Education is one of the great forgotten issues in this presidential campaign. Yet it is a key weapon in the fight against unemployment, impoverishment, vulnerability, violence and insecurity. These are all issues that were at the heart of the political debates. It seems that the only real solution to the world's problems does not interest many people, regrets Aide et Action.
Rising insecurity, violence and conflicts on French soil and in the world, immigration, purchasing power and rising poverty, these are some of the subjects presented as the major concerns of the French by the candidates for the 2022 presidential election. It is clear that all of them have claimed to have the solutions to these problems. However, none of them had the idea of talking about education in the world. Yet today it is the only answer to so many ills.
Aide et Action, along with the Education Coalition, of which we are the leader, denounces this major oversight. Along with 22 other members, ne call on the candidates to the 2022 presidential elections to remind them of the importance of education in building a better, fairer and more sustainable world. For it has long been proven that education is a golden thread of development. To give just a few examples:
- Each year of education reduces the risk of conflict by about 20 %[1].
– Each additional year of schooling increases average annual growth in gross domestic product (GDP) by 0.37 %[2].
– Finally, if every child received a full secondary education by 2030, 200,000 disaster-related deaths could be prevented through increased risk awareness [3].
Only by respecting the right to quality education for all can we build a just and sustainable world without discrimination and inequality. If all children and young people completed secondary education, 420 million of people could be lifted out of poverty, reducing the number of poor people worldwide by more than half.
Yet today, 258 million children, including 130 million girls, are not in school worldwide. And it is to be feared that the last two years of covid-19 and the social restriction measures have only worsened the situation. Yet France, by ratifying the Convention on the Rights of the Child, has committed itself to making the right to education a reality for everyone, both on its own soil and in the framework of its policy of cooperation and international solidarity. Based on this observation, we therefore call on future presidential candidates to place education and training at the heart of their programme and to make ambitious commitments to guarantee education for all in the world.
Discover the 6 commitments proposed by the Education Coalition, of which Aide et Action is the leader.
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[1] Source: World Bank. Doing well out of war (Paul Collier), 1999, p. 5
[2] Source: GEM Report, Education Counts, Toward the Millennium Development Goals, p.6 (2011)
[3] Source: Global Education Monitoring Report, 2016, Education for People and Planet: Creating sustainable futures
