Micah Challenge Welcomes New African Education Funding

Micah Challenge UK, a coalition of churches and Christian organisations, has welcomed the British Government's pledge to provide half a billion pounds over the next decade for primary school education in Tanzania and Ethiopia.

The worldwide movement of Christians, churches and church organisations is campaigning to ensure that Millennium Development Goals to halve global poverty are met by 2015.

The funding was announced in Brussels on Wednesday 2 May by Chancellor Gordon Brown and International Development Secretary Hilary Benn during talks on how to meet the Millennium Development Goal of getting all children into primary school by 2015.

Now Micah Challenge is calling on the Government to follow up its funding pledge by prioritising commitment to disabled and marginalised children.

Philippa Lei, Child Rights Poverty Advisor at World Vision UK, a Micah Challenge member, said: "The announcement is welcome as long-term, predictable financing will allow countries to abolish user fees in education and train, recruit and retain the teachers they need, as well as funding other recurrent costs.

"However, in order to ensure quality education for all children, all donor financial and technical assistance to education must prioritise and support strategies to address the continued exclusion of marginalised groups from education."

Lei said the biggest challenge to achieving education for all was the hard to reach 77 million primary school aged children who remain out of school.

One third of these 77 million children are disabled children, Lei said. In Africa, fewer than 10 per cent of disabled children are in school. In Ethiopia, less than one per cent of disabled children have access to education.

She concluded: "If donor governments really want to achieve education for all, they must commit to supporting national education plans which have strategies to overcome the exclusion of disabled children from education and working with national governments to develop and implement these plans."

Andrew Tanswell, Executive Director of Micah Challenge UK, said: "In the UK every disabled child has a legislative right to learning from primary right through to further education.

"It is unjust that disabled children in developing countries are discriminated against so they are not even allowed primary education. This is an injustice we should speak out against."

For more information on the Micah Challenge UK please visit: www.micahchallenge.org.uk