Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-09-06-Speech-4-240"
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"en.20010906.13.4-240"2
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"Mr President, we have, of course, far too little time to discuss Mrs Kinnock’s excellent report properly. I share her scepticism about the great conferences where people in expensive suits and large expense accounts meet to talk about priorities that they afterwards immediately forget, while the education budgets of the poorest countries are falling and the number of children condemned to illiteracy continues to rise. I really have the impression that a number of countries are acting like some governments in the nineteenth century: keep them poor and keep them stupid, then they will be less trouble. That is, in fact, the strategic reason I can identify behind the manifest neglect of primary education. That primary education has also had far too low a priority in our own budgets for development cooperation. Fortunately, fellow MEPs have already said much that is true. I will therefore restrict myself to a few suggestions relating to that primary education in Mrs Kinnock’s report, which are particularly pertinent.
That education must be free. Children must not be excluded because they cannot afford primary education; otherwise they are condemned to the street, condemned to exploitation through child labour, and so on. On the contrary, we should actually give scholarships to children from poor families, so that they can go to school, to cover the miles, to pay for their uniforms, etc. The teachers must also be paid, they must be trained and they must receive a wage that enables them to survive in a decent way, so that they do not have to leave the children to their own devices because they must urgently earn something extra to at least give their own families some food. It is clear that national action plans will need to be put in place. I expect much more from governments that are aware of the problem, but in that case we must also be prepared to support those governments and increase their administrative efficiency. We are far too inclined to sit on the sidelines with our expensive specialists and our expensive NGOs, while we, in fact, give far too little support to the meagre educational facilities in those countries themselves. That does not detract from the fact that I expect the EU to translate all those words into action."@en1
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