It was almost business as usual at the Education World Forum in London last month. At the world’s largest annual gathering of education and skills ministers, this year’s theme was & "Building stronger, bolder, better education together." But the context was far from routine. The conference took place against a backdrop of global funding cuts to education programmes—the Institute for Economics and Peace estimates that more than 35 million children around the world depend on foreign aid for their basic education. How can policy be strong, bold, or better in the face of these cuts?

Ben Piper, Director of Global Education at the Gates Foundation and a panellist on the

Global Education Evidence Advisory Panel (GEEAP), was at the conference, meeting

education ministers and discussing these problems with them. He tells Tim Phillips that, at a time when funding is scarce, foundational learning projects deliver cost-effective results for policymakers, and huge benefits for children.

Read the full show notes here: https://voxdev.org/topic/education/why-we-need-invest-foundational-learning