April 30, 2021
By: Mohamed M. Sesay
In his quest of commemorating education development globally on the theme “Education Financing for the one billion voices for Education”, the National Coordinator of Education for all Coalition Joseph Archi Cobinah has on the 28th of April, called on government to increase the budget allocation towards education to at least 35-40%.
Disclosing this in a presser held at its Robert Street Office, Joseph Archi Cobinah also intimated that the Free Quality Education needs a lot of provisions for all children coupled with an increase in budget allocated to school feeding, improvement of infrastructure ranging from enough water supply, energy, communication gadgets and other wash facilities in schools across the country.
“The 20 or 21% percent government is claiming is not sufficient because that 21% budget allocation towards education has not reached a GDP of 4 or 6%. So if the budget reaches 4 or 6% it means Sierra Leone has now answered to the question of the universal demand of 20% of national budget and 4-6% of Gross Domestic Product of a nation. We still need an increase of budget allocation towards education so that we can reach the GDP. So if we can achieve 35-40% budget allocation towards education in five years then the country would have done great job”, he said.
He further informed that the COVID-19 pandemic has affected the education of more than one billion people across the world. It is also worsening the existing global education-financing crisis thereby impacting the progress of the entire Sustainable Development Agenda and specifically Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4).
He added that the Global Action Week for Education (GAWE) 2021 will see the world’s largest civil society movement for the right to education come together to demand more and better financing for education to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all led by GCE members and partners in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Arab region, the 2021 edition is being organized as a high intensity advocacy space, in which civil society organizations around the world call for urgent action for education.
In her presentation, Juliet Anderson also observed that Education is a universal human right and must be guaranteed to all people in all contexts, including sanitary emergencies. “COVID19 has exacerbated the already existing inequalities in many of our communities and countries, leaving the marginalized heavily exposed to the negative elements of the pandemic. However, governments around the world and the international community have the opportunity to start addressing these inequalities by ensuring that education is adequately financed”.
She added that The Global Campaign for Education recalls that national budgeting for Education require four central obligations: Increasing the Share of budgets for education; Increasing the Size of budgets overall; Increasing the Sensitivity of budgets in order to respond to the most marginalized and; Increasing the Scrutiny of budgets, so governments are accountable to people.
In-line with the policy framing of the One Billion Voices for Education campaign, she concluded thatthe GAWE 2021 calls on States (including Sierra Leone) and the International Community to: Increase state funding for education to 20% of public expenditure. (congratulating countries for the effort made in achieving like Sierra Leone); Increase their tax base in order to increase resources, working towards a minimum tax-to-GDP ratio of 20%; Enable urgent debt cancellation for the least developed countries; and Debt alleviation for middle and upper-middle-income countries; Ensure inclusive education systems through equitable financing and programmes that prioritizes the most marginalized group particularly girls in Sierra Leone; Provide free quality education for all and end the trend towards the privatization and commercialization of education in Sierra Leone and Improve the quality of teaching through adequate recruitment, remuneration and continued teachers training in Sierra Leone.