Policy paper

Education Policy 2018: Get Children Learning

Action to tackle the learning crisis; prioritising effective teaching and education systems, and renewed focus on poor and marginalised children.

This was published under the 2016 to 2019 May Conservative government

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Education is a human right which unlocks individual potential and benefits all of society, powering sustainable development. Developing countries have expanded schooling at an impressive rate in recent decades but there is an urgent need to drive up quality and learning. Business as usual will not deliver the transformational change that is needed.

The new education policy calls for a united effort by global and national leaders to address the learning crisis and ensure poor and marginalised children - who face the greatest challenges - are not left behind. Our response is to tackle the learning crisis at its root; getting children to learn the basics of literacy and numeracy, as well as transferable skills. We will focus on three priorities:

  • invest in good teaching: support decision-makers ready to take a fresh look at teacher training, recruitment and motivation to tackle the huge shortfall in skilled and motivated teachers
  • back system reform which delivers results in the classroom: help teachers to succeed by making education systems more accountable, effective and inclusive, supported by UK expertise
  • step up targeted support to the most marginalised: ensure they benefit from education, particularly hard-to-reach girls, children with disabilities and those affected by conflict and crisis.

We will drive this ambitious agenda forward through strong leadership on the world stage; using UK influence to shine a light on the needs of the world’s most marginalised children and calling for global action to end violence in schools. We will expand our investment in high quality education research to ensure our, and others, investments are based on robust evidence.

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Published 2 February 2018
Last updated 6 March 2018 + show all updates
  1. HTML version added.

  2. First published.

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