UN General Assembly
2014

are now pursuing the same goal for secondary education. We are equally committed to enhancing the quality of education by, inter alia, improving curriculums and raising the profile of teachers. Vocational education has made strides, with the creation of hundreds of new schools and the professional training and development of 8 million young people over the past four years. There has been an unprecedented expansion of higher education, with the establishment of new publicly funded universities and of scholarships and financial aid that has given 3 million students access to private universities. Affirmative-action policies have enabled poor, black and indigenous students to enrol in universities on a massive scale. Finally, our efforts to tackle the challenges of building a knowledge-based society have led to the creation of a programme known as Science Without Borders, which has sent more than 100,000 undergraduate and graduate students to the world’s best universities. Through a presidential initiative, our National Congress has enacted legislation allocating to education 75 per cent of the royalties earned from pre-salt oil exploration and 50 per cent of the social