Reaction to the International Development Select Committee’s letter to Secretary of State for International Development Priti Patel on their inquiry ‘DFID’s work on education: Leaving no one behind?’

Send My Friend/Global Campaign for Education UK strongly welcome the recommendations made by the International Development Select Committee to Secretary of State for International Development, Priti Patel, on DFID’s work on education, issued by the Committee today. The Committee has rightly recognised the importance of education for sustainable development. Education is the foundation to and driver of global prosperity and peace, which the UK both wants for the world and benefits from. We join the Committee in acknowledging the important leadership role the UK has played to date in getting more vulnerable children into school globally along with the call that the UK can and must do more to give more of the world’s poorest children the opportunity to go to school.

We urge the next government to act on the Committee’s recommendation to publish a new or refreshed education strategy to demonstrate the role UK aid will continue to play in reaching the most marginalized children and ensure they are learning.

We know that the UK public cares about global education – so far this year over 1000 schools have already signed up to join this year’s Send My Friend To School campaign on funding global education, the missing piece of the puzzle to ensure an education for the 263 million children and youth currently out of school and not learning.

We therefore especially welcome the Committee’s support for the 0.7% aid target, enshrined in law and for its recommendation that UK increase its spending on education to not less than 10% of the aid budget, which would be a good first step in increasing UK aid to education and meeting the International Commission on Financing Global Education Opportunity’s target of 15%. We join with the Committee in acknowledging the significant reforms at the Global Partnership for Education and support the Committee’s recommendation that the UK continues to fund GPE and step up its efforts to encourage other donors to do so too.

We are producing a written response which will be sent to the International Development Select Committee and the Secretary of State for International Development, and posted online, in due course.