Making strides, but a long way to go

International development secretary Douglas Alexander defends the government's progress on promises made on the environment and poverty

Liz Ford
Tuesday April 29, 2008

EducationGuardian.co.uk

If the government's global education strategy is working, the press will not be the only people to scrutinise the outcomes of talks at this month's World Bank and International Monetary Fund conference in Washington. There will be another sharpeyed group paying close attention to any promises made.

For in schools and youth clubs across the UK, young people are now being encouraged to think more deeply about international development, about different cultures and how our actions here can have repercussions overseas, in a bid by the government to create a more tolerant, globally aware generation.

Over the past 10 years in schools, the Department for International Development (DfID) has been supporting activities focusing on global concerns. It spends more than £8m a year to support teaching in these areas. More recently, revisions to the secondary school curriculum in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have "allowed for more scope and flexibility for this global dimension in education," according to Douglas Alexander, who took over as international development secretary last June.

The minister was preparing to fly out to join colleagues in Washington when he took time out to explain the government's new approach. "We want young people in Britain to be aware of some of the challenges faced in today's world by fellow citizens and understand how actions here can make a real difference and impact on people around the world.

"I think it [the global dimension] will provide effective education about issues that affect us all. It will raise awareness about some of the challenges and give young people the skills and confidence to transform lives and the communities they live in. We will have citizens who will be able to speak out about poverty."

But is the government leading by example? Do its actions on the issues of aid, trade and climate change stand up to scrutiny? Alexander says the government is making "significant progress" in meeting its promises made at the G8 summit in Gleneagles three years ago, about implementing the Kyoto protocol and helping to achieve the eight millennium development goals agreed in 2000 by 189 governments. But he does admit the challenges of significantly reducing poverty by 2015 still loom large: "We recognise the scale of the task. We're making real progress, but there's still a long way to go."

True, Britain has increased its spending on international development since 2005, and the minister claims the government is trying to secure deals "that would bring fairer trade to the world's poor".

Foreign aid

On aid, Alexander says the money DfID secured in July's spending review, which sets its budget for the next three years, means the government is on track to hit the target of 0.7% of gross national income (GNI) spent on aid by 2013. It has also set a goal of reaching 0.56% of GNI in the next two years which, at current rates, would put the UK on course to overtake the US as the world's biggest donor by 2010.

As for those hot classroom topics - environment and global warming - the minister says he welcomes the concern that young people show on the issue, and points to the climate change bill going through parliament that makes the British government the first in the world to set in law a framework for climate change. But despite these achievements, hitting the millennium development goals seems a long way off.

At the current pace of change, such goals are unlikely to be met by the 2015 deadline, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. This view was confirmed earlier this month by the president of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, who said the international community needed to "re-energise" if it wanted to hit the targets.

Alexander is right that great strides have been made. Around 34 countries are on track to meet the infant mortality goal, 44 are set to meet the goal to halve poverty and 47 to hit the universal primary education target. In healthcare, more than a million people are receiving anti-retroviral drugs in sub-Saharan Africa, up from 100,000 in 2005. However, 72 million children are still not in primary school, and more than half a million women die each year from preventable complications during pregnancy and childbirth. And two-thirds of countries are unlikely to halve the number of people who have no safe drinking water.

Alexander maintains that the government is committed to reaching the targets, and says world leaders will be meeting to "refocus attention on the development goals" in September - just in time for the start of the new school year and the introduction of the new secondary curriculum in English schools. The children will be watching.

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