NEW WORLD RECORD FOR WORLD'S BIGGEST EVER LESSON

28 April 2008

7.5 million children, adults, teachers joined politicians in over 100 countries to learn about the importance of everyone having the chance for a quality education

More than 7.5 million children, adults, teachers and campaigners took part in the "World's Biggest Lesson" last Wednesday, April 23. The world record for the largest simultaneous lesson in history has been broken already – and the numbers are still coming in.

Organised by the Global Campaign for Education, the World's Biggest Lesson focused on providing a quality basic education to everyone especially the 72 million children who are currently missing out. All over the world politicians and ministers went back to school and were taught the lesson by children before being asked what they planned to do to make sure everyone gets a quality education.

The Global Campaign for Education is still collecting verification forms from around the world, but an early count shows that the World Record has been broken. The total attempting the record is at least seven and a half million people. The country with the highest recorded count is Bangladesh, with 2.5 million people taking part in over 25,000 different locations across the country. Millions also took part in the lesson in Vietnam and, in an impressive campaigning effort, a million took part in the Palestinian Territories.

Celebrities, heads of states, and officials took part in the lesson across the world, including the high profile Colombian singer and Grammy award winner Shakira. As Honorary Chair of Global Action Week, she participated in a media conference call with UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown and World Bank President Robert Zoellick, and lobbied Congress with students in Washington.

"I find it so inspiring that there are so many young people who care so deeply about the rights of all children to go to school that they would bring about this global movement," said Shakira.

In the UK, Douglas Alexander, Secretary of State for International Development, took part in an open air lesson outside the Houses of Parliament to illustrate how many children in the developing world struggle to learn against the elements. UK celebrities included Nina Wadia from Eastenders, impressionist and actress Jan Ravens and Samantha Bond, best known as Miss Moneypenny from the James Bond movies also took part, together with hundreds of schools around the UK and many local MPs who joined them for this important lesson.

Amongst the impressive list of others to take part in the World's Biggest Lesson were Papua New Guinea's Head of State Paulias Matane, Afghanistan's Vice-President Ahmad Zia Masuood, the King of Cambodia, Mozambique's Vice Minister for Education, the Netherlands’ Minister of Development Co-operation, Bert Koenders, and Turkmenistan's Deputy Minister of Education, Ms Gulshat Mamedova.

"The most promising reason to believe that the world will achieve its goals of Education for All by 2015 has been the emergence of a strong civil society movement and this mobilization of millions of children, women and men during the Global Action Weeks each year," noted Kailash Satyarthi, GCE President. "We will not fall silent until we have ensured quality education for all."

The World’s Biggest Lesson marks the start of Send My Friend ’08. Following this, schoolchildren in the UK will be inviting their MPs to get creative by completing a ‘missing out’ action card to be part of their school display. The cards will then be sent to the Prime Minister before he flies off to the G8 in Japan at the end of June. The Global Campaign for Education in UK has produced a report ‘The Final Countdown’ in which it sets out what actions the UK government must take to improve its support to education.

For free resources and more information visit www.sendmyfriend.org

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