Global Action Week: 21-27 April 2008
Millions will mobilize for quality education to end exclusion!

Global Action Week: 21-27 April 2008
Millions will mobilize for quality education to end exclusion

This year EI, in cooperation with the Global Campaign for Education, is planning the biggest-ever Global Action Week to continue the worldwide effort to achieve Education For All by 2015. Halfway to the deadline for the EFA goals, this year’s advocacy is crucial. Activists everywhere are gearing up for an event-filled week that will make improvements in schools around the globe. 

This year’s theme is “Quality Education to End Exclusion.” About 72 million children and 700 million adults are excluded from schooling. Some are excluded due to disability or gender, others because of war and conflict in their countries, still others because of poverty or child labour. Whatever the reason, these millions of people are being denied a fundamental human right – and that’s just plain wrong!

The right to education was enshrined in the Universal Declaration of rights in 1949.  Governments have promised that education will be available to all by 2015.  But at current rates of progress, that target will not even be met by 2115! That’s why we need to accelerate the action on EFA.

Part of our plan is to send as many politicians as possible back to school, and to involve so many people in teaching them about the need for quality education that we set a world record for the biggest lesson in history! Together we’re demanding that world leaders take urgent action to get everyone into school. Poor countries must agree to implement long term education plans, and rich countries must support these plans and make the much-needed resources available.

Significant progress has been made since 2000, but much remains to be done:

In 2005 as many as 94 countries missed one of the Millennium Development Goals – getting an equal number of boys and girls into primary and secondary school.

• In order to reach the goal of universal primary education by 2015, all children need to have started school by 2009. That means enrolling 73 million children in the next year!
• 18 million more teachers are needed if every child is to get a quality education.
• To get every child into school will cost $9 billion a year. For children and adults to get the quality education that has been promised to them will cost $16 billion a year.
• If all G7 countries (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, UK & US) actually gave the $5 billion aid they have promised, it would enable 60 million children to go to school. (That $5 billion is equivalent to European nations’ spending on farming subsidies or the cost of four US Stealth Bomber planes.)

The World’s Biggest Lesson will be taught on 23rd April 2008. Let’s make it a learning experience that children and adults around the world over will never forget! You’ll find everything you need to organise your activities in a resource pack at: www.ei-ie.org/globalactionweek

• Background information on EFA and forms of exclusion
• Answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs)
• Lesson plan, activity outline and fact sheet
• Authentication forms to send to Guinness World Records