New York: Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has urged the world community to invest in education to help secure peace for the future generation.  

‘Education is the strongest tool in ensuring sustaining peace. Let’s invest in education to help secure peace for our future generation,’ she said, reports the UNB.

The Prime minister said this while speaking at a High-level Event on the International Finance Facility for Education held at the UN Headquarters on Monday with Special envoy of the UN on the Education Commission Gordon Brown in the chair.

‘When delivered well, education cures a host of social ills. For individuals, it promotes employment, earnings and poverty reduction. For economy, it spurs innovation and growth. And for society, it strengthens institutions and foster social cohesion,’ she said.

Sheikh Hasina, however, said traditional aid will not be enough to fill the gaps in education financing.

‘We must also engage with the private sector. Private sector should invest in education with rights based approach, with an aim to make education affordable to the mass rather than profiting from it, as quality education of workers would keep their business thriving.’

She mentioned that the international financial organisations too have responsibility to share the burden by providing more grants than loans to help countries achieve education goals.

The Prime Minister said it is evident that the financing in education would be increased by a huge margin to achieve the ambitious targets of SDG 4.

Despite substantial estimated increase in funding from domestic sources a wide financing gap will remain, she said adding, ‘We must work together towards devising innovative financing mechanisms.’

Hasina appreciated the efforts of organisations like Education Commission in securing such funds. ‘Development partners must keep the flow alive.’

In 2015, the Prime Minister said, when the Sustainable Development Agenda 2030 was adopted at that time all were committed to ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education for all.

‘Regrettably, about 263 million children in the world are out of school in the world. We’re alarmed at the report that 800 million children are predicted to lack basic skills globally by 2030.’

Hasina mentioned that the key to success in attaining the Goal 4 of the Sustainable Development Agenda 2030 will be commensurate upon channeling resources in education and skill development sector.

With this understanding, she said, Bangladesh has projected an allocation of Tk 867.2 billion for education sector in the country’s Seventh Five Year Plan. In the current financial year, Hasina said, it allocated 26.9 percent of our annual development programme in the education sector.

All these efforts, the Prime Minister said, have resulted in the rise of net primary enrolment rate up to 98 per cent and decline of dropout to 18.8 per cent.