provide them with the resources that they need. The distance from Mount Vernon Primary School to Aquira’s school in Zambia is well over 7,600 miles, but in an educational sense, they are probably even further apart.

My message to the Government today is crystal clear: let us get to a place where children like Aquira receive the same high-quality education as the children at Mount Vernon who proudly wear these ties. With political will and the support of hon. Members, as well as that of our constituents, that is not an unachievable aim, but one towards which we should all be proud to work.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[David Linden]

At one point I was worried the debate would collapse early, given the rate at which we were getting through speeches, but we can always rely on certain Members—the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) included—to pad things out.

In all seriousness, we had an excellent debate. I often say to my constituents back home in Glasgow that Westminster Hall is the place where I most enjoy being in Westminster. I am a Scottish nationalist politician, so I generally do not enjoy being in Westminster, but Westminster Hall is the safe space I come to. It is a place where we do consensus politics, and the House is at its best when we speak with one voice.

The Minister is right that there was only one bone of contention. Well, perhaps there were two, if we count whether we should explain 0.7% to primary school pupils as 70p in £100 or 7p in a tenner, but the only real bone of contention was private involvement, on which there is perhaps more for us to talk about.

Debates like this are about ensuring that the House empowers the Minister to go to the Treasury and argue for further investment and resources. I think we did that very well. Much more can be done to move this agenda forward through the all-party parliamentary group on global education for all, which is chaired by the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), but given the consensus we heard today, I am confident that we can move forward. I am sure we all look forward to having many more debates like this one and much more of the open dialogue I have greatly appreciated this afternoon.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered global education for the most marginalised.