The Common Good

Global progress requires three things. A laser-focus on results, measurable targets and ability to find common ground. In the period between the end of the cold war and the global economic crisis, child mortality was halved, primary school attendance doubled and Polio cases reduced by 99%. This accompanied a near-global endorsement of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and UN Development Goals. Such a consensus is always contingent on a shared view of human rights and global development as a Common Good. The aspiration is that this progress must be universal, not selective.

After the global economic crisis, populism soared and health and education results stagnated. A sense of common good gave way to growing inequality and polarisation. Populists tried to shift from a universal view of human rights to a selective one that tied rights to identity. Culture warriors present a unique threat to universal progress. They suck the oxygen from public discourse without providing any improvement in the lives of the people they claim to serve.

Our vulnerability to the pandemic was turbo-boosted by surging inequality. When schools closed in New York city, the poorest 300,000 children did not have access to online learning. Globally 40% of families had no consistent means of hand hygiene. The virus mutated while those in poorer countries who wished to be vaccinated could not be. In rich countries the misinformed fought for air in hospital beds having refused the jab. Vaccine inequality and vaccine refusal are mutually reinforcing pandemic prolongers driven by bad politics.

Despite all of this, it is a moment to be optimistic. There is the knowledge and technology now to end preventable childhood death and disease and dramatically reduce abuse, neglect and harmful practices. It is possible to deliver fairer and more relevant education in countries currently suffering what the World bank has termed a Learning Crisis. With better global collaboration and leadership we could uphold the protection of the one in four children currently living in conflict zones. Equally, it is not a moment to be complacent. Climate change and population growth bring new challenges which require hard work to maintain prior progress and build out from it.

When we think about the leaders we love, they carried themselves with an abiding sense of the common good. They served all constituencies and took responsibility for what they said and the secondary impacts of how it may be interpreted by others. They delivered results by producing policies that may not have been loved by anyone, but which were acceptable to all.

Reimagining a post-pandemic world needs to bring focus back to a universal common good that appeals across constituencies. We need to talk about how nationalism, isolationism and inequality made us vulnerable to the pandemic. To reward politicians for humility, service and delivering progress for the people they serve. Building a better world, based on values of human rights and a common good is more possible now than it has ever been.

Life Without School

21st March 2002, Afghan New Year, was the most humbling and memorable day of my working life. I was coordinating a “Back To School” campaign in Northern Afghanistan, and the 21st was the target date for opening of schools. This was the first major national reform after after a post-Taliban peace agreement signed a few months earlier. Rebuilding education was seen as a peace dividend for the Afghan people and a symbol of hope for their children on the first day of the first peaceful Spring after 23 years of war.

In this case, Back To School was a slightly misleading campaign title. There had never been more than 10% of children in school in Afghan history. If large numbers of children did go, they wouldn’t be going “back” to school. Most would be going for the very first time and would be the first in their families ever to attend school.

We worked for the preceding 60 days in one of the biggest logistical operations in UN history with the aim of creating an improvised national school system. Millions of classroom tents, text books and school backpacks were delivered via air. We distributed them to makeshift schools across the country, often via donkey or camel train. Many villages were not accessible by road or the routes had been badly war-damaged. A teaching workforce was built mainly from scratch by training anyone with a high school diploma on the basics of teaching. Schools were established in tents, fields, houses and former factories. In some cases. deadly land mines had to be cleared first. The campaign was intense, rapid and exhausting, but at 4 am on the the 21st March we put the final pin in a map. It showed every community in our zone had a designated school space, a teacher and supplies.

Just a few hours later we woke up to see the streets full of children hurrying in different directions to their first ever class. A total of 3 million children went to school that day. Seeing this was indescribable. It wasn’t just about learning. We knew that hungry children would receive lunch, traumatised and neglected children would receive attention, acknowledgement and maybe a sense of belonging. We knew that if children learned to read and write in school today, they would be less likely to die while giving birth or through preventable disease tomorrow. School connected those children to an enchanted world of learning. More than that, it is an accelerator for every other aspect of healthy child development and wellbeing.

The absence of education was a severe deprivation that the Afghan people yearned to overcome, for their children and their future. Similar struggles in different parts of the world have dramatically increased school access. Prior to the pandemic, 91% of the world’s schools age children were enrolled. This was unimaginable a few decades ago.

Todays school closures, affecting some 1.3 billion children globally, have momentarily reversed these gains. They affect all children, but have harmed the most vulnerable in three devastating and potentially life-lasting ways that :

School closures exacerbate existing inequalities of access, quality and attainment for the poorest and most vulnerable children everywhere. Hard fought gains in attendance and access for female, Roma, indigenous or other excluded groups are under threat. Attention and resources risk being diverted away from a pre-covid learning crisis where half of the world’s children are in school but not really learning. Remote learning remains deeply unequal. Here in New York the 300,000 children who don’t have digital access are the poorest and already blighted by the lowest attainment and opportunities in the education system.
370 million of the worlds poorest children are missing out on vital school meals. These are children at risk of malnutrition and depend on school feeding programmes for basic health. Further to this, school is often a key community centre for monitoring overall child health. Health or nutrition deficits in childhood are not momentary, they impact development with life-lasting costs. School closures are a threat to the health and nutritional status of children
At least 20% of children in any given society are affected by multiple forms of neglect, abuse and dysfunctional parenting at home. Only a fraction of them become child protection cases with dedicated and active social work support. For the rest, a soothing relationship with a teacher and school friends that can help them find a pathway to a better future and rebuild self belief. These relationships have been cut off with school closures. We know that unaddressed trauma in childhood is a major driver of poor mental and physical health throughout life and worse outcomes on almost every wellbeing measure.

The safe reopening of schools needs to be an urgent priority for governments everywhere. Remote learning is only a good alternative when schools are closed as a last resort. But as the UK Commissioner for Children Anne Longfield recently pointed out schools must be the last public space to close and the first to open. When there is a possibility to ease social distancing measures, it should be schools first not pubs!

It is a realistic proposition in the 21st century to set a target of connecting every child, every where to digital learning. This makes school systems more resilient to shocks and it can also network kids into public health and social work systems when direct access is not possible. Furthermore, the current digital gap is one of the major determinants of learning inequality. This needs huge innovation and investment, but it is achievable.

As much as disruption to schooling threatens our economic recovery, it also harms social fabric. Prior to the pandemic we were more atomised, polarised and lonely than ever, amidst an onslaught of identity conflict and receding communal values. School is the one place where children are socialised together and with common purpose and expectations. It is our great hope for healing, for binding and for belonging. Along with public health and social insurance, our educations systems are an endeavour that has propelled our societies forward and helped us to flourish. The longer they remain closed, the more difficult it is to narrow the gaps on quality, access and attainment and the wounds inflicted on children affected by poverty, exclusion or trauma. Thats why we need to prioritise the reopening of schools above all else.

All Of Our Dignity

It would be impossible to forget Antonio. His abandonment and isolation had been so complete, nobody even knew how old he was. We guessed about 8 or 9. He lay in a cot, lifeless and listless in a dark corner. The lack of animation was the not the outcome of his severe disability and blindness but rather caused by extreme neglect. The institution “housed” around 150 adults and children. It reaked of human waste and human disregard.

My index finger gently brushed against his palm and he gripped it tightly as his face broke into semi-toothless smile. He had lived a life cut adrift from love, attention or even basic human acknowledgment .

Antonio’s story inspired a shared effort by the government of North Macedonia and the UN to end placement of children in large scale institutions. Children like him would be provided with family-based care, connection and stimulation in community settings.

The plan was knocked off script when locals in the town of Timjanik angrily refused a mayor’s request to accommodate some of the children . We went there with the minister to find out why. On arrival, we sustained a three hour volley of abuse and hostility from several hundred protesters. There was violence in the air. People watching this back in the capital on livestream were horrified. Pundits, influencers and activists began lambasting the protesters as primitive, callous and hillbilly.

We listened carefully. Their’s was a small town in decline. It could have been in Oklahoma or South Yorkshire.The townsfolk had previously been dependent on industry and agriculture. For generations their income and opportunities had been on a modest, upward trajectory. But they now feared their children would have a much more precarious future. They had lived with years of unfulfilled promises to fix their roads, improve their schools and provide a pre-school. They longed for someone to give a voice to them, alongside the regular campaigns they heard from human rights activists for migrants, sexual minorities and people with disability. Like Antonio, in their own way they felt abandoned.

But why did these two different forms of deprivation and abandonment compete with each other? Broadly speaking there are three catastrophic burdens in childhood that drive lifelong inequality:

Discrimination or Exclusion based on race, gender or disability for example. It creates barriers that exclude one from opportunities, justice and often the basic safety that others take for granted.
Income Poverty through a lack of the basic means to survive, thrive and access opportunities to reach one’s potential.
Emotional Poverty through the absence of the basic nurturing and protective parental relationships due to violence, neglect or other forms of dysfunctional parenting (also known as childhood adversity). This is often transmitted inter-generationally and unintentionally.

If you look at Black Lives Matter, Hillbilly Ellergy and Good Will Hunting through the lens of identity, they seem so different to each other. When we look at them through the lens of fairness and dignity for all, they seem the same. It sometimes feels like we have forgotten a sense of ourselves as a whole, we are looking for the differences and barriers. This fragmentation polarises us into differing sides in a counter-productive culture war.

People in places like Timjanik perceive human rights champions to be selective in the injustices they seek to address. Those living with rural and town poverty feel both politically and economically abandoned. They are at the fag end of a painful transition from an industrial to a knowledge economy. This transition has concentrated opportunity in large cities at the expense of almost everywhere else. Those same champions scratched their heads as populists have hoovered up support in poor and abandoned communities. Despite their best intentions, they must bear part of the responsibility for the growth in populism and polarisation.

I felt this recently back home when I took a group of young adult care leavers for lunch in London. They had each lived with all of the three catastrophic burdens described above. It is hard to think of a more deprived group in the UK. We walked past a protest march urging us to support the rights of an oppressed minority in a far flung country. The comparatively wealthy looking protesters obviously felt that from our position of privilege we should all support this vulnerable minority oversees and that this was the most important human rights issue of the moment. But whose privilege is it? One of the young people in our group said he could not imagine the same protesters marching for kids in care. To highlight injustice, without acknowledging it is not the only injustice is itself an injustice.

Coming back to the story of Timjanik. The following day at an unrelated press conference in the capital, we were asked by journalists about the events in the town. We were expected to join the public condemnation of the protesters behaviour. Instead we articulated the townsfolk’s grievances and their struggles and explained that we could understand them, though did not agree with them.

Within two hours our inboxes were flowing with warm messages from people in Timjanik. They had not expected that we would actually listen to them and tell their story. They had needed to be acknowledged and heard. To understand that we think they matter too. From a collective refusal to host the small group home just 24 hours prior, it was now back on.

From that moment on, we numerically balanced our public facing advocacy. We gave equal attention to the situation of the overall population and to those living with one or more of the three catastrophic burdens . If we did a public event on exclusion of Roma minority or children with disability one month, we made sure we also had an event on poverty or a population-wide issue like education or health the next. This struck us as fair, just and effective.

A few weeks after the protest, the government agreed a strategy to transfer all children out of large scale institutions through family re-unification, foster care and small group homes. The government named the strategy “Timjanik” in testimony to what we had all learnt from these events.

On October 15th last year, the last remaining children were removed from large scale institutions. The situation may have improved for children in state care in North Macedonia, but there is still so much to do to prevent exclusion, poverty and adversity in the lives of children the world over. We can only do this when everyone finds their place in a shared story of justice and fairness. We need to “re-universalize” our human rights story.

And the children in the story? Antonio is out of the cot, living in a small group home with adequate care and stimulation and for the first time in his life, he is enrolled in school. Today in Timjanik, the locals visit with cakes and play with the children at the small group home. Just ordinary people in an ordinary place with the extraordinary courage to reimagine a better tomorrow in a world that protects all of our dignity.

COVID-19, Violence & The Need To Act with Urgency

Amidst the fear and uncertainty of the Covid19 lockdown in China, 26 year old Lele experienced something more terrifying than the virus itself. Her husband fashioned a weapon from a kitchen stool and beat her semi-conscious as she held her 11 month old baby in her arms. There was nowhere to go, no services to support, no possibility to flee. She had to spend several more weeks with her abuser before she could reach safety.

On the other side of the world in Greenland, the capital city banned alcohol sales to prevent growing child abuse during lockdown. In India the were 92,000 calls to a child abuse helpline in the first 11 days of lockdown. France experienced a 34% increase in abuse helpline calls by children and an even bigger increase in the number of peers and school mates calling on behalf of friends. . As closed schools and stay at home orders spread, so did the risk of abuse.This pattern played out across the world, in three ways:

The first is the way that lockdown piles pressure on households . Even the calmest, securely attached and ‘child development-aware’ parents are being tested by ‘pandemic-parenting’. Often they are working in uncertain jobs while teaching ‘cabin fever kids’ while adapting to loss of space and privacy. But most will not suddenly become abusive or neglectful. In more volatile families however, this stress can spill over into violence or exacerbate existing abuse patterns. The biggest beneficiaries of #StayAtHome are the serial abusers who practice coercive control and other forms of psychological aggression. the lockdown increase the likelihood of adverse childhood experiences.

Secondly, the means of reporting severe child abuse or neglect have been dramatically reduced. According to the US Department of Health & Human Services child protection interventions are initiated by reports from teachers, social workers or nurses. Social distancing measures have reduced reporting. From the 1980s onwards increased reporting of family violence was a major mark of success and progress in protecting the rights of women and children. Momentarily, reporting is in decline.

The third issue, is complex but equally serious. In normal circumstances less than 1 or 2 % of children are subject to interventions by social workers. Yet Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) research across populations suggests between 15 and 20% of children are affected by chronic, multiple forms of abuse, neglect or dysfunctional parenting at home. This 15 to 20% of children are now in a state of isolation. Children have a biological imperative to have protective, soothing relationships with an adult and are simply not built to be isolated. When a positive relationship at home is absent, the child interprets it at risk. It over-activates their stress response system which wreaks havoc on all aspects of healthy development. Unaddressed it can lead to catastrophic health and wellbeing outcomes throughout life. But when the stress is buffered and soothed by a healthy relationship with a teacher, grandparent or friend and the child is made to feel they matter on an individual level-then the recovery can begin. Right now around the world, hundreds of millions of children have been cut off from those relationships.

This is deeply distressing. Accounts of childhood maltreatment often recall a despairing loneliness and unbearable slowness. Loneliness when the parent who should soothe the pain, is actually the source of that pain. Slowness during long pauses of waiting for a violent outburst or scarce moments of maybe feeling loved. The isolation of the pandemic amplifies this pain exponentially. It is malleable with no end in sight. Relationships with teachers, grandparents and friends were cut off suddenly with no date for restoration.

We need to act with urgency on all three issues. Governments and communities could appoint ministers or local leaders to coordinate child wellbeing during lockdown. A priority must be engagement with parents on managing stress, home schooling and positive discipline, tailored to lockdown conditions. Online and media platforms could be adapted to facilitate a conversation with families and disseminate pandemic-specific parenting tips, similar to the global UNICEF parenting hub. Social protection and housing support must be adapted to reduce the stress on vulnerable families. Behavioural insights and technology innovations should be used to understand how we can best support parents and protect children.

Expanded helplines and channels that enable neighbours and friends to report maltreatment anonymously need to be provided . Equally we need to encourage extended family and friends to maintain regular communication with children in lockdown with abusive or neglectful parents. One of the most moving stories of the pandemic so far is the upsurge in calls by friends of victims reporting maltreatment in France.

Innovation and adaptation could help teachers and social workers restore normal levels of communication with children, despite lockdown. If they are not giving lessons, can they call each child for five minutes? These measures need to be population-wide and not just targeted to 1-2% of children who are child protection cases.

Decades ago, it became normal to ensure every child was immunised against deadly disease with a vaccine. In the future we could hope for a world were every child is buffeted from trauma by a calm and predictable adult connection. A world in which we improve prospects for parenting in every family at the earliest possible stage and maltreatment is managed and prevented as a part of routine public health . All we can do now is demand protection for Lele, her baby and millions of abused children and women locked down, unreported and isolated around the world as part of our immediate and shared struggle to defeat Covid19

Another Brick In The Wall? Transforming Global Learning

Its progress we rarely acknowledge. Today across the world, in savannah and steppe and in city and village, most children will go to school. A few decades ago, this was a pipe dream. Access to education is a hard-fought human right which makes our world a better place. It is an accelerator for every other form of progress in any society. For example, half of the global reduction in child mortality over the past 20 years is attributable to the first generation of mothers in many poor countries receiving an education. A third of the world’s poorest girls continue to be out of school with huge societal costs. In total, 9% of the world’s children still don’t go to school. By 2030 we must achieve the goal of basic access to universal education.

Now the global discourse is expanding from access to quality and relevance of what children learn. From this lens, global education is in a learning crisis. 53% of children in low and middle income countries cannot read a basic text by the time they are 10. This is a benchmark described by the World Bank as learning poverty. Education spending has increased in many low and middle countries. Yet it is not directed towards the poorest children who need it the most. In low income countries, almost half of education budgets go to the wealthiest 10%. Against a background of fast-paced technological change in the labour market, poorer children will be left behind.

We now know that brain development is most prolific before the age of 5. Primary and secondary school are hugely important, but not the most impactful institutions for social, emotional and cognitive development of the child. The family in infancy and then pre-school from 3-6 years of age yield the most influence on learning and life outcomes. Yet, the poorest families have little guidance on early stimulation and brain development. Research has shown that 3 year olds from families on welfare hear around 600 words an hour. Those from professional families hear over 2000. This gap in language acquisition is an indicator of huge inequality even before the child enters pre-school.

Such early disparity could most obviously be addressed by a pre-school education starting at 3, as the child’s brain continues to develop rapidly. But in many countries most poor children just do not go to pre-school. The gap in pre-school access between the wealthiest 20% and poorest 20% is vast. The OECD Pisa survey shows that much later at 15 you can see the outcome of this early inequality. 15 year olds who attended pre-school are on average between one and two years ahead in maths science and language. Together, these early disparities drive an intergenerational cycle of poverty. This harms the individual child, exacerbates inequity and undermines economic and social development.

Even many well-resourced primary and secondary education systems in wealthy countries struggle to keep pace in a changing world. Education reform is never a progression from one static position to another. It is an evolution constantly informed by two streams of change. The first is the changing labour markets and civic culture Education should prepare citizens contribute and gain from progress and prosperity. The second is our growing knowledge of brain development and how children learn. Systems creak and move slowly, and despite the amazing dedication of most teachers, schools are behind the curve on both counts.

All research shows the one thing that drives good education outcomes is the performance of teachers. Yet stakeholders including unions, parents and parliamentarians often focus on structural issues like class size or teaching hours rather than teaching itself. Children learn from teachers they love and who inspire a passion for their curiosity. The 20% of children affected by multiple traumas at home cannot learn at all unless the teacher provides a sense of safety, calm and belonging.

Most countries do not have a system to recruit high calibre teachers, keep them motivated and developing in step with a changing world. Many spend less than 1 % of their education budgets on in-service development. They are teaching for a moving target. A glance at todays vacancy pages shows jobs that did not exist when I started school millions of years ago. Teachers should be preparing children for jobs that don’t exist yet, and for working lives with much greater change than we have known before. Teachers need to shift from teaching kids stuff to teaching them how to think and create stuff. Children also need to learn how to learn and to be inspired to keep learning throughout the life course. For good citizenship they need media literacy too. Many countries are not adequately making these obvious changes happen. Pink Floyd railed against authoritarian teachers in the 70s. Today the threat is “authority-less” teachers with kids checking their smart phones in class to see if what the teacher is saying is up to date.

No public service institution can keep up with the pace of start-ups and tech. No country can address the learning crisis without engagement of the private sector. No private sector can flourish without a properly equipped workforce. Each needs each other, yet there is so little collaboration between them.

Both our evolving knowledge of adolescent brain development and of the labour market lead us to the same conclusion. The most relevant and rewarding way for a teenager to learn is through collaboration with peers in developing a creative solution to a problem. Yet most classrooms do not and cannot practice this.

Rutger Bremen questioned the mantra about educating children to find their place in the labour market of tomorrow. Instead he argued we should educate children to create the kind of labour market and society we would like them to live in. School informs character development, whether we intend it to or not. Inclusive moral and civic learning is a prerequisite for individual and societal flourishing. The UK-based Jubilee Centre has developed a framework for teaching integrity, respect, neighbourliness alongside core performance and intellectual competencies. The framework is being adopted in UK schools, and adapted oversees.

To address the global learning crisis we need to make sure that children are ready for three big transitions. The first is school readiness at 5 or 6. This requires narrowing the gap in early learning. All parents should receive knowledge of early stimulation through pre-existing primary health networks, at the same time they learn about vaccines and nutrition. We should pursue universal access to pre-school for 3-6 year olds as we have pursued access to primary and secondary education. Governments should invest at least 10% of their education budgets in early learning. They should also end the huge wealth disparity in pre-school attendance.

The second transition is at age 10. We need to eradicate learning poverty by ensuring that all children can read a basic text at 10. More than anything else, this will depend on the quality of teaching. We need behavioural science innovations to keep teachers motivated and systems where teaching practice can be informed by the evolving science of learning. Schools need to be trauma-informed so children affected by family or humanitarian trauma can be soothed, feel safe and make the important connections required to enable learning. Inclusion and gender-responsive school systems are also essential to end learning poverty.

The third transition is at 16 or 18 to work, training or higher education. This is about the relevance of education to both the labour marker and citizenship. We need a global commitment for teaching competencies, collaboration and character in an age of AI and fast-paced technological change..The public sector cannot achieve this alone and needs innovative financing and constructive technical collaboration with the private sector. As has happened in Finland, the teaching workforce needs to become an agile community of practice. This would enable it to adjust and develop teaching based on what it sees in the classroom and in the outside world. Creativity and collaboration needs to be at the heart of teaching.

Wherever we are, in addressing the learning crisis, our aspirations must be high. On the one hand we should work toward a world in which our children and then their children have a quality of life that is better than the one we had. On the other to ensure that they shape a society that is even fairer, kinder and a better place to live. Only a radical rethink of global education will help us get there. We owe our children nothing less.