Boris Johnson appoints special envoy for girls’ education

United Kingdom (UK) Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced the appointment of Helen Grant, Member of Parliament for Maidstone and Weald, as the new special envoy for girls’ education to reinforce the UK’s focus on empowering girls through education under its G7 presidency.

Grant, in addition to her role as the PM’s trade envoy to Nigeria, will take on the new role to refine the UK’s global expertise on education and secure backing for initiatives to get 40 million more girls from developing countries to join primary and secondary school by 2025.

Johnson stressed on how educating girls is the simplest and most transformative act to lift communities out of poverty, end gender-based violence and build back from the pandemic. He also emphasised on its role in not just changing lives of women but of communities and entire nations.

Grant stated that ensuring 12 years of quality education for all girls is a priority for the government, and highlighted the importance of high-quality female education in empowering women, reducing poverty and economic growth. She also said that encouraging a more ambitious approach to girl’s education from the international community was her ‘mission’ in order to build back better from the COVID crisis.

Under this initiative, the UK will also co-host the Global Partnership for Education Summit with Kenya later in 2021, bringing together governments, businesses and civil society to globally get children into school through investment and action.

The G7 is an intergovernmental collective of democracies comprising Canada, Italy, Germany, France, UK, US, Japan. The next summit is scheduled for June, in the UK. Johnson has earlier invited PM Narendra Modi to attend it as one of the three guest nations alongside South Korea and Australia. 

According to information from Downing Street, a child whose mother can read is 50 per cent likelier to live past the age of five, and twice more likely to attend school. Moreover, one additional school year can increase a woman's income by up to a fifth. The UK has supported 15.6 million children, including over 8 million girls to receive quality education since 2015.