International Day of Education

Sam Rushworth Excerpts

Thursday 22nd January 2026 Westminster Hall

[Sam Rushworth (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Southgate and Wood Green (Bambos Charalambous) for his excellent speech and for the excellent event he hosted this week with Send My Friend to School. It was very moving to see so many young people and children coming to Parliament to tell us to speak up for their values and their belief in global education.

Prior to entering this place, I had the privilege of spending a few years as a teacher at a school in Rwanda, where I was doing my PhD research. It was a world away from what we know as a school. I had a chalkboard at the front and a few pieces of chalk, and the children had notebooks and pens—those were about the only resources we had to deliver learning. To this day, it always warms my heart when they reach out to me on social media to let me know how they are doing. Most of them are in their mid-20s, successful and thriving in the world.

I want to talk briefly about one of the young men who attended that school. He was a genocide orphan who, after the genocide, found himself living at the rubbish dump in Kigali in the shell of a burned-out car. He would go out each day with other children and pick through the dump for food to survive. After a few years of that, an American woman who was in the area got out of her car one day to give these street children—they are called mayibobo, which means children of the street—some bread rolls. This young man went up to her and said, “Please, I would like to go to school.” She felt moved, so she put him in the back of her taxi, took him to a local family she trusted, and paid them to put him through school.

A few years later, another child at the young man’s school was being bullied because he was poor—he was scruffy and did not have the school supplies. Remembering his experience as a street child, the young man formed a little charitable group in the school. They clubbed together to secretly put school supplies on the student’s bed to help him through school. From that act, they set up a charity at their school, which now has chapters across the entire country, and also in North America and Europe. It is a youth-led charity and it inspires young people to do good. The young man went on to get a scholarship to Harvard University. He did not mention his background because he wanted to have it on merit. Today, he continues to do incredible work. That story illustrates to me not only the incredible success, but how many children like him remain at the rubbish dump and are not given those opportunities.

Global education is facing cuts of £3.2 billion by the end of 2026. That is severe, and the impact will be felt by an entire generation of children around the world. That amount sadly includes cuts to UK aid, although I should say that the UK cannot and should not be expected to go it alone on global education. There are many other things that we need to do. For example, 34 countries in Africa spend more on debt interest every year than they spend on education and health. That is a disgrace. This Parliament could do something by legislating to change that reality, and I hope that we do. We need to do more to encourage other countries that, frankly, could give more and do not to step up.

It is in our national interest to build strong partnerships. I have worked in international development and met many Ministers in other countries, and I noticed how often they were educated in the UK, and how often they previously worked at a university. Unlike in this place, where we tend to appoint Ministers who are not necessarily specialists in their field, it is generally the case in the global south that Ministers come through the academic ranks and are a specialist in their area. They often have views that were shaped by their time studying at a UK university, or by their relationship to one, which is incredibly important. Other institutions that we should be greatly proud of include the Voluntary Service Overseas, which does important work in education around the world, and the British Council. They are really important parts of UK soft power.

As the world is changing and becoming more volatile, and as Britain’s place in it is shrinking, there are some big players in the world today who do not share our democratic values or our belief in human rights, and who are positioning themselves to sweep up influence across the global south. In that context, we really need to think, as they often do, of a 100-year plan, and what it would look like to shape the world in our image, have people learning our language and have more people feeling a great affinity with this country. That is another important role we can play by investing in education.

I am aware that other Members wish to speak, so I will conclude by appealing for education to be a bigger part of UK thinking about development. The higher education partnerships are so crucial, but so are the school-to-school partnerships and the idea of making development education a part of our national curriculum. It was heartwarming, at my hon. Friend’s event this week, to see children who were globally aware citizens who wanted to connect with children in other parts of the world and to work together to shape a better world. They had some strong messages for us, and we need to listen to them.

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[Valerie Vaz (in the Chair)]

Order. I ask the hon. Member to stick to the motion.

[Sam Rushworth]

While the hon. Member is on that point, we are all aware of a letter that he wrote in 2020, in which he urged President Elect Joe Biden to do exactly what the Government are doing. Will the hon. Member say why his opinion has changed on the matter?

[Andrew Rosindell]

I am so pleased that the hon. Member has raised that point. With your permission, Ms Vaz, I will answer it.