Thank you very much.
I'm director of the Education for All Global Monitoring Report in UNESCO. We've been working very closely with the Global Campaign for Education globally and here in Canada. In fact, they provided some of the submissions you have before you.
Maybe I'll run through a couple of things very briefly.
I don't think I need to tell anybody on this committee how important education is. I think that in Canada, maybe more than in any other OECD country, you've seen the power of education to transform people's lives and to change the direction of a whole country. In particular, you've paid a lot of attention to issues like equity gaps, inequalities in education, and achieving high average levels of education across the board.
I'm often struck, when I visit developing countries, by the sheer level of drive, commitment, and ambition that people living in the most desperate of circumstances— in slums and drought-prone rural areas—have to get their kids a decent quality of education. I really think this is an area in which Canada has a very proud record, which, if I may say as a non-Canadian, you somewhat understate. If you look at your aid program, I think you're currently giving around $210 million to basic education. You've doubled the commitment to basic education since about 2002. That aid is being directed to countries in which there has been quite extraordinary progress. In Afghanistan, which is one of your major recipient countries, we've seen the number of girls in school go up by a factor of five in the last seven years. In Tanzania, another one of your major recipients, we've seen the out-of-school numbers drop by about three million. Senegal, another major recipient, has been one of the fastest movers in terms of getting girls into school.
I know that maybe even in this committee in the past you've had witnesses who have told you that aid doesn't work. I think in all of those examples, if you went and spoke to any of those kids or any of those parents, they would tell you a very different story, which is that your Canadian aid has made a big difference. Also, I believe that you have a big opportunity now as the host of the forthcoming G8 to draw on your own leadership and use it as an example of what other governments in rich countries could do to step up to the plate and make a difference in education.
One of the things we do in our report is monitor progress in education across six key goals. I'm not going to go into each of those goals, but really, the headline story that emerges is that there's a lot of good news out there. We've seen out-of-school numbers globally come down by about one-third in the last decade, including in countries that have seen a rapid expansion of the school-age population. That's a very real and a very positive achievement. We've seen gender gaps across Africa and South Asia narrowing, in some cases spectacularly. We've seen dropout rates falling and more kids getting into school and completing education. All of these are very positive developments, and I think they give the lie to the myth that we can't make rapid progress towards these goals that the international community has set.
There's a bad news part of the story. The bad news is that promises were made to the world's children back in 2000, including a commitment to get all children into school by 2015. We estimate that with current trends, that number will be missed by at least 56 million primary school-age children. That is a very big number to miss an achievable target by, and it's only the tip of the iceberg, because of course many kids will also get into school and drop out. Many millions more will get into school and get through primary school but come out without basic literacy or numeracy skills, because the quality of education is lacking.
That story, I think, matters, because education is a basic right. But it also matters for other areas Canada has a deep interest in. For example, you've prioritized as a country maternal and child health for the G8 summit. There's a very strong rationale for doing that. But if you want to cut child mortality, one of the most effective ways to do it is to educate young girls. A girl with a secondary education who becomes a mother will have children who are three times, or more, more likely to survive to the age of five than a mother who has no education. If you want to save lives, investing in education is one of the stories here.
Also, if you want a functioning democracy and a transparent government, how do you achieve that without education? If you want shared prosperity in an increasingly global-based economy, how do you do that without accelerating progress towards education goals? One of the messages of our report is that we need to think of education not just as a right in itself, but as one of the great drivers and multipliers for progress in other areas.
What do we need to do to change the picture that I've set out to ensure that all kids are in school by 2015 and getting a decent quality education? First and foremost, we emphasize that developing country governments need to do an awful lot more to reach their most marginalized populations, to scale up investment in resources, to train the teachers who are needed to achieve the goals.
But even with the best effort on the part of the developing country governments, we estimate there will still be a global financing gap of around $16 billion annually. Of particular concern is the fact that we've seen aid to basic education stagnating in recent years. Last year, for the first time, it actually dropped by over 10% globally. It's a little bit of a concern in this context that we've also seen Canadian commitments to basic education aid also tailing off. That draws a worrying picture for the future.
We have an opportunity to change this picture at the G8 summit, but I think we have to recognize the window of opportunity is closing. The year 2015 may seem like a long way away, but it's one primary school generation. You can't leave it until 2013 or 2014 to put the investments in place. We have to act now. That's why we would like to see the Canadian government really bringing education to the centre of the G8 agenda, not to displace child health and maternal health, but to build a bridge between the two, to recognize that progress in both of these areas has to go hand in hand. That involves I think citing your own leadership to call on the rest of the G8 to make the concrete commitments that are actually needed to produce results.
I think we have a huge challenge before us, but we also have an opportunity to solve it. I think, if I may say, to some degree it does fall to Canada to demonstrate real leadership at the G8 and to get us back on course to where we need to be.
Thank you very much.