Boris Johnson pledges more than £200m to boost girls’ education across the world
2 min read
Boris Johnson has committed Britain to spending more than £200m on educating "the world's most marginalised girls", while urging global leaders to follow suit.
The Foreign Secretary laid out plans to provide 12 years of “quality education” for one million girls across the Commonwealth as leaders gather in London for their bi-annual summit.
The funding, which is due to run to 2030, comes as he launched the Platform for Girls’ Education scheme, which he will co-chair with Kenya’s education secretary, Amina Mohammed.
The campaign will involve “a group of 12 influential figures” from across Commonwealth nations “holding countries to account” in the bid to boost girls’ education globally.
The Government say the move will help address issues around poverty, cultural taboos, poor teaching and a lack of resources, which are “shutting the world’s girls out of the classroom”.
Ministers have already pledged to offer the UK’s “world-class expertise” on improving education in development countries while earlier this week they endorsed the Safe Schools Declaration.
They add that 130 million girls are not in school across the world, and in conflict areas girls are over twice as likely to be out of school.
Australia, Ghana, Kenya and Sierra Leone are among other countries to have made their own pledges for greater funding towards the cause.
Mr Johnson, who launched the plan at a reception attended by Prince Harry and his fiancée Meghan Markle, said: “Girls’ education is the Swiss Army knife, the Rosetta Stone, the Black and Decker toolkit that solves a multitude of the world’s problems.
“Educating girls is in all our interests. If we fail, we store up huge problems for the future and wilfully miss out on boosting economic growth, managing population pressures and creating stable, prosperous societies.
“As a Commonwealth we’ve pulled together to make one of the great problems of our time a global priority. We must keep up the momentum, we must drive forward change and we must do everything to ensure that the world’s poorest girls’ get 12 years of quality education.”
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