The Learning Generation: Investing in Education for a Changing World

In 2016, a quarter of a billion children and young people are out of school. Another 330 million are not learning because we fail to invest in them even when they are in school. We cannot accept another year or decade like this. It is time we started telling new stories about our children. Time we offered them not just safety, but a real future — not just freedom from fear, but the freedom to realize their potential through education.

So with this report we attempt to start a different story — about securing every child the right to an education, making a promise  that this time we will keep. This is the civil rights struggle of our generation. For unless we change course now, nearly 1 billion  school-aged children will still be denied basic secondary-level skills in 2030. Even in 2050, one child in three in Africa will not be able to complete basic secondary education. By then, Korea, Japan, and Taiwan will be delivering higher educational opportunity for 80 percent or more of their school graduates, while the Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Niger will, at best, struggle to reach 5 percent.

The International Commission on Financing Global Education Opportunity was set up to reinvigorate the case for investing in education and to chart a pathway for increased investment in order to develop the potential of all of the world’s young people. The Commission was convened by the Prime Minister of Norway, the Presidents of Malawi, Indonesia, and Chile, and the Director-General of UNESCO, following the 2015 Oslo Summit on Education for Development. The UN Secretary-General welcomed its creation, and agreed to receive the report of the Commission and act on its recommendations.