GCE is the main grantee and co-grantees are its regional coalitions the Asia South Pacific Association for Basic and Adult Education (ASPBAE), the Latin American Campaign for the Right to Education (CLADE) and the Arab Campaign for Education for All (ACEA).

In the course of the OC3 program GCE works on expanding the use of the budget monitoring and pledge tracking online tool which was initially designed to be used by national education coalitions in Africa under the GIZ- German Backup Initiative. The use of the tool is being rolled out to GCE’s national coalitions in other regions including Asia and the Pacific, Latin America as well as the Middle East. National coalitions in these regions are offered an opportunity and support to use the tool to collect evidence-based data and analyze national governments spending on education.

Research initiative in pipeline

Also linked to the topic of Education Financing is an exciting initiative: the development of a research initiative on debt mechanisms and education financing. The overarching aim of the initiative is to understand the potential of the multiple debt mechanisms available, such as debt alleviation, debt cancellation or debt swaps for investment in education, to increase national education budgets. The research samples are drawn from Georgia, El Salvador, Lebanon, Gambia and Zambia, Nepal and Mongolia.

GCE also takes this opportunity to announce its education financing and advocacy e-learning courses which are accessible from the GCE website. The courses are running on a Moodle platform, and are flexible self-paced lessons with learning resources from different regions across the globe on key topics that relate to education financing and advocacy.

GCE is also working on establishing an education financing observatory with the objective of tracking the performance of public education financing and to strengthen civil society participation, especially of GCE members, in the analysis of national, regional and international contexts and the implementation of actions to demand and improve the financing of education.

GCE also seeks to tighten the links between national, regional, and global advocacy, while enhancing CSOs influence in key education policy platforms relating to education financing, GPE processes and recommending inclusive education solutions in times of emergencies or crises. Under this objective, it is envisaged that linkages between national, regional, and global level education financing advocacy and campaigns will be established, including the inclusion and building on national-level views in key regional and global level debates/events.

One Billion Voices

In January 2021, GCE launched a new global campaign, One Billion Voices with a primary focus on the education financing strategic area 4 within the GCE global strategic plan. The overarching objective of the OBV long-term campaign is to secure an increase in sustainable financing for education. This campaign provides a narrative on the global scale and severity of the education funding crisis which has been worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting increase in debt and severity of austerity measures around the world. A week-long action of the Global Action Week for Education (GAWE) (26-30 April 2021, under the theme More and Better Financing for Education, amplified the objectives of the One Billion Voices for Education campaign.

GCE takes part in the High-level Steering Group and Executive Committee of Education Cannot Wait (ECW), which plans the expansion of civil society seats in ECW as well as taking a lead role in organizing the elections process. Conclusion Through the Education Out Loud program, the GCE movement has been enabled to deliver its strategic policy advocacy and campaigning initiatives with an overall objective of contributing to processes that strengthen public education systems.

With the current COVID-19 pandemic crises, the GCE has focused its EOL program deliverables on generating evidence-based information on the lasting negative impact that the pandemic is likely to have on education financing and identifies possible policy responses to mitigate this impact through its policy advocacy and campaign initiatives at national, regional and global levels.