This week, children all over Scotland are going to back to school. I remember the year when my younger daughter was about to start Primary Four. She told me that she didn't need me to take her to school any more; she was old enough to go herself. After waving her off, I ran for the box of tissues.

Fast-forward to earlier this year. I was in Zambia's Copperbelt visiting Oxfam's education programme, meeting local partners and civil society organisations that work to provide education to children and adults living in some of the most remote villages in Zambia.

Although the Zambian Government has introduced free primary education, the challenges they face are immense. There are still very few state-registered schools in the Copperbelt, so concerned villagers have been helped to build their own.

In the Mufulira District of the Copperbelt, Oxfam and its partners help resource these community-built schools, and offer training to the under-qualified teachers to improve their skills, as well as running literacy-clubs for adults.

In Buyantanshi School, in Salumingu Village, there are two classrooms for more than 150 children, some of whom walk more than 10 kilometres every day along unmarked forest paths, others even crossing the border from the Democratic Republic of Congo.

As the Village Chief showed me round the school, he was clearly proud of the coloured posters on the classroom walls, and he pointed out the sentences written in English on the blackboard. Yet the school has no desks or chairs and, after just a few minutes of sitting on the floor to write down my notes, I became very uncomfortable. There was nothing even to lean against - with no books or jotters, there is no need for cupboards.

Some women told me that they come to help the teacher with the lessons and prepare food for the children in the middle of the day. One mother, Esnat Chibala, appealed to me saying they have no healthcare and their children need treatment for malaria, coughs, and sore eyes. Another woman, Elizabeth Mulenya, talked about how hard it is for children who have been orphaned by AIDS. One message that they had in common was they all want something better for their children - an education.

In comparison to the education children in Scotland receive, what I saw in Zambia was hugely inadequate. But the fact remains 75 million children around the world get absolutely no formal education. That's why Oxfam is calling on rich countries to keep their promises so that no country with a credible plan will be unsupported in delivering education for all, and that poor countries channel money into their education budgets, so that it reaches people on the ground.

Education is imperative in tackling poverty. A single year of primary school has the potential to increase the wages a person can earn in life by 5-15 per cent. For children who go on to secondary education, an individual wage can increase by 15-25 per cent. In sub-Saharan Africa, one in three children who start school never get the chance to complete basic primary education let alone progress to secondary school. It is no coincidence that the highest levels of poverty are found in this part of the world.

As we went around the school, a small group of children walked into the grounds. Memory Mwansa, twelve years old, had brought her two sisters, Miriam and Given, and brother Edward to see their aunt Elizabeth. With both parents dead, Elizabeth is their closest relative, and they now call her 'mother'. Even so, it has taken them several hours to walk the many kilometres through the forests from their own village to visit Elizabeth. It's what children here in Zambia's Copperbelt have to do, every day, if they want to go to school.

My daughter just had to cross one road - and she even had a Lollipop man to help her.