Education minister Janet Museveni has pledged to work extra hard to find a way to catch up with the developed countries.
“While the developed countries studied, we were fighting and doing nothing in education; therefore we must indeed run to catch up with them,” she said.
Her call came as she formally received a report from the International Commission on Financing Global Education Opportunity (Education Commission), which advocates for the need for increased financing in education, last week. The commission is mandated to ensure that every child in the world is in school and learning by 2030.
The report titled “The Learning Generation: Investing in education for a Changing World”, was launched during the United Nations General Assembly in September 2016.
Last week, the report was presented to the education minister by former Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete in a meeting at State House Nakasero. He was accompanied by Teopista Birungi Mayanja, a retired teacher and founder of the Uganda National Teachers' Union, who is also a member of the International Commission on Financing Global Education Opportunity.
Kikwete advised that to catch up with the developing countries, there was need for a financing compact between developing countries and the international community. He added that domestic expenditures on education should increase from an estimated $1 trillion per year today to $3 trillion by 2030.
Kikwete said Uganda has been included in pioneer states to implement the report and should be ready to start raising expenditure in the education sector. Along with increased funding, governments are advised to commit to reform their education systems to maximize learning and efficiency, ensuring that every child has access to quality free education from pre-primary to secondary levels, improve the performance of their education systems and promote innovation.
According to the “The Learning Generation: Investing in Education for a Changing World” report, more than 263 million children and youth around the world are out of school, while more than 250 million children, who are already in classrooms, cannot read and write and are unequipped with necessary skills to succeed in school and in life. The bulk of these are in Africa. The commission also concluded that in the current state of technological advancement, two billion people globally will be replaced by automation by 2050.
The commission, chaired by UN special envoy for Global Education Gordon Brown, is comprised of many leaders, ranging from heads of state and Nobel laureates, to leaders in fields such as education, economics and health.
Among them is Norwegian prime minister Erna Solberg, director-General of Unesco Irina Bokova, Kikwete, the chair of the Global Partnership for Education Julia Gillard, and executive director of Unicef Anthony Lake.