 How can you talk a little bit more about ways that the partnership itself goes? What would be the vision for the development of the partnership over the next few years? Let me describe a little bit more the partnership. And it is a partnership. The idea of the partnership is to try and it's anchored in trying to utilize as effectively as possible development assistance, if you will, in support of education. So it isn't, we're not sitting back and it's actually hosted by the World Bank, it's not a World Bank program, but it's hosted by the World Bank. So we're not sitting back in Washington deciding what the global partnerships education program should be. It is very country-based. Right now there are 46 countries that are part of the partnership. 46 of the poorest countries in the world that are part of the partnership. The way it functions, as I said before, is it supports the education plans of the country itself, but it supports it in a number of ways. By, in essence, at the country level, let's say Zambia, since you mentioned Zambia, at the country level, in essence, convening the different actors in that country engaged in education, certainly starting first with the government itself, the Ministry of Education. Hopefully even the Ministry of Finance, who often have a lot more to say about education than the Ministry of Education, actually, but at least, at a minimum, the Ministry of Education. But also the other actors, the external actors who are actually present in that country. So maybe it might be Irish, UNICEF, DFID, USAID, whoever, the other actors. And basically, in essence, the model brings them around the table, convenes them for the following purposes. One, policy dialogue around the country's education sector plan, so as hopefully to improve that plan, to think it's rude, to challenge it, to engage with the Ministry and others. Brings them around the table so that UNICEF isn't doing their pilot project up in the North, and the Germans doing their pilot project in the South. And the Minister, if he or she is even able to keep track of any of this, not pulling their hair out. Doesn't mean everybody has to do the same, but generally a commitment to support the major principles of this plan, the major elements of this education plan. They may support it in different ways. The Germans may be supporting the technical and vocational elements that are in the country's education plan. And somebody else may be supporting another element of it, both supporting it in terms of technical assistance and also finance. But at least it's in support, so you don't have this splintering all over the place of education. And so the idea is to convene. It's to encourage alignment of development actors around the plan. And also we provide some funding. We don't provide the only funding because there's bilateral funding out there. And that bilateral funding, hopefully, is also aligned with the plan. But we do provide some funding. And in the 10 years the partnership has been around, we have provided over $2 billion in funding in support of these education sector plans. We also, as the plans are being developed in conjunction with this group now, it's called the Local Education Group, which this month it's convened. In the course of the development of the plan, as I said, we do analysis and try and help and improve the plan, so what goes forward. Now, when it was first convened, the partnership was solely about Millennium Development Goal 2, which, again, is accessing completion of primary school. Over the course of the 10 years, actually the board of the global partnership, which consists of representation from these different partners. That's what they are, donor partners, developing country partners, civil society partners, teachers, private sector, and international organizations. The scope has expanded, in part because it's pretty clear that you don't even get the full benefit of primary school unless you at least get early secondary. And secondly, because these ministers are not dumb, so they were trying to draw up education plans that looked like they were entirely only focused on primary because that's where the global partnership's money was supposed to come, but they were trying to sneak in a little bit of early childhood development and a little bit of secondary. So they had to make it look like a giraffe, even though it was half zebra and half something else, but say, oh, here's our education plan for primary school. And then you look at it and say, well, that seems to have some of this and that. And so that was their need, their perceived need. They weren't doing anything wrong. It was just because at that point, as we were first created, it was solely about primary. If that's what you have to do to get some money to support your education plan, you do that. So the scope now has changed. Not for everything, actually, because we can't do everything, but the scope has changed to allow for this education plan that at least the partnership will support. Bilaterals can support other things that are aligned to it, but to at least range from early childhood into secondary at this point. So where do I see the partnership going? Again, the partnership is I see it continuing to support in the way that it has. It is recently particularly highlighted three priority focus areas. One is fragile states, in part because underlying the work again of the partnership is making sure the kids who are not in school get into school. So if that's where the majority of these kids are focusing on fragile states, and that's going to mean doing work differently, because you aren't, in many cases, going to be able to work through ministries of education. So it will mean even more engagement at a local level with NGOs and others, because in terms of the ability to carry things through. For example, Afghanistan just became a global partnership although they have a very active minister of education. He even found my telephone number in New York. So pick up the phone one day. He said, we have an application in. We really hope that you'll support it. I'm going to worry you. We are working right now, for example, among others with the Democratic Republic of the Congo and with Sudan and also with South Sudan. So it doesn't mean that the other countries, Zambia or Malawi or Mongolia or Papua New Guinea, were particularly easy because they are not easy at all. But the nature of the South Sudan's and the Democratic Republic hung those types of countries are going to be even more challenging going forward. Second priority continues to be girls' education, but with more attention to secondary school. And so this will, again, there's some underlying elements that have been identified that are incentives for girls going to school in no particular order. Things like having separate latrines at schools. Not a major thing. This is not some big scientific breakthrough, but for young girls having separate sanitary facilities. Having more female teachers. How near a school is to the community, whether the community has water available generally in the community. Because girls very often are the one, well, almost always the ones that have to go and fetch the water. So those kinds of things. So for secondary school, some of those will become even more challenging because primary schools tend to be closer. So the secondary schools are further away. So the issue, it's not just girls can't go further. It's their parents and they, too, worry about violence. And so some of the strategies for girls transitioning into secondary. And also, for example, challenging the early marriage and all of those kinds of things. Some of those strategies will be different than they've been solely for primary school. So that's another focus. And the third focus is, as I said before, on the learning agenda and the focus on reading in the early years. So I think that partnership has evolved as education in development is evolving. Hopefully, we're able to share best practices with others. But I think we're also learning best practices. And we are looking to try and help create more, using everything from just traditional ways to even technology platforms for the sharing of best practices, because there are good practices out there. And it doesn't mean that what worked necessarily in Cambodia is going to work absolutely in Haiti. But there are some things that, because it worked well here, it will work somewhere else. So a focus in those areas, more attention to quality and a broader scope, I see, as the future of the partnership. I should also say, I mentioned before that the partnership is hosted by the World Bank. And in its early years, it was largely staffed by people from the World Bank. Wonderful, good people. But the World Bank fundraising efforts, at certain points in time, have a big replenishment efforts. And everybody goes out, and there's a replenishment. And they fill the coffers. And then everybody kind of goes away again. And then a couple of years later, they replenish the coffers. And frankly, when you're the World Bank, you're able to replenish your coffers. Well, when the global partnership got started, and by the way, it wasn't called the global partnership in those days, it was called the worst name in the world. It was called the Education for All Fast Track Initiative, or FTI. My friends at home thought I worked for the FBI. I have to have talent in them. So nobody could remember it. Or particularly in New York, they thought I worked for FIT, the Fashion Institute. And I get, what is that place that you're working with again? So we've changed the name, frankly, and went through a rebranding process, because actually, not just to change the name, because it is a partnership. And the idea is to engage the broader partnership at this point. But when it was started, they never created a fundraising capacity within the organization. And I told you, we've allocated over $2 billion. But allocating and not inocating means you start to run out of money. And so they noticed about two years ago that they were running out of money, because nobody was bringing in any new money. And so we did institute, finally, about a year, a little more than a year ago, at least a fundraising capacity. And so we had actually a big fundraising event this past November. The call was for more financing for education, not just only financing for the global partnership. And I'm happy to report, because I consider this good news, one, we were able to raise money. We raised a billion and a half for the next three-year period for the Global Partnership Fund itself. But more importantly, in my view, and that's not unimportant, developing countries themselves committed to an additional $2 billion of investment above and beyond that which they were investing now in education. That to me was really a very significant factor, because they are the major funders of their own education system. And then five bilateral donors also increased their commitment to education. So I think that was a good sign going forward. Thank you. Please. Yeah, I'm the ambassador of MISUTU here. And I'm actually still in transition from being a development worker to being a diplomat. And I think it's something going on too well. It's going on very well, Ambassador. But more importantly, I'm an educator in life. And in MISUTU, I was a great part of working with the first strike initiative. And for a long time, I missed the connection between the FTI and the global partnership, as you called it. I almost didn't recognize you talking about the same of MISUTU until just now when you explained that. And then the big question we have always coupled with in basic education is, for one, this constant pull between more education and it's better education. More education on the issue of access, getting more children into school, and getting them to stay there. But also, you really are always involved with the other imaging issues and all the issues of environment, global warming in Africa, HIV and AIDS. Everybody wants some of that to be in the school curriculum. The tendency is, therefore, that you end up with more education, there's more things to learn. And in the end, children learn less of everything. So the key functional skills of literacy and numeracy get diluted hugely in the process. So then on the other hand, the issue of education that will have longer effects on children's lives is about really learning how to read and write, not just the one indigenous or the nuclear language they have, but also the functional language of the economy. Those are important and they have the much longer lasting effect on their education as well as numeracy as reported. But as I say, that struggle has always been there. Everybody comes up and says, no, if you have to solve this global problem, teach it to the children. And how do you do that? Put it in the curriculum. And that's an issue when you're thinking about learning better and I know in the FTI also it has been an issue about whether we continue to expand the curriculum infinitely as more and more things come to be learned. Then on the other hand, you talked about the whole thing of trying to put in the other level of education somewhere in the international plan for basic education. And it brings up the question which I moved on later on to teach education, which is considered third level education. And say, the debate has been the whole movement used to strengthen basic education, seem to be undermining third level education even where it supports basic education as does teacher education, for instance. And therefore, when you find some countries building in, training more teachers. Because that quality element in education can only be improved if you want. You get not just more teachers, but better teachers. And that's where you end up with everything. And also you talked about preschool education. And again, if children come to school and they are six years old and their social skills are still really low and everything that goes with preschool learning, that they would have missed. It sets back whatever you're trying to do. I want to think about the two elements, the issue of the problem with more education in the manner I've described. And also the continuity, even if the global partnership supports a smaller part of the national program in education that covers primary and junior secondary education, but still be part of a bigger plan, including preschool education and including some third level education. I think you're going to make a very good diplomat. I mean, first of all, having a development experience always does that. I'm always happy to meet a minister of finance who's been a minister of education. I always think that's going to be a better thing, too. I don't think there are simple answers to any of those. I mean, I want to come back a little bit on budget, actually. In most poor countries, the single largest expenditure in that poor country's budget is for education. That being said, however, so much of that is ultimately for, frankly, for teacher salaries. Not that the teachers are making a lot of money. It's not a matter. I don't say that because, oh, the teachers, it's usually the largest component of the public workforce are teachers, even when there are not enough teachers and there are not enough teachers. I mean, one of the big challenges coming from doing away with school fees, which in my view was a good thing to do, because it really did encourage even the poorest families to send their children to school is that there were too few teachers in the first place, and now there are even fewer teachers. So one of the challenges is, even though the largest amount of funding comes from the countries themselves and it goes for education, is that it really, the availability of that budget money for anything beyond teacher, anything much beyond teacher salaries, such as updated curriculum, such as teacher training and professional development, such as just even the environment in the classroom. Not that it has to be gorgeous and beautiful, but just even some additional things is very often quite limited. The issue of what gets thrown into the curriculum, I think, really still has to rest largely with the decision makers at a country level. And in fact, hopefully, with there being more focus now in education generally, and again, it's not run through, but on quality, there may be some attention now to not having so much thrown in that it just, and thrown in and then it's taught on a rote basis. So the life skills that you need coming out of education very often, you lose. And hopefully, there may be other opportunities, even through simple technology of learning in some of the different ways. I also think there's some potential for, and again, I do not see technology as the answer to everything, but I think there's some potential for more use of technology in terms of teacher training. The possibility of doing distance learning, the possibility of doing peer-to-peer from teachers across borders might allow for a more financially efficient way, in some cases, of doing teacher training. But yes, schools are, it is assumed that in education everything will happen, and it just can't happen in education at this point, but those decisions and those choices have to be made at a country level. They really can't be parachuted in and say, here's what your curriculum should be. Thank you. Please. Could you tell us who you are first? Frank Ehrer, I'm a member here of the Institute when it happened. I spent many years in Africa in education and later in the Balkans, so. And I wonder if you'd like to comment on what you see as the current driving forces behind education, and who is dictating what is important in education. For many years, it seemed to be, if we use the north-south lingo, then it seemed to be the north that was telling the countries in the south what they should be doing, telling them in ways of coming in while we were fun teacher training and we weren't fun school building, or the IMF coming in with their structured adjustment and saying, well, now it's time the community started contributing towards the cost of education, keeping the government out, to swing around. We have the MDGs there. I mean, the flipper of the last few years now. But again, they weren't invented in the south. They came from the northern direction. And now, what I hear, you know, people who are speaking from this part of the world, well, it's time we moved in some other direction. I wonder if you'd just like to comment on how you see the balance, how much of the initiative for change and for what is best, is coming from within these countries themselves. Well, I think that's a very mixed picture. I would say, I suppose, right now, the MDGs are still not just the flavor of the day. They are still, I mean, they are still the overall global development agenda. Now that being said in education, you know, the one MDG that's the education goal is, I apologize, I don't mean to offend, but is kind of a dumbed-down, broader education agenda. I mean, the broader education agenda are the education for all goals, which actually range from early childhood to tertiary education. I mean, and includes basic education, but it recognizes the importance of adult literacy as well as early childhood development, whereas the Millennium Development Goal was very focused just on, it's not even just basic, it's just focused on primary education. So I would say that's probably been the largest driver in the last decade in terms of not just only in education, but in development, in the development focus. And that being said, first of all, I don't wanna say, and you've already raised it, I mean, you didn't even make the connection to FDI. So I wouldn't say that we're working perfectly in all countries, but the one thing that I think, well, several things that I would say on behalf of the global partnership in education is that as I said before, we're not a top-down, send the program from the West or the North, but rather it really is anchored at the country level in the country's education plan. Now that being said, what I think is interesting is happening right now is, well, two things. One, at least some beginning thinking, I hope, around what the global development goals post-2015 will be, but I think this is still in preliminary thinking. But two, the changing face or the evolving face of the development actors out there. And in my mind, that ranges across the board. It ranges from more leadership at a country level itself and not in every place, but we're seeing it in more and more countries where the countries are making very clear that, you know, fine, we need some external assistance, but we're leading this process, more so than I think we even saw a decade ago. Two, it kind of, and these are very important actors, but the kind of the development, the external development actors who make up the OECD are not the only players anymore in terms of development assistance. You're traditional donors, if you will. They're very important. They're very important players out there, but there are a lot of other actors out there now involved in North, South, South, South, South, South. So, I mean, and they're playing by, in many ways, their own rules, whatever their own rules are. Whether, I don't mean that in a bad way, it's just kind of the, okay, let's all get in a room and agree what the development rule should be. Well, frankly, China isn't going along with that and Brazil isn't going along with that. And Malaysia isn't necessarily going along with that. Not that there's something wrong going on. They're out there, and there are others. Korea kind of is, because they're part of the OECD, but it's, you know, the Gulf foundations. There's a whole range of other actors out there who are influencing development in different ways. Now that being said, I was at a meeting recently where I think it was the Vice Minister of Finance from Mozambique kind of was talking about this, a woman, and she was saying, so we Mozambique, we're gonna set our kind of framework or for external development partners, no matter who they are, whether they're the new ones or the traditional ones, we're gonna at least try and lay down kind of a set of rules. So I think the interesting change out there is that it's just North-South. I think they're just more development actors out there today and a whole range of ways in which they are engaging. And it's a whole new world actually, or it's starting to be a whole new world and it's gonna be interesting to see. Thank you, thank you. Casey. I'm Gina Hanman. I'm a researcher here at the Institute. I'm sorry, you're? I'm a researcher here at the Institute. I just wanted to ask you a little bit about the partnership vision for tertiary education. You just touched on it very briefly earlier, but you focused a lot on primary and I know that you're trying to expand to focus on how you're talking to people and very much on your work with tertiary education. Well, we had, like all good organizations, we had a very interesting discussion and debate around scope. And in fact, there isn't consensus within the governing body entirely on scope. So we adopted what I thought, now I'll go back to my lawyer days, although I wouldn't hire me, it's been me so many years ago that I was a lawyer, but I thought we had a great compromised resolution and this was about scope. And the resolution in essence said, our scope aspiration are all of the education for all goals, which is, again, it's not that they're perfect, but it does span the range basically from early childhood, basic education, vocational adult literacy, so it basically goes from pre to tertiary. So our ambition would be all of the goals, but our financing support will be largely focused on, but this at least took it beyond what it used to be only primary, our financing to the extent to which, and again, the global partnership isn't the only financer. It provides financing, but the whole idea it was to help catalyze other financing too, so our financing will be primarily focused on early through early secondary, so early childhood through early secondary. So the aspiration is the whole scope, the financing part is an expanded scope. I think clearly tertiary is very important. Now, I mean, it's interesting, there are a number of, well, I'll say, Germany and France, for example, when they report their development assistance for education, they stand there happily and broadly and talk about how much money they put into education, and they put a lot of money into education in terms of development assistance, but big chunks of those go, for example, for on the scholarshiping side or in tertiary education. And so we have debates about whether, does that mean they're the biggest donors or what about the big donors into basic education? But I mean, clearly, teachers are critical, that's not the only element of tertiary education. The idea isn't that you just do primary school and you stop, that's been the development goal, but everybody now realizes, or it's largely realized that you need to go into secondary, and particularly for, interestingly, for secondary, you're gonna need teachers with a little bit more education. Now, again, as we think about secondary, we may have to think about different ways, particularly in the poorest communities of supporting that, where you may not have absolutely everything and might have one teacher is gonna have to cover a number of subjects, but you're gonna have to have a little broader and a little bit more depth there. So just even for education, and therefore just for teachers, tertiary education becomes very important. But again, the partnership's focus, in terms of its financing, is still largely going to be early childhood through early secondary. Thank you, Karol. Mary Hanfond, who's the former Minister for Education. Thanks, I could reassure the ambassador from the Zilliput, it's not only in Africa that everybody thinks everything should be on the curriculum. And just, during my time in the Minister for Education, I had to set up a program with Zambia again back to what I said about teacher training, where they wanted kind of mentors in the Irish teacher training because it isn't there. Which I think still continues. Then it was interesting, only two years ago in pre-Ku, Egypt, when I met the Minister for Education there, that quality of teacher training was the very one thing that they mentioned as well, because we're getting teachers who are starting to train at 15 years of age. So when I hear you talk about moving on to the quality agenda, got more focus on it, rather than just on access, would you see that as the key to the quality? Or are there other factors? And the other thing then would be, through the partnership, we have tremendous things with all of the different bodies working in an individual country. Are you the one's best place to influence the political decision making? Or who are the people who actually decide on that? Could we take another question? I think clearly teacher training and teacher development is very important. We in the partnership say we've done some and I know we have or we've provided financing for some, but I don't know that we have particularly drilled down into and paid. It's an area I think that in the partnership, and when I say the partnership, it's not the partnership running a program, it's got to be done through that local education group. But I don't think enough attention has been paid to what has been involved in the teacher training. And so I think clearly, I mean you can have some curriculum and some modifications that will particularly build into the education plan, some strengthening of your efforts around reading, but in fact a teacher or the teachers assistants are going to become very important in that. So I think again not just the partnership, I know Education International, the big education union is also looking over the next year to some particular initiatives around teacher training. I think there's more attention being paid to this. Not only and again the focus has been very much on the teacher shortage, which is a very important focus. There are enough teachers out there, but equal attention has to be put on the quality and training at this point. And I don't think enough attention has been placed there. It's just okay, let's have a training. I must say I say that partly based on my years at UNICEF. I mean we'd have a training, but it wasn't clear whether the training was like, if you don't know what to do, let's have another workshop. And so really it was sometimes things work, sometimes you train them and then they left and went to work for the NGOs or for UNICEF rather than continuing to, I mean not that they're not allowed to do that, but I mean really more attention to the substance of the training, not just here's some funding for teacher training at this point. And I have now forgotten your second point, which was a, well first of all, we are not country based. We engage in dialogue with the country, but we're not country based, which I think is probably a good thing. I think we've been a little too shy in the past to actually when things got stuck to intervene a little bit more. On the political side, first of all, it seems to me, I mean this local education group, and it'll look a little different in each country because it depends on who the actors are. That's probably the place that is best positioned, if you will, to at least try and bring some kind of political pressure if some kind of political pressure needs to be brought. It's not some external actor, although that local education group is made up of external actors. They are at least people who are in the country. They are from the missions in the country. They are people who hopefully are knowledgeable. Now actually I wanna raise something in that context, you make me think. One of the negative things that are going on right now, that is going on right now, is that in the context, and these are particularly the traditional donors, in the context of more aid effectiveness, a lot of the development ministries of different donor countries are reviewing what countries they're investing in and what are their priority countries. And each one of those analysis is actually probably done pretty well. And what we're seeing is a number of donors pulling out of some countries. I mean they're still there, but they're still involved, but instead of being involved in 12 countries, they're now involved in eight countries. And that analysis is pretty good by the UK. And that analysis is pretty good by Netherlands. And that analysis is pretty good by Denmark. But the problem is when you bring the three together, there are some countries now that are becoming, if you will, aid orphans or development assistance orphans because all three are pulling out of this country because they looked at this. And so that's having an impact. It's not just the money that's being pulled out. It means that in that mission, the technical assistance that could provide some technical assistance around education is no longer there. So I came to that by virtue of talking about the local education group. But if the local education group, for example, in fewer and fewer cases has anybody who really has some experience in education, it means, I mean not that they have to be the political one, but it means that then that local education group is going to be less sharp actually in having some impact perhaps on some of the political processes that would be helpful for education. So that is a problem that's happening right now. We're seeing that trend. It's not motivated by good reasons, this more aid effectiveness, but the net effect of the trend is reducing the number of education technical specialists and that's having a negative impact. Thank you. Is here. And Jenny helps from Conserva. It's very welcome to hear the character chronology of the learning agenda and reading. And we're actually attending the first three-year-old children reading. Oh, and Kigali? Yeah, yeah, for 80 and for Liberia and for Rwanda. And my question is that one of the key barriers that we find when we're trying to implement early reading programs is the lack of mother-tongue education materials. And it's a real barrier when we're trying to work, especially in post-conflict countries or conflict-detective countries, but in countries that are, that provide the right-hand class for budgets need to go to teachers' salaries and it's so expensive to develop reading materials and correcting the materials in mother-tongue. But where the teacher can't speak or understand the language of instruction and moral skills, each other just won't develop reading skills. Will that be a focus to the partnership or will it be a drive within the third priority to look at mother-tongue education for early reading skills? One of the problems being the principal or like the chair is, I'm good for three minutes on every subject, but I'm not, don't scratch me for the fourth. I believe it is. I'm sorry. Clearly, to being able to teach in mother-tongue is one of those critical issues. And it has a couple sides to it which you know much better, concerned certainly would know much better, great organization. And by the way, what she was mentioning is over the next month, we are, the partnership is holding two workshops for representatives and ministers and civil society and others from a number of countries and at this point in Africa and but also Haiti around the learning agenda. So that's what you, that's one of the things that we're doing right now is trying to share some of the experiences. And I know that mother-tongue is involved. I mean, my sense would be again that as we are in dialogue with the countries as they're developing their education sector plans and as we're in dialogue with the local education groups, clearly around the learning, around agenda that this needs to be something taken into account. Now, one of the challenges is not, oh well, you mentioned one challenge which are materials. But another challenge are having teachers who can teach in the mother tongue, which is Rwanda went out and, well, this isn't mother tongue. Rwanda went out and took a decision that everybody was gonna learn in English. And then they realized that didn't have teachers who could teach everybody in English. Mozambique took a decision that they were gonna go out, a good decision, and everywhere where they needed to in the indigenous or the communities where the language was different than whatever the education language was, which is a little bit Portuguese, they were gonna do it in mother tongue, but then they found that they didn't have enough teachers who could teach in the mother tongue. So having materials is one thing and then having the teaching capacity to teach in mother tongue. But it clearly is a very important element to learning early grades. Because the child just gets determined to be not able to learn, has nothing to do with their cognitive capacity, has to do with the fact that they've never spoken the language that is being used in the classroom. But it is, sorry. I'm sorry. Charles Tapp, who's senior advisor at the secretary for the global partnership. But mother tongue instruction in the early years is absolutely a core pillar of the learning agenda and dealing with the material supply element of it is a core part of what we're looking at in the plans and looking to have local production of those sorts of materials rather than the sort of the massive bulk international competitive bidding which when everything arrives six months late and comes into the real country anyway. And cost triple. And cost triple. So I mean, these absolutely core issues that we're looking at. Thank you. Please. Firstly, and it's been a welcome to Dublin. Can you tell me who you are? I'm Calvin Parlow. It's to us. So it's just really a very interesting observation and it seems to be often an assumption that government should be not just the thunder of the service provider of the education. And I don't, I'm not really sure in the answer to this, but if you look at where the innovation is coming from it's also coming from more organization than the other increasingly private sector providers. So I'm just wondering if you have observations on asking for it. It's not a black and white issue, but observations on government as a service provider for an education versus the other options that are available. Well, our model has been anchored in supporting government sector plans. But I think one has to also be realistic. I mean, you mentioned Haiti a moment ago. I mean, and this was even before the earthquake. I mean, virtually 90% of schooling to the extent it was being provided at all was being provided privately. Now that was largely through the church. So when you say private, there's a whole range of private. So again, when I say we supporting the country's education sector plans, those education sector plans have to take into account the provision of education in the country as well. So at least our funding for the partnership will still largely be funding that will be going to government, although, and again, I think we're doing a better job of it than we've done in the past, engaging civil society in the local education group so that they are right from the beginning. We've had a program over the last couple of years of some modest funding to do capacity building for local NGOs, international NGOs are wonderful but for local NGOs to strengthen their capacity to better push the government and push others and do things. And clearly in fragile states and humanitarian situations where in a number of cases you may not even find a functioning government or barely a functioning government, even our model is going to have to work more with alternatives out there. But I think, I don't think it's a black and white picture. I know in some elements of the education community, it's seen as pretty, all this or all that, but I think that the public sector can learn from innovations that are going on in the private sector. And I think there are innovations that the public sector can be leading as well. And I think that one of the things that we need to be doing, again, in the partnership, not that the partnership knows what the innovations are, but encouraging these education plans to be thinking about some innovative ways at this point. So from my perspective, and I think generally the partnerships perspective, it isn't private is all bad and it's only government, but our focus has still gone largely beyond the government's education plan, but that needs to take into account what the situation is in that particular country. Thank you. Are there any further questions? Well, let me just say that it really is, it's a great pleasure to listen to somebody with a vision and a commitment like you have. As I said earlier on, I started out as a school teacher. I think education is the way to change societies for the better and it's wonderful to see somebody and to hear somebody with your vision and your determination doing it and the way you're doing it. There was, I thought, a good range of questions. None of them fazed you, not even the one from the former minister. I was really struck by the practical way that you're entering into this and the way that you're working with governments, working with NGOs, working with whoever is in the field, to leave the place a little bit better than you found it. So I thank you for coming to us. This event is part of a series that we're doing in partnership with Irish Aid. We're very grateful to Irish Aid. The next one in this series is Next Monday and in a way it leads on from this because it will be the European commissioner for humanitarian affairs and for conflict resolution. And as you said yourself, some of the areas where this educational issue is most difficult is actually in areas where there are conflict. And so the next one will be with commissioner Georgé of Next Monday, which will be in the Irish Aid headquarters, in fact, am I right? In O'Connell Street. Just before I say, the whole question of language is a very interesting one. If you look at the Reformation, the Protestant Reformation was largely successful because of the determination of people to translate the Bible into the languages which people could understand. The Protestant Reformation failed in this country because they failed to translate the Bible into the then language of which the people in this country spoke, which was Irish. So I fully agree that the question of languages is so important. I just say personally, I'm blessed. I have a three and a half year old grandson who speaks his two native languages, which is English and Finnish. Finnish with his father, English with his mother, and who goes to a Niemre, a little school where he speaks Irish. Thank you for coming to us. We really, it was a wonderful session and we wish you well in your work. Thank you.