Conference invitation for Tuesday the 24th of March

On the occasion of the recent release of the seventh Global Monitoring Report on “Education for All” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Education and the Danish National Commission for UNESCO are pleased to invite you to a presentation and debate on the report.

The Global Monitoring Report 2009 will be presented by Gerd-Hanne Fosen, Senior Adviser, Ministry of Education in Norway. The presentation will be followed by a debate among the participants discussing the report and key findings.

Education funding is a precondition for achieving the EFA goals, but not enough donors are making the goals a high priority. Therefore, one suggestion in the report is to “Get behind the Fast Track Initiative” (FTI). In the second half of the programme, John Nielsen, Head of Division, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, will present the FTI and the global trends in aid to education. Subsequently, Kristian Edinger, Senior Education Adviser, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, will relate the EFA goals to other UN Millennium Development Goals, linking this discussion to the debate on quality of education.

The Global Monitoring Report suggests various, necessary fields of action strategies to achieve the goals. Furthermore, the report is also considered to be the most important instrument to measure progress made so far in the fulfilment of the EFA goals.

The 2009 Report is the seventh in the series. The report offers a warning to governments, donors and the international community. Deep-rooted inequalities persist in education, condemning millions of children in the world to diminished opportunity and even to poverty. Too many children are receiving an education of such poor quality that they leave school without basic literacy and numeracy skills. The report stresses the important role that financing and governance reforms have to play, and aid to education is stagnating.