The future of Education Re-Imagined
7th GCE World Assembly
After 23 years of being founded, the Global Campaign for Education (GCE) will hold its 7th World Assembly on November 22–24, 2022, in Johannesburg, South Africa. The largest civil society movement working to advance the right to free, inclusive, quality education is getting ready to gather, renew its governance structures, and deepen discussions on the obstacles, challenges, and opportunities to overcome exclusion, discrimination, and impoverishment of education around the world.
This 7th World Assembly will be a great place to come up with new ways to fight the political battles that have been driving the movement for many years. It will also be a great place to work on new ways to deepen the movement's influence in all areas of education and beyond.
The GCE brings together civil society organisations, networks, and coalitions from almost 130 countries, representing a diversity of actors, including youth and students, women, teachers, union leaders, activists, researchers, and academics from around the world. The GCE finds its greatest inspiration in this diversity, which makes it a global movement with legitimacy and proven impact.
The civil society perspective continues to be essential for transforming education. Therefore, the World Assembly is an ideal space to discuss the changes needed to solve the problems of violence and inequality that are hurting education, especially for people and groups that have been left out and treated badly for a long time.
There is a need to expand the dialogue on the role of the new governance mechanisms in which GCE participates, such as the SDG4 Education 2030 High-Level Steering Committee, the Global Partnership for Education's Board, and the Education Cannot Wait High-Level Steering Group and Executive Committee, among others.
The 7th World Assembly will be comprised of Discussion Forums, through which GCE will deepen discussions on critical issues such as global mobilisation to achieve a new education financing compact and urgent gender transformative, inclusive education frameworks. These forums will also be an opportunity to advocate for a new global agreement to counteract the negative impact of the privatisation of education and global governance. The negative effects of indebtedness and regressive taxation have prevented low- and middle-income countries from ensuring adequate education financing. Getting the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to talk is an important step that the GCE will push for.
The GCE will lead advocacy efforts to get teachers back in charge and get more young people and students involved in making decisions. This includes fighting against all kinds of discrimination and exclusion and looking for solutions to humanitarian crises, like occupation, that make it impossible for people to get an education.
The 7th World Assembly will make recommendations on how to expand state accountability for education and lifelong learning, including advocacy dialogues on adult education and early childhood care and education. The GCE believes that only a holistic approach can offer the foundation to escalate the impact of the Global Campaign for Education from actions that combine the accumulated experience of its diverse members, including the voices of youth and students, people with disabilities, sexually diverse communities and women, under whose guidance the movement is heading for new struggles in favour of the right to free, inclusive, quality education for all.
The winds of change are blowing strong, and the 7th World Assembly will point out the strategic course leading its members and partners to renew policy decisions and actions to navigate towards a world of solidarity, justice, prosperity, and peace.
The future of Education Re-Imagined
