LOCAL SCHOOLCHILDREN TAKE PART IN HAPPILY EVER SMARTER TO GET THOUSANDS MORE CHILDREN INTO SCHOOL IN THE MOST REMOTE PARTS OF THE WORLD

Notes to Editors:

Scarisbrick Hall School media contact:

Suzie Walmsley
[email protected] | 01704 842240

UWS media contact – for more information, spokespeople, content and imagery:

Karen Garvin
[email protected] | 07971 576917

Kanchi selection of images and first-person story *Kanchi’s name has been changed to protect her identity. (More stories and images available). Photo credit: Navesh Chitraker. 

UK Aid Match and Happily Ever Smarter logos

UK Aid Match campaign – From 29 April to 29 July 2021 for every £1 you give to United World Schools the UK government will match your donation by giving another £1. All donations will help children from very remote communities access education across Asia. UK government funding will go to UWS’ programmes in Nepal to help over 8,000 out of school children in some of the most remote areas go to primary school for the very first time. Donations from the British public will be spent across all UWS’ education programmes in Nepal, Cambodia and Myanmar. 

United World Schools (UWS) builds schools in some of the most remote, impoverished villages in the world and champions inclusive, innovative and sustainable education, including remote learning during the Covid-19 pandemic. Since 2008, UWS has built 250 schools and trained 1,000 local and government teachers and reached 43,000 children in Nepal, Myanmar and Cambodia with a life-changing education. UWS is a 2019 WISE Award Winner for educational innovation, and a 2020 UNESCO King Sejong Literacy Prize winner for ethnic minority literacy programmes.

Global Education Facts and Figures

Out of school figures: 

• 258 million children were already out of school before the coronavirus pandemic struck (UNESCO 2019). This includes: 59 million children of primary school age, 62 million of lower secondary school age and 138 million of upper secondary age.  
• 18.7 million children are out of school in Asia (UNESCO 2019).

Covid-19 impact: 

• School closures amid the pandemic have compounded the already dire progress on Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4) – the global commitment to guaranteeing a quality education for every child by 2030. 
• 24 million children may never go back to school (UN, Oct 2020) after the pandemic, falling victim to early marriage or a lifetime of poverty. Vital progress made in access to education worldwide will be pushed back by a decade. 
• UNESCO has warned that it may be six years until 2018 levels of education financing are reached again, resulting in lost learning for millions of children (UNESCO 2020).

Education benefits:

• For each additional year of schooling, an individual’s income increases by up to 10%. If all students in low income countries acquired basic reading skills, 171 million people could be lifted out of poverty. (EFA GMR 2014)
• The pandemic has shone a spotlight on the importance of global healthcare and access to health information. Education is inextricably linked to health and the benefits are lifelong. A child whose mother can read is 50% more likely to live past the age of 5 and 50% more likely to be immunised.
• For the world’s most marginalised children, school not only builds opportunities for the future, but is also a place of safety and a centre for life-protecting and and growth of social and life skills.  For example UWS works to instill hygiene practices at the schools it works in.