Campaigners want world leaders to provide education for all. James Hawkins

Education is a basic human right, and a critical means to alleviate poverty and suffering.

Yet despite this, over 100 million children worldwide are denied the opportunity to go to school.

The majority of these children are girls – who, with even a basic education, experience a higher standard of living, tend to have smaller families and are more likely to send their children to school. This aids poverty reduction and helps create a skilled workforce that can command better wages.

Universal primary education, if implemented now, would also save an estimated 7 million people from the HIV virus in ten years.

A pupil studying during her lunch hour at a primary school in Kibera. Crispin Hughes/Oxfam

For these reasons, Oxfam views a good quality basic education (for children and adults alike) as a basic human right.

Two of the aims of the Millennium Development Goals campaign are to achieve universal free primary education by 2015, and to eliminate gender disparity in education, so that boys and girls will be able to experience at least five years of quality education, irrespective of their economic status. Make Poverty History is the global campaign to support these goals in 2005.

Oxfam also supports continued adult education, so that adults will have access to enough educational opportunities to help them overcome poverty. To do this, Oxfam’s education programme works with others to implement good-quality education.