By ALICE NACHILEMBE
Zambia has committed to supporting the national education sector by protecting and increasing the share of the national budget dedicated to education towards the global 20 percent benchmark.
Ministry of General Education Permanent Secretary, Jabbin Mulwanda made the commitment in a video, during a two-day Global Partnership for Education (GPE) summit held in South-West London.
“The Republic of Zambia is committed to supporting our national education sector by protecting and increasing the share of the national budget dedicated to Education towards the global 20% benchmark. The education shares in 2021 was 11.8 percent, in 2022, it will be at 13.19 percent and by 2023, we commit to increasing this by 14.25 percent. These projections are aligned to the country’s medium term expenditure framework,” he said.
The Summit was attended by a host of developing world leaders and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the UK had pledged £430 million last month to the global partnership for education (GPE) in the face of “difficult financial circumstances” after the coronavirus pandemic.
GPE has launched an ambitious financing campaign to raise at least US $5 billion over 5 years to change children’s lives through education. The funds will help transform education systems in up to 90 countries and territories, which are home to more than 1 billion children and more than 80% of the world’s out-of-school children. An equally important campaign goal is to ensure that domestic education expenditure is protected.
Fully-funded, GPE will leverage the partnerships and mobilize the resources needed to enable 175 million girls and boys to learn, reach 140 million more students with professionally trained teachers, enroll 88 million more children in school – including 46 million more girls – and help governments save $16 billion through more efficient spending.
GPE calls on countries to prioritize, protect and increase domestic financing towards the global benchmark of 20% of total public expenditure to leave no one behind and mitigate potential for huge losses in human capital.
GPE is also calling on countries to ensure education budgets are more equitable, allocated and spent to reach the most marginalized, and efficient, every dollar spent goes as far as possible to improve learning.
