NIACE applauds International Development Strategy Thursday, March 4, 2010 - 17:48

The Department for International Development launched its five year Education Strategy, on Wednesday 3 March. Douglas Alexander made a commitment to spending £1,000 million per year on aid for education with a strong commitment to the Millennium Development Goals and to achieving primary education for all children in the world; improving the quality of teaching; enhancing skills education at secondary level.

Most people at the launch welcomed the strategy. It is a strong commitment to:

• African countries;
• better schooling and improved quality of education;
• help to fragile states;
• primary education for all;
• increased spending on higher education;
• increased focus on teacher recruitment; and
• stronger focus on girls' participation in education.

Peter Lavender, Deputy Chief Executive at NIACE, said:

"While NIACE is delighted with the majority of this announcement, it is missing any mention of improving opportunities for adults - particularly the 770 million people with little or no literacy skills or those needing technical and vocational education. It was a bit of a cheek to borrow UNESCO's key strategy ‘Education for All' where youth and adult literacy is one of six major priorities and not to match the priorities in the strategy but to focus ‘learning for all' on just the Millennium Development Goals."

"This is indeed a bold strategy in today's climate so two cheers for that. NIACE, a supporter of the Global Campaign for Education, agrees with David Archer from Action Aid when he said that DfID had missed an opportunity to benefit women and families in particular by putting adult literacy on the DfID agenda. We sincerely hope this will happen next time perhaps, in 2015."