Millennium Development Goals

Lord Crisp Excerpts

Thursday 7th November 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Crisp (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Loomba, on keeping up the pressure and the profile of this fantastically important issue, although I recognise that Her Majesty’s Government obviously understands this issue well. Nevertheless, we should keep the pressure up and keep producing examples of what works.

I want to make three points. The first is to re-emphasise something that the noble Lord, Lord Loomba, said; namely, that girls’ education is not only good in itself but is good as a means for other things. As people probably know, I speak from a background in health and my understanding of the fact that it is empowered women and educated girls who have big impacts in all kinds of areas of life. The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, referred to the cultural context. DfID has done some very good work in a number of areas on health where it has engaged traditional leaders, particularly around issues such as maternal mortality. I wonder—simply because I do not know—the extent to which DfID has engaged traditional leaders in Africa and other places to put pressure on their communities to get girls to school, as they have done with maternal mortality.

All my points will repeat what someone else has said because, broadly, we are talking about a common understanding. My second point is about primary education. There is a developing issue in Africa, which is where I notice it, with people who have got primary education asking, “What happens next?”. The issues about higher and further education apply not only to girls of course. It would be good to hear from the Minister the Government’s view on that and on educating people to a certain level but not recognising the whole system.

My final point is on disability. I chair Sightsavers, which is concerned with the blind. We are very conscious of the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Browne of Ladyton, that people who have multiple disadvantages are the least likely to get educated. If girls are less likely to get educated anyway, a disabled girl is going to have a bigger problem.

I believe the issue is even wider than that. A DfID publication states:

“It is principally the poor, rural children, children of uneducated mothers and children with disabilities that are excluded from education”.

There again is the point about this going down the generations and the fact that educating women can help to reverse that cycle.

I know that the Government, the Prime Minister and the high-level panel have made these pledges about leaving nobody behind, but that makes sense only if we can measure it in some way. It will be critical to understand how the Department for International Development and other agencies around the world will help to ensure that there are some measurement processes in place that will record whether girls with a disability are actually being excluded from education or are getting their fair share of it. How will monitoring be undertaken?