Gordon brown backs education campaign
21 April 2008
The Prime Minister has given his support to the Global Campaign for Education's action week aimed at pushing forward the Millennium Development Goal of education for all children by 2015.
Speaking to journalists in a conference call from Number 10, the PM said that 2008 "must be a year of action" if the 2015 target is to be met. He said that education is a "moral issue" as well as an economic one and spoke of his desire to be part of the first generation to ensure that all children have a chance to go to school.
Mr Brown pledged to push the issue of universal education at the EU summit in June and also the G8 summit to be held in Japan in July. The time had come to build a "global partnership" of governments and NGOs to ensure that promises made at the Millennium Development summit in 2000 were met, he said.
US recording artist Shakira, a long-standing advocate of universal education, also took part in the conference call. She thanked the PM for his "strong leadership" and "consistent commitment" to the education goal and said it was "unbelievable" that 72 million children around the world had no access to any form of education.
Robert Zoellick, President of the World Bank, told listeners that schooling had "laid the foundation of modern economic development" and that "no country has lifted itself out of poverty without education". He called for "long-term and predictable" aid to help countries access the "untapped talents" of their people.
This Wednesday children around the world will aim to conduct a lesson simultaneously on the issue of education for all, with five million young people across 100 countries expected to take part. The campaign is running an initiative called "Send my Friend" to help pupils in poorer countries into school.
Image copyright: Reuters
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