Every morning, in the Kakuma refugee camp, north of Kenya, Pauline Nyokabi of Biology and Chemistry class to more than 100 students in a classroom “Without electricity, without Wi -Fi and without a library.” In spite of everything, there is taught, learned, resists. “My students give me strength. They are resilient and. And I am a model for them. I cannot fail them,” says Nyokabi, who speaks from the experience of taking years holding, with their own hands, the right to learn in one of the most forgotten contexts of the planet.
Five years after the 2030 Agenda term expires, that right is far from guaranteeing. The international commitment to ensure inclusive, equitable and quality education for all people has been, in many cases, in wet paper. If nothing changes, 84 million children could continue without having stepped on a school in five years.
10 years ago the international community made a promise for dignity. However, far from approaching those acquired commitments, the 2030 Agenda has become, too many places, a list of unfulfilled promises.
António Guterres, general secretary of the United Nations, was clear and forceful a few weeks ago when he revealed that only 35% of all the goals of all are aimed at being fulfilled within the planned period. An alarming percentage that shows the difficulties and lack of political and financial will that exists in the vast majority of countries, and that becomes even more evident if we stop exclusively in it, the one dedicated to the right to education. We know that political and financial will mobilize by social pressure. As a society, we must wake up, we must press, we must raise our voice.
That is what we have done from the NGO, on the occasion of the return to the classrooms. We have put the focus on all those empty chairs in schools, schools and institutes of the world and we have asked ourselves for the reasons that cause so many places where there are children without schools.
The conclusions have been as forceful as worrisome: 272 million children are today outside the educational system, four being the factors that feed this very serious educational crisis in the world. First, that’s. Second, official development aid for education has stagnated. Third, the austerity policies imposed by international organizations that have limited the hiring and salaries of teachers. And in fourth place, the polarization of many societies, where solidarity and education is questioned and goes from being seen as an investment to a expendable expense.
However, the truly urgent are not statistics, but people. In Chad, Tsayem Saturnin, national director of the FE and Alegría Educational Network, warns that preschool education remains an inaccessible privilege for rural childhood. In Honduras, Belkis Yamileth, general coordinator of the Nazareth Center of Fe y Alegría in Urraco, reminds us that in many occasions specific curriculums do not have the support of governments: “Technical formation in the country is a great challenge. It is full of challenges and does not have the necessary political support.”
Educational communities do not need heroicities, they need conditions, they need educational justice
Testimonies such as those of Saturnin and Yamileth put voice and face to a hard reality: none of the educational goals of the 2030 Agenda will be fully fulfilled if it is not already acting and with decision. The impact that the pandemic left has not been able to be reverted at all. The health crisis closed classrooms, cut learning processes, aggravated the digital gap and pushed thousands of students, especially girls, outside the educational system.
Sometimes, when speaking of resilience, the international community frequently forgets the essentials: educational communities do not need heroicities, they need conditions, they need educational justice. Without connectivity, without decent and equipped classrooms, without a teacher formed and recognized – it is estimated that 44 million additional teachers will be needed here to 2030 – there is no possible educational miracle.
Despite all the challenges, great gestures of hope occur every day that, again and again, they question the international community and demand to fulfill the promises collected in the 2030 Agenda. They occur when Nyokabi in Kenya holds the motivation of his class without hardly any resources. Or when Saturnin in Chad affects that preschool education schools are built. Or when Yamileth in Guatemala accompanies his students while they are formed in a profession that will allow them a life with greater opportunities.
Inspiring speeches are not enough. It is necessary political will, sustained investment, coherence between what is said and what is done. Without budgets, without transformative public policies, without participation of communities and teachers, the right to education will continue to be, for millions of people, a promise without complying.
Inspiring speeches are not enough. It is necessary political will, sustained investment, coherence between what is said and what is done
Five years after the deadline for making that promise, five years from 2030, cannot and should not resign ourselves. It is true that the right to learn is at risk, but it is even more true that we are in time to act. We must demand that the international community and states guarantee public, inclusive and quality educational systems and redouble efforts to place education in the center of all agendas.
In this way, we cannot ignore the structural inequalities that are going through educational systems that, although they are different in each country, do not understand borders, and question the ability to guarantee the right to learn throughout the planet. Although with different degrees, gender, poverty, disability, ethnic origin or immigration status continue to determine in many cases who access and who is out of school.
Education must be a justice tool and not a mirror that reproduces the exclusions of the world and to make that reality, there is a debt that cannot be postponed anymore. A debt with those who learn in classrooms without light, with whom kilometers walk to reach class, with whom they teach from precariousness but with the conviction intact. A debt to global childhood, which cannot continue waiting.
Education cannot wait any longer. The promised is debt.
