Five reasons why educating girls globally is vital.

 Educating girls, everywhere, is one of the smartest investments we can make to lift communities out of poverty, grow economies and build back better from the pandemic.

 Here are just five reasons why it is a game-changer:

1.  A child whose mother can read is 50% more likely to live past the age of 5, twice as likely to attend school themselves, and 50% more likely to be immunised. Quite simply, education can save lives.
2. With just one additional school year, a woman’s earnings can increase by a fifth. This is vital to levelling up society and ending poverty.
3. It makes economic sense: lost learning due to the pandemic could result in students around the world missing out on around ￡12,000 in reduced wages over their lifetimes. Altogether, we could lose one-tenth of global GDP.
4. If all girls had a secondary education child pregnancy could fall by 59%. Getting girls into school can help them make their own choices about when and how many children they want, expanding opportunities for their futures and breaking down barriers that keep women out of the workplace.
5. Today’s girls have the potential to be tomorrow’s innovators, entrepreneurs and business leaders. Quality education creates thriving and diverse workforces, enabling girls to lead change in their countries and communities, including in response to major global challenges such as the climate crisis. 

In my first month as the Prime Minister’s Special Envoy for Girls’ Education, I have championed every girl’s right to 12 years of quality education for all the reasons above and more. We need to get girls into school, get them learning and help them stay there. I’m calling on businesses to join us in this fight.

The Prime Minister Boris Johnson has put girls’ education at the heart of our G7 presidency, allowing the transformative power of girls’ education to get the profile it deserves, as well as a much-needed focus on financial and political commitments.

The Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab has agreed ambitious global targets, which include getting 40 million more girls into primary and secondary schools across African countries and beyond, and a third more reading by the age of 10, by 2025.

This July, the UK and Kenya will co-host the financing summit for the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) to urge world leaders to invest in getting children into school to build back better from coronavirus.

Let’s make 2021 a key year for one of the most important human rights causes today – educating girls. I hope you will join us in this fight.  

#education | #girlsempowerment