‘The humanistic conception regards a child as a gardener regards a young tree...as something with a certain intrinsic nature, which will develop into an admirable form, given proper soil and air and light’ ~ Betrand Russell

Education is a bet on the future. As Bertrand Russell says above, a child - like a young tree - needs the right conditions, care and nurturing to develop their potential to become a unique ‘admirable form’ of their own. For too many children around the world these conditions have never existed. Now, as a result of the tremendous damage wreaked by the COVID-19 pandemic, many more stand to lose out on their education. If unchecked this damage to education will cause real damage to humanity’s battle to protect the planet. Better educated children - and adults - will be more engaged and informed future stewards of the planet, more active citizens, more resilient in the face of challenges, more considerate of their individual impact on global emissions and more skilled to be able to find solutions. If we fail to educate the scientists, activists, leaders, teachers and poets of tomorrow the world will lose crucial participants in the fight against climate change. More immediately, we will be failing to implement Article 12 of the Paris Agreement to ‘enhance climate change education’. How can we advance climate change education if education itself is in crisis?

To explore these issues I’ve answered a few FAQs below that discuss the new #SaveOurFuture paper I’ve been working on at the EdTech Hub. The #SaveOurFuture paper was launched at UNESCO’s Extraordinary Session of the Global Education Meeting 2020 and sets out in detail the education crisis exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, and I discuss how it relates to climate action and sustainable development.

What is the #SaveOurFuture white paper and why is it important?

Launching the paper on Thursday the UN Special Envoy for Education, Gordon Brown, described it as ‘a global blueprint to both avoid a generational catastrophe and to offer genuine hope to the 260 million children who never go to school, the 400 million who finish their education at 11 or 12, the 800 million - half the developing world’s children - who leave school without any qualifications at all.’ The paper sets out that:

‘Education is facing a triple crisis: the vast majority of children in the world have been affected by school closures; the impending financial crisis could lead to a financing gap for education systems globally; and these COVID-related impacts are hitting an education system that was already in crisis even before the pandemic with millions of the world’s children out of school or in school but learning very little.’

The vast majority of children (90%) have had their education disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic. The problem is that the damage may last a lifetime. Children who were teetering on the brink of being in school are now at risk of dropping out altogether (over 24 million), some girls who have been at home will be forced into child marriage (500,000) or early pregnancy. And education budgets, particularly in the developing world, are now cut to the bone. We risk reversing decades of progress towards the goal of getting every child into school. The #SaveOurFuture paper sets out seven areas for action over the next 6-24 months to stop this happening.

What are the seven areas for action in education set out in the #SaveOurFuture paper?

The #SaveOurFuture paper describes these key areas for action:

We must prioritize reopening schools, resume delivering vital services such as health and nutrition to children, and we need to protect the workforce and treat them as frontline workers.
We must transform education making it more inclusive, engaging, and adaptive so that it can act as the engine of sustainable development that we desperately need.
We need to strengthen the education workforce so that teachers and other professionals are equipped to enable learning and well-being for all children
We need to focus education technology where it is proven to be effective and most equitable: and we need to avoid the risk that technology continues to exacerbate inequality.
We need to ensure that governments protect education budgets and that they target budgets to those who are left furthest behind.
We need the international community to step up to fully finance education as a key part of the recovery from COVID. We need to ensure that any funding put into education achieves its maximum impact by improving coordination and the use of evidence.
We need to ensure that any funding put into education achieves its maximum impact by improving coordination and the use of evidence

How does the #SaveOurFuture campaign, and efforts to tackle the education emergency link to the climate emergency?

In so many ways! In the short term, plans to recover from the COVID-19 pandemic need to integrate both education and climate action. Also, the pandemic has exposed the vulnerability and inequality of our societies and has shown that, in crises, the poorest and most marginalized will suffer the most. The #SaveOurFuture paper shows how this has happened in education during COVID-19 and this should act as a warning for how climate change will cause real harm to the most vulnerable groups in the future. Finally, education underpins the sustainable development goals and global plans for a healthy, sustainable future on the planet. Education is about the future, the people we want to be and our relationship with each other and the planet and now is the time to reorientate education around these priorities. This last point was powerfully made by the Save Our Future Youth Caucus who said:

‘Our education should shift in purpose, from competency and competitiveness in the marketplace to co-existence and sustainable living. Sustainability should be a transverse, universal concept embedded in all curriculum...Rethinking our education will ensure a better quality of life for all, delivering the future that we want. A future where there is gender equality, concern for community and environment, racial and ethnic equality, equal opportunities, peace, and political stability.’

Addressing young people at the launch Gordon Brown said that ‘none of the sustainable development goals can be achieved unless we provide you with quality education’. What did he mean by that?

The sustainable development goals are interlinked ambitions to achieve fulfilling lives for ourselves and all life on earth, without compromising future generations’ ability to do the same. If we look at them, we can see how connected they are:

For example, quality education will lead to active citizenship taking powerful climate action to save the planet, just as better education underpins gender equality which will enable young women to have greater control over their lives and families and better health for their children. Achieving these goals by 2030 was always going to be difficult, but has been made even more so by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sadly, the #SaveOurFuture paper shows that the challenges people face, especially the most vulnerable people, are connected too. Take Pakistan, for example. The population has grown from around 30 million in 1950 to over 200 million today. The basic geography of the country is semi-arid based around one main water source - the Indus river - flowing from the Himalayas down to the ocean. There is simply not enough water for the increasing population. There are many ways to tackle this but education underpins a range of them. For example, better educated women (in Pakistan, around 40% of women can read compared to 70% of men), would be able to stay in education longer and have fewer, healthier children.

The problems in education and the environment seem so vast, is the necessary action really achievable?

The action demanded by the #SaveOurFuture paper is vast but not impossible. For instance, the paper calls for $9 billion of aid for education annually to protect the education of the most vulnerable children. To put that in context the Support Syria and the Region conference in 2016 raised $10 billion in a single day. As with the environment, the challenges in education are vast but not insurmountable and action depends, ultimately, on our priorities as a society.

Written by Sam Wilson - Education Lead at wyeside consulting

Read the full paper here

Read the executive summary here

Read the cheat sheet here