14 Mayo 2021

Demonstrating our commitment to building bridges between different language communities, RTE participated in two multilingual events in this year’s Global Action Week for Education (GAWE).

On Wednesday 28th April, we co-hosted an event in Arabic alongside the Arab Campaign for Education for All, considering the privatisation of education in the Arab region. RTE’s Project Officer Hoda Awwad presented the Abidjan Principles alongside Dr. Boubacar Houman, member of The International Federation of Centers for Training in Active Education Methods (Ficeméa). Presentations and discussion on the specific contexts of Jordan, Lebanon and Morocco were given by experts in the field.

Issues raised included the dwindling funding for public education, intensified in light of the pandemic, and the unchecked proliferation of private schools which are contributing to declining standards in the public sector and educational segregation. This webinar is a landmark event for RTE, reflecting the first webinar conducted in Arabic and indeed establishing an important milestone in the delivery of our strategy on the role of non state actors in education in the Arab region. 

Later the same day, our Director Delphine Dorsi took part in an event co-hosted by the Campaña Latinoamericana de Derecho a la Educación (CLADE), Fundación Relaappe, and the Global Campaign for Education, which addressed educational privatisation in Latin America and the Caribbean. Participants discussed the role of supranational banks in funding educational systems in the region, and raised questions about the implications of such finance for wider educational policy and the right to public education. A report analysing the role of educational technology and the implications for data protection and quality education was also introduced.

The webinar was conducted primarily in Spanish and Portuguese, with live translation into French, Creole, and Sign Language. 

This Global Action Week for Education (GAWE) aims to mobilize public financing for education. Led by the Global Campaign for Education (GCE) members and partners, the 2021 event was organised as a high intensity advocacy multi-layered space, in which civil society organizations in different regions demand concrete actions to stop privatization and the indebtedness of fragile states, as well as to achieve the necessary goals to predictably guarantee the funds that public education systems need; including the progressive increase of the national budgeting for early childhood education, basic education, education for youth and adults, and tertiary education.