Education

Oxfam believes that all girls and boys have a right to a free basic good-quality education. Quality education can play a crucial role in reducing poverty and promoting gender equality. It is empowering to girls and boys and enables them to develop the skills they need to help them overcome poverty, to make positive changes in their lives, and to make their voices heard. Oxfam’s education work is therefore closely linked to our work on gender equality and on ensuring people’s right to be heard.

Our work on education combines programme-based development work with advocacy and campaigning. This ensures that learning from our experience on the ground is linked to the lobbying for local, national, and international action that is necessary for the building of strong education systems. To do this we work with others (including local non-governmental organisations, and grassroots organisations in local communities) to strengthen local, national, and regional education coalitions and networks, and we are a member of the Global Campaign for Education (GCE). Our education advocacy and campaigning activities are linked to our Health and Education campaign.

We are also working to develop and share our learning from our programme, advocacy, and campaigning work with partner organisations and education networks globally.

Our education work has a strong focus on high-quality schooling for girls and boys with two priority areas:

Financing and capacity building for high-quality basic education

Oxfam is working with the Global Campaign for Education and with partners and alliances at local, national, and international levels to build capacity and to ensure that there is adequate financing for strong public education systems. This work involves:

Developing and influencing strong national education plans and advocating for civil society participation in education planning and budgeting;
Capacity building, research, and monitoring of education budgets to ensure that funds are spent well and equitably;
Developing good practice for local management of schools and parental participation at both school and community levels.

Girls’ education and gender equality

Oxfam is working to get as many girls into school as boys and to ensure that, once in school, both girls and boys receive a relevant and good-quality education that enables them to do well. To do this we are:

Lobbying at international levels to ensure that gender equality is integrated into education policy
Lobbying to ensure that the design, planning, budgeting, and implementation of national government education plans take gender into account;
Working at local levels to develop experience of what good gender-equitable education means in practice, and promoting models that contribute to a high-quality educational experience for girls.