DFID Education programmes and activities
Education is an essential way of improving people’s livelihoods. Being able to read and to write and to learn how to learn is an important end itself but it enables people to do so much more. Education also is a human right that is enshrined in binding international conventions and is vital for economic development.
As the White Paper (DFID, 2006) puts it:
Where there is access to water, children can go to school, rather than spend time fetching it. Going to school leads to better health. A girl who has been educated is much more likely to get her own children immunized and healthy children are much less likely to drop out of school. Social protection helps children attend school or get to a health clinic. Investing in people – their skills, health and security – boosts sustainable economic growth and increases incomes. And having more money, in turn, gives people more choice, and generates the tax revenues which pay for public services.
And yet, in 2007, there are still 72 million children of primary school age worldwide not in school and a minimum of 750 million adults lacking basic literacy skills. For those who have missed out, the intrinsic worth of education – its ability to add meaning and value to everyone’s lives without discrimination - is lost. So too is the knowledge and the skills, the attitudes and the values which together help people to bring other rights within their reach, including better health, security, liberty, prosperity and justice.
DFID’s commitments
Working
towards poverty reduction by helping to achieve the targets associated with the
Millennium Development Goals and the Education for all (EFA) on universal
primary education and gender equity underpins DFID’s strong support for basic
education and good quality education.
DFID’s White Papers since 1997 and its strategy and policy papers and notes
published since 2000 make this priority clear. For example, in
Making
Globalisation Work for Poor People
(645
kb) (DFID, 2000) the dividends that accrue
from high quality primary education for all were highlighted – particularly for
girls. In the strategy paper, The Challenge of Universal Primary Education(268
kb)
(DFID, 2001), the importance of governments putting basic education at the heart
of their development policies was emphasised. In
Children Out of School
(418
kb)
(DFID, 2001) the case was made for a step change in national and international
efforts to bring upwards of 100 million children into school, while in
Girls’
Education: towards a better future for all
(254
kb) (DFID, 2005), the focus was on
helping governments to enrol and retain more girls in school.
The most recent White Paper
Eliminating World Poverty: Making Governance Work
for the Poor
(1054
kb) (DFID, 2006) reaffirms DFID’s commitment to getting children of
primary school age who are not currently attending school into a classroom with
a qualified teacher.
The Millennium Development Goals
DFID is very clear about the importance of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The current DFID Departmental Report states that everything that DFID does, through its country programmes and collaboration with international organisations is guided by the MDGs (DFID, 2007).
The Education for All Goals
There are six Education for All (EFA) goals. Like the MDGs they were agreed in 2000 - but at the World Education Forum in Dakar, Senegal. If the MDGs are centrally about poverty, the EFA goals are much more about the right to a good basic education and for young people and adults as well as children. DFID played a strong role in the formulation of these goals in 2000. The two goals on UPE and gender parity and equality are similar to the MDG’s education goal and targets but they are sometimes cited by DFID for their emphasis on inclusion and meeting the needs of the most disadvantaged.
Related links
Last updated 15 February 2008
