In Chad, a GPE-funded emergency program has enabled the government to shore up an already over-burdened school system to serve thousands of refugee children who have fled violence in neighbouring countries.
GPE, the Global Partnership for Education, works on a whole-systems basis.
In the Central African Republic, for example, GPE quickly approved emergency support to allow more than 100,000 children who had been displaced by conflict to return to school, helped rehabilitate hundreds of school buildings and promoted teacher recruitment and training and other efforts to rebuild the country's crumbling education system.
The UN education, scientific and cultural body, which released statistics on Thursday at the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) pledging conference in Brussels, said not enough progress had been made in improving access to education since 2007.
In 2001, of the 49 countries presently supported by GPE who have credible data, 35 spent less than 20% of their budget on education.
In South Sudan, which has been torn apart by civil war, partners like GPE have helped the government create and execute a plan to improve the national education system, assist schools in improving their performance, offer models for school strengthening and enable more girls to receive an education.
GPE does this by providing the support needed to build durable, quality education systems.
Within a few months, she became chair of the Global Partnership for Education GPEE) and fellow of influential US think-tank Brookings.
The scenarios playing out in these African nations are all too familiar to the Global Partnership for Education GPEE) and our many partners in the education sector.
Funding from the GPE should always help to leverage increases in domestic spending – rather than plug gaps left by deliberate government inaction.
Indeed, GPE hopes to secure $16bn in domestic pledges from developing countries – but more could be done.
