That is the figure that the Global Campaign for Education (GCE), an international coalition of charities and teacher unions, believes is the very minimum necessary to achieve the target -- agreed on by the UN in 2000 as a Millennium Development Goal and reaffirmed at the G8 summit at Gleneagles a year ago -- of providing universal free access to primary education by 2015. Strides towards this goal have been taken in several countries, thanks to the combined effects of debt relief and increased aid: Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania have scrapped school fees for primary education, luring an extra 7 million children into the classroom. But where are the new teachers needed to teach them?

It is these missing millions who are the focus of the current campaign by the GCE, My Friend Needs a Teacher, which aims to ensure every child has a trained and properly paid teacher and can be taught in a class of no more than 40 pupils. It follows in the footsteps of last year's action to draw attention to the 100 million children around the world who do not go to school at all. That saw more than 5 million children worldwide create cut-outs to represent their would-be classmates, in what the GCE claims was "probably the largest children's challenge ever."

But that campaign took place in the white heat of the Make Poverty History rally, the Live 8 concert and the G8 leaders descending on Gleneagles. This year, the public profile of this agenda might have dimmed, but the enthusiasm of pupils for its goals has not -- more than 8,000 UK schools have signed up this year. So how has this issue captured the passions of children and made them so determined to ensure politicians stick to their pledges?

no letdown

"We've been very heartened by the fact that there has been no die-down since last year," says Janet Convery of ActionAid, one of the UK partners in the GCE. "It's part of children understanding how change takes place. We didn't want them to think the campaign was over with the Live 8 concert. It's actually an easy thing for children to understand -- they are motivated by an innate sense of unfairness, and they know why education is important."

Jenade Sharma, a year 8 pupil from Langdon school in east London, visited Mozambique earlier this year.

"In the first school we went to, there were 70 children to one teacher," he says. "In the second school, they were outside, getting taught under the trees. Knowing the facts really shocks you."

Jenade is something of a seasoned campaigner on this issue. In April, with his classmate Lily King-Taylor, he traveled to Mozambique with the Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown to meet Nelson Mandela to discuss the importance of getting every child into school.

And on Tuesday, together with pupils from four other UK schools, Jenade went to 10 Downing Street in London to check on the progress made by British Prime Minister Tony Blair on this promise and those made at Gleneagles.

Jenade insists, however, that he was going merely as a representative of the thousands of pupils who have been involved in the campaign.

questions

"Our questions are not just from us but from all the children in England," he says.

"Being part of this big thing, they feel they can really make a difference," says teacher Jeannie Rios of her class at South Street primary in Bedminster, in the English midlands, three of whose pupils went to No 10.

"They saw that it wasn't just them, that it's a massive campaign, and that really enthused them," she said.

This year, the GCE has enlisted the help of celebrities but, in reality, it is pupils who have fronted the campaign, and pupils who are keeping it going.

"It's superb for our children to think they were with this right at the beginning and have followed it through," says Tabitha Sawyer, a teacher at Ysgol Emmanuel, who took two pupils to Downing Street.

Year 6 pupil Rosa Maitland-Price recalls hearing about a school in Nigeria with 900 pupils and just nine teachers.

She could not believe it, she says: "We need lots more teachers."

Teaching is not, in many developing countries, a particularly attractive career. Training can be scarce or non-existent: In Uganda, for example, half have no training at all. Pay is often poor; in some countries, teachers can go for months without receiving their salaries. Class sizes are huge -- 60, 80, 100 pupils for each teacher -- and classrooms overcrowded or improvised. HIV/AIDS has cut a dreadful path through the profession and threatens its replenishment.

Last week, Blair fleshed out the promises made by Brown in Mozambique, committing the UK to a doubling of its aid budget for education, from ?45 million (US$82.9 million) last year to ?1 billion by 2010. Countries will be encouraged to come up with long-term plans for their education systems, with teacher training an integral part of that vision.

Blair told the children who visited Downing Street: "Developing countries need to draw up ambitious plans for their education systems, and the G8 and other international leaders need to provide the long-term, predictable funding that is required. An important part of these plans must be ensuring that there are sufficient trained teachers for the increased numbers of schoolchildren."

"We are seeing progress. As a result of debt relief, Nigeria is already employing an extra 120,000 teachers and sending 3.5 million more children to school," he said.

There will also be a renewed focus on promoting secondary and tertiary education.

The forthcoming G8 summit in St Petersburg, the pupils think, should provide that opportunity; they want Blair to know -- and to pass on to fellow world leaders -- that the goodwill generated by last year's fine words will not continue indefinitely.

With sessions on education and Africa, the issue is one of the priorities at the G8 summit. But progress on the ground since last year's commitments were trumpeted has been hard to assess. The GCE is working on ways to measure the effects of the promises of aid and advice.

uk in the lead

"We do welcome the lead the UK is taking on this," Convery says. "But there is still a long way to go. We're not going to be happy until we see that 100 million figure go down."

The cost of meeting the goal of free, universal primary education by 2015 is estimated at US$100 billion. The GCE says there is currently a shortfall in funding of US$10 billion a year; the US, Japan, Germany and Italy are among those countries it believes are not pulling their weight. Some African nations still spend more in debt repayments than they do on education.

Another Millennium Development Goal, to eliminate the gender gap in primary schools by last year -- two-thirds of those children not in school are girls -- was missed by more than 70 countries. At the current rate of progress, says the GCE, it would take 150 years in Africa to reach the goal of getting every child to school.

The pupils involved in the campaign are not prepared to wait anything like that long.

"Seeing as England is a wealthy country and part of the G8, we have a responsibility to help other countries," says Inderpal Lehal, a year 8 pupil from St George's school in Gravesend, east of London.

His teacher, Kirsty Ritchie, says: "When you bring it to the level of analyzing what world leaders like Blair and [US President George W.] Bush have done to follow though on earlier promises, the kids seem to get really involved. They like to play detective in finding faults and blunders and also to examine whether leaders have kept their promises or not.

"When they realize that a promise has been kept, like the raising of the aid budget, they seem to develop greater respect for politics and they also feel proud that their country is helping. However, when they find a promise that has no evidence of being kept or followed through, they want to remind leaders of the promise," Ritchie says.
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By Claire Phipps

source: http://www.taipeitimes.com