Question to the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, what steps her Department has taken to help advance the two global girls’ education targets since the meeting of the G7 in June 2021.

We have built on the momentum of the G7 and UK-hosted Global Education Summit to push forward progress on girls' education. At COP26 we shone a spotlight on the links between education and climate and called for countries to prioritise early learning in their efforts to mitigate climate change. In Afghanistan the UK has called for girls' right to secondary education to be restored, and UK humanitarian funds are helping provide safe spaces for learning for 38,000 displaced children, including 28,000 girls.

As of mid-December, more than 647 million school children were still affected by partial or full school closures. Ministers are pressing national governments to reopen schools as a matter of priority, while our bilateral education programmes and flagship Girls' Education Challenge continue to support children to catch-up on the learning they have lost. On 26 January the UK helped launch a new report by the Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel focused on recovering children's education, as part of our commitment to increase the global evidence base for education reform.