The Stakes Couldn’t Be Higher

Having worked as a senior education policy adviser for the National Education Union (NEU) since its formation in September 2017, following the merger of NUT and ATL, and before that for the NUT, I was delighted to be appointed this year as the International Secretary of the NEU, the UK and Europe’s largest education union. 

I am so proud of the dedication that educators across the UK and globally have shown to their pupils, both during lockdown and since schools have reopened. The move to distance and blended learning during lockdown was sudden and unexpected but educators rose to the challenge to keep children learning whilst also opening schools for the children of key workers and vulnerable pupils; distributing food, ensuring families had access to books and educational resources, computers and internet connections as well as supporting pupils’ mental health and wellbeing and ensuring that children remained safe.


School reopening has posed many new challenges. Ensuring schools are Covid-safe and secure is a huge responsibility for educators everywhere but in countries where many schools lack basic sanitary conditions, such as access to clean water, it is a huge barrier to safe reopening. Covid outbreaks among staff and pupils and enhanced restrictions continue to cause school closures locally, nationally and internationally.


The pandemic threatens to set back by decades achievement of Sustainable Development Goal Four (SDG4) which calls for inclusive, equitable and quality education for all. The impact on girls’ education in particular could be catastrophic without coordinated action to address this global education crisis.


According to UNESCO, over 875 million of the world’s students remain affected by COVID-19-related school closures, with the majority in Sub-Saharan Africa.(1) Many may never return to school as the economic impacts of the virus limit government spending on education and force families to make difficult choices between education and economic survival, particularly where schooling carries a financial cost. When family budgets limit the affordability of education, gender inequality means girls are most likely to lose out.


The Malala fund has analysed the impact of previous health and economic crises and finds that marginalised girls are more at risk than boys of dropping out of education altogether following school closures.(2) They estimate that approximately 20 million more secondary school-aged girls could be out of school after the Covid crisis has passed, if dropouts increase by the same rate as they did following the Ebola epidemic in Sierra Leone (3).


Girls who are out of school are more likely to face early marriage and motherhood, violence and domestic abuse. Save the Children has estimated that an additional 2.5 million girls are at risk of child marriage over five years and that adolescent pregnancies are expected to rise by up to 1 million in 2020, as a result of the economic impacts of the COVID-19 crisis.

The stakes couldn’t be higher. An educated female population leads to improved health, gender equality, democratic engagement and economic growth for an entire country.


The theme of this year’s World Teachers Day, ‘Taking the Lead’ celebrated the crucial role of educators during the pandemic. Now Governments and global institutions must accept their responsibilities to ensure that high quality, free public education for all, girls included, is at the front and centre of sustainable national and international global recovery plans.


1 UNESCO, African countries must build back equal for girls’ education & learn from the COVID-19 crisis (September 2020). Available at: https://bit.ly/2HFpSRs
2 Malala Fund, Girls Education and Covid-19 – What Past Shocks Can tell Us about Mitigating the Impact of Pandemics (April 2020). Available at: https://bit.ly/34Aj7sR

3 Ibid. 

CELIA DIGNAN, NEU INTERNATIONAL SECRETARY • January 13, 2021

36 Bicycles. Countless Futures in The Gambia.

By Ann Beatty • May 20, 2026
How a simple act of practical solidarity is transforming the journey to school in The Gambia’s Central River Region North Policies have been written. Schools have been built. Yet for many children in The Gambia’s Central River Region North, access to education is still measured in kilometres, not opportunity. 

Education for Hope in Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous Times

By Laura Griffin • May 13, 2026
‘In a single hour vast tracts of shaded woodland became a jumble of torn trees and upturned soil, exposed to the glare of the summer sun. Such land-clearing events are rare, but forests exhibit remarkable resilience in the face of disaster. I’m told that the Chinese character for ‘catastrophe’ is the same as that which represents the word ‘opportunity’. And, the blowdown, while catastrophic, presented opportunities for many species.’ (Wall Kimmerer, 2003: 89). In the context of a volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world (Stein, 2021) what kinds of education for hope might support children’s and young people’s critical engagement in local and global issues? In the spirit of exploring the possibilities of hope further, this short article focuses on the area of global citizenship and sustainabilityrelated education. It will briefly open by sharing commonalities across pedagogical approaches that take up the concept and act of hope more critically, and close by offering reflective questions for educators, with suggestions for further reading. Perhaps it is a kind of hope that is grounded in the present, in future reimagining(s), in ethical solidarity, and an acknowledgement of our deep entanglement with the living metabolism of planet earth 1 our singular home (UNESCO, 2021); a hope that engages with complex root causes and lived realities of multiple overlapping crises in critically reflexive and contextually relevant ways. As McCloskey notes, ‘Hope can fire our collective imagination and critical consciousness as a mainspring to activism and intervention in the world.’ (2025: 3). Commonalities across critical pedagogical approaches to hope include: Acknowledging the context of a ‘seamless single story of progress, development and human evolution’ (Andreotti, V.D.O., 2021b Relating to social and ecological justice and the wellbeing of people and planet Using participatory, action-orientated and inquiry-based learning processes Exploring diverse worldviews and perspectives Practising grounding in the present with opening up possibilities for change (relational, embodied, response-able 2 ) Experiencing ‘struggle’ in different forms (dialogical, selfreflexive, open-ended) Engaging individual and collective agency, action and activism Looking for lifelong and life-wide learning and unlearning. 1 See ‘Co-sensing with Radical Tenderness’, in Machado de Oliveira Andreotti. 2021a 2 See ‘Crossing Borders’ in 2 Depth Education “Depth Education and the Possibility of GCE Otherwise, 2021b. Source: Andreotti, V. 2021a & 2021b., Atif, A. (2025)., Bourn, D. 2021., Bryan. A. and Mochizuki,Y., 2024., Giroux, H.A. 2025., Meade, E. 2025. Whilst engaging in the concept and act of hope more critically reflect upon: What kinds of education for hope might you explore further and why? How might you provide generative spaces for engaging in diverse worldviews and perspectives? In what ways can you facilitate individual and collective agency? How might you support learners’ practice grounding in the present in order to relate differently? In what ways can you support learners in navigating complex root causes and lived realities of local and global issues? As Chief Ninawa Hini Kui affirms, ‘The future depends much less on the images we project ahead than on our capacity to repair relations and build relationships differently in the present.’ (Andreotti et al, 2023: 73. An invitation for further reading: Transformative Learning for a Sustainable Future . d’Abreu, C., Belgeonne, C., Bourn, D. and Hatley, J. (2025) ‘Transformative Learning for a Sustainable Future’. DERC Research Paper 24. London: UCL Institute of Education. Hospicing Modernity: facing humanity’s wrongs and the implications for social activism. Machado de Oliveira Andreotti, V. (2021a) ‘Hospicing Modernity: facing humanity’s wrongs and the implications for social activism’ , London: Penguin Random House. Development Education and Hope . McCloskey, S. (2025). (ed) ‘Development Education and Hope’. ‘Policy and Practice: A Development Education Review’ , Vol. 41, Autumn. Centre for Global Education, Belfast. Link to and download the full reference list here

I heard it said today by a friend that “You learn a language best when you use it to speak and write about things that are important to you. ”

By Susan Piper • May 6, 2026
This summed up to me about why I volunteer for the Hands Up Project. HUP is a charity trust which, through its network of volunteers, connects children around the world with young people in Palestine. By means of online interaction, drama and storytelling activities, it enables the use of creativity and selfexpression to promote mutual understanding, personal growth, and the development of English language skills. I joined HUP in 2020 during COVID. After going to Palestine in 2017, I wanted to get more involved in working with Palestinian children in schools. HUP gave me the opportunity to link up with schools in the West Bank and Gaza. Every week I’d tell them stories from all over the world, then we’d discuss it, play games and I’d get them to retell it. Sometimes we would work from their coursebook English for Palestine’ in mutual team teaching sessions with their teacher. The simple act of telling a story became much more than entertainment. It became connection, healing, and a bridge to the world beyond their immediate reality to help them improve their language skills, and to give them a platform to speak about their lives in a language that connects them to people everywhere. I loved it, every week, seeing their smiling faces on the screen and building long lasting friendships with their teachers. I even went to Gaza in 2023 and met some of the kids I’d only seen on Zoom. It was a beautiful experience and something I will never forget. As hostilities escalated, I lost contact with everyone. I thought about where the kids were and what had happened to them. As I watched schools being bombed, universities flattened, and people killed in their thousands, I thought about where the kids I’d met were and what was happening to them. I kept in contact with many of the teachers I knew and heard daily news of displacement, destruction, hunger and bombing. Recently, I’ve started to link up again with children in Gaza, and it feels wonderful to be back helping them learn after being denied an education for over two years. Connecting with children in Palestine is more than just words. When a child in Palestine confidently tells their story to someone on the other side of the world, bridges are built, empathy grows, and the world gains a fuller picture of childhood in contexts far from peace and privilege. My work with these children is rooted in the belief that education and voice are inseparable. Through storytelling and English language learning, I witness children not just learning new vocabulary, but reclaiming their narratives, believing in their potential, and finding human connection in a world they perceive has abandoned them. And more than anything, this work reminds us all that children — everywhere — deserve to learn, to speak, and to be heard. Links to HUP information, books and resources: The Hands Up Project BY SUSAN PIPER Susan Piper is currently an ESOL teacher in Oldham, Greater Manchester and has worked in education for over 30 years. She is also a volunteer for the Hands Up Project and is the International Solidarity Officer and President of her NEU district. She believes in quality education for all and aims to make her lessons creative and inclusive so that effective language learning can take place.