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| Julia Gillard |
Julia Gillard, board chairwoman of the Global Partnership for Education (GPE), has called for more funds to ensure education opportunities for every child across the world.
"The World Education Forum needs to take a very hard headed approach to how we not only lift ambition but how we increase resources so that goals can be realized," Gillard told The Korea Times, Monday, a day before the forum started its four-day run in Incheon.
"It is estimated that $22 billion is needed each year until 2030 to ensure that every child receives a pre-primary, primary and lower secondary education," she said.
The GPE, an international organization aiming to get all children into school for quality education, has allocated $4.3 billion over the past decade to support education reforms in some of the world's poorest countries.
The group is made up of nearly 60 governments from developing countries donor governments, civil organizations, as well as the private sector and other foundations,
"Immediately after the forum we will have a board meeting in Korea because Korea at the end of last year decided to become a partner country and a donor country with us," Gillard, the former Australian prime minister, said.
"That's very exciting and a fantastic tribute to Korea in that the country has developed from the ruins of the Korean War when it was a recipient of overseas aid to now being a donating country to GPE by bringing its technical expertise on education to our partnership."
Korea contributed $5 million when it joined the GPE as a donor partner in Sept. 24 last year. It is now among the 22 donor nations.
"When the board meets, we will consider what we can do to assist Nepal," she said.
According to Gillard, the organization has provided Nepal with $120 million to support meaningful projects including a creation of 13,000 scholarships for the most disadvantaged children to get them into school, helping more than 40,000 teachers to get better training and building 11,500 early education centers.
"We will be considering further assistance to Nepal in this very dreadful time after the devastating earthquakes, where some schools were completely obliterated, many have been damaged and 15,000 classrooms have been lost," Gillard said.
The board has to make the final decisions on the supporting amount at the meeting which will be held on May 22, but the initial recommendation from the committee was $59 million, she said.
Besides Nepal, the organization plans to approve an education grant for three more countries: Bangladesh, Mozambique and Rwanda. These will be the first grants under the new funding model.
"Thirty percent of the money that we grant is at risk and countries have to acquire a great performance benchmark in order to access the final 30 percent of the money," she said. "It is a system that focuses on getting good results."
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