Colm Brophy (Dublin South West, Fine Gael)
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Ireland’s international development policy, A Better World,puts reaching the furthest behind first at the centre of Ireland’s development cooperation. Education is at the heart of delivering on this ambition.

My Department, through the Irish Aid programme, provides support for education in low income countries, with an emphasis on the most marginalised within those countries. For example, in Uganda, Ireland focuses its education support in Karamoja, which historically has significantly lagged behind other regions of Uganda in terms of education access and achievement, particularly for girls.

Last year I announced a new pledge of €60 million for the Global Partnership for Education. This fund supports countries with the greatest education needs, targeting those with large numbers of children out of school, and weak school completion rates. Within those countries, it targets the most vulnerable and hardest to reach children.

Children in conflict situations and other humanitarian emergencies face some of the greatest inequalities in education.Since 2019 Ireland has committed €11.85 million to Education Cannot Wait, a fund which supports the urgent education needs of children and youth caught up in wars, forced displacement, natural and man-made disasters.

Ireland addresses gender inequalities in education through better education planning, creating safe school environments, and reducing the risk of gender based violence.In 2020 Ireland launched the Drive for Five, a global call to action for the education of adolescent girls. We continue to promote a holistic approach to getting all adolescent girls into school, keeping them there, and ensuring schools are supportive, safe and healthy environments.

COVID-19 disrupted education globally and has generated significant learning losses, disproportionately affecting poorer and marginalised students. An immediate priority is to use the Irish Aid programme to assist partner countries to safely reopen schools and enable the return to in-person learning for all, with remediation and acceleration programmes to make up for learning losses.