Education for All

Education is the key to unlocking inter-generational deprivation, as it offers the knowledge people need to live healthy, happy lives...By investing in education, the G8 can leverage huge returns in women’s and children’s health, nation- and peace-building, and global economic development now and in the future

— Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Mary Robinson and Muhammad Yunus in a June 2009 letter to the G8 leaders.

RESULTS has supported the Education for All campaign since 2002, out of the belief that education is critical to eliminating poverty, empowering active and healthy citizens, and building sustainable solutions to the greatest development challenges of our day: HIV/AIDS, environmental degradation, economic deprivation, inequity, violence.

And yet, more than 75 million primary school-aged children around the world still do not have access even to the most basic literacy, numeracy and other skills an education provides. Even worse, a quarter billion children will never make it on to secondary or high school and as adults, over 700 million will not be able to read — condemning them to a life of limited options and vulnerability, which their children will in turn inherit.

The Education for All movement is a global commitment to provide quality basic education for all children, youth and adults. The movement was launched at the World Conference on Education for All in 1990 by UNESCO, UNDP, UNFPA, UNICEF, the World Bank and civil society partners from around the world. Participants endorsed an ‘expanded vision of learning’ and pledged to universalize primary education and massively reduce illiteracy by the end of the decade. Ten years later, with many countries far from having reached this goal, the international community met again in Dakar, Senegal, and affirmed their commitment to achieving Education for All by the year 2015. They identified six key education goals which aim to meet the learning needs of all children, youth and adults by 2015:

1. Expand early childhood care and education
2. Provide free and compulsory primary Education for All
3. Promote learning and life skills for young people and adults
4. Increase adult literacy by 50 percent
5. Achieve gender parity by 2005, and gender equality by 2015
6. Improve the quality of education

RESULTS actively advocates for donor governments to increase their aid for basic education, and improve the way it is being delivered so that it achieves measureable, effective and tangible impacts on education development objectives. By advocating for better education aid policy both in the U.S. and within multilaterals such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, RESULTS ensures that donors are fulfilling their commitment to achieve Education for All.