Helping ‘those’ girls will lead us to reach all children

LAURA DAVIES, AMBASSADOR AND PERMANENT DELEGATE, UK DELEGATION TO UNESCO

In September 2022, while the eyes of the world were glued to the funeral of Her Majesty the Late Queen, Elizabeth II, a critically important summit was taking place in New York, in the margins of the UN General Assembly. The Transforming Education Summit - the TES - a summit whose ambition was to go where no summit had gone before: to get Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 4 on track.

The TES is the first step in UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres’ Our Common Agenda, an attempt to make multilateralism more effective in its response to humanity’s most pressing problems. The SG is absolutely right to start here. We are in the midst of a global education crisis, exacerbated by the pandemic, the impact of climate change, increasing instances of conflict - and monstrous abuses of children’s right to learn.

The pandemic harmed the education of over 90% of the world’s children. Cuts in education budgets have exacerbated the impact: 64.3% of the world’s 10-year-olds are unable to read and understand a simple text. In Afghanistan, 3.7 million children are out of school, 60% of them girls. In Ukraine, UNESCO reports that Putin’s war has disrupted the education of 7.5 million children and damaged over 2,550 educational institutions.

But the crisis goes wider. All over the world; children are not in school, in school but not learning, or in school and learning, but learning the wrong things. The impact falls unequally. As Guterres said: “instead of being the great enabler, education is fast becoming the great divider.”

The TES was designed to address this. An impossible ambition? We cannot allow that to be true.

In June, UNESCO organised a TES pre-Summit at its Headquarters in Paris, to galvanise thinking, funding and political will ahead of the TES, and to bring youth to the table. Again and again, I was struck how foundational learning for the most marginalised will have an impact on all the other SDGs.

At the TES, we launched the Commitment to Action on Foundational Learning, a much-needed push for all children to learn to read, do basic maths, and build socio-emotional skills by the age of ten. These are the fundamentals they need to thrive and make progress through their education. It builds on the global objectives agreed last year – to get 40 million more girls in school and 20 million more girls learning to read - and on national Governments’ own targets. The ambition is to halve learning poverty globally by 2030.

This is not about limiting a child’s education to the basics, but about giving them strong foundations to build on. Options and choices. If a girl is learning in school, and she and her family can see this, she is more likely to stay in school - opening doors for future education and keeping her safe. A girl not in school is more likely to suffer violence and/or sexual abuse, end up in child labour, marry young, and have more children.

But these are difficult times, with Official Development Assistance (ODA) allocations for education going down, so we need innovative solutions to increase funding flows. The UK has been a key partner in the design of the International Finance Facility for Education (IFFEd) from the start. IFFEd will multiply donor resources up to seven times and give lower middle income countries access to affordable financing to recover from the learning crisis. It was launched at the TES, should start its first projects in 2023, and has the potential to unlock over 10 billion dollars by 2030.

There is energy, passion and a determination to succeed. There are boundless good ideas. 130 countries made commitments in New York last month. The challenge now is to turn the conversation and energy into concrete, sustainable action for which we are all held to account - particularly by the next generation.

Transforming Education Summit 2022

The Transforming Education Summit 2022 focused on education in crisis situations, improving quality of learning for all, environmental impact, quality public digital learning for all, gender equality, and increasing equitably and efficiently. This is a crisis having a devastating impact on the futures of children and youth worldwide. The aim of the Summit is to bring education to the top of the global political agenda and to inspire action, ambition, solidarity and solutions.

This article was first published in Engage 25.

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LAURA DAVIES • January 16, 2023

Chess in Schools - What impact does it have?

By Dan Staples • February 21, 2025

Chess is a low cost, high impact educational intervention. It knows no boundaries of age, gender, faith, ethnicity or disability, and can be played anywhere at any time. The game fosters intellectual and emotional skills crucial to a child’s wider development. Chess in Schools & Communities (CSC) is a nationwide charity founded in 2009 which delivers the educational and social benefits of learning chess to disadvantaged communities across the country. We work in a variety of community settings: libraries, hospitals, youth centres, homes for older people and prisons. Through our Schools’ Programme we currently teach chess in over 300 schools every week and support a further 2,400 schools with tuition, equipment, access to our curriculum and training. In schools, CSC’s unique approach is to run chess lessons during the school day as well as traditional chess clubs after school. Our lessons follow a bespoke 30-week curriculum designed to support other areas of the primary school learning, most notably mathematics. The course is suitable for children with no prior knowledge of board games and takes them from complete beginners to proficient players over the course of an academic year. Lessons are delivered by trained CSC tutors supported by school staff. The lessons are for whole classes of 30 children and typically take place in KS2 in primary school. Teaching during the school day ensures our programme is completely inclusive: no child is excluded from chess activities and children with special educational needs flourish. Girls, often under-represented in typical chess clubs, thrive in our lessons and tend to perform extremely well in our tournaments. In addition to these core activities, CSC also organises the London Chess Classic, a world-class chess tournament with a schools’ festival attended by up to 2,500 of our pupils, and ChessFest, a celebration of the game of chess which culminates in the charity taking over Trafalgar Square for the day to offer free, familyfriendly chess activities to members of the public. On 7th July 2024, a record 23,300 people attended the fourth edition of ChessFest ( www.chess-fest.com ). Our lessons plans contain large amounts of mathematical content particularly relevant to Key Stage 2 in primary schools: Numeracy – children are encouraged to constant keep track of the numerical value of their collection of chess pieces relative to their opponent. Coordinates - it is impossible to describe chess moves without using the coordinates assigned to the squares on the board. Geometry - when teaching in lower KS2, we often find our teaching of the chessboard introduces children to basic geometric vocabulary: horizontal, vertical, rows, columns, diagonals. In addition, when teaching the tricky knight move, many of our tutors use an L-shaped piece of paper to lay on the chess board and then talk about rotations and reflections of that shape to generate all the possible moves. Algorithms - there are various technical tasks in chess, especially when it comes to forcing checkmate. Our curriculum explicitly describes these as algorithms. For example, when delivering checkmate with a king and queen against a bare king, our pupils learn the Closing the Box method. Basic proofs - when learning how the pieces move around a chessboard, our curriculum sets children various problems that require simple mathematical proofs. For example, can the children find a way to move a knight from the bottom left corner of the chessboard to the top right in six moves? In addition to this mathematical knowledge, learning chess also develops various skills that are critical to STEM subjects in general: problem solving logical thought decision making visualisation concentration skills If you are interested in having chess taught in your school please get in touch! www.chessinschools.co.uk – dan@chessinschools.co.uk BIOGRAPHY Dan has worked for CSC since 2011. He started as a tutor in London and became London Coordinator before moving to Yorkshire. While he still loves teaching chess in schools, he coordinates CSC’s work in Yorkshire and other counties and deals with Tutor Recruitment outside London and Training, is National Library Coordinator and Deputy Safeguarding Lead. He is married and has two children. As well as working with chess he also enjoys playing

STEP Starter Sacks: Connecting traditionally nomadic families with preschool education

By Maureen Finn • February 17, 2025

A country should judge the effectiveness of its public services through the experiences of those who fare least well. In Scotland, where many acknowledge the education system to be progressive, children from the Scottish Gypsy/Traveller community have been educationally disadvantaged for generations. Frequently, the children receive no schooling or they opt out at an early age. Scottish Gypsy/Travellers are from a tradition of nomadic communities across the UK, which also includes Romani Gypsies, Welsh Travellers and Irish Travellers. A key concern for communities is sustaining their culture. Most believe that schools fail in preparing their children for Gypsy/Traveller lives. Boys often leave at age 11 to take up opportunities offered through family businesses. Girls leave to be trained in domestic skills by mothers. Recent research findings (STEP, 2023) showed that the involvement of women was key to developing culturally relevant school experiences. However, the modest knowledge that women had of the modern education system was largely based on their own past experiences, which included an inflexible curriculum and frequently involved racism and discrimination from fellow pupils and staff. The women in the study were unaware of the changes to the system over the past 10 years. For example, while pre-school nursery is encouraged and places are free in Scotland, few mothers took up the offer—to do so would be a failure in their maternal duties. The research recommended that educators collaborate with communities to increase women’s knowledge of the system, to empower them to make decisions about their own, and their families’ education in line with SDG5. Communities’ members and educators collaborated with STEP to create STEP Starter Sacks, a culturally relevant play-based programme targetting pre-school-aged children and their mothers. A series of Sacks contained materials that encouraged women to participate in learning activities at home to prepare children for school. More strategically, the sacks also encouraged connections between mothers and nursery / school educators. Through these relationships, we hoped, mothers would gain trust and discover the value of education for all their children not to mention themselves. Moreover, staff at participating centres received training about Gypsy/Traveller culture and using appropriate ways to encourage parental participation. Each sack was colour coded for its contents: , literacy (red), science (yellow) and health and wellbeing (green), each designed to address some known barriers, including: Social rules and routines, helping children’s familiarity and confidence before starting school Mitigating barriers presented through low adult literacy, activity cards with QR codes directed mothers to video content on the STEP website To encourage a sense of ownership and belonging, Gypsy/Traveller culture was explicitly represented in the curriculum materials. To encourage sustained engagement, new Sacks were introduced at four-monthly intervals. The programme has been running for three years. Over 400 women continue to be involved. Their knowledge and understanding of the current education system has increased and we have evidence of changes in decision-making, expectations and aspirations around their children’s education, particularly for girls. “Obviously, education is important for anybody but, like years ago, what it was like for Travellers—you'd get married, you'd cook and you'd clean. You'd have kids. That was the women's life. But I don't want that for my girls. I want them to get an education and enjoy their life a little bit. They don't need a man to provide for them. They can do it themself. Obviously, eventually get married, yes. I just don't want that to be their life plan.” Female, 17-40 The programme has had significant impact on the uptake of nursery places as well as school attendance in older children. For the women, they have reported increased confidence in supporting their children’s learning at home. Most importantly, some described an increased understanding of their own agency. They have collaborated with staff, reaching shared understandings of their cultural needs and expectations. We have also extended the programme, opening local opportunities for women to develop their own literacy. These women now have enhanced capacity (resources, skills, social capital and connections), which we hope will lead to future benefits. BIOGRAPHY Maureen began her career as an artist and a teacher in Scotland. She has worked in schools and galleries throughout the UK using the visual arts to inspire new forms of participation and inclusion in education. She has undertaken research and evaluation for national bodies including The Arts Council of England, NESTA, Scottish Book Trust and The Scottish Government. She is currently Director of STEP, a Knowledge Exchange Centre at the University of Edinburgh, which supports sustainable education for traditionally nomadic communities. Maureen’s doctoral research was in digital participative research methods.

"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world"

By Sam Tiwari • February 14, 2025

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world,” wrote a young Anne Frank, at just 14 years old, during one of the darkest periods in modern history. Her words, penned during war, persecution and loss, continue to resonate today, reminding us that even in times of despair, we possess the power to bring about change—both within ourselves and the world around us. As I reflect on the state of the world today, Anne’s message of hope and determination feels more urgent than ever. It is a call to action, a reminder that no matter the challenges, the possibility for change is always within reach. But what does this have to do with the right to education? In my view—everything. Since it was founded in 2009 to honour Steve Sinnott’s legacy and lifetime of commitment to education for all, The Steve Sinnott Foundation has remained steadfast in its mission to advocate for the right to education for every child, everywhere. Through diverse global initiatives, the Foundation has provided access to quality learning in myriad forms. But at its heart lies a powerful belief: education is much more than simply acquiring literacy and numeracy. It is a lifelong process that fosters creativity, critical thinking, and a deep commitment to justice and equality. No child should ever be denied that opportunity. Over the past two decades, significant progress has been made towards expanding access to education. The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and their successor, the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), have focused on increasing global enrolment and completion rates in primary and secondary education. Encouragingly, data shows these indicators are improving, signaling a positive trend. Numerous innovative initiatives are breaking down barriers to education, and it’s increasingly recognised that achieving one development goal cannot be done in isolation from others. In my work in the field of reproductive health and rights, the interconnectedness of these challenges is evident. In Sub Saharan Africa, for example, a lack of access to contraception remains a major barrier to girls’ education. Each year, around 4 million girls drop out of school due to pregnancy. Without reproductive health services, many young women are forced to leave the classroom, setting off a cycle of lost opportunities that impacts not only their futures but also those of their communities. Inadequate access to safe and clean sanitation facilities, including menstrual hygiene resources, means girls often miss school regularly. Global crises such as climate change and conflict have displaced millions of children, further disrupting their access to consistent education. The scope of these challenges is vast, but so are the efforts to address them. A growing number of inspirational individuals, organisations, and governments are coming together, recognising that complex problems cannot be solved in isolation. Education, health, gender equality, and access to technology are deeply intertwined, and collaborative solutions are needed, ones that reflect the complexity of lived experiences and ensure that no one is left behind. This brings me back to where I began. The barriers to education must be broken because access to learning has the power to transform lives. It changes hearts and minds, creating spaces for dialogue, reconciliation, and collaboration. There are millions of children and young people who could make this world a better place if only they had the opportunity to realise their potential. Education is the cornerstone of a just and equal society. It enables the formation of ideas, empowers individuals to question the status quo, and equips them with the tools to improve the world. Whether in classrooms or communities, the true power of education lies not just in the transmission of knowledge but in its ability to foster change. It creates ripples of positive transformation that extend far beyond the individual, reaching entire societies. In a world too often marked by division and uncertainty, education holds the key to a brighter, more equitable future. And as Anne so beautifully reminded us, we need not wait a single moment to begin. BIOGRAPHY Sam Tiwari is a dynamic leader in global philanthropy and the non-profit sector, with over 20 years of experience advancing human rights and social justice across diverse regions. Her journey began with community organisations in North India, where she gained firsthand insight into the structural and societal barriers faced by women and girls in social, economic and political participation. Sam has since worked across diverse sectors such as women’s cooperatives, education, health and humanitarian response, connecting resources to causes that are tackling some of the biggest challenges facing people and planet. Currently, Sam leads the Philanthropy team at MSI Reproductive Choices, a global organisation championing reproductive rights and bodily autonomy. She also serves on the boards of the Steve Sinnott Foundation and Dignity Alliance International.