Girls’ Education — House of Commons, 2019-09-05
Topic: Education
Daniel Joseph Carden (Labour, Centre-left): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of the statement and welcome him to his new role. He is the third Secretary of State I have faced in this position In its "World Development Report 2018", the World Bank declared an international learning crisis. We know that it is too often girls who are most affected by the lack of education globally. They are twice as likely as boys to never start school. Given these figures, we welcome the Secretary of State’s focus on education, and girls’ education in particular While, like the Government, we recognise that the benefits of girls’ education reach far beyond the individual girl, does the Secretary of State agree that education is first and foremost a basic human right? That is why the Labour party is committed to a rights-based approach to education Last month, I visited Kenya and saw for myself the huge educational needs in that country. I visited state schools and low-fee private schools, meeting teachers, pupils, parents and civil society groups, and one thing was clear when it came to education: the people I met there wanted exactly the same things that my constituents in Liverpool want—decent, publicly funded schooling for their children. I am concerned about the growing support that DFID is providing to expanding private education in the global south, because we know that fee-paying private schools never reach the most marginalised children. We know from our own experience in the UK that universal public systems of education are the only way to reach all children. The International Development Committee has said that DFID’s support for private education is "controversial". The last Independent Commission for Aid Impact assessment of DFID’s work to support the most marginalised girls found that DFID is "falling short" of its ambitions to educate the poorest and most vulnerable girls. One reason for that was a lack of influence by DFID on public Government-run education programmes In Kenya, I heard some worrying stories from parents and teachers about their experience with so-called low-fee private schools, and one chain of schools in particular: Bridge International Academies. Parents told me how they had been tricked into believing that their kids would benefit from scholarships, leaving them unable to pay fees and their kids missing chunks of schooling as a result. I met the head of the Kenya National Union of Teachers to discuss education in the country, and he had a very clear message: he wanted the UK to stop using aid money to privatise his country’s education system In August last year, Oxfam published its review of a DFID-funded education public-private partnership in Pakistan. It found that schools were failing to reach the most marginalised, relying on very low wages and poor employment practices. In February this year, the Send My Friend to School coalition released a report calling for DFID to ensure that its aid spending goes towards supporting education that is provided universally and is available free at the point of use. In April, a report from the National Education Union and Global Justice Now claimed that UK aid is being used to push an ideological agenda to expand fee-paying private education around the world Labour knows the importance of publicly delivered public services. That is why we will set up a new unit for public services within DFID that will champion education as a human right and a public good. Will the Secretary of State listen to the sector, to the unions and to teacher and campaign groups in the UK and the global south, who say that education is a universal right guaranteed by the state and not a market to make profits from? Will he shift his Department’s focus on education towards a human rights-based approach, so that all girls get the education they are entitled to?