Press conference on education

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Hello and welcome to our press conference on education for all the world's Children.

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As we Know, 100 million youngsters worldwide do not get the chance to go to school.

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This press conference is going to look into some of the issues about how we do get them into school by 2015.

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Let me welcome our panelists this morning.

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On my immediate left are the UK Chancellor, Gordon Brown.

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Welcome.

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Mr.

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Brown.

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On his immediate left are Paul Wolfowitz, the president of the World Bank Group.

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The Nigerian Finance Minister, Minister Ngozi, Welcome.

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And on her immediate left is Jan Villem Vandakai, the Executive Director here at the World Bank Group for the Dutch government.

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So let me ask Mr.

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Wolfowitz to start us off with a couple of minutes of broad overview and then we'll go to the ministers.

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So Mr.

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Wolfowitz, over to you.

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Well.

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Thank you, and let me begin by thanking my colleagues for the significant contributions of their governments.

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And.

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The Netherlands has been a leading donor for basic education, providing both resources and political leadership.

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And the UK has recently made an historic announcement of $15 billion / 10 years for support for education.

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And I'm very pleased to be joined by Nigerian Finance Minister Ngozi today.

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She knows better than anyone.

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I think the daunting challenge is on the ground.

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I'm told that in Nigeria today, there are nearly 8 million children who 7 million, You're getting the numbers down.

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There's so many other things that is great that we're out of school.

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We know that investment in education, particularly for girls, can help slow the spread of AIDS, contribute economic growth and break the cycle of poverty.

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But around the world, there is still 100 million children, 100 million out of school, 58 million of those are girls.

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The urgency is clear when you consider that in sub-Saharan Africa alone, more than 40 million children don't go to school.

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Two weeks ago I visited Timor Leste, where the reconstruction of the education system after the devastation of 1999 is one of that country's major achievements.

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About 90% of schools and educational facilities were destroyed at the time of independence, but since then around 3000 classrooms and more than 600 schools have been built and enrolments have been steadily increasing.

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But I saw first hand what it means to lose the opportunity for education.

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I saw 15 year olds in 3rd grade classrooms struggling.

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Although eager to make up for lost time, having to make up for an education that's missing is a serious obstacle overcome.

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It's even more serious when you meet adults who are still trying to learn to read.

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So it is absolutely critical to invest in education in the early ages when it makes the biggest difference.

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The principle of investing in education, I think is clear.

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It's an investment that brings returns for decades afterwards.

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And the principle of why we need to support sound country policies is also clear.

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And so too is the need for countries to be able to have long term plans that they can count on to do things like hiring teachers, which can't be done hand to mouth year to year.

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So in coordination with other donors, the Bank launched in 2002 the first global compact on education, the Fast Track initiative, Fast Track initiative to accelerate progress toward universal primary education.

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The FDI, if you'll let me use the abbreviation, is about coordinating the efforts of donors, partner countries, and civil society around the common goal of quality primary education.

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The FDI partnership is starting to provide a glimpse of what development could look like across all sectors.

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Mauritania, Burkina Faso and Ghana have collectively added one million children to their primary school enrollment since joining FDI In The Gambia.

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Part of the $4 million enabled the government to purchase thousands of textbooks for grades one through 4, resulting in a better quality of education in poor rural areas.

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Today, there are 20 developing countries receiving support from the Fast Track initiative that will go toward helping 16,000,000 children who are not yet attending school.

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There are another 40 countries that are preparing education plans and putting policies in place with the goal of joining FDI by the year 2008.

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But to get there, we need funding.

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This year alone, the total external financing need for these twenty countries, the 1st 20, is $1.1 billion donors so far providing $490,000,000 through regular financing and another $115 million through the FDI catalytic fund.

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But that still leaves just for those first twenty countries, a financing gap of $510 million.

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If those additional 40 countries are able to join by the end of 2008, the total external financing needs will be 3.7 billion and the gap will be that much larger.

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We have to do more to secure long term and predictable financing to support effective country education plans.

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That will send a positive signal to the next round of countries that their engagement in FDI is worth the investment and the developing strong country plans will make it possible to recruit trained teachers to provide quality education.

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The recent announcement by the UK is a very important step forward for which we are very grateful.

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Around the world, even the poorest parents might say, particularly the poorest parents, understand how important education is for their children.

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In Pakistan, attendance is high where schools are good.

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Where schools are bad, attendance is poor.

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Parents know.

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In Burkina Faso, I saw a school that is so good that poor families pay some of their meager incomes in order for their children to go to school.

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Poor families know how important education is for their children's future.

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We need to recognize how important education is for the future of the world and for the dream of a world free of poverty.

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I am fully committed to ensuring that the World Bank Group invests our full energy on both the global and the country level to help poor countries improve their education systems and to send more boys and girls to the classrooms, to quality classrooms.

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Thank you.

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Mr.

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Wolfowitz, thanks very much indeed.

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Let me bring in Chancellor Brown at this stage.

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Can I say, first of all, it's a great pleasure for me to be here with Paul Wolfowitz, who has shown us that he is going to give a new impetus to the World Bank's commitment to education.

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With Mingozi, who is a great finance minister and who is organizing a conference in Nigeria in the next month to discuss these very issues.

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And with my Dutch colleague.

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And the Dutch government has led the way with their call for 10 year plans for the future of education as they have done on many other issues in development.

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Now, last week in Maputo, Hilary Benn and I, we're honored to join with President Gabuza, President Mandela, Gracia, Michel Ningozi herself, and Trevor Manuel from South Africa to support the initiative that every child should have the greatest opportunity of all, and that is the right to schooling.

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The promise of the Millennium Development Goals and the pledge of Glen Eagles last year was that every one of the world's children should be able to go to school and that by 2015 there should be primary education available for all.

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So it is one of the world's greatest scandals that must now be addressed, that 100 million children are not going to school today, denied one of the most basic rights of all, the right to education, and most who lose, who lose out, our girls, denied the most basic chance to realize the potential.

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We know, as Paul has just said, that education puts opportunity directly into people's hands.

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It is not just the very best anti poverty strategy, it is also the best anti the best positive economic development program.

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It is the most cost effective investment in the future we can make.

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The benefits are in jobs and prosperity.

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For every additional year of a mother's education in the poorest countries, childhood mortality itself is reduced by 8%.

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The benefits are in health, education, preventable diseases and education is vital in preventing the further spread of HIV.

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AIDS Now in 2005, Make Poverty History was a campaign that asked and persuaded governments to make promises on aid.

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Now in 2006, we must keep our promises with a resolution that by delivering the promise on aid, we achieved the Millennium Development Goal on education.

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For $10 billion extra a year, every child in every continent could have teachers, books and classrooms.

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Last week in Mozambique, Hilary Benn set out our government's commitment.

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For the first time, Britain will enter into 10 year agreements with poor countries to finance 10 year education plans.

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In total, Britain will commit at least $15 billion over the next 10 years, four times as much as the 3 1/2 billion dollars of the previous decade.

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We will work with developing countries to help them produce the ambitious 10 year plans necessary to meet the Millennium Development Goals.

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In itself, our own funding can provide education for 15,000,000 children, but our intention is to persuade other countries to join us.

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Without increased predictable long term funding, poor countries will not be able to abolish fees or provide universal schooling.

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The promise of a little more aid for a year or two will not allow countries to plan to meet the Millennium Development Goal.

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So we must encourage other donors to deliver on the promises made in 2005 and provide the necessary long term, predictable funding through 10 year agreements with developing countries.

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The Fast Track Initiative that Paul has just given you momentum to this morning must be the centerpiece of our effort.

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Already, through the leadership of the World Bank and donors such as the Netherlands, we have shown what can be achieved in delivering more schooling opportunities.

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But progress has not been fast enough.

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We need to scale up the level of ambition.

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We need to ensure that more countries are endorsed.

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We must take immediate action to plug the current financing gap that Paul has just identified in the Fast Track Initiative, which is why the United Kingdom is announcing today that we will provide an extra $178,000,000 to the Fast Track Initiative over two years, which represents a down payment to meet our share of the current financing gap.

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We call on other donors now to come forward with their contributions.

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We look forward to discussing this under the Russian chairmanship at the G8 Finance Ministers meeting in Saint Petersburg.

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Heads of Government will examine this issue when they meet as the G8 chaired by President Putin, 10 year plans will be the subject of a meeting in African countries in Nigeria next month that I will attend on May the 20th to the May the 21st.

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I'm delighted that President Wolfowitz is committed to delivering education through a more ambitious fast track initiative.

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It is central to the World Bank's poverty agenda and we will work with him to persuade other countries to give more finance in the next few years.

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We want to meet our educational ambition and our anti poverty goal.

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School by school, class by class, child by child, Children freed from poverty, freed to grow and freed to develop their potential.

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That is our aim and I believe working together, delivering on our promises, we can achieve this.

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Chancellor, thanks very much indeed.

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Minister Ingezi, I'll give you the last word this afternoon, but let me go very quickly to Mr.

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Vandekai from the Netherlands.

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Thank.

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You.

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Well, what brings us here is that it's really an unbearable fact about our world today that 100 million children, mostly girls, are not getting the primary education they need to escape from poverty.

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Giving kids in poor countries the ability to read, to write and to count is their passport to a better life than that of their parents.

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And unless we step up and invest more generously in education, it may take another 30 years before Africa's children all get the chance to go to school and to get the education they need.

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And can we seriously tell them to be patient with us and wait another generation?

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We in the Netherlands have left just talking about the education gap behind us.

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We will spend €700 million on education in poor countries in 2007 alone.

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And that's a very steep rise as compared with the end of the 90s.

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And in this respect, we strongly welcome the recent announcement by Chancellor Gordon Brown to increase the British aid to education in the next 10 years.

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Usually it is very, very welcome that an important G8 member now take serious steps to ensure more predictable money for education.

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We also look to World Bank President Paul Wolfowicz to champion the Education for All Fast Track initiative.

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And we are very confident that under his leadership, the Bank will continue to act on its belief in the power of education to improve development outcomes and even to strengthen it.

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But over and above the Nettles and the UK, we have to call on more donor countries, the eight members in the particular, but not only them, to live up to promises they made to educate these 100 million out of school kids by 2015.

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This is one of the cornerstones of the Millennium Development Goals.

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This money has to buy results and this will happen if donor money goes to developing countries with credible education plans to get all their children a complete primary education by 2015.

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And therefore donor countries should should start filling as an emergency the financing needs of the Education for All Fast Tech initiative with more and longer term funding for education in developing countries.

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Mr.

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Wolf, which just gave very strong, very sterling figures in this respect.

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Children need to rely on a stable environment and good quality schooling and therefore donors must get predictable and long term financing and it is surely one of the best investments that rich countries can make in today's world.

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Thank.

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You, Mr.

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van der Kye, thanks very much, Minister Ngozi, I promised you the last word.

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Well, thank you.

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I'll try to be quick.

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I I really want to say that I'm excited to be here with Paul Wolfowitz, Gordon Brown and our colleague from the Netherlands to relaunch this initiative for the education of our children worldwide.

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We all know what an investment in education can give us.

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We don't need to go over that because all the research has been done, all the facts are on the table.

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What we needed was leadership, and we are getting that leadership from 2 very important people around the table and they don't know who has been persistently interested in this issue, the Netherlands.

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We want to thank them for that.

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Was very exciting to be Maputo with Gordon Brown and and Hilary Benn and President Mandela and others to launch this initiative.

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We've made a promise to Africa's children.

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We don't want donors to let us down.

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However, Africans recognize that they have to take.

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Sees their problems and take take their problems into their own hands and we are doing this.

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We are not waiting for others to come and solve our education problems for US.

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President Obasanjo has called a meeting May 20th to 22nd in Abuja of Finance Ministers of African countries along with Education ministers and others to look at this problem and see what we on our own side can do.

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Our first commitment is that we must make these 10 year plans that will layout fully custard attempts to get our children into school.

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The other commitment is to make sure that all the ancillary infrastructure that we need to make education work and to make it possible that we also look at how we finance these so that we can make an appreciable move towards meeting the objectives of the MDGs.

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And we're excited that we have Gordon and Paul, hopefully, and many others who have pledged to come to this conference to give us the kind of support we need.

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I know about the value of Education 1st and my parents trained 19 people who didn't have a chance to go to school to go to secondary school 19 in addition to their own seven children and this made a vast difference in their lives.

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Today I have just had six months ago adopted a girl, 17 year old with a baby who didn't have a chance to go to school.

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She lives with me now and you can see the impact of not having education at a personal level.

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Even taking care of her child was an issue, but now she's being tutored privately, she's learning to read and write, and this has opened up a vast new world to her that would never have been there.

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So from a personal level to a continental level, we know that we have to act to get our 40 million children in Africa back into school.

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We know in Nigeria we have to act to get our several million children back into school.

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And we are raising the resources to do this ourselves.

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We're not just waiting for the but I want to say this, that, you know, we need these additional resources and if we make these education plans and we don't get the support we need, it will be a scandal.

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As Gordon said, it will mean that we are condemning whole new generations of girls and boys from not having the basis to escape from poverty.

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I don't think they deserve this.

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I don't think the world should do this.

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I think it is a shame that the Fast Track initiative was never fully funded.

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We call on donors, if Africans make the effort which they are doing, that you should fully support us and we have pledged that we will do this.

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So I invite you all donors, put your money where your mouth is.

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Make sure our children go back to school.

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Thank.

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You, Minister, thanks very much indeed.

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Let's take some quick questions.

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If you'd let us know which organization you're from, that will help us up here.

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So floor's open, gentleman on the right.

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Wait for the microphone, if you will.

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Marty Crutsinger, Associated Press.

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If I could ask Gordon Brown, he talked about you talked about the need to get other countries to support this.

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Is this a topic of discussion for the G7 meetings today?

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And how optimistic are you that you're going to be hearing announcements soon?

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Yeah, there is a sequence of of discussions starting obviously today in which all countries will be asked both to contribute to the fast track initiative & up to the 10 year plans that will be developed by the countries that Mingozi will call together in Nigeria next month and countries in other continents of of the world.

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Yes, we will discuss it today at the the G7.

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Then there will be a meeting of the G7, the G8, sorry, in Saint Petersburg, in which it is distinctively a major part of the agenda and it will be on the agenda of President Putin's meeting of G8 Heads of Government in, in, in, in, in, in Russia in a few weeks time.

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So I hope that the G8 will be able to move this forward.

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It will then be on the agenda, obviously, of the annual meetings as we come through to September when we're in Singapore.

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In the meantime, I believe this African meeting that has been organized by Ningozi is very important because it will be a signal that all that developing countries wish to see this move forward with speed.

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And right throughout this process, we will be seeking to persuade our colleagues in Europe and and elsewhere as the Netherlands initiative has suggested, that they should make their contribution both to the fast track initiative and to supporting the 10 year plans.

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And I'm confident from the response that we've had so far that there is a huge interest now in moving this forward.

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I think there are distinctive initiatives on girls education that will come forward over the next few few months.

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And I believe that churches, charities, schools, universities, colleges will also be involved in a grassroots initiative on this, on this issue.

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And I can see schools in Britain and in other countries linking up with schools in Africa and elsewhere.

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I can see teachers linking up with teachers, churches with churches, community groups with community groups.

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And I think this is more than just a campaign that is going to be run by governments.

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I can see from the response that NGOs have issued that they wish to lead this this campaign and we, I believe, have a duty to respond to what they are saying as well.

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Let's go to the gentleman just two back, and then I'll come to you, Madam, on the front.

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Thank you.

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My name is Arshad Mahmoud and I from the prothom alo in Bangladesh.

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I have a question about this universal primary education.

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You have made these figures here which is rising since this FTI was launched and Bangladesh is a country which is often cited as a success story in terms of putting kids into primary school.

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Their enrollment is about 90% or so and I have some first hand knowledge about this quality of education there.

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I did some survey personally and to my horror I discovered the quality is so appalling.

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And what are you thinking in in, in terms of that, to improve that?

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Otherwise it would be a big disaster to happen in the future.

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Thank you.

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Ngozi, maybe you could talk to us just briefly about the importance of quality in education.

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It's not just having kids in school, Is it in their seats?

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Now when we talk about universal primary education or completion, the issue of it's not just the quantity, you know, it's the quality.

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Because when the the the quality is poor, you have high dropout rates.

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People are not motivated.

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And As for Wolfowitz said.

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You see in countries, including in my own poor parents really trying to scrape together resources to send their children to school where they feel the quality is better.

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The public school near them is not good enough.

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So in this initiative, we must aim not just at getting children into school, but giving them a quality education.

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It's not just about their enrolling, it's about their completing and being a whole human being who can benefit.

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And I think that this depends a lot on the quality of the teachers that we put into these schools.

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Also on the quality of the physical environment in which children learn.

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In my own country, we have a mixed record.

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We have some primary schools that are very good, good environment, good teachers.

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And others where children learn is sitting on the floor or under trees.

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So in order to improve the quality of those things, we have to, we are working on teacher training, putting more, more teachers into these schools, better trained teachers, improving the physical environment.

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In fact, in Nigeria, we're using resources from debt relief that we just got.

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I'm putting that into education to improve the physical environment in which children learn, making sure the children, the teachers have the necessary equipment, the children have books in the schools.

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This is a long term, this is a takes a lot of doing and coordination, but I think that's the way we have to go.

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And of course, testing the children to make sure that the education is a quality one and it's getting results, that's also very important.

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So I think you've hit a good point and this is one of the central things we have to work on follow up.

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Question from the President of the World Bank.

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On this, yeah, Please go ahead.

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That is precisely is my point.

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I mean, do you have any specific mechanism that can be put in place to measure the, the progress every year?

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Does the World Bank has any idea of doing this thing to monitor this progress and come up with say for next year or by 2015 when the MDGs, the threshold point that you can come up with say yes, we have done this so that we can monitor?

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Thank you.

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That is really precisely the idea of fast track initiative is to have policies that are coherent, that are sustainable over the long term, as in Gozies.

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I mean, the key thing in in quality of education, as in Gozi said, is quality of teachers.

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It's very hard, hard to have quality teachers unless you have a long term policy for hiring them, for setting standards.

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And I discovered in in some of my trips a term that I hadn't heard before called ghost teachers, which is what happens either when teachers aren't paid enough to turn up in the classroom or they're paid but they do something else anyway.

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It's I guess you'd call a form of petty corruption, but it's consequences are severe on children.

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And in state of Lahore in Pakistan, the state government there has a very ambitious program to try to correct that problem.

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What impressed me, and again this was actually in Pakistan, was hearing from civil society representative that the, IT was dramatic and noticeable that where the schools had quality, poor parents would send their kids to school even though there were opportunities to send them to work otherwise.

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And when the schools weren't good, then the kids were put out to work, which is kind of a double tragedy.

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I mean, you end up with child labor instead of child learners.

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But the so it is a critical issue.

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I don't think there's a single solution.

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I don't think there's a single measure.

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If I had to go to a single measure, I'd go to parents and not to any institution.

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But it's something that we are going to work on.

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But to be able to work on it, you need long term sustainable plans and that means long term sustainable funding.

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I just emphasized the whole point of the 10 year plan is to develop capacity in the education system by training teachers, by Building Schools, by providing the educational materials that are necessary.

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When I was in Mozambique last last week, we visited a school with more than 4000 pupils on 4 shifts, the youngest children sitting with no desks, educational materials that had to be shared and a pupil teacher ratio of about 90 to one.

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Now that's what's got to change and be improved.

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So it's not simply a question of getting places in education, it's improving the system of education.

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And at the same time, of course, as we have recognized, it's free primary education so that no child is debarred from an educational opportunity by simply the absence of parental income.

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By the way, it's also why you need a whole educational system.

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You can't just do primary education.

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You need to train teachers.

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I think to illustrate, the World Bank currently does about $2 billion a year of support for education.

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Half of that is for primary education.

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There's a lot of other work to be done in both the secondary and tertiary level.

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You have to have balanced programs.

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Thank you, lady in the front here.

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You've been very patient.

0:32:09

Mr.

0:32:09.28

Brown and your colleague from the Netherlands, we should congratulate you for the good initiative.

0:32:13.68

I hope that you will be going through to the main objective.

0:32:18

I was wondering during your state enough in Nigeria for during the forthcoming meetings, are you going to meet African children, schoolchildren, to ask them about their needs, what they want to listen to them?

0:32:31.64

If that's the case, do you have any question you want to ask them before you get there?

0:32:36.28

And I was also wondering if you have any input on Mali, which is my country and I'm the first woman doggone journalist and I've been journalist only for 20 years.

0:32:49.56

Chancellor.

0:32:50.88

Well, yes, yes, we will listen to children.

0:32:54.88

And when Ninguzi and I were in Mozambique last week, it was children that were asking the questions to us about whether the promises that have been made to children will be kept.

0:33:06.28

And it is children that are increasingly saying that they want, as I found out when I was in Tanzania, teenagers saying why do we have to leave school?

0:33:14.32

We want to continue in our education.

0:33:17.12

So there's no doubt that the voices of children will be heard.

0:33:20.52

But it's pretty clear, I think, to, to, to, to, to, to everyone that if a child's potential is to be realized, that opportunity for education has got to be available in the 1st place.

0:33:30.16

And this is a historic opportunity.

0:33:32.72

We would become the 1st generation in history that it delivered education to every child born in the world, and that itself would be a tremendous achievement for the world if we were able to do that.

0:33:45.52

But that is what the aim of this plan is.

0:33:47.56

Thanks, Chancellor.

0:33:48.4

The clock's very much against us.

0:33:50

Let us take this lady here in the 2nd row, if we can just bring the microphone.

0:33:54.32

IVA.

0:33:56.24

Hi, Celia Duggar with the New York Times.

0:33:58.96

You all very eloquently made the case for donors giving more to education.

0:34:03.56

I wanted to ask if you could name who the laggards are among the G7 and what you plan to do to whip them into shape.

0:34:17.71

Yes, who will take that?

0:34:21.43

Well, we, we, we know who the leaders are and they're sitting up here.

0:34:25.63

The UK and the Netherlands have been really outstanding.

0:34:30.11

Let me say, as far as the United States is concerned, I think you could say on the one hand, there's been a significant improvement from 2002 to 2004 from about $100 million to $260 million.

0:34:43.64

But just stop and think about it.

0:34:45.36

That's about $1.00 per capita, whereas I think the UK numbers are now up to $20 per capita.

0:34:51

So the US could do a lot more.

0:34:52.96

So could just about every G7 country with the exception of the UK.

0:34:59.44

This is of such.

0:35:00.76

But what I'd also like to emphasize is this is not just charity.

0:35:04.96

The world will be a better place.

0:35:07.36

We will all benefit when these kids are able to be productive, contributing members of society.

0:35:12.36

It's something they deserve.

0:35:13.6

It's something we owe to them.

0:35:15.24

But frankly, it's also something we owe to ourselves.

0:35:19

Chancellor Brand, One last thought.

0:35:20.96

Just say on the question of Mali, Mali has increased its participation from 30% to 60% and I believe it will join the Fast track initiative in the second-half of 2006.

0:35:31.92

So I hope that we can see progress made possible by the additional money that is being provided today and hopefully by other countries as well.

0:35:40.64

I'm encouraged by the response that there has been to the new proposals on the Fast Track initiative from all countries in the G7 and from the European Union as a whole.

0:35:54.68

And I believe from the countries that are caught coming to Ningozi's conference that the President of Lasanja has organized in in Africa.

0:36:04.84

So there is already a response, But of course, we need more than a response.

0:36:10.2

And I do believe also that the campaigns that have been run by civil society, by NGOs here in America, NGOs in Europe, but also civil society groups around the world, particularly the developing world, will have a huge impact on this as well.

0:36:26.24

And I think the interesting thing about this initiative is that it may be led by parents and by teachers and by children and by young people and by churches and by community groups.

0:36:37.96

And we, the politicians will have to respond to that over the next period.

0:36:42.24

Period of time.

0:36:43.4

So I'm not only optimistic about the, the general enthusiasm there has been in the responses to what has been said in the last few weeks, but I do believe that the whole of civil society, an American Civil society where there has been a huge interest in, in education is, is ready to have a huge impact on this.

0:37:02.16

And in the end it will be as it was with debt relief and it was with Make Poverty history, large numbers of people persuading governments that this is the right time to act.

0:37:12.6

Mr.

0:37:12.88

Brown, thanks very much.

0:37:13.88

Let me also thank Paul Wolfowitz and Minister Ngazi.

0:37:16.68

Mr.

0:37:17

Vandekai clocks against us.

0:37:19.2

Thanks very much for coming, ladies and gentlemen.

0:37:21.68

Thank you.

0:37:22.76

Thank you, Johnson.

0:37:58.2

He'd like to.

0:37:58.84

Comment on Nigeria paying back all its debt.

0:38:01.64

Absolutely.