Commonweal school students are taking a global education campaign to Parliament

Year 9 students at Commonweal school are campaigning for global education. Holly Griffiths, Maegan Watts and Megan Kamber were the only children in the South west of England who have been selected to be Send my Friend to School Campaign Champions.

Send my Friend to School Campaign brings children into the world of campaigning and politics, giving them the chance to fight for the right of education that every child around the world should have. It is an educational opportunity that shows we all have a voice and can change the world.

263 million children in the world are not getting an education. It is a basic human right, one of the building blocks of life, yet hundreds of millions of children cannot access it. In addition, many children are getting a very poor education due to a lack of facilities, being educated in languages they do not understand or getting taught by unqualified teachers as they cannot afford qualified staff.

In places like the UK education is taken for granted, many do not want to get up in the morning and go to school. However, millions of children wish for better schooling as they know they cannot fulfil their dreams and potential without a quality education. The campaign helps children to appreciate their education and to use it to help those without.

The problem is not just that this is unfair, particularly to girls and children with disabilities who are far less likely to be educated, but the UK signed up to the Sustainable Development Goals in 2015. One of these goals is that every child in the world should have an education by 2030, but with the current funding levels this is not predicted to be achieved until 2084. We are calling on the government to put more of the foreign aid budget into Global Education, as currently only 8% is spent on education. However, education transforms not just individual lives, but whole communities, and helps lift countries out of poverty. By investing more in education it would ensure countries are more stable and self-supporting in the future.

In April, Holly Griffiths and Megan Kamber went to a two day residential in Leicestershire to learn all about the Send my Friend to School campaign and how to campaign. There they met all the other young people involved in the campaign, heard speakers, played games, did activities and much more. After the weekend they were told to campaign locally and get as many people aware and involved in the campaign as they could. They have done assemblies at their school and have been to other primary schools in Swindon and Wiltshire, including Goddard Park and St Katherine’s in Savernake. Holly has attended a Girl Guides’ session and we have also spoken to a team at Nationwide about the campaign.

On 12 July, Holly and Maegan will be going up to Parliament to speak about global education and everything they’ve been doing within the campaign. It will give them the opportunity to speak to those in power and persuade them to put more money into global education from the foreign aid budget. They will be having a meeting in Westminster with members of the Global Education for All APPG, and visiting the Department for International Development to hand in their campaign and meet with politicians there.

They wish to tell them that giving those in need a quality education will help to develop other countries and therefore develop the world. This will be a brilliant experience for us and this whole journey of campaigning has been fantastic.

You can get involved in the campaign by contacting your MP or to find out more about the campaign you can go here.