Gillard promotes quality education amidst pandemic

By THOMAS HUKAHU
HAVE you ever listened to a speech, and while the speech is going on your respect and appreciation for the deliverer grow?
For me, it has happened a few times when listening to a number of good speakers in Papua New Guinea, including a former governor-general, a number of former senior MPs, a former chief justice and a few university lecturers.
Last week, I participated in a conference here in Australia, and for one of the day’s sessions, Australia’s former prime minister Julia Gillard opened the day and promoted the need for support in delivering quality education to children during these trying times.
That very small speech is possibly my best speech of the year, as you will see in this article.

What was the conference?
The conference I am referring to was hosted by the University of Queensland and its partners and it is the 2021 Research for Development Impact Conference.
The theme this year was “Pathways through disruption: RDI Conference 2021”.
The main conference ran from June 30 to July 2, but had other lead-up sessions in previous weeks.
We, the Australia Awards scholars, were informed about that conference, and earlier in the year I submitted an abstract for the paper that I planned to present for the meeting.
Even though it was not accepted for the conference proper, I was given a time during the student forum to give the presentation.
My paper was about “Using social media to educate and motivate a football team” and it came from my experience in working with a soccer team participating in the PNG National Soccer League.
(I will share a bit on this in another article.)
Most of us, the participants, were participating online, unlike in past years where speakers and other participants travelled to Brisbane where the University of Queensland’s main campus is situated.

Gillard’s opening talk and her work with GPE
On July 2, Gillard gave a small talk to open the conference’s day’s sessions.
I have listened to Gillard speaking on TV on different topics, mainly to do with politics and governance.
However, this time she spoke about education and the importance of supporting education with the aim of mitigating the effects of the pandemic and other challenges and in doing so protect the future of nations.
It was that speech that stood out for me, mainly because it was about education, the field that I was engaged in for decades and am still passionate about, among a few others.
As you will see in her speech, it emphasises the need for governments (and people) to realise how children in schools would be affected by pandemics, like covid-19, and the need to support them appropriately.
Before we get to the speech, let me say a few more things about Gillard and her experiences, things that may help you see where she is coming from, so to speak.
Wikipedia tells us that Gillard served as the 27th prime minister for Australia and leader of the Labor Party from 2010-2013, the first and only woman to date to hold either role.
She has also served as the education minister in the government in previous years as well as working as the minister for employment and workplace relations.
Gillard was born in Wales in 1961 but she, with her family, migrated to Adelaide, in South Australia, in 1966.
She is currently the chair of the Global Partnership for Education (GPE).
Wikipedia states that GPE is a multi-stakeholder partnership and funding platform that aims to strengthen systems in developing countries in order to increase the number of children who are in school and learning.
GPE was founded in 2002 and has its headquarters in Washington DC, in the United States.

Gillard’s talk: Education is crucial in these times
I will now present Gillard’s talk and in the next section give some of my thoughts regarding points made in her talk.
Here is Gillard’s talk:
I congratulate the University of Queensland on the launch of its global development impact plan which I understand aims to harness the expertise across the university to achieve positive development impact across the Indo-Pacific.
It is great to see researchers and development practitioners come together at this conference to exchange knowledge on initiatives and innovations that may support Pacific and South East Asian communities as they struggle to recover from the disruptive effects of the pandemic.
It is important that development support must be informed by expert research and analyses. So, I thank each of you for your contribution.
We find ourselves at a challenging moment in history. The outbreak of covid-19 has awoken us to the danger of health pandemics in our globalised and interconnected world, with their ability to spread exponentially and feed off and exploit conditions of inequality and poverty.
Covid-19 has exposed inequalities in wealth, gender and race. It has exposed inequalities in countries and between them. The pandemic has pushed 100 million people into extreme poverty.
We need to come together as an international community to address the health and other immediate needs of the people in the lower income countries, while also ensuring a longer term investment in human development that tackles the root causes of conflict and vulnerability.
I believe that education needs to be at the centre of that investment. There can be no doubt about the pandemic’s impact on education outcomes, including in the Indo-Pacific region.
The impact of school closures and economic crises brought on by covid-19 threaten to entrench poverty and inequality and undo decades of progress in education. OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) research indicates that school closures alone may lead to 1.5 percent lower annual GDP rates for low income countries in the years to come.
The pandemic had a disproportionate impact on girls’ education. Globally, 20 million secondary-aged girls could drop out of school due to covid-19.
In the Indo-Pacific region, this amounts to more than 1.2 million girls.
There has been a dramatic increase in gender-based violence and child marriages since the onset of the pandemic …
I am proud to be the chair of GPE, the world’s largest global partnership dedicated to transforming education in lower income countries through collaborative partnership with both donor and developing country partners.
GPE is working to transform education systems for more than 1 billion girls and boys in up to 90 countries and territories. GPE helps partners keep their education systems functioning through wars, displacement crises, climate disasters and health emergencies.
GPE has a strong gender focus because investment in school-aged girls have the highest returns in tackling future gender inequalities.
Twelve years of quality education for every girl would boost economies …
Gender equality in education also decreases a country’s conflict by as much as 37 percent.
GPE has provided almost US$ 1.2 billion to 23 Indo-Pacific countries over time, and stepped forward during the pandemic to provide US$102 million to countries of the region through GPE’s covid accelerated fund, which aims to mitigate the impact of the pandemic and sustain education …
It is worth noting that as many as eight Pacific countries have joined GPE since August 2020. This is in addition to PNG, which has been a longstanding GPE partner.
We have also provided a $US 50 million grant to establish a Pacific regional education framework, a 12-year framework that promotes equitable access to high quality education by all Pacific islanders.
In our region of the world and globally, we know that the ripple effects of investing in education will be significant. By investing in children’s futures in education, we increase our chances of success in the fight to end poverty, prevent climate change, save lives and create a better future for all.
I commend the University of Queensland once again on its dedication to sustainable development and recovery in the Indo-Pacific region.
I thank you.

Some thoughts on Gillard’s talk
As I was going over Gillard’s speech, I was reminded that while governments and their planners are working to control the threats brought on by covid-19, they must also strategise and ensure that education for the children must not be stopped.
Their futures are as important as the future of their nations.
So, the planners must explore ways in which the children’s education should continue, and remote learning and self-learning could be possible methods to utilise to ensure learning continues despite the restrictions on face-to-face instruction.
And such methods may require the use of online networks to facilitate learning.
Universities all over the world, as in Australia, are already delivering full university courses online, where students are not required to meet their lecturers in face-to-face sessions.
A similar mode of delivery may be what is needed for the lower levels of education also.
And researchers and planners would be the right people to suggest to their governments how to do that.
Educators should also consider the different modes of delivering lessons that are currently available and use whatever is appropriate to ensure learning continues despite restrictions to meet with their students.

• Next article: Gillard’s talk on misogyny and sexism