"Education must be at the cornerstone of efforts to beat poverty" said Lucia Fry, Head of Policy at GCE. “If the G20 wants to get serious about hauling the bottom billion out of poverty, developing a tax that would put every child into school would set the foundations to drive poor countries forward. Too often education is an afterthought and schooling needs to be at the heart of the next G20 Summit.”

The group welcomed the announcement that the G20 will establish a working group on development that will be tasked with putting together action plans for the November meeting. GCE’s flagship campaign for 2010 is 1GOAL, backed by FIFA as well as political figures such as Queen Rania of Jordan. GCE is looking forward to the special World Education Summit on the 11th July in South Africa called by South African President Jacob Zuma, in response to the 1GOAL campaign. The event will discuss a roadmap for achieving education goals, prior to the UN MDG Event in September.

“The G20 has missed a chance to address the impact of a financial crisis which had its origins in Wall Street and the City of London but is now affecting African governments, who have to consider cutting back on critical investments such as whether children can go to school or not.” added Lucia Fry “The world has a number of excellent opportunities over the next few months to change this and build a concrete action plan to provide education for all from the World Cup Education Summit, the UN High-Level Event on the MDGs and the Seoul Summit. Let’s not waste these next twenty weeks but use them to set a path so that by the Brazil World Cup in 2014, all children are in school.”