At an international conference organized by Qatar Foundation’s global education initiative, the former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown warned about the underfunding of education while speaking at Education Disrupted, Education Reimagined Part II.

Gordon Brown, a UN Special Envoy for Global Education, voiced his fears that “hope will die” among millions of children and young people if they are denied access to learning because their countries cannot afford to give them the opportunity. 

He called for solutions including debt relief for the poorest nations to allow them to invest in education and health. 

 “I harbor the aspiration that we will be in a world where we are developing the potential of all young people, but we also have to recognize that we have an education emergency impacting the life chances of millions of children around the world.’’

“It’s said you can survive 40 days without food, eight days without water, and eight minutes without air, but you can’t survive for a second without hope’’ 

‘Hope doesn’t just die when food convoys cannot get through or ventilators are not available, it can die when young people feel they don’t have a chance to plan, or dream about future. we have to face the fact that it will die unless we take the necessary action.” 

Gordon Brown said education is being “crowded out” as other areas are prioritized for expenditure and aid, and that low- and middle-income countries with already low and meager education budgets could see them cut further, describing it as “a recipe for disaster” 

 “We must persuade them that not cutting education budgets is not just in the interests of education, it is in the interests of quality of life’’ 

Gordon Brown expressed the importance of Financing education because teachers cannot be sent to classrooms without the resources they need, and children to schools without the necessary backing. 

He said ‘A human tragedy is unfolding if we do nothing and leave education completely underfunded, lacking the resources to enable children to flourish in the future.”

Speaking about his hope he said: “we can be the first generation in history where we can say every child goes to school”. 

 Brown emphasized that education cannot be reformed without global cooperation, saying: “Scientists, technicians, researchers, virologists, and immunologists all want to work together to fight COVID-19. The same is true of teachers, educators, and others in education to coordinate a response to the crisis that it faces.

In an overview of the 2020 Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report by its director, Manos Antoninis of UNESCO said that “identity, background, and ability still dictate education opportunities”, highlighting that children with disabilities are two-and-a-half times more likely never to go to school than their peers and, in at least 20 countries, no girls in poor rural areas complete secondary school.

The report also found that inequality has contributed to the education crisis caused by COVID-19, with 40 percent of poorer countries not targeting at-risk learners in their response to the pandemic.

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 Source: Qatar Foundation