Education: Children

(asked on 8th October 2020) - View Source

Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that its education programmes focus on supporting the poorest and most marginalised children.


Answered by
Wendy Morton Portrait
Wendy Morton
This question was answered on 16th October 2020

Our education programmes prioritise the poorest and most marginalised children, especially girls. The UK is a world leader in supporting girls' education and champions the right of all girls to 12 years of quality education by 2030. Between 2015 and 2020 the UK supported at least 15.6 million children around the world to gain a decent education, of which 8.1 million were girls.

The UK is dedicated to supporting education in emergencies and protracted crises: reaching these children is critical to global progress towards Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4. The UK is the largest donor to Education Cannot Wait, the global fund for education in emergencies, and Chairs its Executive Committee. During the COVID-19 pandemic, we recognise that children already living through emergencies are at a double disadvantage. The UK has provided an additional £5 million to ECW as well as £5.3 million to UNHCR to support refugee education.

There are an estimated 65 million children with disabilities, and 1/3 of all out of school children at the primary level have a disability. In 2019, together with the World Bank and the Norwegian Government, we launched the Inclusive Education Initiative (IEI). This initiative is providing technical expertise to help make education more inclusive for children across the spectrum of disabilities.

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