Ex-Australian PM Julia Gillard urges action on lack of schooling for 121m children worldwide

Ex-Australian PM says schooling – especially for girls – imperative in creating educated parents to help prevent infant mortality and lift people out of poverty.

“There is a moral, rights-based reason why we’ve got to educate every girl, but there’s also a practical development outcomes if we do educate girls. We know that if we educated every girl, we would see infant deaths plummet by 3 million. We know that if women are educated children are more likely to survive childhood, more likely to be vaccinated, that economies grow because women have got the capability to work and direct that financing back to their families. Educating girls is win, win, win all round.”

there are still about 121 million children of primary and lower secondary age who are not in school. Of the 58 million not in primary school, about 31 million are girls.