Developing Countries: Education
International Development
Tony Cunningham (Workington, Labour)
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development what recent steps his Department has taken to meet the Millennium Development Goal to ensure universal education.
Alan Duncan (Minister of State, International Development; Rutland and Melton, Conservative)
The UK is playing its part in helping to achieve the millennium development goal of universal primary education.
DFID's
2012 Annual Report shows that the UK is supporting 5.3 million children
in primary education (2.5 million girls) and 600,000 in lower secondary
education in developing countries. The UK has also helped to train
90,000 teachers. Over the comprehensive spending review period the UK
has pledged to support nine million children in primary school, over
half of whom will be girls and two million in lower secondary education.
In
addition DFID recently launched a new mechanism called the Girls
Education Challenge, which will support up to an additional one million
of the world's poorest girls to complete their education. GEC will encourage innovation in the non-state sector to find new ways to reach girls in marginalised communities.