As the Global Partnership for Education gears up for a record replenishment, education advocates are predicting 2018 could be a “pivotal year” for global education which could see the sector enter a “golden era” of support, as experienced in global health.

However, questions remain as to whether key donors will come up with the cash; if the financial ask is ambitious enough to create meaningful change within the sector; and whether the GPE in its current form is the best mechanism for the job, with some suggesting it should consider divorcing itself from the World Bank, where it is currently housed.

GPE’s leadership team, which includes former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, is on the fundraising trail. They were in Europe for high-level meetings earlier this month in the run up to the GPE financing conference, set to take place in Senegal in February, and co-hosted by France, where the partnership hopes to raise a record $3.1 billion to fund its activities up to 2020, and help it become a $2 billion a year fund.

That has led education advocates to speculate that 2018 could be a pivotal year for global education funding, which has long languished behind global health. The GPE, which was established in 2002, is the only global multilateral funding platform dedicated to education. By comparison, the Global Fund’s most recent replenishment raised $12.9 billion.

An estimated 260 million children and young people are still not enrolled in school. According to the recent World Bank education report, a further 330 million may be in school but are learning little. Yet global funding for education is falling woefully short: The United Nations has estimated an annual spending gap of $39 billion in what is needed to reach the Sustainable Development Goals’ education targets.

Read the full article by Sophie Edwards about the Global Partnership for Education from Devex International Development