Education and the invisible child

By short-changing the world’s children, we are squandering the most valuable untapped resource we have

basic education — 1.5 billion adults will have had no education beyond primary school. Worse still, half the world’s young people will still be entering the workforce with no recognisable qualifications, and will probably suffer long periods of unemployment.

By short-changing the world’s children, we are squandering the most valuable untapped resource we have. Moreover, we could be setting the stage for a modern doomsday scenario, because an entire generation of uneducated, alienated young people will make easy prey for extremists and terrorist organisations.

Former British prime minister Special to Gulf News

Success stories

The Education Commission just published a roadmap and a proposed global budget to provide universal, high-quality primary and secondary education. Our evidence shows that if developing countries can adopt domestic reforms to match the results of recent success stories, such as Vietnam, they can deliver education for all by 2030.

For our programme to succeed, the global investment in education will need to rise steadily from the current $1.2 trillion to $3 trillion by 2030; and low and middle-income countries will need to modernise their education sectors by increasing their domestic investments to 5.8 per cent of national spending — 1.8 per cent above the current average.

If countries are willing to make this level of commitment, they should not fail to deliver universal education for lack of funding. Education is the most cost-effective investment we can make, so the economic case for increased funding could not be clearer.

The Education Commission’s goal is to make today and tomorrow’s children a “learning generation”. If we succeed, we expect low-income countries’ per capita gross domestic product to be 70 per cent higher by 2050 than it is now.

By contrast, if the world succumbs to inaction and paralysis, we predict that it will cost global GDP $1.8 trillion by 2050. The brunt of this cost will fall on low-income countries. Those are the quantifiable costs of ignoring an invisible generation of young people. The other costs — in terms of lost opportunities and ravaged, alienated lives — are impossible to quantify, but should be equally worrisome. Gordon Brown is also UN Special Envoy for Global Education.