Ei-iE

The 2026 edition of the Global Action Week for Education (GAWE) is taking place from the 20th to the 25th of April, mobilising millions of education activists all around the globe. With education financing at risk, activists are calling on governments to invest in education and honour their commitment to leave no one behind and achieve Sustainable Development Goal 4 on quality education for all.

GAWE 2026 marks the 24th annual global mobilisation led by the Global Campaign for Education (GCE) of which Education International is part. This year’s campaign focus is education financing. As countries reduce their investment in education and education aid is radically cut to fund military spending, the campaign urges governments to “Hold the Flame High for Education”.

The main objectives of GAWE 2026 are:

• Accountability to SDG 4: The GCE is calling on governments and donors to honour their commitments, specifically following up on the Transforming Education Summit. The campaign advocates for official development assistance for education as a matter of global justice and reparation for historical injustices, and to address inequalities.
• Financing quality public education: The GCE advocates for the public provision of education. The campaign challenges false solutions and innovative financing schemes where private profit threatens education as a human right and a public good.
• Global financial reform: Education cannot be transformed without changing the global financial system. For governments to sustainably finance education, the GCE argues for international tax justice and debt cancellation, a substantive UN Framework Convention on International Tax Cooperation, and a UN Framework Convention on Sovereign Debt to free up fiscal space for developing nations.
• Public mobilisation: GCE members, with their broad constituencies, are mobilising to demand the right to education from governments, the international community, and other decision makers.

Go Public! Fund Education

Speaking at the launch event of GAWE 2026, EI Africa Director Dennis Sinyolo highlighted the global shortage of 50 million teachers and the risk it poses to the right to education around the world. EI’s Go Public! Fund Education campaign is the profession’s response to this crisis. “Through this campaign, we are calling for a quality public school for every child. A public school where every child is taught by a highly trained, professionally qualified, motivated, and supported teacher and every child learns in a well-resourced and safe classroom. We are saying no to the privatisation, commercialisation, marketisation, and commodification of education”, Sinyolo noted.

The EI Africa Director also called on governments to implement the United Nations Recommendations for a strong and resilient teaching profession and urged the International Monetary Fund and all international financial institutions to remove all austerity measures and the debt burden imposed on developing countries. “Allow developing countries to breathe and to invest in teachers, education, and other public services”, he stressed.

Click here to access the GAWE campaign pack and raise your voice for education.