International Development: Education

Stephen Twigg Excerpts

Thursday 29th March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the First Report of the International Development Committee, DfID’s work on education: Leaving no-one behind?, HC 367, and the Government response, HC 914.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Sir Graham. I first draw the House’s attention to two relevant entries in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests: last August I visited Liberia with RESULTS UK to look at health and education work there, and in 2015 I visited Jordan with Oxfam. I am also chair of the all-party parliamentary group on global education for all.

In November last year, the International Development Committee released our first report of this Parliament, on global education. Since then, the Department for International Development has published its education policy refresh and responded to our report. The bulk of the evidence gathering for the inquiry was undertaken by our predecessor Committee in the 2015 to 2017 Parliament, but the new Committee agreed to resume and conclude that inquiry. I thank members of both the current and predecessor Committees, and I particularly thank those who gave evidence to our inquiry. I especially express appreciation to the Send My Friend to School campaign for its excellent work. Send My Friend has had a real impact, engaging young people in this country in solidarity with children and young people around the world.

Education is, of course, one of the key pillars of development. The right to education is at the heart of the United Nations universal declaration of human rights and at the core of the sustainable development goals. It can indeed be the silver bullet, with the potential, alongside other measures, to reduce poverty, increase economic growth, significantly improve public health and even contribute to peace and security. That is why it is right that DFID should spend a significant proportion of its budget on education.

Since 2000 we have seen great global progress on education. The millennium development goals set an ambitious aim of achieving universal primary education by 2015. That target was not fully met; nevertheless, significant progress has been made. We saw, for example, a 50% reduction in the number of primary-age children out of school, a significant increase in global literacy rates and more girls in the poorest countries entering education than ever before.

Even with that progress, the statistics on those not in school remain staggering: 263 million children around the world are not in school and another 330 million are in school but judged not to be learning the basics. If we are to eliminate poverty, let alone tackle the challenge of inequality around the world, that needs to change. Of course, a child attending school does not on its own equate to learning, and as such the quality of education is just as important as access to places in schools.

We know that often, children arrive unprepared for school, teachers lack the skills, motivation or proper levels of remuneration required for teaching, and there is poor management and governance, all of which can undermine the quality of education available to children and young people. The driver behind the millennium development goals was to get students into school, but they did not specifically address the quality of education that those children would receive once they were there. Equity between groups needs to be addressed and, once in school, children surely need to be taught both the basics and the transferable skills needed for the modern world, including the jobs and economy of the future.

To help combat those problems, the Committee reached the conclusion that the UK needs to invest more of its education funding in early years and technical education. The benefits of pre-primary education for later learning are well proven, and there is a real appetite amongst those who work in this area to do more. In its response, the Department committed to reviewing the effectiveness of its current spending on early years education this year. When she responds, I ask the Minister to update the House on the timescale for that review.

In 2015, the UN agreed the sustainable development goals. SDG 4 has a broad remit and commits the nations of the world to improving access to and quality and equity in education. We know that to do so will require a huge leap of progress, which is achievable only with a combination of political will, strong and inclusive systems of education and long-term, sustainable funding. The global context is hugely challenging. Population displacement as a consequence of conflict or of climate change and other natural events is widespread. It is in that context that the Committee decided to look at DFID’s work on education.

I start with the crucial issue of funding. Globally, education funding remains substantially below the target level required to come close to meeting the ambitions of SDG 4. It has been estimated that the annual financing gap over the period of the global goals is about $39 billion. That is the additional amount we need to spend to reach universality in pre-primary, primary and secondary education with good quality. We have seen DFID’s funding for education fall since 2011. In 2011, the percentage of the UK’s total official development assistance spent on education was above 10%. By 2015, that had fallen to just above 7%. I understand that that was an exceptionally low figure, and I will be grateful if the Minister can give us a figure for the percentage of the UK’s total ODA spend on education in 2016, even if that is an estimate. My assumption, from the research I have done, is that the figure is probably now around 9% to 10%.

The Committee took evidence from the Malala Fund and the Global Campaign for Education, which said that the UK should be doing much more and should commit to allocating at least 15% of UK aid to education. The Committee concluded that we would like to see the amount of UK overseas development assistance going to education increase over the course of the next spending review. We commend DFID for striving to improve the value for money of what it spends on education, but we reached the conclusion that alongside that proper focus on value for money, we need additional total spending as well.

In the Government’s response, DFID said:

“The precise level of spending on education through country programmes will be determined by country offices as they consider development needs and opportunities locally.”

I invite the Minister to ensure that country offices give education the high priority it surely deserves. In response to the Committee’s recommendation that DFID should support the international finance facility for education, the Department stated that it is “considering its feasibility”, but is

“not yet in a position to support the proposal.”

Can the Minister outline when the Department might be able to reach a decision and, we hope, give support to that new financing facility on education?

Of course, DFID provides a lot of its education funding via multilaterals, most notably the Global Partnership for Education, which was established in 2002 with the aim of strengthening education systems in the poorest and middle-income countries. GPE works directly with Education Ministries in those countries to implement, monitor and evaluate their education work. Uniquely, GPE asks countries for a commitment from their Governments to increase the amount that they spend on education in return for the funding that it gives. The recent replenishment conference in Senegal in February saw 50 countries commit, as part of this, to increasing their domestic public expenditure on education. That is very positive and is to be welcomed.

The Committee recommended that the UK should agree to the full amount that GPE requested from the United Kingdom for that replenishment, which was £300 million over three years. We also said that, if the UK was to have a cap on its contribution, it should be announced early as a tool to encourage other donors to commit generously to the fund. In the event, DFID pledged significantly less than we requested—£225 million over three years. It is welcome that the United Kingdom remains a major funder of GPE, but I am disappointed that a more generous pledge was not made, and certainly that it was not made at an earlier stage.

The aim of SDG 4.5 is to

“eliminate gender disparities in education and ensure equal access to all levels of education and vocational training”.

We know that girls are far more likely than boys to be excluded from education in the poorest countries. It is often said in the development world, “If you educate a woman, you educate a nation”. That is supported by evidence. According to UNICEF, educating girls has a multiplier effect and brings a litany of other benefits in areas such as health. DFID has a positive story to tell when it comes to girls’ education. The Girls’ Education Challenge, launched in 2012, is a positive, innovative programme with the aim of getting the most marginalised girls into school. It has so far given around £300 million to projects in 18 different countries.

The evidence we received about the programme was overwhelmingly positive, and the Committee’s message is that DFID should continue to be at the forefront of such programmes to ensure girls’ and young women’s access to education. I know that the Department is currently reviewing the GEC. In the light of an Independent Commission on Aid Impact report, we recommended that the Department should certainly seek to fund programmes in the second stage of the GEC, particularly focusing on reducing the drop-out rate at key transition points in girls’ education.

We also know that disabled children face huge barriers to education, in our own country as well as globally. According to the World Bank, around 15% of the global population experience some form of disability. Analysis by the Education Commission estimated that around half of all disabled children in low and middle-income countries are not in school at all. As Julia McGeown from Humanity and Inclusion told us:

“Disability is the biggest reason why children are out of school.”

As I have said, DFID has already shown leadership on education for girls and young women. It is now surely time for DFID to show the same leadership on the needs of disabled children.

According to much of the evidence we received, we have seen real progress as a result of the Department’s disability framework, which was recommended by our predecessor Committee in the 2010-15 Parliament. However, more now needs to be done to ensure that it is implemented right across the Department’s programmes and is integral to all aid, including that administered by other Government Departments.

When our predecessor Committee visited Kenya as part of this inquiry, we were impressed by the GEC project run by Leonard Cheshire Disability in Kisumu. The programme worked with disabled girls and, indeed, some boys, and there is a strong argument for the Department to look at that programme and to look at how it could be extended in Kenya and in other parts of the world. In particular, while we entirely understood the focus on disabled girls, one message we got from parents that we met, and also from some of the headteachers, was that they would like the Department to look at a similar programme for disabled boys.

In responding to the Committee’s recommendations on improving access to education, DFID states that it is looking to deepen international engagement in this area. Will the Minister set out in her response how we can use the upcoming Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting here in London in April, and also the very welcome disability summit in July, to encourage this crucial international engagement? I ask her to particularly address the potential for the disability summit to be an opportunity for the UK to set out much more fully how we will support education for disabled children and young people in the longer term.

By 2030, the share of the extreme poor living in conflict-affected countries is expected to rise to more than 60%. We know that the number of displaced people has grown extraordinarily in the last two decades. In 1997, 34 million people—a very large figure—lived as displaced people, either as refugees or internally. That figure has almost doubled since, with 66 million people living as displaced people in 2016, about a third of which are refugees and two thirds of which are internally displaced. That is more than the population of the United Kingdom living as displaced people around the world.

Our predecessor Committee saw evidence of that when we visited Jordan and Lebanon as part of the inquiry. We witnessed at first hand the extraordinary support DFID has given to the Governments there, but we also saw and welcomed the remarkable hospitality of the Governments and peoples of those two countries in response to those who had fled conflict in neighbouring Syria. That work on education for Syrian refugees has made a real, life-saving difference to a whole generation of Syrian children who had to flee not only their homes but their country.

While we were in Jordan, we also visited a very impressive school run by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian children. At a time when the US Administration is threatening to cut its financial support for UNRWA, does the Minister agree that it is vital that we and other donors step in to ensure that UNRWA’s remarkable and important work with Palestinian children is able to continue? We also visited Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. Migration flows in that part of Africa are very high because of conflicts in South Sudan, the Congo and elsewhere.

We know that more than half of the world’s registered refugees of school age are not in school. The funding for education during humanitarian emergencies is not always readily available; less than 2% of all humanitarian funding goes towards education in emergencies. As conflicts become longer and more protracted, surely it is vital that the international community provides the funds and infrastructure for students to continue to get an education while they are displaced. Children caught up in crises should surely not be denied that basic right to an education. During the Committee’s recent visit to Bangladesh, we had the opportunity to visit a child-friendly space in the sprawling Cox’s Bazar refugee camp. Much more needs to be done there to ensure that Rohingya children get access to even the most basic of education during this crisis.

DFID played a leading role in establishing the Education Cannot Wait fund. The fund has attracted considerable financial support, about a third of which has come from this country, which is surely very welcome. It is all about seeking to help children living in emergencies, clearly through no fault of their own.

One aspect that I want to focus on before I finish is the importance of the school as a safe haven for children to learn even during conflict. A quarter of a billion children—some 246 million—are affected by violence each year, with an average of 15 life-threatening attacks on education establishments every single day. Too many children face the threat of their school being bombed or attacked by military or armed groups, and children in conflict-affected states have much higher drop-out and absence rates than elsewhere.

We know, for example, that Nigeria has the highest number of out-of-school primary age children in sub-Saharan Africa, despite being one of the better-off countries in that region. One of the reasons for that is the continued attacks on education by Boko Haram. DFID has already taken steps to try to address that by, for example, seeking to ensure that schools are protected during conflicts and rebuilt afterwards. However, the UK can further take the lead on that if we sign up to the safe schools declaration, which outlines the positive and protective role that education can play and aims to prevent attacks on schools and education facilities during conflict.

The declaration has attracted international support from Canada to Côte d’Ivoire and from Afghanistan to France. I hope the Government will soon commit to becoming the 73rd signatory to the agreement. Perhaps the Minister can update the House today on progress towards achieving that.

The sustainable development goals’ focus is on “leaving no one behind”. If we are to translate that aspiration into reality, we need to give much higher priority to investing in global education. I welcome today’s debate as an opportunity both to discuss our report and the Government’s response and also for us to demonstrate once again the very strong cross-party support for achieving the highest possible quality of education for children and young people around the world.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Twigg]

We have had an excellent debate and I thank everyone who has taken part in it, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick), who rightly reminded us about the central importance of road safety education; the hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire (Mrs Latham), who is now the longest serving member of our Committee and an invaluable member, and she rightly reminded us about the central theme of the global goals of leaving no-one behind; my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle), who is one of the new members of the Committee, having joined the House last year, and he has brought great new energy and enthusiasm and represented us at the replenishment conference in Senegal; the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Scully), who spoke very powerfully, in particular about what we saw when we were in Uganda and Kenya; the hon. Member for Glasgow East (David Linden), who spoke for the Scottish National party and who also spoke very powerfully, based on what he saw when he visited Tanzania; and my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden), the shadow Minister, who is my constituency neighbour and who rightly reminded us of the central importance of leadership by our country if we are going to address these crucial issues.

Finally, I thank the Minister for her response to this debate, including responding to questions that I put during it. The theme that she set out—the five words—is one that can unite us all today: “12 years of quality education”.