Millennium Development Goals
(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Loomba
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress has been made on the Millennium Development Goals covering the improvement of education for girls and young women in developing countries.
Lord Loomba (LD)
My Lords, I welcome this opportunity to debate progress towards the millennium development goals concerning the education of women and girls in developing countries. I know that my noble friend Lady Northover was going to respond to this debate but is unable to do so. I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Bates, in her place and I hope he is as passionate about the plight of women and girls in developing countries as she is, and I look forward to his response.
The UN’s flagship millennium development goals campaign launched in 2000 gave many of us great hope. It gave us hope that by 2015 important issues, such as education, promoting gender equality and health, will have been significantly improved in developing countries. While I am delighted that some progress has been made in these areas, I remain concerned that 2015 is now on the horizon but not enough progress has been made in order to hit these goals within this timescale.
Education should be the birthright of every child. Unfortunately, the statistics tell us a very different story. More than 57 million children around the world do not go to primary school. Even more shockingly, at least 250 million children cannot read or count, whether or not they go to school. Despite some progress, the UN is falling short of its promise to ensure that,
“by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling”.
Education is the key to solving many of the health crises across the developing world. It is also the key to minimising conflict. It is well known by the UN, Governments and NGOs that investing in education for women and girls is one of the most effective ways of reducing poverty. I am proud that the UK Government have committed to spending 0.7% of income on aid to help the world’s poorest people. They, like me, realise that children are our future. This money from our country will go towards educating 11 million of the world’s poorest and most disadvantaged children. Ring-fencing this money was the right thing to do and I commend my right honourable friend the Deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, for fighting for this to happen.
The Department for International Development’s priorities for education focus on improving learning, reaching more children and keeping girls in school. It is right to focus on keeping girls in school as there are so many places around the world where they are stopped from receiving the education they need. Stemming from this important priority is the Girls’ Education Challenge, which was set up by the department in 2011 to help up to a million of the world’s poorest girls have an opportunity to improve their lives through education. I was disappointed to see on the department’s website that only £7.5 million out of the possible budget of £61 million has been spent so far through this initiative. I ask the Minister to look into this and see whether improvements can be made.
The now infamous case of Malala Yousafzai, shot by the Taliban for campaigning for girls to be educated in Pakistan is sadly one of many examples throughout the world of women being held back from education.
The reasons why girls are not on a par with their brothers in education across developing countries are complex and diverse, but in many cases interconnected. Research shows that boys are still favoured by parents to receive education over girls in many countries. Early marriage, early pregnancy, domestic responsibilities and a gender-insensitive curriculum are just some of the reasons cited for that. Those issues must be addressed by the respective Governments in partnership with the UN to make more progress on the MDG framework.
What practical steps can Governments take to get more girls into education across the world? The culture of boys being favoured over girls to be educated must stop, and attitudes need to change. There is a growing body of evidence to demonstrate a strong relationship between the presence of female teachers and the attendance and performance of girls in schools, particularly in rural areas. Female teachers are often seen as role models for the girls and their parents. Breaking down barriers such as that one is essential to success.
Having greater female participation and influence in public life in developing countries is another key to growing the number of girls in education. That will ensure that female-specific needs and interests are promoted and defended. On a practical level, that could be as simple as ensuring that schools have female toilets and drinking water, which will encourage girls to go to school.
Government support and leadership in developing countries is essential to deliver more girls into education. I declare an interest: through my charity, the Loomba Foundation, I have seen that first hand. We do a huge amount of work in India educating the children of widows. There are 500 million children of widows across the world, according to UN figures, and 51% of them are girls. Despite making good progress in many parts of India, we had difficulties in the north-eastern states. That was primarily due to the lack of regional government support and leadership. That lack of government support is in my view one of the key contributing factors to why MDG framework targets have not been met in many developing countries.
I leave your Lordships with this. It is vital that the UN sets ambitious but achievable goals, targets and indicators within the post-2015 MDG framework, especially about ensuring that more women and girls have the opportunity to be educated. That will have a positive ripple effect on other problems facing developing countries, such as general and maternal health, gender equality and help to reduce child mortality.
Education is the best gift that anyone can give a child, and I welcome the continuing support from our Government to developing countries in that area. However, I ask our Government to do even more to get larger numbers of girls into education and to put pressure on the UN and other Governments to help to achieve that.
Baroness Chalker of Wallasey (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Loomba on raising this issue because now is certainly the time to put pressure not only on our own departments but on all the international organisations in which we work. While girls’ education is becoming accepted in some countries, I am afraid the vast majority of girls in the developing world probably have the opportunity of education only in the primary stage and not beyond. Should they marry early or fall pregnant, that opportunity is frequently removed from them by one means or another.
I have been looking at what the United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative has been doing across many countries and, while it is laudable, it is very patchy. It does not extend and I have tried to find examples. Most of my mine come from Africa but there are others. I want to highlight a couple that are indicative of what can be done in other places and are known to have worked. In Rwanda, the United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative has functioned as a multistakeholder partnership and if that were extended to other countries, it would work very well. It is not just a question of getting parents to send their girls to school; there is also the problem of getting educationalists in national government departments to realise the importance of girls going to school. So you have to work from both ends of the problem—through the individual departments of education and through the families. You also have to work through the churches and the mosques. With the mosques we have a problem, which I am not qualified to talk about, in the sense that so many do not think girls’ education is valuable. But I firmly believe that there is much more that can be done by setting an example in government departments, in districts of countries and through the various institutions.
Certainly, the revised education sector strategic plan that came into effect in July this year in Rwanda was easier to enact there because it is a small country. In a huge country like Ethiopia which is difficult to get around and where communications are not yet of a nature where you can rely on the internet, it is notable that since a gender budgeting guideline was developed there some five years ago, there has been much better debate on capacity building and gender mainstreaming. This is an interesting area which I hope to follow up in December when I am there. There are also new measures in Zambia, helped by the influence of UNICEF, which has some very good ideas, such as its re-entry policy guidelines for teenage mothers, the finalisation of the child protection policy for schools and its gender review of HIV and AIDS policy.
I could quote many other examples, such as in Tanzania and other African countries, but what I note above all else is the fact that there are so many gaps between what is accepted in international forums and what happens in Governments and, based on an understanding of the problems, we have to bring pressure to bear on those national Governments as well as encouraging families to keep girl children in education.
Lord Browne of Ladyton (Lab)
My Lords, I, too, wish to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Loomba, on securing this important debate and creating an opportunity for this issue to be brought to the attention of your Lordships’ House and to engage with the Government on it. It is an enormous privilege to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Chalker, and I commend the previous speeches for setting out the issues which need to be addressed. In the short time I have I intend to address just one discrete point.
Women and girls are marginalised enough but when multiple inequalities intersect, they are marginalised even more. More than one-third of the 57 million children who are not in school have a disability. There are very limited data on disability and they need to address this lacuna and make it one of the key messages of the global disability movement for the post-2015 framework to address. However, if there were statistics they would almost certainly show that girls are unequally represented among the children with disabilities who are out of school. There are a number of reasons for this and the noble Lord, Lord Loomba, enumerated some of them. They include broader gender inequality and entrenched cultural attitudes towards girls and women. Often girls and women in households are responsible for caring, cooking and cleaning or just working to support the family. There are often early and forced marriages of girls and a lack of female teachers or school managers or other female role models to encourage girls to participate. Unfortunately, gender-based violence and harassment, particularly on long journeys to school, make girls feel very unsafe. Among other things, poverty causes families to make choices about which children they should send to school and they often favour sending boys.
The MDGs 2 and 3 on universal primary education of girls have made considerable progress but, as the MDGs make no mention of disability, the harsh fact is that this progress has not reached girls with disabilities. The high-level panel’s shift on “leave no one behind” is to be welcomed. The UK Government have a special responsibility to ensure that this emphasis is not lost, as the discussions continue at UN level.
I am aware that girls’ education is a major priority for the Department for International Development. One of the headline goals is keeping girls, particularly the most marginalised, in school. A target for 2011-12 to 2014-15 to support 11 million girls and boys in school is a significant challenge and the sub-target of 1 million of the most marginalised girls is even more challenging. I welcome this focus and DfID’s flagship Girls’ Education Challenge, which is intended to deliver a step change in ensuring that the barriers that prevent girls from benefiting from education are removed.
I end with one simple but important question to the noble Lord, Lord Bates: how is DfID’s Girls’ Education Challenge fund reaching girls with disabilities?
Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Loomba for securing this important debate. I think we would all accept that when you educate a girl you also benefit her family. Although eliminating gender disparity has been a major focus of the MDGs, there are still 31 million girls of primary age not in school.
The poor quality of schooling in many parts of the developing world causes many girls to drop out and return to domestic or agricultural work. In some places the teachers do not turn up, demand bribes or are simply not well enough educated themselves. Among many other charities, the Steve Sinnott Foundation is trying to do something about that by training some of the teachers over here. As has been said, another reason why girls in rural areas do not go to school is because they simply fear for their safety on the journey. Among adult women, literacy rates are rising and the gender gap is narrowing. Even so, women represent two-thirds of the world’s illiterate adults.
If we draw any conclusions from the MDGs it should be that development must be holistic to have any real impact. The charity Network for Africa found that Rwandan women were unable to attend their free literacy and numeracy classes or vocational training sessions because they were worried about the safety of their children who were left at home. When childcare was provided, girls were no longer being kept home to care for younger siblings; mothers attended training programmes; and toddlers, who benefited from just one year of nutritious meals and cognitive development games, gained years ahead of their peers in health and mental ability. The women in the project quadrupled their income, on average, after six months. When women know that their babies are safe, they will attend classes and improve their life prospects.
Sadly, MDG progress sometimes disguises the fact that social norms still perpetuate discriminatory behaviour toward girls and women. Until someone challenges the idea that we cannot question traditional culture, no great strides will be made. Therefore, in the MDGs post-2015, we need indicators for social norms embedded into every aspect of development programming.
The MDGs tackle the easy part. The tough part is challenging cultures that keep discrimination against women in every aspect of their lives. The myth that gender equality is culturally sensitive and must be treated with kid gloves has to be challenged and debunked and the importance of universal human rights stressed. The position of adolescent girls is crucial and ought to be one of the focuses post-2015. Adolescence is when girls realise that their dreams are unattainable because of cultural traditions and persisting views about gender roles. It is all very well aiming attention at schooling but if negative attitudes still exist in the home they will dominate girls’ lives.
Finally, I wish to make a point about the importance of education in emergencies; it is an aspect of global education that is often forgotten. Nowhere is this more critical than in complex emergencies like the crisis in Syria. Currently in Syria, 2.3 million children inside the country and 400,000 refugee children are without education. More than 4,000 schools have been destroyed, damaged, used as shelters or occupied. In countries surrounding Syria, refugee children have put a strain on the local education systems. Without education and adequate psycho-social support, these children are at risk of accepting violence as normal and replicating it, undermining their own futures, the future of their nations and the stability of the region. The future of an entire generation lies in the balance; the global community must be more strategic in its planning and take steps now to avoid this lost generation and destruction of the region.
I ask the Minister whether the UK Government will ensure that the post-2015 MDG agenda adopts a 100% target for quality, basic education for all children and that inequalities relating to gender, location, age, and income levels will be tracked in all the targets in the post-2015 framework.
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?
Lord Moynihan (Con)
My Lords, I declare an interest as a member of the International Olympic Committee’s International Relations Commission, and will focus my remarks on the importance that sporting opportunities can have in advancing the MDGs and improving education for girls and women in developing countries.
Since the introduction of the MDGs, the world of sport has applied significant resources to development, helping to promote formal education, culture, healthy lifestyles, human rights, sustainability, gender equality, understanding among peoples and peace, to name a few. In my opinion, education underpins the entire set of MDGs. It is similarly the cornerstone of Olympism, a philosophy that aims to educate youth around the world through sport and its values.
The Olympic values reflect the notion of sport as a school of life. The IOC’s Olympic Values education programme forms an essential part of this perspective. The project was designed for children and young people, with developing countries in mind. The IOC has now rightly teamed up with the United Nations, with its observer status, and in particular with the work of UNESCO, to apply this programme to its network of schools in line with the organisation’s mandate to enhance and enrich quality education worldwide.
Gender equality is also critical to the world of sport in general. It is a matter of fairness. It is a human right that women and girls should be accorded the same opportunities as the other half of humanity. All of us involved in sport accept the universal reality that women are underrepresented in all aspects of life—political, economic and social—and that we all must do our best to contribute to the international agenda of righting that situation. The situation in sport reflects the importance of this balance both on the playing field and in administrations. The goal was and is to ensure that girls and women across the developing world are given equal opportunities to engage in sport and physical activities throughout their lifespan. The development of women’s sport is one aspect of a more general societal, social and cultural evolution which provides increased recognition of the roles and needs of women in society. These roles and needs are very similar to those already enjoyed by men and are signposts of a healthy society.
I am mindful of the many other challenges that the women of the world face in their daily lives, but the issue of women in sport is directly related to human and social rights. Sport is an integral part of society and exerts an influence on our lifestyle and social perceptions. The fundamental principles of the Olympic Charter state that every human being must have the possibility of practising sport in accordance with his or her needs.
I point to just one practical example; namely, the International Olympic Committee’s support of the UN Secretary-General’s Zero Hunger Challenge leading up to the 2016 Olympics in Rio. There is no level playing field in sport or in life without adequate nutrition for all. Few people appreciate the importance of good nutrition better than athletes, but hunger stunts the potential of 165 million children—one in four around the globe—and we have regrettably failed to meet the millennium development goal to halve hunger by 2015. Athletes can help to get these messages out as they know better than anyone the impact of nutrition on performance.
The UN Secretary-General has made 100% access to food for all an essential element of his Zero Hunger Challenge. Former President Lula’s Fome Zero programme in Brazil was the inspiration for the Zero Hunger Challenge, which was launched in Rio in 2012, making it a neat fit with the Brazil 2016 Olympics. At the closing ceremony of the London 2012 Olympics, the Brazilian Government formally promised to make hunger and nutrition a focus of the Rio 2016 Olympics; such is the power of sport. All of us who are involved in sport need to build a coalition of sporting personalities from around the globe—especially from developing countries—to speak in support of the Zero Hunger Challenge. The UN has wisely suggested that leading athletes could promote zero hunger through field project visits, media messages, speeches, editorials or articles.
I close with the reflection that the empowerment of women is at the core of an essential process which we need to put in place. Strengthening leadership and entrepreneurship capacities for women in and through sport will inevitably bring women to the forefront, and enable communities in developing countries to benefit from the increased contribution of more than half of the world’s population.
Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead (Lab)
My Lords, education is of course a basic human right, and it is one of the very best ways to reduce poverty within families and indeed across generations. It is key to efforts which have to be made to advance gender equality and women’s empowerment. Education provides the building blocks a girl needs if she is to participate fully in society, earn a living and care for her children and family. It also prepares her to stand up for her right to make her own decisions about her own life and her own future. Education is the one constant positive determinant of practically every single development outcome we seek.
Yesterday I met Manizha and Samira from Afghanistan, who are women’s rights activists. They described the regular attacks on girls who walk to school, the girls’ schools which have been burnt down, the acid attacks on girls, the poisoning of girls’ school drinking water, and the threats and violence that teachers face if they teach girls. Extremists clearly do their best to terrorise girls who still dare to go to school in Afghanistan. They told me about their concerns that there is insufficient monitoring by DfID of funds allocated to the Ministry of Education in Kabul. I would therefore appreciate information from the Minister on what checks and balances are in place to ensure that the funds are properly managed and distributed so that girls get their fair share of those funds.
In the limited time that I have, I also ask the Minister whether he agrees that UN discussions must focus on the urgent need to work to ensure that there is universal literacy by 2030. That has to include tackling the gender gap in access to literacy across the generations. An Education for All statistic tells us that of the 760 million illiterate adults around the world, two-thirds are women. This is despite the clear evidence that, unless there is a much stronger commitment to access to education for women and mothers, they will continue to be excluded and marginalised. Is it not time that Governments placed greater emphasis on tackling the blatantly discriminatory social norms which continue to dictate that boys’ education is to be valued more than girls’ education? Simply emphasising getting girls into schools is not enough. Unless a firm priority is given to the need to tackle the root causes of gender inequality, frankly it just will not ever happen.
The new global framework to be finalised in 2015 will include access to secondary education. Will the Minister outline DfID’s view on how girls’ transition to secondary school can be supported? Will the UK move beyond the high-level panel report recommendations and support a stronger position which recognises those underlying causes of gender inequality? I trust that the UK will convey a strong message on the need for a strong and explicit focus on gender inequality and women’s rights post-2015. The fact is that millions of women and girls simply cannot wait for the fulfilment of their right to a quality education.
Lord Bhatia (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Loomba, for raising this important issue today. He is an acknowledged individual who has worked on this issue for many years, particularly in India. I declare my interest as the vice-chair of the India 800 Foundation and as a supporter of a recently established charity called the Pearl Education Foundation.
I believe that the statistics published by various national and international agencies mask some of the realities of the problems facing women and girls in Asia and Africa. I should like to focus on some main issues relating to women and young girls. They are those of education and healthcare for women and, in particular, young girls between the ages of eight and 16. Many young girls are unable to go to school because many schools, both primary and secondary, do not have toilet facilities. That is a big issue and a deterrent that stops young girls attending schools. Many mothers of those young girls who have not been through any formal education are themselves unaware of those problems. The second issue on the health front for young girls is access to affordable sanitary towels. Right on the ground, those NGOs that work on this issue find that rags of clothing are used again and again, causing immense health issues. Please will the Minister inform us whether those two issues form part of Britain’s funding for women and girls under the millennium development goals?
Although Britain is contributing substantial funding through DfID in the third world, I draw the Minister’s attention to the issues facing many women who come to Britain from third-world countries to join their families. Research shows that many women who come from third-world countries are unable to speak English or connect with the wider community. As a result, finding jobs becomes almost impossible. Their inability to talk to their doctors and those at their children’s schools is well known. ESOL for those isolated groups of women, to bring them from the margins to the mainstream, is very important. Very little funding is available from local or central government, and I hope that the Minister will look into the issue and inform the Committee what is being done to increase funding in that area of work in the United Kingdom.
Baroness Thornton (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Loomba, on initiating this debate. I am aware that I am probably the least qualified on international matters to speak in it, given the excellent contributions, particularly when I put myself alongside my noble friends Lady Kinnock and Lord Browne.
The noble Lord, Lord Loomba, outlined the key issues, and I will not repeat them. However, the fact that we know that 123 million young people still lack basic reading and writing skills and that 61% of them are young women is a huge concern. We know that the millennium development goals will not be met in full so, surely, the question for the British Government to address is: what happens next? Are the UK Government involved in discussions about post-2015, particularly as outlined by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley?
I want to make two points about how important girls’ education is. The first is to do with reproductive rights and control over their own fertility. We know that there are 215 million women in the developing world who want to delay or avoid pregnancy. We also know that all the information available from across the world, some of which was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Chalker, tells us that the whole of their societies and communities benefit when women have control of their sexual health and childbirth.
The second link is between illiteracy and sexual violence. Yesterday, I read an article in the Nairobi Star from Kenya. A report had been published on the Ganze sub-county that states that higher literacy levels are partly to blame for the increase in cases of sexual, gender-based violence. The reason for this is in this report. Basically, the high illiteracy level hinders the conceptualisation of information about gender-based violence. In other words, young women and parents cannot report gender-based violence because they are illiterate. They do not understand how to do these things. Indeed, the children’s officer who compiled the report pointed out that literacy classes would be enormously beneficial in this respect.
We should take some hope from initiatives that have been taken and the dedication of people who are determined to effect change across the world to get girls and women educated. I would like to mention that our former Prime Minister Gordon Brown has dedicated a great deal of his time to this issue. He was the person who moderated the United Nations session in September in which Malala made her speech about the importance of education. It is worth quoting from that speech. Among her remarks she calls on leaders to focus on education:
“This is our demand, our request to all the responsible people—that instead of sending weapons, instead of sending tanks to Afghanistan and all these countries that are suffering from terrorism, send books. Instead of sending tanks, send pens. Instead of sending soldiers, send teachers. This is the only way we can fight for education”—
well, exactly.
I would also like to pay tribute to Hillary Clinton and the work that the Clinton Foundation is doing. No Ceilings: the Full Participation Project links education to women’s control over their lives, fertility and health. It is important to end my remarks on a note of hope. There is hope and there are people who are dedicated. I would like the Minister to assure us that the British Government are taking part in the hopeful nature of what comes next.
Lord Bates (Con)
I thank all noble Lords for taking part in this debate. I particularly pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Loomba for introducing this debate so effectively and comprehensively. He has great authority from his work over many decades in this area of levelling the playing field to help women and girls around the world. He was also quite right to refer to the fact that my noble friend Lady Northover, the lead Minister for DfID in the House of Lords, particularly wanted to be here, but due to a close family bereavement she is unable to be. I am sure that the whole Committee will want to send our condolences to my noble friend.
As the 2015 deadline for the millennium development goals approaches, it is right that we come together today to explore the core issues around the progress of education for girls and women. Progress on MDGs 2 and 3 has been made. Globally, more girls go to school; in sub-Saharan Africa, the net enrolment rate for girls rose from 47% to 75% between 1990 and 2011. Gender parity in primary enrolment has improved significantly in regions that started the decade with the greatest gender gaps. Literacy rates are on the rise, and gender gaps are narrowing.
However, under Millennium Development Goal 3, the target of gender parity in primary and secondary education has been achieved by only two out of 130 countries. Gender gaps in access to education have narrowed, but girls are still disproportionately absent from the classroom; 31 million girls are still out of school, and 70% of these are from the most disadvantaged communities in the world. In 10 countries, at least half of poor, rural girls have never been to school. Girls suffer double discrimination; first because they are poor and secondly because they are female.
I now turn to the points raised in the debate to give them maximum time because there were some excellent points and pertinent questions.
The noble Lord, Lord Loomba, asked a specific question about allocations of the gender fund which has been established. He mentioned his disappointment with the information from the website which showed that perhaps not much of it had been drawn down. Of course, the updating of websites is an essential part of communication; I looked into that and found that the figure was from April. As of now, £225 million has been allocated, and £25 million has been spent. This is an innovative process where people are bidding for funds and therefore to ensure that there are the correct checks and balances, the period during which those funds get distributed is longer than normal.
By 2015 the UK will have supported 11 million children in education in primary and secondary schools and 190,000 teachers. There are some very innovative examples taking place in the Punjab region, which will be of particular interest to the noble Lord. Stipends have been introduced for children to encourage them to take part in school. This means actually sending them the books and the pens and giving them some resource to enable them to attend school. That applies to 400,000 children in the Punjab area, which I think is a positive initiative.
I remember serving in the other place with my noble friend Lady Chalker when she was Minister for Overseas Development, before it was so fashionable. She served in that role with great distinction for eight years and it is thanks to her that much of the legacy continues. She mentioned Rwanda and Ethiopia and I listened carefully to her points, particularly about the importance of having supportive governance in place at a provincial level to encourage education and make it a priority. It reminds us that educating girls is only the first step towards empowering them to take greater control of their whole lives, and to then move on to becoming more economically active, to have a greater base and then to move into government, governance and institutions. It was well pointed out that as well as being educated, women are also educators; if you have an educated parent then you will have an educated child.
The noble Lord, Lord Browne, asked a specific question about disability. There is some progress there. The noble Lord highlighted—and with astute knowledge because of his experience—where the canards are in this particular debate, because the absence of reliable data is one of the things that the high-level panel noted needed a great deal more work. One of the new millennium development goals was a data revolution, and how you disaggregate that data to show gender differences and then disaggregate that further to show differences between disability. I would just mention two points to the noble Lord. First, DfID has a strong commitment to the education of people with disabilities and it seeks to ensure all new educational construction directly funded by DfID is accessible to people with disabilities. Secondly, it is also working with other organisations, including the World Bank and NGOs, to improve and get better data so that they can tackle this issue. One of the pieces of data which quite shocked me does not relate to a specific area, but says that the limited statistics that are available indicate that only 3% of adults with disabilities are literate in the poorest countries of the world, and only 1% of women with disabilities. The data issue is a key part and that is something which DfID is looking at.
The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, spoke powerfully about Syria in particular, and she used the words “the lost generation”, which is a great tragedy with so many refugees who are coming. On a recent visit, the Secretary of State established the lost generation fund of £30 million for children in Syria and the surrounding areas to ensure that they have better access to education. Therefore, we hope that the diplomatic efforts will be gathering pace, although that might take time. Of course, these are critical years for these children, some of whom I have seen myself in schools in the Bekaa area. She also mentioned access to good-quality education, which is important.
The noble Lord, Lord Crisp, mentioned completing education as well as making a point on data. He referred to his work with Sightsavers, which I know makes a huge difference around the world. Some 10 million children drop out from primary school education every year. The Girls’ Education Challenge will ensure that barriers preventing girls from benefiting from education are tackled at root by collecting data in a systematic way, by trying to track progress through the secondary school system and by asking those who qualify for the fund to collate data on the proportion of women marrying by the age of 15, attitudes towards age of marriage and choice of marriage partners. That data will help inform further work and further allocations.
My noble friend Lord Moynihan spoke about Olympic values, which of course have equality at their heart. As an Olympian of note, he has done a huge amount in this area. Last year, he rightly was awarded the Olympic Order of Merit for his work not just on the London Olympic Games but over many years on the international side and the development side. He works as a trustee of International Inspiration as well. He mentioned the Hunger Summit and the Hunger Challenge which came out of 2012. Before I came to the Moses Room, I read the new IOC president’s speech to the General Assembly of the United Nations yesterday to mark the Olympic Truce, which he and I worked on last year. He will have been heartened by that. It referred to the millennium development goals and the hunger pledges that were made, particularly towards Rio, which reminds us that education is body, mind and soul.
The noble Baroness, Lady Kinnock, served in the Foreign Office as a Minister and knows this area well. She spoke about the importance of ensuring funds to help and support Afghanistan in particular. The point is that women and girls are up front and central in all DfID’s considerations. The funding of £47 million over three years which DfID has allocated to the Ministry of Education is being supervised with that very much in mind. Just yesterday, my noble friend Lady Warsi met with officials from Afghanistan on that very point.
The noble Lord, Lord Bhatia, raised a specific point on the experience of migrants in education in the UK. Perhaps I may write to him on that. I would be very happy to meet on the margins of this debate to take better note of that issue. The noble Baroness, Lady Thornton, spoke about reproductive rights, which of course is a key part of giving women control over their own lives and bodies. It is a critical area that we need to look at. She also recognised the work of Gordon Brown as the UN Secretary-General’s envoy, particularly on global education. All who saw the incredibly moving speech by Malala in the margins of the General Assembly really brought hope to us about the importance of education. The more that her voice is heard, the better.
It is right therefore that the Government place women and girls at the centre of their approach. All UK education programmes in developing countries prioritise the education of girls and, where needed, have specific interventions to address gender-specific barriers to educational opportunities. UK aid has so far supported 6.4 million children at primary and secondary level, of which 3.1 million were girls. Looking beyond 2015, the UK, through the Prime Minister and his co-chairmanship of the high-level panel, has been at the forefront of building momentum around the standalone goal for women and girls in the new development framework. However, this battle is far from won. We will continue to work with others to push this important agenda forward over the next two years.
To conclude, it is important that we focus on keeping NGOs, charities and the private sector engaged in developing projects that will expand education opportunities for women and girls. The noble Lord, Lord Loomba, began our debate by reminding us that education is the best gift you can give any child. Much has been done but more needs to be done.