2015 Countdown Summit to develop action plan to get children into school
Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 2 set out to ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere would be able to complete a full course of primary education.
Yet, as we approach the 2015 deadline, 57 million children remain out of school. Hundreds of millions more are not learning.
At the current rate of progress, it will be 2086 before the last girl is able to attend primary school. This is nearly 70 years late and completely unacceptable.
It is clear that a greater sense of urgency is needed if we are going to keep the MDG commitment.
We must accelerate efforts to get every child into school and learning. In order to do so, we must work to eliminate the largest barriers that keep millions of children out of school.
To this end, on April 10 A World at School will host the 2015 Countdown Summit in Washington, D.C. We will bring leading grassroots campaigners, communications and policy experts and youth activists together with global policy leaders, including UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon and UN Special Envoy for Global Education Gordon Brown.
At the 2015 Countdown Summit, we will begin to develop a strong, shared plan of action for the 500-Day Countdown campaign and generate ideas to accelerate progress and ensure as many children as possible are in school and learning by the end of 2015.
Through the 500-Day Countdown for Global Education Campaign to be launched later this year, we will highlight important areas representing the key barriers to education, including:
- Children affected by conflict
- Early forced marriage
- Discrimination against girls
- Child labour
- Zero exclusion from education
- Teachers and learning
Follow the 2015 Countdown Summit on the A World at School website and our social media platforms. We’re on Twitter @aworldatschool and on Facebook at facebook.com/AWorldAtSchool.
Participants and their organisations are encouraged to share messages, experiences and results around the event as well as join the conversation online.
The official hashtag for the event is #educationcountdown. Secondary hashtags are #childmarriage, #childlabour #educationfirst, #TeachLearn, #250MillionReasons, #InvestinGirls, #GirlswithBooks, #educationcannotwait and #youthtoolkit.