Education budgets must be increased around the world. Otherwise, the world will continue to face a crisis, Julia Gillard, the chairperson of Global Partnership for Education, a worldwide education funding agency, warns. Gillard said the world would face a crisis if countries won't increase education budgets and have more children get into school.
Education Commission, a worldwide organization of ex-prime ministers, business leaders and academics formed in 2015 to campaign for funding for education, has reported 260 million children and youths out of school worldwide. This has been attributed to several factors like gender, poor nutrition and hunger, and discriminations based on religion, status or traditions. However, it was associated mainly with parents' inability to earn enough money to send their kids to school.
The good news is these problems can be solved if the people worldwide will try. Julia Gillard said this issue is not something that has not done before by human being.
"If every country were improving its education system as the rate of the top 25 countries - in their income band - then we would solve all these problems," Reuters quoted Gillard as saying. With this, Gillard said we can solve all these problems and be on track to have a learning generation with every kid in school.
The first step to having children and youth into school, according to Gillard, would be increasing education budget both overseas and domestic. The Global Partnership for Education has put up a total of $525 million yearly in the past two years, Gillard said. However, it needs $2 billion per year to carry out its work which was guiding developing countries on high-quality education, giving special funds and assistance.
The Commission stated in their website that low- and middle-income nations should increase domestic expenditures on education from around $1 trillion in 2015 to $2.7 trillion by 2030, or from 4 percent to 8.5 percent of GDP. The report also said that overseas funds for education should increase from $16 billion a year to $89 billion for each year by the year 2030. However, it's still insufficient, accounting for just 3 percent of the overall funding required.
If the scarcity continues, Gillard will say people will see a generation that does not have the capacities and skills to make a living for themselves and the following generation of kids will have less probability to survive childhood, less probability to be immunized and less probability to enroll to schools. Thus she warns that education funds must be increased or else the world will suffer.
