Cautious welcome to the World Bank’s $750 million education pledge
The World Bank announced that they’re pledging (US) $750 million towards universal primary education. When we first heard about this in the run up to the MDG summit, we thought that this would prompt new announcements from other influential donors and states. However, we then found out the Bank’s 750 million USD will be disbursed over five years (meaning only 150 million USD per year) and is the Bank’s opportunity to catch up on its education aid for the poorest countries.
With 16 billion USD needed annually to achieve basic education for all, we hope that other states will use the MDG Summit as an occasion to announce an increase in their pledges and commitments to universal primary education, or to catch-up on commitments made on previous international meetings.
Earlier on today the Global Campaign for Education hosted a 1Goal event to call for greater international support to get all children into school. The event was hosted by H.M. Queen Rania of Jordan, who was joined by the World Bank’s Managing Director, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Gordon Brown, a member of GCE’s High-Level Panel, Australia’s Foreign Affairs Minister Kevin Rudd and the UK’s International Development Minister Andrew Mitchell, among other high-level representatives.
The Global Campaign for Education als0 released its Back to School Report, highlighting the worst places to be a school child, and areas where much more work needs to be done. As a campaign member, we backed the report.