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Education International
Education International

ILO must ensure ‘lost generation’ gets access to quality education

published 9 June 2010 updated 9 June 2010

‘Will we have a lost generation?’ is the solemn question that EI's Senior Consultant to the General Secretary, Bob Harris, will be asking participants at the International Labour Conference on 10 June in Geneva, Switzerland.

In his scheduled speech during the General Debate at this year’s event, hosted by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), Harris will emphasise that “the speculators who caused the financial crisis two years ago are now betting against entire nations, raising the cost of borrowing and forcing massive cuts in public services. And what are the consequences? Cuts in vital resources for education and training! A whole generation denied quality education and training.”

He will also tell the international audience that “Education International, with other Global Unions, supports the ILO’s role as a place where governments, employers and workers can come together on the recovery of the real economy.” Harris will also remind participants that “the [Labour and Employment] Ministers called on the ILO to continue its work, with constituents, on a skills and training strategy based on lifelong learning and a solid foundation of general education.”

In his core statement, Harris will say that “it is time for Labour Ministers who come to this Conference to be more assertive, and insist that the financial sector must be at the service of the real economy, not the other way around. In country after country, our members are faced with the consequences of the doctrine of sudden and premature fiscal consolidation. Dismissals of teachers have started in many countries, several hundred thousand more dismissals are expected in Europe and the United States before the year is out. And those dismissals mean quality education being denied to millions of children and young people.”

Harris will also take the opportunity to will also emphasise the ILO’s role as “the institution to which we look for the defence of human and trade union rights.”

To read the full intervention of Bob Harris at the General Debate of the International Labour Conference, please click here.

To read the full intervention of Bob Harris at the General Debate of the International Labour Conference, please click here.