Education: Females

(asked on 17th June 2021) - View Source

Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, with reference Government's commitment to education at the G7 in June 2021, what steps the Government is taking to ensure that its goal of increasing the number of girls who have access to 12 years of education will still be achieved following the reduction in aid spending from 0.7 to 0.5 per cent of GNI.


Answered by
Wendy Morton Portrait
Wendy Morton
This question was answered on 25th June 2021

2021 is a year of UK leadership on the world stage, including on girls' education. Meeting under the UK Presidency, G7 Foreign and Development Ministers endorsed two new, global, SDG 4 milestone targets on girls' education on 5 May, which we are calling on the world to help deliver, working in partnership with developing country partners, multilateral institutions, civil society, girl-led groups, and youth leaders. At the G7 Summit the Prime Minister announced a UK pledge of £430 million to the Global Partnership for Education, this is our largest ever pledge to GPE and an uplift of 15% from our current position as top bilateral donor. This significant pledge meant we were able to secure commitment from G7 partners of at least $2.7 billion to GPE contributing to GPE's rolling target of $5 billion over the next 5 years.

The FCDO will also spend £400 million of bilateral ODA on girls' education this year. This is separate from our pledge to GPE. This very substantial sustained investment of UK ODA is only one of our tools in achieving our ambitions.

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