September 6, 2018//-Civil society organisations (CSOs) have presented policy proposals on the world’s most pressing educational challenges to a historic first meeting of G20 Education Ministers in Mendoza, Argentina.
The meeting saw civil society organisations, many with decades of experience on the coalface in education, present ministers with four key policy papers.
South African education minister is expected to be there to listen to the recommendations. Gwebinkundla Qonde Director General of the Department of Higher Education and Training joined ministers from China, India, Russia, the US, Canada and other G 20 countries at the meeting.
While the G20 has met regularly since its inception in September 1999, it is the very first time all the G20 Education Ministers held a summit, at a time when there is growing concern about the global education crisis.
Around the world, there are nearly 263 million children out of school, and of the 650 million primary school-age children in school, 250 million are not learning the basics.
At current rates of progress it will take until 2072 to eradicate illiteracy among young people, and, in order to meet the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal of quality education for all, we will need to recruit 69 million teachers by 2030. These educational failings endanger the future health of the global economy.
South Africa has a strong track record of engaging civil society in education, which is why we are positive that its government will be open to hearing this new perspective in the debate.
The South African education system receives the largest share of government spending (5 per cent of GDP), and South African business is particularly supportive of education CSOs, with education receiving the largest share of the R3.5 billion that is spent on corporate social investment through non-profit organisations.
South African CSOs have also set a great example for the rest of the world. There are around 76,000 non-profit groupsin South Africa, employing around 1 million people, and groups in this sector have a substantial role as facilitators, conveners and advocates for unheard portions of society.
These include groups that aim to alleviate poverty through education by bringing informative projects to under-resourced communities (such as Model United Nations and arts and culture festivals). Broadening the conversation to include such groups is a good thing: too often, education debates remain insular, when such organizations have important experience that others could learn from.
Meeting on the fringe of the G20 summit convened to address these pressing issues, a group of civil society organisations including Plan International Canada, Education International, and the Harvard School of Education brought their decades of firsthand experience dealing with education challenges on the ground to bear, as they come up with imaginative, practical and pioneering solutions.
Representatives of the CSOs met with President of Argentina, Mauricio Macri, and presented their recommendations to the G20 Education Ministers including their chair, Argentina’s national minister of education, to aid the G20 discussion and help develop an action plan on how to best solve the world’s deepening education problems.
The CSOs to debated how the international community can lead the way on education, what role the G20 can play to strengthen vital education reforms, how barriers to social mobility can be broken down and how digital literacy can best be deployed to lead education into the 21stcentury.
Among policy papers the group of CSOs discussed were how to create a highly motivated and professional teaching force; issues around education, equity and inclusion; how to match the future labour market with the right youth skills; and how education, young people and social media interact.
Esteban Bullrich, Senator from Buenos Aires and Argentina’s former Minister for Education, and Vikas Pota, Chairman of the Varkey Foundation, jointly chaired the education CSOs gathering.
Esteban Bullrich said: “The fact that, under Argentina’s presidency of the G20 this year, education ministers had a place at the table for the first time is deeply significant.
They were acutely aware that, despite a blizzard of summit communiques, soaring rhetoric and ambitious promises, there is a deep global education crisis that among many other pressing demands often finds itself too far down the in-tray of the world’s governments”.
In many developing economies, teachers and facilities are lacking – and even where they are provided, pupils are not gaining the skills they will need for the future.
“That education ministers met to address these problems is a vital first step. However, equally important was another group who are too often missing from global economic discussions: the independent civil society organisations that devote their work to education.
It’s time for governments to accept that, to solve the global education crisis, they need to take notice of the views of civil society organisations and I am proud to be helping convene this meeting to get that conversation started.”
Vikas Pota said: “The world’s most urgent education challenges have proven too difficult for successive generations of politicians to solve.
We’re already slipping on progress towards the sustainable development goals and in the coming age of automation – in which those with low skills are already beginning to see their jobs replaced by machines – I fear this problem may only get worse. The economy will be unforgiving for those without an education”.
“Our fervent hope is that the G20 ministers will listen to our policy recommendations because the institutional knowledge of civil society organisations, often acquired over decades and combined with extensive on-the-ground experience, means we have insights that could be of huge benefit to ministers as they try to ensure that every child is given their birthright, a quality education”.
“In particular, our policy recommendations address the ever-increasing role that technology is playing in young people’s lives, recognising that in the educational environment of the 21st century, online learning can offer great benefits, from providing an instant source of information to allowing students to connect with their peers across the world. But without proper guidance and safeguards, the omnipresence of technologies such as social media can also see children exposed to false information, mental health issues or even radicalisation”.
The CSOs were Atlantis Group of former Ministers of Education and former heads of government across the world, who share with them the experiences of tackling these same challenges from within the corridors of power.
African Eye Report
