Post-2015 Consensus: Education Viewpoint, Save the Children

Viewpoint Paper

There is no doubt that smart investments must be made in seeking to maximise available resources to advance access to quality education in the next period. However, a simple consideration of the ‘market benefits of education’ in order to identify where investments are best made will not serve to uphold and advance human rights commitments or channel funding to education in such a way as tackle one of the most important issues facing education,  and development more broadly, in the 21st Century: inequality.

So, any assessment of the relative merits of post-2015 education proposals must go beyond a benefit-cost ratio based on a narrow understanding of social rates of return to analyse the extent to which they will address pervasive inequalities, narrowing the gap between the educational opportunity afforded to the ‘haves’ and the ‘have-nots’ and   promote the rights of all children to a quality education at all levels.