Today, theUN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's newEducation First Initiative will be launched, uniting the agencies and programmes of the UN system, governments, business leaders and civil society in a concerted effort to put education on the top of the global agenda ahead of the 2015 Millennium Development Goals deadline.

 

The high-levellaunch where major new commitments forthe initiativewill be announced will seeBan Ki-moon joined at UN HQ in New York by several Heads of State, business and civil society leaders and UN officials, including: Gordon Brown, Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Global Education and former prime minister of the UK, President Jacob Zuma of South Africa, Prime Minister Julia Gillard of Australia, Jim Yong Kim, President of the World Bank, and Anthony Lake Executive Director of UNICEF among others.

In a panel discussion following on from the high-level launch focus will be drawn to Education First’s three priority areas – to get children into school, to make sure they learn, and that what they learn is relevant for addressing today’s global challenges – and ways to help shape the evolving discourse on education in the post-2015 development agenda.

In the year 2000, 189 of the world’s nations pledged to achieve universal primary education by 2015. It was the second of eight Millennium Development Goals aimed at freeing people from poverty and deprivations.

Significant progress has been made towards achieving these goals, yet much more remains to be done, latest statistics have begun to showthere hasbeen a slowing downinreaching the goals. Without a major effort, a danger now remains that there will be more children out-of-school in 2015 than today.

The Education First Initiative aims to galvanize governments and all other sectors of society into action on education, to get all children into school, to make sure they learn, and that what they learn is relevant for addressing today’s global challenges. Read more on the Education First Initiative.

Read more on the launch of the initiative.

The event will be webcast livefrom 6.15pm BST.