Education and Aid Programme     (14/10/2005)

Lord Thomson of Monifieth rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what is their policy on the role of education in their overseas aid programme.

The noble Lord said: My Lords, I can put simply my reason for having this debate. I wish to emphasise before the next Commonwealth summit in Malta in November the vital importance of education within the aid programme, particularly within sub-Saharan Africa. The Government have been taking welcome initiatives with their Africa commission and their presidency of the G8, which should now be vigorously pursued through the machinery of Commonwealth co-operation.

I declare a personal interest as an office-bearer of the Council for Commonwealth Education, which I helped to found around 50 years ago. We set it up to enable interested politicians of all parties to join interested educationists in trying to create a climate of informed opinion about the role of education in aid policy. At that time Harold Macmillan's "wind of change" speech was blowing across the continent, and, if I remember rightly, it was called "Africa year". Amid the rhetoric, some of us felt that education would remain the key to making a success of independence. Now, 50 years on, we have "Africa year" again, and sadly the sub-Saharan region of Africa is one of the most impoverished and turbulent areas of the globe's surface.

I think of Malawi, which I used to know as Nyasaland, which had close links with Scotland and the Scottish Kirk. I remember asking a Parliamentary Question in those far-off days about how many graduates Nyasaland had. The answer was around 20, and at that time more than half of them were in detention because of the government's imposition of the Central African Federation proposals. I was interested to see, 50 years on, the report from the Government's Africa commission on the situation in Malawi, where it has been making a heroic effort since 1994 to achieve free primary education for all. It has introduced an imaginative and radical new teacher training scheme, which produces a high volume of teachers at a low cost. I am sure that everyone wishes it well in that.

However, the commission also says, for example, that a survey showed that 25 per cent of teachers who started work in rural areas in January 1999 had left by October the same year. So there are great problems to overcome. At the other end of the educational spectrum, throughout Africa, a disproportionate emphasis on primary education to the exclusion of other forms of educational development has produced a state of crisis in university education. One of the most depressing sentences in the Africa commission report is that which shows that at present there are more African scientists and engineers working in the USA than in Africa.

Such facts underline the importance of taking a holistic approach to educational development needs, as the report emphasises. Primary education expansion is very important but it depends on a flow of trained teachers, an adequate supply of graduates from the African continent, and relevant postgraduate research in African universities. We would therefore like to see DfID's policy develop much more comprehensively to address levels of education other than primary. We would also be very cautious about trendy new gadgetry; for example, some schools cannot afford computers, and there is often no electricity. I have been through such issues often. There is still a very important role for old-fashioned textbooks, especially if they can be published in Africa economically by African publishers.

We very much welcome the Department for International Development's greater commitment to international education and educational development. We look forward to closer partnership between that department and the Department for Education and Skills, particularly because the latter is a repository of professional experience in the UK's education systems that can be shared with our partners abroad. In that context, we should not overlook the close inter-relationship between our own education system and those of other countries, in which Commonwealth co-operation can play a constructive part.

All of that points to the need for joined-up government, especially in areas where international migration has an impact on development. Joined-up thinking is not always evident, as is evident from the Government's decision to charge for issuing visas and to impose visa restrictions on students accepted for study here. Those policies are a direct threat to the very targets set by the Prime Minister for an increased number of students from abroad. I will listen with great interest to the Minister's remarks on that front.

Britain should use the Commonwealth much more fully as a vehicle for assisting development. Middle-income countries often have experience that is more relevant than our own to the poorest countries. The United Kingdom could help to mobilise that experience through the Commonwealth secretariat. I speak as the last Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations that the United Kingdom ever had, and I am bound to say, as a politician who has taken an active interest in those affairs during my lifetime, I do not believe that the multi-racial Commonwealth would have survived as a force for good in the world if it had been simply left to the politicians. At its heart, the Commonwealth is an extraordinary network of personal relations in which the education profession has a proud role.

On this year's Commonwealth Day, in Westminster Abbey, Her Majesty the Queen said:

"Education is sometimes described as the golden thread that binds the Commonwealth. Our shared use of a common, world language—English—has underpinned a long and rich tradition of educational co-operation".

Long may that remain so.

Lord Judd: My Lords, as a fellow patron of the Council for Education in the Commonwealth, I very much I endorse the message of the noble Lord, Lord Thomson of Monifieth, concerning education and the role that the Commonwealth has to play. His credentials do not need to be underlined. His message needs to be taken seriously. I am sure that we all greatly look forward to the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington.

Education is the key to economic and social development, to health and to living, as distinct from merely existing or struggling to survive. In 2000, 189 governments, under the aegis of the United Nations General Assembly, agreed on millennium goals to be achieved by 2015. These included universal primary education and, by 2005, the elimination of gender discrimination with as many girls as boys at school. Women are certainly central to development.

Today, the reality is that some 100 million children are still out of school in approximately 70 countries, and 60 per cent of those are girls. At the present rate of progress it will be 2150 before Africa meets the target of all children into school. Meanwhile, it has been calculated that if every child in the world completed primary education, at least 7 million HIV infections could be prevented in the next five years.

Against that background, the Government's commitment to the Education for All—Fast Track Initiative, with £40 million to back that commitment, is to be warmly welcomed. But very much more will have to be done by us and the international community if the Millennium Review Summit's renewed commitment to,

"eliminate gender inequalities in primary and secondary education by the earliest possible date, and at all educational levels by 2015",

is to be achieved. In that context, the call of the summit for the elimination of user fees for primary education is particularly important.

We live in a totally interdependent global community. In the UK, relevant education has to be rooted from the earliest years in an understanding of that. There are many indications that schools in Africa and the UK, with international partners in the other continent, do better in all respects, not least academically, than those without them. I am therefore heartened to learn that the Department for Education and Skills, with its recently published international strategy, Putting the World into World Class Education—designed to equip children, young people and adults for a life in global society and for work in a global economy—is encouraging every school in the United Kingdom to have an international partner. It is altogether good news that DfID is providing £1.3 million for a programme of school partnerships led by the British Council, the UK One World Linking Association, VSO and the Cambridge Education Foundation.

The BBC, which has been hoping in the current year to help to promote 1,000 partnerships between schools in the United Kingdom and Africa, has, I understand, excitingly already exceeded that target by 800. Every Anglican diocese in England has a link to a diocese in the developing world. To prove the validity and relevance of faith schools, as an Anglican, I am convinced myself that linking has urgently to be brought into the classrooms of every Church of England school.

Beyond all of that, practically based linking between professional groups is indispensable, not only to development—it is indispensable to development—but also to education in its wider social sense. Community-based international partnerships can also have an imaginative part to play in generating the understanding which is essential if we are to build social cohesion within our own increasingly culturally diverse society.

In a voluntary capacity, through my association with the work of BUILD—that is, Building Understanding through International Links for Development—I have been impressed by the way in which a coalition of 50 agencies, including VSO and OXFAM—I am glad to have been a director of both—has been formed to foster the development of international partnerships between community-based organisations and counterparts in the developing world. The importance of the £1 million to £1.5 million provided by DfID for the development educational programme in the United Kingdom cannot be overestimated, and I hope that it is just the beginning.

Towns, schools, local authorities, faith-based organisations, hospitals, arts, sports and cultural groups—and, perhaps most important of all, the universities—have a vital part to play. Currently our universities put a lot of effort into partnerships with universities in the affluent parts of the world. They urgently need to balance those activities with partnerships with universities in the developing world. The disciplines of joined-up government and strategic thinking, both for humanitarian and global security reasons, demand the maximum possible co-operation between DfID, DfES, the Home Office, ODPM and other government departments. We need to see evidence of this, and I was so glad that the noble Lord, Lord Thomson, emphasised the point.

Most important of all, we need the driving force of vision. No longer should we tolerate a world in which any child, anywhere, should be destined prematurely to go to the grave without having had every possible encouragement to fulfil their intellectual and creative potential. That, for me at least, is why education should take pride of place among the priorities of DfID.

Baroness Hooper: My Lords, the importance of education for the future of every country, whatever its state of development, cannot be in doubt, and I look forward to the Minister's response. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Thomson of Monifieth, for introducing this important debate, and I fully agree with the points he has made. To add to his remarks and to those of the noble Lord, Lord Judd—with which I also agree—I want to refer to the importance of tertiary education, which should complement primary and secondary education. Given that government policy should aim to be both comprehensive and joined-up, can the Minister explain in her reply a particular point: why is the budget for the Foreign Office's Chevening Fellowship scheme being squeezed and the numbers reduced?

I ask that because, sadly, British universities are no longer the first choice for overseas students. As the noble Lord, Lord Thomson, made clear, overseas fees and visa requirements, for which successive governments bear responsibility, are proving to be barriers. Moreover, since the British Council no longer seems to play its former role in education and educational exchanges, the Chevening Fellowship scheme has filled a very important gap. The noble Lord, Lord Thomson, referred to the Commonwealth. I would add to that and underline the needs of students in the British Overseas Territories for tertiary education. Further to illustrate the point, recently I made an IPU visit to Bolivia. Not only is the president of Bolivia a former Chevening Fellow, but also six out of the 12 leading politicians, industrialists and representatives of the media gathered together by the British ambassador for a meeting. If anything were needed to emphasise the importance of the scheme, that example should serve.

My second point addresses the terrible aftermath of the series of recent earthquakes, culminating in the present situation in Pakistan. Furthermore, we should not forget the disastrous floods and mudslides caused by Hurricane Stan, which has affected El Salvador, Guatemala, parts of Honduras and Nicaragua. Given that these natural disasters have destroyed many schools, a large number still with children in them—some have said that it means the loss of a whole generation—can the Minister say whether the Government have any plans to provide funding for the reconstruction of schools? Will they also ensure that proper risk assessments are made and strict building conditions imposed and monitored so that new buildings reach the recognised standards required to withstand the worst effects of earthquakes and natural disasters? I learnt recently that in a serious earthquake in California—in Los Angeles or San Francisco—60 people died. Of course, we all know that in the recent earthquake we are talking about thousands of people.

Finally, I should be very interested to know how much of the United Kingdom's contribution to the European Union's development aid programme goes towards educational purposes. What kind of direction over such projects does the United Kingdom have?

The Lord Bishop of Coventry: My Lords, if someone were to discover an existing education infrastructure consisting of thousands of schools and teachers in some of the poorest and most rural parts of Africa, I would expect educationalists to beat a path to his door. When the providers of such education are those also running the most effective civil society organisations across Africa, and given the rhetoric of community-led participatory development, I would expect development agencies to beat a path to their door. Moreover, given that the capacity of these schools could be doubled, or even tripled, within a few years with minimal sums of money, and given that universal basic education is our second millennium development goal, I would expect aid experts to beat a path to their door. Yet, so far, they have not—at least they have not done so in great numbers. I am grateful—as are others—to the noble Lord, Lord Thomson, who has given us the opportunity to consider where the gaps and opportunities lie in aid and education matters.

As your Lordships will know, in this country the Church of England boards of education are statutory bodies providing the education of 25 per cent of primary school pupils and 5 per cent of secondary school students. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Judd, who, by his reference to the links that exist and potentially exist between Church of England schools and those in the developing world, has saved me at least a paragraph of my speech.

Historically, the Anglican Church has been a pioneer in education for all, not only in this country but also in Africa and other parts of the developing world. Our overseas education networks through the Anglican Communion's 80 million members mean that we have much to teach as well as to learn. But the Church needs to be drawn out of its silo—I apologise for the cliché; it is one to which I have recently become addicted—as, indeed, does government aid. We need to be drawn out of our respective silos in order to create a synergy with the most significant bilateral community-based education network literally in our midst.

The quality work and the early encouraging results of the development community's engagement with Muslim schools in parts of Africa should serve to strengthen the desire to work with Church schools in other parts of Africa. Indeed, the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of Canterbury has already initiated a project in this respect in Burundi, where, as I understand it, schools which were founded by the Church and taken over by the government are being returned to the Church. I also understand that a similar project is in mind in Nigeria.

The Commission for Africa, which the House has debated, encourages working in partnership—not least in post-conflict reconstruction efforts in countries such as Burundi and southern Sudan. I quote from its section on improving the quality of aid to Africa, which states:

"Often the most cost-effective service delivery is provided by faith based organisations".

Chapter 6 of the commission's report, which focuses on education and aid, speaks of the priority action needed in the international community to develop partnerships with non-state actors as well as governments. Precisely because of whom Church leaders and educationalists are, with their weaknesses as well as their strengths, they are essential community-based partners in any aid and education strategy.

In addition, I believe there is an untapped potential for better collaboration between UK-based NGOs and traditional mission agencies such as the Church Mission Society. Quite rightly, secular, non-religious NGOs must remain distinctive in their approach to aid and development matters. There is, of course, already good collaboration between faith-based aid and development agencies such as Christian Aid and TEAR Fund with other relief agencies, not least in the current crisis in Kashmir. Nevertheless, the accumulated experience and wisdom of many mission agencies whose personnel have spent many years working on local educational projects should not be set aside as irrelevant.

I hope that the Minister and the Government will take seriously their own vision of working with the Church in Africa and in the UK on gender equality, teacher training and community involvement in developing relevant curricula. I look forward, with others, to the delivery of that policy soon.

Lord Hunt of Chesterton: My Lords, it is a pleasure to speak in this debate, introduced by the noble Lord, Lord Thomson of Monifieth, who was, as he proudly said, one of the last Commonwealth education officers. My father was a High Commissioner who was much inspired by his leadership.

The Government's aim in its aid programme is to reduce poverty but, like other policies, this is complex and must be considered in relation to many other aspects of policy. Poverty reduction is sustainable only when the poorest communities are empowered to take responsibility for their future through knowledge, strength of society, security from national disasters and war, and material support. In many cases, spiritual strength also plays a vital role, as we saw this week in Pakistan.

Education brings information and socialisation, as well as skills and knowledge. It was remarkable to see in Pakistan this week how poor villagers have devoted so much of their resources to education. It was tragic and inspiring to see on television a father extracting maths books from the rubble along with his crushed child. If these remote communities take education so seriously, surely aid programmes should do so as well. We hope that the Government will be helping these schools, and schools everywhere, with relevant programmes. That is also important in avoiding corruption; in some countries the money for education is not getting through.

The building of schools is very important. It is also important that children in schools should know about safety aspects. In Pakistan the children in the schools who survived were the ones who hid under their desks. In America, this is standard practice. People in schools are told that if there is an earthquake, they should get under their desk, as my daughter found when she was at school there.

I should like to reflect on what my noble friend Lord Judd has said. DfID is an efficient department and it is highly stretched. If we are really to co-ordinate all the various contributions of British organisations in government and in the non-governmental world, we need a co-ordinating effort. I was very pleased to hear that such efforts are being made and that DfID is supporting them outside government. That is progress.

I declare an interest as a professor at University College, where we have colleagues from developing countries on educational programmes, and president of an NGO. I am a former head of the Met Office, where there was a substantial programme of training people in developing countries. My point, which the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, may take up, is that government agencies and laboratories in many parts of the UK can contribute and are contributing to education programmes to relieve poverty but the co-ordination and appreciation could be improved. We need effective partnership programmes. Many parts of the United Nations, such as the World Meteorological Organization, have very effective programmes. But sometimes in Africa these are suffering greatly. A DfID report last year commented that it is almost impossible to monitor climate change because of the lack of trained people available to undertake training.

We will be trying to help with this situation in a conference which we will be holding in Accra in November in conjunction with UK NGOs, the government of Ghana and other African organisations. It is absolutely essential that education, the arts and science come together to help inspire people to be involved in these scientific and technical areas. We would like to have more support from DfID for those programmes.

My final point in a way reinforces the point of the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper. One of the important aspects of educational exchange is to encourage specialists when they come to the UK. They should have not only some experience in specialist education, but also some knowledge and some understanding of the political and administrative arrangements in the UK. Sadly, the British Council provides zero funding for all technical people who come to UK. It does not give them even a cup of a tea and a train ticket to London to hear the House of Lords—which might be revealing. I have raised this issue time and again and I find that officials in the field say that it is a tragedy that these technical people come to the UK and the UK simply tells them to go to a laboratory, study there and go home again. It is crazy. I hope that the Minister will agree that it is crazy and will do something about it.

Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington: My Lords, it is a great honour and privilege to address noble Lords in this House in my maiden speech in such an important debate.

On 24 May, I was introduced to your Lordships' House by my noble friends Lady Goudie and, my predecessor as Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, Lord Condon. I thank them sincerely for their help and support on that day. I have been overwhelmed by the generous welcome I have received from your Lordships and the staff of this House. It is extraordinary to come from the outside into a place where you would never have expected to have been and to receive such a welcome. I am also indebted to officers and staff for their help and support. That support has allowed me to take my courage in both hands and make my maiden speech. If it had not been for that support, perhaps I would have put it off for another month or two.

Another reason for making my maiden speech today is my passion and close personal interest following previous charitable work in the Western Sahara and the twinning of the township of Alexandra in Johannesburg in South Africa with the London Borough of Southwark. Education, together with policing, was a major part of our activities.

I turn to the debate before us. Education is a fundamental human right. It leads to the fulfilment of an individual in every aspect. The report of the Commission for Africa stated that countries which have not met their target in delivering education will have a higher mortality rate and more underweight children. A World Bank study in 17 sub-Saharan African countries shows a very clear correlation between education and lower HIV/AIDS infection rates. It further showed that providing girls with one extra year of education boosted their eventual wages by up to 20 per cent.

I would submit that the case for education is overwhelming in both human and investment terms. I am sure that all your Lordships will welcome the pledge for education at the World Education Forum in Dakar in Senegal in 2000. It was made by the international community. The assembled nations committed themselves to providing free and compulsory education for every child in the world and achieving adult literacy by 2015. Likewise, commendably, Her Majesty's Government committed themselves at the G8 Summit in Gleneagles to "turning words into actions" and, as we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Judd, to £1.4 billion of funding for education in the next four years.

These actions surely are to be welcomed and commended. For those of us who are privileged to have been involved in some of those activities in the front line, I would commend more co-ordination on occasions, though that is not in any way a criticism.

We also learned from those who we were assisting in so-called educating. We have learned about the priorities of life—human dignity, the will to improve and the innate goodness of the human spirit. For us who were involved, the education was a two-way process. To conclude, much has been done but much needs to be done and the goals although formidable can be achieved, provided that the promises made time and again by the international community are kept.

Lord Newby: My Lords, on behalf of the House I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Stevens of Kirkwhelpington, on his maiden speech. I do not need to enumerate his many achievements in his police career to your Lordships, because they are very well known. We welcome him to the House today and look forward to the contribution that we hope he will be able to make in the months to come, as we debate the difficult issues of terrorism and policing in your Lordships' House.

Although the title of today's debate is broad, we are concentrating on Africa, because Africa lags behind. Like other noble Lords, my starting point was the analysis and proposals of the Commission for Africa. The commission very sensibly looked at education in the round and said that rather than simply concentrating on primary education it was necessary to look at secondary, vocational and higher education as part of the overall approach. The commission concluded:

"All elements are part of a complementary and mutually reinforcing system".

The commission gave depressing evidence of why such an approach was necessary by noting that in many countries there was a chronic shortage of teachers. In Ghana, there were only 25 per cent of the necessary number of teachers, and in Lesotho merely a fifth. Even when there are teachers, they are often underqualified; in northern rural Namibia, only 40 per cent of teachers have teaching qualifications. As a result, the commission was clearly right in arguing that to boost the teaching force, the number of people progressing to and attaining higher education must increase. That is easier said than done, however.

I shall give an example of some of the problems and the efforts being made to overcome them by describing what is happening at the North-West University in South Africa. It is one of the more successful African countries economically and in other respects, so the problems encountered there are considerably less than in other parts of the continent, but they are very significant. I declare an interest as a trustee of the university's fundraising arm in the UK.

The North-West University was created out of the former Afrikaans Potchefstroom University and the black University of the North-West. That created a number of problems, as noble Lords can imagine, but one was the disparity of attainment of new students at the two parts of the university. Not surprisingly, the black students were less well prepared for university than their white counterparts; as a result, not only was the average attainment level on recruitment lower among black students but they had more difficulty in progressing beyond the first year and many as a result failed to complete the course. Problems were particularly acute in the standards of maths and science.

The university realised that the only way in which to tackle the problem was to get involved itself in improving the standards of teaching and management in the schools in the region from which they were seeking to recruit many of their students. The university formed a partnership with the provincial education department, the national business initiative and local communities to deliver a three-year programme in selected schools to improve the overall quality of education of school leavers and to make the schools a focal hub of their communities. They are looking for a step-change in community and human capacity development, with programmes that are well under way and are already producing positive results.

At the same time, however, the university realised that it needed to improve the quality of its own management, and with that in mind it formed a partnership with London's South Bank University to develop its HR function, its corporate governance and, interestingly, the whole question about how to manage a multicultural student body, because South Bank University has a very multicultural student body as well. Again, that is producing positive results, and North-West University and South Bank University are both confident that these approaches are replicable elsewhere in Africa. Indeed, South Bank University also works with universities in Uganda and Nigeria on management and curriculum development issues.

What impresses me about these programmes is that they are based on the development of the people—the students, the teachers and the professional staff—who are the key to improving educational performance in Africa. Investing in people, therefore, should be the priority for the UK Government in looking at how they can best support educational development across the continent. That is not to say that the physical infrastructure—schools, buildings libraries and equipment—is not also important, but I think that this should primarily be an area in which local African governments supported by the World Bank should take the lead. The UK has a comparative advantage in teaching management skills for the education sector and on curriculum development. We should recognise and exploit them.

The kind of programme which I have described, however, will succeed only if it has the support of African governments as well as of the UK and other donor countries. One of the positive results of the Commission for Africa was to help re-energise governments in Africa in terms of further and higher education. NePAD, for example, has recently embraced the concept of renewing the African university project. The African Union, I understand, is meeting at the end of this month to co-ordinate its approach to university development. There is a real sense of momentum for which the UK Government can take some of the credit.

There is, however, also a growing scepticism that the Gleneagles promises and the funding targets in the Commission for Africa report may not be met, and growing concern that the recent momentum could be dissipated. In concluding, my questions are therefore as follows. What is the current state of the play on implementing the Commission for Africa proposals, not least in respect of education? And specifically, what commitment are the Government able to make to help renew Africa's universities both in funding and in helping to co-ordinate the UK higher education sector's clear and genuine willingness to form partnerships with its African counterparts?

Lord Joffe: My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Thomson of Monifieth, for initiating this debate on a subject that is so important to the future of the developing world. I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, on his impressive maiden speech. I am glad that he did not delay it too long. I declare an interest as a trustee or adviser to a number of charities involved in education in the developing world.

World Bank statistics show a direct correlation, which it measures at 89 per cent, between a nation's economic wealth and the level of education among its citizens. Nothing could better demonstrate the crucial importance of education in the battle against poverty. The millennium development goals focus on increasing access to primary education. Such education is clearly the essential starting point. However, formal education at primary and even secondary level is not going to produce the entrepreneurs and business leaders who will create a vibrant economy, which in turn will create the employment and wealth to raise standards of living. That can be demonstrated by South Africa—to which, like the noble Lord, Lord Newby, I refer, although I shall refer to another university there.

South Africa is far better placed than most countries in the developing world to compete in a globalised world because of its excellent infrastructure and the wealth of its elite white population. Yet in South Africa today 38 per cent of the population live on less than $2 a day and unemployment is estimated at a horrifying 41 per cent. Most black children go to primary school and each year 1 million black children leave school, of whom 81 per cent enter the job market to compete for jobs with the 41 per cent unemployed.

Only one out of every 100 of these school leavers graduate from university. Against that background, the challenge for education and government is how rapidly to create highly motivated, skilled and entrepreneurial individuals who will build businesses and in the process help to develop a vibrant economy, which in turn will create employment and the wealth and opportunities ultimately to erase poverty.

What government cannot do is to create these businesses. What they can and must do is to create an environment in which entrepreneurship and business are encouraged and stimulated. How, then, is this challenge to create a vibrant economy to be met? There is no simple way but I want to dwell on a very exciting model set up in South Africa which could be replicated in other parts of the developing world if aid were to be made available. It is called CIDA City Campus and is a low cost but high quality university focused on the training and development of the entrepreneurs and business leaders of the future.

Only six years ago Taddy Blecher, an actuary by training, who believed passionately that higher education was the driver of wealth, decided that he would create a business university which would provide the gateway for those who would otherwise be excluded. He would tap the potential of those students who were too poor to go to university and give them the opportunity to transform themselves into business leaders and entrepreneurs. He decided that his university would offer only degree, and that was a four-year course in business administration. He looked out to the rural and poorer areas of South Africa to find poor but capable students who had the potential but no chance of getting entry to the traditional universities because they could not afford the fees. He offered them a deal. They would get a virtually free four-year scholarship leading to a degree in business administration which would focus on entrepreneurship, business and technology. However, the university would be based on a "no handouts" principle. In return, the students would have to help to run the university on a day-to-day basis and in their vacation they would have to return to their home villages to teach groups of their people about relevant issues such as money management basics, small business creation and HIV/AIDS awareness. Within five years of graduation they must fund another student from their home town for his or her degree. CIDA students would undergo a four-year degree rather than three years and spend up to triple the time in classes and tutorials compared with those taking a degree at a traditional university. The results have been phenomenal. In the national stock exchange exams CIDA students have outperformed students from around the country with the highest pass rates nationwide. Entrepreneurship is compulsory and with the substantial input of Sir Richard Branson, the Branson School of Entrepreneurship at CIDA will open later this month.

What greatly impressed me was the confidence, commitment and maturity of the first group of graduates whom I met, who were ambitious not only to have successful business careers but also to make a real contribution to their country and their communities. After only six years there are 1,300 students at CIDA and another 20,000 applicants hoping to be accepted. The cost per student is one-third of the cost of students at other universities. President Mbeki has commended CIDA in the South African parliament and Mrs Mbeki has agreed to become the first chancellor of CIDA. CIDA has had two graduations to date and has injected a total of 267 business graduates into the economy.

In the many years that I have been involved in development I have not seen an initiative with so much potential and one which I believe could be replicated throughout Africa and the developing world. I commend to DfID that it studies this model of low cost, high quality education of future business leaders and entrepreneurs which must surely be one of the keys to eliminating poverty in the developing world.

Baroness Tonge: My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Thomson, on securing this debate, which lies at the core of what I learnt in eight years in the other place as spokesperson for my party on international development. Education is a major tool in development; that is the message.

I want to tell noble Lords about Rwanda, which has not been mentioned yet. As a member of the Select Committee for International Development, I visited Rwanda early in 1998. Noble Lords must remember that although the main events of the genocide were in 1994, when we visited in 1998 in the six months before we arrived there had been another 6,000 deaths. The genocide continued in Rwanda for many years and it is continuing in the Congo now. It was a terrible experience. The streets were empty. The bellboys in the hotels were crouching in the shadows. No one would make eye contact with anyone else. You did not see any children about, unless they were in NGO-run missions for traumatised children, or child-headed households, or orphans. It was a terrible situation. Government buildings had been shelled.

We went one day to see a genocide site, where there were fast-disintegrating, drying-out bodies of people who had been massacred during the genocide. I remember that night coming back that although we had armoured trucks in front of us and armoured trucks behind us—and it was not even getting dark—the driver was terrified lest we did not get back to Kigali before dark, because Rwanda was so dangerous. I remember Kipling's "Fear" going through my mind. Do noble Lords know it?

"Ere Mor the Peacock flutters, ere the Monkey People cry, Ere Chil the Kite swoops down a furlong sheer, Through the Jungle very softly flits a Shadow and a sigh— He is Fear, O Little Hunter, he is Fear!".

"Fear" was Rwanda then. As if on cue, black kites were gathering in the sky, which we were told denoted yet another murder somewhere in Kigali. It was a terrible, terrible place.

I returned to Rwanda in 2002 with the Inter-Parliamentary Union, and I could not believe what I saw. It was a complete transformation—people everywhere, walking tall, stopping to chat, shops open. The government under Paul Kagame was functioning well; we know that it was not doing so perfectly, but we shall not debate that today. Above all, wherever we went, we saw schools open and lines of children in the little uniforms that they all seem to wear in Africa. They always try to afford the school uniform. Children were marching everywhere in orderly lines with their teachers. One day the whole place seemed to be marching children along the roads, and we learnt that it was national vaccination day and all the children from all the schools were being frogmarched by their teachers to get their jabs.

Rwanda still has much to do and it has many problems, but this year more children are being educated than before the genocide started. Some 91 per cent of Rwandan children are enrolled in primary schools. Since 2001, they do not pay any fees. There is gender parity; the same number of girls and boys are being enrolled. Some 45 per cent complete their course. That needs working on, but it is a lot better than in many other African countries. In the secondary schools, sadly only 15.4 per cent are enrolled as yet, but it is great progress. The Rwandan government in their poverty-reduction strategy have made education their priority. They have developed a strategic plan for education, which includes trying to give every child in Rwanda nine years of education, training more teachers and encouraging higher education—all the things that we have been hearing about.

Why did the transformation occur? It is difficult as a member of an opposition party to do this, but I suggest that it is because of our Department for International Development. Our Government ensured that aid to Rwanda would concentrate on education. DfID is the largest donor, contributing £10 million over the past five years to education alone and another £37 million to general budget support to the government of Rwanda. That is a big success story. We should congratulate DfID on its efforts in Rwanda, which have transformed lives, especially those of the traumatised children there.

There is much to do all over the developing world, however, as we heard this morning. I am confident that our Department for International Development knows what to do, and I know that it sees education as at the core of those efforts. I only hope—this is the barb in the tail—that this Government will not ruin the work of DfID by pursuing the wrong foreign policies, trade agreements and arms sales.

Baroness Northover: My Lords, I too thank my noble friend Lord Thomson for raising this extremely important subject, and pay tribute to all his work in the area over the years. I also congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Stevens; it is surely a credit to him that, with all his expertise in so many other areas, he chose this subject on which to make his maiden speech.

It is a key year for international development, and this year Make Poverty History has hit the headlines. There are three arms to that campaign—aid, debt and trade. By that, I mean the reduction in debt of the poorest countries, the increase in aid to 0.7 per cent of GNP, and the removal of barriers to trade for the benefit of the very poor. Clearly, economic development rather than aid or debt relief has the greatest potential to pull countries out of poverty. The cases of India and China are obvious examples. But for that to happen, countries desperately need an educated and trained workforce, which is why simply the removal of trade barriers may well hurt the poorest countries while benefiting those better-off developing countries. Aid and debt relief then play their parts in trying to enable the poorest countries to catch up with more developed nations.

Universal primary education is the second MDG, as was pointed out by the noble Lord, Lord Judd, but it is the key at the least to the first, on halving world poverty; the third, on improving gender equality; the fourth, on reducing child mortality; the fifth, on improving maternal health; and the sixth, on reducing deaths from AIDS and other diseases. Yet, despite overwhelming evidence that education—particularly for girls—can increase economic growth and break the cycle of poverty, more than 100 million children do not attend primary school in developing countries, as was said by the noble Lord, Lord Judd.

As Jo Becker from Human Rights Watch recently put it:

"Education breaks generational cycles of poverty, protects children from exploitation and improves their very chances of survival".

We heard from the noble Lords, Lord Hunt and Lord Joffe, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Coventry and others how much education is valued in developing countries. Sometimes that seems rather ironic to me as I dynamite my children out in the mornings, especially my boys. They drag rather unwilling to school but, when they visited some schools in a township outside Cape Town, they too could see how important schooling was for the children of their age, especially if they were to combat AIDS. Whether that makes them easier to get up in the morning is another matter.

My noble friend Lady Tonge mentioned the position of girls; my daughter is a little easier to get out. UNICEF, Save the Children, Oxfam and many other organisations are particularly concerned that girls are most likely to miss out on education, even though the impact of education on development is stronger when girls are educated. The figures are in some ways a little misleading. Of those not in education, 60 per cent are girls, but it is at the higher levels that the girls are really missing. Oxfam points out that the aim was to achieve gender parity in primary and secondary education by 2005; the noble Lord, Lord Judd, emphasised that. That first target will be comprehensively missed. Neither the G8 leaders in Scotland nor the world leaders at the UN world summit in New York last month explicitly acknowledged that failure in their reports. Will the noble Baroness comment on why they missed that out?

That target was set for 10 years before the other MDGs, partly to reflect the belief that it was achievable. It also reflects the critical importance of girls' education to the achievement of those other MDGs by 2015. Education for girls and women helps them to improve their own lives and the lives of their families. Girls who complete primary education are much less likely, for example, to become HIV positive. Their children are more likely to survive infancy and to be healthy. As the UN Secretary-General stated on 2 March, 2005:

"Without achieving gender equality for girls in education, the world has no chance of achieving many of the ambitious health, social and development targets it has set for itself".

Due to poverty, girls are not in school. The more expensive education is, the less likely it is that families will invest in the education of girls. In Kenya, for example, before school fees were abolished, girls were more than twice as likely as boys to be withdrawn from school. But after Uganda abolished fees, girls' enrolment increased by 20 per cent and among the poorest fifth of girls, it went from 46 per cent to 82 per cent. In other words, it is an achievable goal.

The Africa Commission put renewed stress on another area—tertiary education. That is an interesting development. It is, surely, right to make that emphasis and the noble Lords, Lord Thomson and Lord Newby, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, rightly stressed the need to strengthen all levels of education. Will the noble Baroness say whether the conclusion of the Africa Commission on that issue has altered DfID's direction on education and, if so, how?

This is a key year for the UK. It has a lead role with great responsibilities. We all agree that education—primary, secondary, tertiary and vocational, for girls as well as boys—is the key to greater prosperity in developing countries. We hear what a difference it makes. We need to know not only what the UK is doing, but how far it is persuading its G8 partners and its EU colleagues in delivering their commitments.

Baroness Rawlings: My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Thomson, on initiating this debate. It has been fascinating, with an outstanding maiden speech by the noble Lord, Lord Stevens. Few of us would have forecast that, with his distinguished policing career, he would have chosen this debate for his maiden speech. But that in itself, as well as the speech, showed the breadth and depth of the wisdom he brings to your Lordships' House. We look forward to his future contributions.

The noble Lord, Lord Thomson, presents us with an invaluable opportunity to examine the important contribution that DfID can make in the field of improving global education. As is so often the case in your Lordships' House, we have heard many well informed and enlightened contributions. It is, indeed, a timely debate for two reasons. The year 2005 is important for the UK. As noble Lords know, we chair the G8 and hold the presidency of the now expanded European Union. Furthermore, we are now only a decade away from 2015—the deadline for achieving the millennium development goals.

In April 2004, the Secretary of State for International Development, quite rightly, stated that:

"if we are to enable poor people and poor nations to gain a strong voice, economic independence and self-reliance for the future, we have to ensure that their basic needs are met and that the building blocks are in place for a strong civil society and effective and transparent government".

That is a sentiment with which, I am sure, noble Lords on all sides of the House would agree. We on this side have consistently argued the importance of trade and not relying solely on aid as one of the key building blocks to help the poorest countries.

Education is a vital building block. The World Education Forum in Dakar in 2000 committed to achieving six goals specifically relating to education. They included, among other things, achievement of universal primary education, the elimination of gender disparity in education and halving adult illiteracy levels by 2015.

Here, I want to refer to the pioneering work done by Professors Cohen and Bloom on the costs and benefits of providing all the world's children with high-quality primary and secondary education. That was undertaken through a project called Universal Basic Secondary Education, supported by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. I draw your Lordships' attention to an excellent article summarising the project: it can be found in the IMF's Finance and Development quarterly of June 2005.

The most recent statistics show that we are far away from where we want to be. Unfortunately, more than 100 million children worldwide still do not attend primary school, and it is often girls who are disproportionately affected, as we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Northover.

We welcome the progress that has clearly been made in providing improved access both to healthcare and education. That is vital not just in providing a future workforce equipped with basic skills but also in preventing the continued spread of disease that cripples the development of so many African countries.

In Africa, we welcome the particular progress that has been made in providing education for young people, and we have recently seen a doubling in the number of children enrolling in primary education in countries such as Uganda and Rwanda, as we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge. The ongoing scourge of HIV/AIDS continues to blight the continent, spreading through a mix of cultural traditions and a lack of education. However, in countries where health education has been pushed to the fore, we have seen significant reductions in new cases of the virus. That has particularly been the case in Uganda.

In Asia, we are delighted that in Afghanistan economic growth is up again and that more than 4 million children have returned to school. In the previous year, there was a doubling in support to the Yemen with, in particular, an increased focus on providing education for girls.

Noble Lords on all sides acknowledge that conflict is the single biggest factor in preventing development. Education is surely one of the key tools in reducing conflict. The establishment of good governance and civil society is underpinned by an educated population who have the skills to provide for themselves, who understand and participate in democratic government, and who are able to contribute to their own future. Of course, the role of this House is to ensure that the money that DfID is targeting on education projects is really going to the areas where it is most needed. Noble Lords may recall that in June last year on the publication of the DfID annual report, I asked the Minister to enlighten the House on Her Majesty's Government's decision to participate in a $100 million loan to provide schooling for 2.4 million children in China. Only last week, we heard reports that India and China are producing record numbers of university graduates, far outstripping the numbers that we are producing at home. Perhaps the Minister could update the House on the rationale behind a loan to support education in one of the fastest-growing economies in the world.

Given the example that I have outlined, can the Minister also update the House on the Government's progress in their commitment to spend 90 per cent of this year's aid budget in the world's poorest countries? As we have heard from all noble Lords, many of these countries are in need of our support in providing opportunities for trade, development aid and access to education—one of the most basic of human rights and a building block for development still enjoyed by far too few people.

Baroness Royall of Blaisdon: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Thomson of Monifieth, for having secured the opportunity to debate this crucial issue. I have learned much. But, much more importantly, it is absolutely right and proper that we draw attention to the vital role of education and lifting individuals, families and nations out of poverty. It was an honour to be present for the maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Stevens. I look forward to many more speeches from him in the coming months and years.

Education is a well established priority for the Government's aid programme. The Government targets 25 low-income countries for their bilateral assistance and supports international initiatives which are designed to help to achieve the education millennium development goals and the education for all goals. I endorse the statement of the noble Lord, Lord Stevens, that education is a basic human right. Not only is it currently denied to more than 100-million school-age children, as noble Lords have pointed out, nearly 60 million of whom are girls, but it has also been denied to 800 million adults who are unable to read or write. Only yesterday the UN Population Fund report suggested that the war on poverty cannot be won unless much greater efforts are made to give women equality. That is clearly recognised by DfID's strategy, Girls education: towards a better future for all, which was launched in January.

Education is crucial to any country's strategy to eliminate poverty. Skilled workers are needed for economic development and for improving public services. An extra year of schooling for girls can boost their eventual earnings by 10 to 20 per cent. Education is vital for healthier, safer and more equitable societies. In sub-Saharan Africa the children of mothers with five years of primary education are 40 per cent more likely to live beyond the age of five than those without.

Education is essential to limit the spread and the impact of HIV/AIDS. For example, in Swaziland, two-thirds of teenage girls in school are free from HIV, while two-thirds of those out of school are HIV positive. That is why basic education is a core component of our aid programme, for which the primary goal is the elimination of poverty. Our approach is to ensure that education aid results in real changes to children's lives. In Kenya for example, the abolition of primary school fees resulted in the enrolment of more than one million additional children. DfID and other agencies are supporting the Kenyan government to sustain attendance and improve quality.

I can assure noble Lords that we have not ignored secondary and tertiary education, which is essential. However, as in our own education system, we had to prioritise our policies at the beginning for our support of education in developing countries. DfID works with governments to develop education plans which provide for a balanced investment across all levels of the education system. Much of our funding is through direct budget report which will strengthen the education sector as a whole, including secondary and higher education.

The Government of course recognise that the Chevening and other scholarships are of the greatest importance. I am pleased to tell the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, that in 2003–04 there were 2,401 Chevening scholars.

The noble Lord, Lord Thomson, was right to draw our attention to Africa and we learn from his great experience with the Commonwealth. We join him in wishing Malawi well with its innovative initiatives. Earlier this year, the Commission for Africa made a strong call for well-conceived, appropriately financed education strategies in the sub-continent. DfID is exploring ways of working with the African Union and NePAD to ensure that government education policies pay more attention to investing in science and technology. This will have implications for the revitalisation of higher education in Africa, including teacher training.

Working with the Church in Africa is, of course, extremely important. The noble Lord, Lord Newby, was right to point out that teachers are a vital tool for achieving the education MDGs.

On the Commonwealth, I am glad to say that we still have a very strong system of Commonwealth scholarships and fellowships planned and a Commonwealth student scholarship scheme. We also support The Commonwealth of Learning.

The noble Lord, Lord Newby, asked about the CFA. DfID and other government departments are committed to the recommendations on strengthening the capacity of African governments and organisations to lead their own development. On education, we continue to support African governments to develop their plans for education at all levels, including higher education.

These priorities inform our policy dialogue with partner governments to support the development of sound education plans. In many countries, particularly in Africa, this requires assistance for recurrent costs, especially for teachers. This is why we provide medium to long-term financial support directly to government budgets.

Noble Lords have mentioned many new initiatives, and DfID will certainly look closely at, for example, the extraordinary CIDA initiative mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Joffe. In Tanzania, the abolition of school fees resulted in a dramatic increase in primary school enrolment, from 50 per cent of seven to 13 year-olds in 2000 to 95 per cent in 2005. I am glad to say that DfID is committing £85 million for Tanzania's strategy to eliminate poverty, which includes education.

Work in countries experiencing conflict and emergency is of increasing importance. In Afghanistan we contributed to the Reconstruction Trust Fund, which has helped 4.2 million children back to school. In Pakistan, we are waiting for an assessment of the situation from the UN, and when we receive that we will act upon it in the way suggested by the noble Baroness, Lady Hooper.

As the noble Lord, Lord Judd, noted, we play a lead role in the Fast Track Initiative, an international partnership designed to mobilise additional resources for countries to accelerate education progress and to improve donor co-ordination. DfID has committed £50 million over three years to the FTI. We are also working innovatively with other bilateral agencies, and are developing a delegated co-operation agreement with France that will provide £10 million for the Niger Government's basic education programme, particularly for girls.

We encourage the involvement of civil society in developing national education policies, and, like noble Lords, the Government warmly welcome the partnerships that have been formed between schools, universities, faith-based organisations and communities. This is essential for our own social cohesion, as well as for enabling greater global understanding. Joined-up government is, of course, essential. The right reverend Prelate is right when he says that we must all clamber out of our silos, and I am glad to say that all departments are striving to do so.

I note the point made strongly by my noble friend Lord Hunt about the need for wider education when people come to work or study in this country. I am assured that the British Council is doing this, but I feel strongly about this issue, and shall pursue it further.

In the 25 countries under DfID's public service agreement, progress towards the education MDGs is monitored regularly. Evidence from 16 African PSA countries shows good progress, with average primary school net enrolment ratios rising from 67 to 77 per cent since 1998. Progress in Asian PSA countries is mixed, but some countries are now at, or close to, universal primary education. Net enrolment is now above 90 per cent in China, Vietnam, Cambodia and Indonesia, and gender parity is already achieved at the primary level in Bangladesh, China and Indonesia. This demonstrates that policy reform, supported by external assistance, can result in fast and significant improvements, leading to real returns from education in the longer term.

World-wide, however, as many as 70 countries may not achieve the 2015 target for universal primary education, based on the current rates of progress, and I share the anxiety expressed by the noble Baroness, Lady Northover. More than 75 countries are at risk of missing the target for gender parity in education even by 2015. The experience of those countries that are making significant progress, however, is a clear signal that change is possible, even in the most difficult circumstances. As the noble Baroness, Lady Tonge, said, there has been much success, aided by the excellent work of DfID, but there is much more to be done. I assure noble Lords that we will do much more.

Between 1997 and 2002 the UK Government committed over £700 million to basic education in developing countries. Our support for education will rise to £1.4 billion over the next three years, a strong indication of our enhanced commitment to provide long-term assistance. Given the pledges made on aid and debt relief by the international community in 2005, the UK will, and must, press hard for other donors to meet their commitments to education.

The noble Lord, Lord Thomson, mentioned ICT and the fact that we provide some assistance that is not relevant. We support ICT in schools where it is relevant and in the right context. We have, through our initiative Infundo, worked with governments to develop lasting, effective, sustainable and appropriate efforts to ensure access for all. The noble Lord also asked about visa restrictions preventing students coming to the UK to study. The Government are working to ensure that all students from developing countries can benefit from academic exchange with the UK. DfID is working with the DfES and the Home Office to look at that issue. We sponsor a number of scholarship programmes that encourage exchanges to develop the capacity of individuals from developing countries to contribute to their own country's development.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hooper, asked about our contribution to the European Union. As she will know, the EU is the second largest multilateral provider of aid to education after the World Bank. In 2001–02, it totalled £250 million. That is increasing, and our funds to the EU support education programmes in some of the poorest countries in Africa and south Asia. I will obtain fuller figures if the noble Baroness desires.

We must ensure that the commitment to increased aid and debt relief, announced at the G8 this year, benefits education. This Government are strongly committed to working with partner governments and the international community to accelerate progress in achieving education for all.

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