That this House has considered the International Day of Education.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Vaz. This Saturday, the 24th of January, will mark the eighth International Day of Education, which was established by the United Nations to highlight the importance of education for peace and development worldwide. Nobody can doubt the transformative power of education in empowering individuals, opening up life-changing opportunities, strengthening communities and creating a more peaceful world. The right to an education is enshrined in article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which begins with the line:
“Everyone has the right to education.”
Today, unfortunately, there are still many millions of children globally who are not in education. There has been great progress in improving access to education across the world, and the UK has played a powerful role in achieving that progress as one of the world’s most influential donors, advocates and innovators in global education. However, in recent years progress has slowed, against the backdrop of successive cuts in the education aid budget, and an increasingly dangerous world of conflict and climate change.
The UK has played a unique role in basic education. Foundational learning provides the building blocks for essential life skills, such as literacy, numeracy and personal development, but there is a serious concern that basic education will be one of the areas hardest hit by cuts in aid, because historically the UK and US Governments have been the biggest donors in that space. The Centre for Global Development has highlighted the catastrophic impact that not funding basic education would have internationally.
I urge the Minister to consider funding basic education as an area of high priority for the UK Government when global education funding is being considered. There is evidence to show how effective investing in basic education could be. New data, which was released this week by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office-funded What Works Hub for Global Education, shows that achieving universal foundational learning could increase global GDP by $196 trillion over the next 20 years.
Just yesterday, I joined parliamentarians and campaigners to celebrate 25 years of the Send My Friend to School campaign, as well as the efforts of millions of young people to push for the right to education globally. I thank everyone involved in making that event a huge success and I particularly thank the young people for their impressive advocacy. At the event, I had the chance to speak to the former Deputy Speaker of the Afghan Parliament, Fawzia Koofi, who has dedicated her political career to defending the right to education of women and girls in Afghanistan. She told us that when her husband was imprisoned by the Taliban, she wrote letters to the group asking for his release. When she spoke to his prison guard, he said that she should count herself lucky to be able to read and write. So many of the girls that she grew up with did not continue their education beyond grade 6, and did not learn how to read and write. For her, it was receiving a full education that gave her the opportunity to become who she is today.
It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Southgate and Wood Green (Bambos Charalambous) for his excellent speech and for the excellent event he hosted this week with Send My Friend to School. It was very moving to see so many young people and children coming to Parliament to tell us to speak up for their values and their belief in global education.
Prior to entering this place, I had the privilege of spending a few years as a teacher at a school in Rwanda, where I was doing my PhD research. It was a world away from what we know as a school. I had a chalkboard at the front and a few pieces of chalk, and the children had notebooks and pens—those were about the only resources we had to deliver learning. To this day, it always warms my heart when they reach out to me on social media to let me know how they are doing. Most of them are in their mid-20s, successful and thriving in the world.
I want to talk briefly about one of the young men who attended that school. He was a genocide orphan who, after the genocide, found himself living at the rubbish dump in Kigali in the shell of a burned-out car. He would go out each day with other children and pick through the dump for food to survive. After a few years of that, an American woman who was in the area got out of her car one day to give these street children—they are called mayibobo, which means children of the street—some bread rolls. This young man went up to her and said, “Please, I would like to go to school.” She felt moved, so she put him in the back of her taxi, took him to a local family she trusted, and paid them to put him through school.
A few years later, another child at the young man’s school was being bullied because he was poor—he was scruffy and did not have the school supplies. Remembering his experience as a street child, the young man formed a little charitable group in the school. They clubbed together to secretly put school supplies on the student’s bed to help him through school. From that act, they set up a charity at their school, which now has chapters across the entire country, and also in North America and Europe. It is a youth-led charity and it inspires young people to do good. The young man went on to get a scholarship to Harvard University. He did not mention his background because he wanted to have it on merit. Today, he continues to do incredible work. That story illustrates to me not only the incredible success, but how many children like him remain at the rubbish dump and are not given those opportunities.
It is a great privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Vaz. I put on the record my thanks to the hon. Member for Southgate and Wood Green (Bambos Charalambous), who secured this timely debate to coincide with the International Day of Education.
Over my 25 years as a Member of this House, I have been extremely fortunate to travel to all parts of our planet, whether as part of the Foreign Affairs Committee, on which I served for 15 years; the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, which does excellent work, as we all know; the Inter-Parliamentary Union; the NATO Parliamentary Assembly; the British-Irish Parliamentary Assembly; or, most especially, the Westminster Foundation for Democracy, which I served as a governor for nine years, doing work in countries around the world. I have also taken part, over the years, in various missions with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to countries including Uganda and the British Indian Ocean Territory. I will say a bit more about the Chagos islands later.
Through my travels I have seen at first hand the impact of British education, cultural exchange and institutional engagement around the world. I felt it right to participate in this debate because I was due to respond to it on behalf of His Majesty’s Opposition as a shadow Minister. Although that is no longer the case, I am sure that the hon. Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp) will do justice to the role this afternoon, and I wish him well in his endeavours.
Education has the ability to transform lives and, ultimately, it shapes the world in which Britain must operate. For generations, this country has been regarded as the workshop for global leaders, and the world’s elites have wanted to send their children to be educated here in the United Kingdom. That includes post-colonial leaders such as Lee Kuan Yew, Robert Menzies and Mahatma Gandhi, and contemporary leaders such as the great Tony Abbott and Shinzo Abe. The list goes on—it is very extensive—and we should take great pride in the fact that so many distinguished figures from around the world choose to send their children and families to be educated here in the British Isles.
I commend the hon. Member for Southgate and Wood Green (Bambos Charalambous) for securing the debate—I am sorry that I could not have been here earlier; I was in the Chamber.
I know the focus of the debate is on what Britain does when it comes education, but the other side of it is that many churches across all of this United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, including in my constituency, have built schools and universities. Does the hon. Gentleman recognise the good work done by the churches in my constituency? The Elim church has built a hospital, a health centre, a primary school and a secondary school, and it does work on job training for farming as well. All these things are done by people from Newtownards going to Malawi, to Swaziland and to Zimbabwe. That is an example of what can happen if we all look at some of the good things that are happening.
That was a fine intervention and I entirely endorse everything the hon. Gentleman said. One of the reasons Britain has had so much outreach around the world is because of our Christian foundations. It is so important to uphold and cherish our Christian heritage. Of course, Christian missionaries have travelled the world and established schools, hospitals, universities and churches, helping countries far and wide and people of all religions. I entirely endorse the hon. Gentleman’s examples from his constituency; my constituency also has many churches that do excellent work and support causes around the world. I thank him for raising that point.
The Commonwealth is, I believe, a tangible force for good—I am sure we can all agree with that—and it should be central to any Government’s foreign policy. A voluntary association bound by shared language, legal traditions and educational standards embodies the very arguments that we are debating here in Parliament this afternoon. Above all, it provides Britain with a unique global reach that no other country enjoys. There are Commonwealth countries in every part of the world, including, let us not forget, our cherished overseas territories and Crown dependencies, such as the British Indian Ocean Territory, which should remain a British territory.
The Commonwealth has presented our great nation with an inheritance that is the envy of the world. But, obviously, soft power works only when it also serves the national interest. I am afraid that is where this debate has to be honest. Too often, international education policy has drifted away from British priorities and towards fashionable global causes, administrated by bloated bureaucracies with little regard for value for money or outcomes. My new party, Reform UK, believes in engagement with the world, but on Britain’s terms, not at our expense.
Last month, in my previous role as shadow Minister, I met with the British Council. It does invaluable work—I place that clearly on the record—but what I heard in that meeting should concern the House. Funding from the Foreign Office has still not returned to pre-pandemic levels. The British Council is being forced to consider the closure of up to 35 country offices, with 10 having already been lost during covid. Just £20 million would stabilise the British Council network, yet at the same time, this Government appear perfectly relaxed writing cheques running into the tens of billions for the handover of a British territory, thereby betraying British people, based on questionable interpretations of international obligations that deliver nothing tangible for the British taxpayer.
While the hon. Member is on that point, we are all aware of a letter that he wrote in 2020, in which he urged President Elect Joe Biden to do exactly what the Government are doing. Will the hon. Member say why his opinion has changed on the matter?
I will certainly do so. To say one brief thing to the hon. Member, the letter was written to reflect the consensus of an all-party parliamentary group that I happened to be the chair of. The letter did not necessary reflect my opinions on everything. Self-determination should always determine decisions.
I will go back to the point. We are told that there is no money for the British Council, yet somehow we find the cash for all sorts of other things: for housing the people who are coming to this country illegally; for the failing digital identification experiment; and for a long list of projects that do nothing to strengthen Britain’s position in the world or to promote education.
I am sure we will shortly hear warm words from the Minister about the importance of international education, and rightly so, but those words will ring hollow when the Government are presiding over an erosion of Britain’s ability to support education, influence and cultural engagement across the globe. What makes matters worse is that the cuts are focused on British Council offices in developed countries—the countries that need our support more than most. These are places where English teaching may not be the primary objective, but where influence, networks, science, culture and diplomacy absolutely are.
The British Council is certainly not just an English teaching charity. Its stated aims are to foster cultural, scientific, technological and educational co-operation with the United Kingdom. Undermining that mission weakens Britain. However, Reform UK is not calling for a blank cheque—far from it. If Britain is to help educate the world, that education must champion the United Kingdom and its values, free speech, our model of parliamentary Government and the rule of law. It must never put Britain second.
We should not be funding programmes to apologise for our history, undermine our institutions, or promote ideologies fundamentally hostile to our way of life. Nor should international education be used as a back door for uncontrolled migration or permanent settlement. Students should come to Britain to learn, and then return home as ambassadors for this country and assets to their peers. They should certainly not be numbers that disappear into a broken system that is already overstretched.
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Investing in education is one of the smartest long-term investments that we can make for global stability. Improvements in learning opportunities contribute directly to the achievement of sustainable development, and to the empowerment of women and girls. One additional year of education can reduce the risk of conflict by up to 20%, and there are particularly strong effects when girls and women have equal access to learning. In addition, research has shown that improvements in education have powered half of global economic growth in the past 50 years.
The United Nations set a specific strategic development goal for education, SDG 4, which aims to
“Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”
by 2030, but with over 270 million children across the globe not in education, it is highly unlikely that that goal will be met. I note that the International Parliamentary Network for Education recently put out a statement expressing its solidarity and the need for global co-operation to tackle the challenges and achieve sustainable development goal 4. It is imperative that we also take urgent action to help to meet that goal. But as we speak, global education is facing a serious threat as a result of sharp cuts to the official development assistance budget. Aid to education is projected to fall by around 24%, or $3.2 billion, globally by the end of 2026. Unless that course is reversed there will remain significant barriers to accessing education in the poorest parts of the world.
As I mentioned, according to UNESCO over 270 million children are out of school. Cuts to the educational aid budget could push a further 6 million children out of school by the end of this year. In some contexts, including in Chad and Sudan, funding for education in emergencies has already been cut by up to 90%. Such figures reflect real choices that are impacting strides that have been made in expanding access to education across the globe.
The Global Partnership for Education has been instrumental in addressing those challenges against the backdrop of aid cuts. It supports partner countries by designing and financing national education plans, strengthening systems and aligning donor and partner efforts behind one coherent reform programme. In Somalia, where girls’ enrolment in secondary school is a mere 9.7% and large numbers of girls drop out due to discriminatory gender norms such as early pregnancy, early marriage and involvement in household work, GPE funds programmes to enhance the learning of Somali children in the federal member states of Galmudug and Hirshabelle, and in Mogadishu, in Banaadir. The programmes construct and rehabilitate classrooms, as well as water, sanitation and hygiene facilities.
As a result of GPE’s work, 400 new classrooms across 147 schools were constructed, 394 classrooms were rehabilitated and 669 were provided with new furniture, including 15 sets of desks. That supported access to education for over 33,000 out-of-school children, with girls’ enrolment increasing by 59%. Between 2026 and 2030, GPE will double the co-financing that it attracts to $10 billion, reach over 300 million more children and boost UK investment beyond what can be achieved by bilateral programmes alone.
Yet, as aid is set to fall, payments to multilateral partners such as GPE have been delayed. The Government will soon decide whether to maintain their future financial support to GPE for this period in the coming weeks. By investing in GPE, the UK could help prepare this generation to drive prosperity in their own countries and strengthen the foundations of a safer, more stable and more liveable world.
Emergencies, and educational emergencies in particular, are another area I want to focus on. In a world that has become increasingly dangerous, education protects children from violence and exploitation, lowers long-term humanitarian and recovery costs, and helps to mitigate conflict and displacement pressures. Financing education in emergencies supports the UK’s priorities on peace and security, migration, climate resilience, and violence against women and girls. Yet, with the risk of further cuts to the education aid budget, the climate crisis and conflicts threaten to destroy any chances of children getting access to an education.
Globally, 234 million crisis-affected children currently require educational support—an increase of 10 million in the last two years. Children in Africa and the middle east face the largest impact, with millions of them looking at disruption or cancellation of their education. The climate crisis is an underlying cause of that. As climate emergencies become more prevalent, children and families are being displaced from their homes and forced to take shelter elsewhere. When international aid comes in, education is often deprioritised—despite being a lifeline for children in crisis.
That means that classrooms are left without teachers, learning materials and safe spaces, and a generation of children risk losing not just months but years of education at the very moment when stability and hope matter most. According to UNICEF, nearly 40 million children a year have their education interrupted by disasters and disease outbreaks following extreme weather events. Not only are children losing access to drinking water, healthcare and food, but their education is being forgotten and they are left vulnerable to violence and despair.
Furthermore, in places like Sudan, which is experiencing the world’s largest humanitarian and displacement crisis since records began, just shy of 12 million people are displaced internally or have fled to neighbouring countries. The civil war is leaving many children traumatised, uprooted from their communities and cut off from education and basic protection. This increases their risk of exploitation, early marriage and long-term poverty, making it harder for the country to rebuild peace and stability for the future.
Education Cannot Wait is a global fund dedicated to financing education in the world’s most severe humanitarian crises, working in places such as Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan and Nigeria. It invests in safe learning spaces, sustaining minimum education pathways and acting as a frontline protection measure for violence against women and girls. In South Sudan, Education Cannot Wait worked with the Minister of general education to expand equitable access to education and reduce the number of out-of-school children. Through its multi-year resilience programme, more than 190,000 learners—46% of them girls—have gained access to formal and alternative education systems such as accelerated learning programmes.
ECW funding provides tailored support to vulnerable girls, supports the distribution of dignity kits, strengthens school-based child protection systems and expands safe learning spaces where girls feel protected and welcomed. However, we are in a situation where there have been minimal funding commitments by the Government for the upcoming replenishment of both GPE and ECW.
According to UNICEF, planned funding cuts for education in emergencies will mean that crisis-hit countries in Africa and the middle east will lose over 10% of their national education budget. This will also impact teacher development and data systems and will have a lasting impact on education due to a loss of skilled educators and gaps in data, making a recovery less likely even if funding returns in future. That is why it is crucial that the Government provide adequate funding for education aid and support for organisations, such as Education Cannot Wait, that are on the frontlines delivering education in emergencies.
I have a few questions for the Minister. The first relates to the Government’s commitments to education in emergencies. Does he agree that it is vital that as part of our humanitarian assistance we support the provision of education in areas of conflict and climate emergencies? When countries emerge from conflict and climate emergencies they need help to get themselves re-established, so can the Minister tell me whether the Government intend to support countries to transition from the emergency education provision to national education systems, particularly if support mechanisms such as the Global Partnership for Education are reduced? Will the Government ensure that the ODA budget will be focused on foundational learning where every lesson has the most transformative impact on a child’s life chances? Will education feature in the Future of Development conference being hosted by the UK in May?
The UK has always understood the importance of education. We championed girls’ education before others. We fought for foundational learning when the world’s attention risked drifting elsewhere, and we played a defining role in the creation of the Global Partnership for Education and Education Cannot Wait, which are some of the most effective engines for transforming education systems around the world. With a smaller aid budget it is essential that the UK makes its money go further. As we mark the UN International Day of Education, let us celebrate the huge strides we have made in progressing access to education across the globe, but also be honest about the scale of the challenge that we face.
We find ourselves at a crossroads: the Government can choose to continue their efforts in fighting for education for those who need it most, or they can abandon decades of hard work on the international stage. Let us step forward once again and work together to invest in teachers, systems and safe and inclusive classrooms. Let us ensure that every child can learn and thrive, because when we invest in education we build not just schools but futures.
Global education is facing cuts of £3.2 billion by the end of 2026. That is severe, and the impact will be felt by an entire generation of children around the world. That amount sadly includes cuts to UK aid, although I should say that the UK cannot and should not be expected to go it alone on global education. There are many other things that we need to do. For example, 34 countries in Africa spend more on debt interest every year than they spend on education and health. That is a disgrace. This Parliament could do something by legislating to change that reality, and I hope that we do. We need to do more to encourage other countries that, frankly, could give more and do not to step up.
It is in our national interest to build strong partnerships. I have worked in international development and met many Ministers in other countries, and I noticed how often they were educated in the UK, and how often they previously worked at a university. Unlike in this place, where we tend to appoint Ministers who are not necessarily specialists in their field, it is generally the case in the global south that Ministers come through the academic ranks and are a specialist in their area. They often have views that were shaped by their time studying at a UK university, or by their relationship to one, which is incredibly important. Other institutions that we should be greatly proud of include the Voluntary Service Overseas, which does important work in education around the world, and the British Council. They are really important parts of UK soft power.
As the world is changing and becoming more volatile, and as Britain’s place in it is shrinking, there are some big players in the world today who do not share our democratic values or our belief in human rights, and who are positioning themselves to sweep up influence across the global south. In that context, we really need to think, as they often do, of a 100-year plan, and what it would look like to shape the world in our image, have people learning our language and have more people feeling a great affinity with this country. That is another important role we can play by investing in education.
I am aware that other Members wish to speak, so I will conclude by appealing for education to be a bigger part of UK thinking about development. The higher education partnerships are so crucial, but so are the school-to-school partnerships and the idea of making development education a part of our national curriculum. It was heartwarming, at my hon. Friend’s event this week, to see children who were globally aware citizens who wanted to connect with children in other parts of the world and to work together to shape a better world. They had some strong messages for us, and we need to listen to them.
It is clear that our schools, universities and language, and our great British culture, have projected British influence further than any number of tanks or treaties ever could have done. That influence has been built deliberately through institutions and scholarships that are respected across the globe, including the Rhodes scholarship, the Chevening programme, the work of the Association of Commonwealth Universities, and the generations of Commonwealth scholars who have gone on to become leaders in politics, business, science and civil society. As chairman of the all-party parliamentary group for the Commonwealth, I have seen how thriving these networks of influence truly are.
However, I am afraid that the Commonwealth itself, and bodies such as the Commonwealth of Learning, have been understood by successive Governments as almost like a hangover of colonial times—something from the past that should belong in history. That attitude is wrong and needs to change. We should be proud of what Britain has achieved over the centuries and we should continue those traditions today.
Ahead of the International Day of Education, I say that, yes, education changes lives, but it also helps to shape geopolitics. If we hollow out our soft power while pouring money into symbolic global gestures, we will wake up—as we have for some time—poorer, weaker and less respected. Reform UK believes that Britain should engage with all nations of the world and treat all countries with respect, working with all nationalities and peoples for the best interests of humanity, but always in Britain’s national interest. Our educational institutions and global networks remain world class—dare I say, the best—but the question is whether the Government are willing to end the bipartisan policy of managed decline and once again put British cultural influence back on the map.