Re Education : Issue #24 - The Elephant Hiding in Plain Sight
...and why we don't talk about it
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Introduction
This month’s guest blog is from Jake Ross, formerly of Cambridge Education, now an independent consultant. Jake presented a version of this paper in a session at the UKFIET Oxford Conference in September. Jake’s article focuses on a very large elephant of a problem, one hiding in plain sight, a problem central to the issues of education financing but rarely discussed.
The blog is Socratic in style – it’s approached best if you treat it as a Q&A in which you see how well you know the issues by answering a series of five questions. It’s most effective if you read it in the app (click Read in App above right).
Confused ? Enlightenment awaits, read on.
Andy Brock, October 2025
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The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much, it is whether we provide enough for those who have little. Franklin D Roosevelt
The Elephant Hiding in Plain Sight
Have you noticed ?
Something big has changed. And I don’t think we’ve got our heads around it yet. In fact, many of us haven’t even noticed that it has happened. I’m not talking about the vandalism wreaked upon the global education and development architecture in 2024/2025. I’ll come back to that.
This is much bigger.
It’s something that has happened under our noses in the global economy, gathering pace since the turn of the century. It has material consequences for development financing, as well as for the prospects of widespread well-being, harmony and justice among the populaces of high, middle and low income countries alike.
And by extension, it has real implications for education: for stopping the inter-generational transmission of poverty; for tackling and reversing the climate crisis; and for ending global inequality.
It underpins, perhaps more accurately, undermines, the economic-growth-at-all-costs agenda that western governments are clinging to, in an ever-decreasing spiral of desperate faith and doom-laden foreboding. Is it a coincidence that it is happening alongside the systematic dismantling of universal rights, trust in scientific truth and evidence, and global solidarity?
Can you guess what I’m talking about yet?
Time for a Pop Quiz
As an educator and a fan of the Socratic method, let’s see if we can tease this out through a spot of Q&A. Click on what you believe is the correct answer to Question 1 below.
The answer is 1.5%. Yep, 3.2 billion people hold just 1.5% of global wealth. Which means the other 98.5% is held by the top 60% of people (see chart below).
You’ll also be thinking the wealth distribution is quite skewed, and you’d be right. So let’s focus on the world’s millionaires.
Just 120m people in the world own USD 1m or more. That sounds like quite a lot, and it is: approximately the population of Japan, but a tiny fraction of world population.
Question 2 : so, how much of the world’s dollar wealth do those millionaires control?
The answer is 48% as shown above.
Just think about that for a second. Less than 2% of the global population owns nearly half of all global wealth. That matters: not just from an envy or theoretical Marxist perspective, but from a global justice and sustainability angle, as we shall see.
But, first, let’s drill down a bit further. Here’s the next question - select an answer.
And how many do you think there are now in 2025 ?
In the year 2000 there were fewer than 500 dollar billionaires. By 2019 that number had quadrupled to over 2,000, and just six years later there are already 3,000+. While the world has suffered anaemic growth since 2008, there’s been no shortage of growth in billionaires !
And lastly, Question 5: how much wealth do you think those billionaires own?
This one’s tricky because (unless you’re one of them) we’re simply not equipped to conceive of numbers this big. We have no frame of reference that comes close. This is an important point though: it allows billionaires to hide behind a veil of incomprehension.
Here’s a way of thinking about it which I found helpful; perhaps you will too. Imagine spending a thousand dollars today. Not on one expensive item, but spending USD1,000 on your shopping, your transport, your clothes, your meals and drinks. That’s a pretty lavish day, right?
Do it again tomorrow, and the next day, and the next: every day for three years. USD1,000 every day for about 1,000 days and bingo! You’ve spent one million dollars.
Now, imagine doing that one thousand times. That’s right – those three years a thousand times. We’re talking about going back 3,000 years. 1,000 years before our ‘common era’ began. That was the start of the Iron Age; the Phoenician alphabet was being formulated; and rice first began to be cultivated in Japan. Spend USD1,000 every single day from then until now, and that’s your one billion dollars.
Back in the year 2000, the world’s 470 billionaires had about USD900 billion between them. In the one generation since then, the total wealth of today’s 3,000 billionaires is over USD16 trillion. That’s nearly 20 times more than 25 years ago, and about half the current value of the whole US economy.
As the development economist Jeffrey Sachs observed:
…we have 2,775 billionaires on the current list [in 2021]. Their combined net worth is $13.1 trillion. Now I have it on good authority you don’t need more than $1 billion to be comfortable, but they have an excess of $11 trillion over ‘just’ the $1 billion. So we should be taxing that and having a civilized world.
“So what?”
The numbers are startling, but what’s this got to do with education?
Firstly, it upends the narrative that there are insufficient funds to address the shortfalls in education funding – the money is out there, but in the wrong places and the wrong hands (this is true for all development sectors of course).
Secondly, it begs the question : how have we got to a situation where our societies allow these inconceivably vast reserves of wealth to lie untouched while a quarter of a billion children remain unschooled worldwide, and nine out of ten children in sub-Saharan Africa remain in ‘learning poverty’ unable to comprehend a basic passage of writing after completing primary education?
Thirdly, it should make us question why, since the destruction of USAID and the cutting of education budgets by many northern bilateral donors, the narrative has focused so squarely on the idea that global south governments need to step up? It seems like a classic distraction technique. Yes, governments need to do more, but to pretend they have the fiscal resources to substitute for the cuts, or to address these systemic issues, is to misunderstand why aid for education was ever needed in the first place. And it conveniently shifts the focus from where excess wealth is hiding.
The pivot : of elephants and mice
UNICEF estimates the education funding gap to be around USD 97bn per annum. Just one percent of the $11trn Jeffrey Sachs mentions would solve this. Of course, there is a difference between cash and wealth (the latter includes fixed assets) – but, this is a red herring ; a false path away from the discussion of inequality.
Nevertheless, an alternative future will only have a chance if there is collective action globally to dismantle the ‘wealth defence industry’, build consensus around how those huge surpluses of individuals’ wealth extracted from the non-billionaire global population’s labour and capital assets should be reduced and invested, and re-configure the power relations between global ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’.
There are progressive voices within many corporate social responsibility funds, the global agencies for solidarity in education finance, the philanthropies, and the bi- and multi-lateral donors. But these voices need to be louder, smarter, broader-based, and driven by leadership from the Global South.
We mice need to find our voices, and call out the elephant in the room.
The first step is to stop accepting the narrative that “there isn’t any money” – and take every opportunity to point out where the money is, who holds it, and why this is not only morally wrong but bad for all humanity (including the middle class), bad for global development (including people worried about migration pressures), and bad for future generations (including all lifeforms and ecosystems on our fragile planet).
The second step is to learn about and advocate for tax reform and debt relief. The UN Convention on Tax Reform, under negotiation now, is an important but fragile start. Implementing progressive taxation regimes, and forgiving or reducing debt to LICs and LMICs, would give significant headroom to supporting education development.
So, as we survey the wreckage left by the vandalism meted out to the global education sector, despair should give way to outrage. I believe there is a need for change, an appetite for change, and an opportunity for change. I hope you do too.
Jake Ross
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Suggested reading :
Ingrid Robeyns, Limitarianism: The Case Against Extreme Wealth — argues that curbing excess wealth is essential to building a fairer, more just and sustainable future for all.
David Archer and Faiza Hassan : Tax Justice and Education Financing Reform – a well argued case specific to education.
Many blogs and resources on the Global Alliance for Tax Justice website here.
Global Wealth Inequality (inequality.org)
News
What a joy to see children smiling and dancing in the streets of Gaza - hope, actively hope, that it lasts.
Gaza children rejoice after ceasefire agreement - YouTube
The Luminos Fund has published a book called “The Luminos Method : The Secret to Unlocking the Light of Learning in Every Child”. It’s based on their accelerated learning programme which has been shown to have significant results in a very short time e.g. in Liberia. I reviewed that programme in Issue #8 “Praying for Scale” for those interested to explore further.
Sophie Edwards of Devex has a must-read article : “‘Moonshot’ education finance facility aims to turn $1 into $7 in LMICs” about the newly launched IFFEd – Gordon Brown’s brainchild. Her article balances the positive view of IFFED as an essential funding instrument to encourage governments to fund education with the criticism that this is just going to add to the debt burden facing poor countries.
IFFED CEO, Karthik Krishnan says governments undervalue the necessity of investing in education : “Education is taking a back seat because it’s a silent crisis; it takes 20 years before it explodes in your face”. David Archer of ActionAid is sceptical : “IFFED is a distraction that gives power to bankers rather than national governments”. Wherever educators find themselves on this spectrum, they need to engage with and be informed about this new initiative.
Is this the first domino in a chain ? The Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (CIFF) has announced it will no longer partner with US NGOs, citing a lack of confidence in the US policy environment for foreign funders.
A majority of Brits surveyed in a recent poll (55%), from the Send My Friend to School campaign, want to see UK aid spent on education overseas. This despite the relentless stream of negative stories about overseas aid and narratives about spending aid money on the military.
Mamadou Ly, Executive Director, Associates in Research and Education for Development (ARED), based in Senegal, has won the prestigious Yidan Prize 2025. The judges cited groundbreaking work in accelerated learning using bilingual instruction.
The Education Outcomes Fund (EOF) has announced a $14m partnership with the government of Rwanda for early childhood care and education. See here for my analysis of Outcomes Based Funding.
Are you a researcher / teacher with time to help ? Scholarships for Ghazza is looking for academic mentors – see here.
For UK readers especially (but has much wider significance) Sam Freedman recently published an excellent piece on the charging of VAT to English private schools “The Great VAT Panic”. This government policy, which started in 2025, was greeted with dire warnings of disaster, including predictions of up to a 50% fall in student numbers in private schools. The actual number, now we have data from the first year, is….1.85%. It’s a salutary lesson in scaremongering by the rich against any diminution of their wealth – and the price inelasticity of private schooling.
The Association for Development Education in Africa (ADEA) is hosting its Triennale from 29-31st October in Accra, Ghana. ADEA 2025 Triennale. It’s a shame that this year both ADEA and UKFIET have held education conferences in successive months, since the themes and content are very similar. But, as Triennales and Biennales respectively they will now move into different orbits – at least until 2031. Maybe then they should coordinate.
The REAL Centre has launched it’s autumn programme.
The Open University will host its annual Global Development Lecture on November 20th. Eradicating poverty without growth: can it be done? will be delivered by Olivier De Schutter, United Nations (UN) Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights. Join in person or online. Details here.
Development
Print reading is in decline. We are, says James Marriott, in a blog that has gone viral, in “The dawn of the post-literate society”. Marriot writes for The Times and has a Substack called Cultural Capital. His blog, about the implications for society and democracy of the decline of reading and the connected ability to reason, is provocative, persuasive, prescient – and has been ❤️ liked 11,000+ times. But, is reading really in decline or is it print books ? You decide. An essential read for educators (ironically of course, on your smartphone / laptop). For the persistent, try wading through the 800+ comments !
Is ChatGPT now the world’s most influential teacher ? A substack called “Dr Phil newsletter” has a very insightful piece on how AI is being used for learning (10% of all ChatGPT messages now are defined as “tutoring / teaching”). The article makes an interesting distinction between asking and doing i.e. how much ChatGPT use is for information and how much for tasks that are developmental.
Another good source on AI in education is the Connected Learning substack – lots of practical approaches as well as sceptical analysis. Against this we also need to set the harm that AI / edtech is potentially doing to the environment and to children in the global south e.g. see this piece on the impact of ChatGPT on children in DRC cobalt mines.
I find the podcast series “Your Undivided Attention” one of the best sources for really understanding how AI is being, and might be, used, for good and bad. Hosted by the Centre for Humane Technology (CHT) they provide a pretty balanced view. So, this episode, which deals with the suicide of US teenager Adam Raine, abetted by ChatGPT, was all the more shocking for the almost palpable anger of the host, Aza Barcay, at how very simple model safeguards were ignored in favour of engagement. Essential listening for any educator interested in student well-being in any country.
The Goal4 Podcast series hosted by Richard Ingram recently interviewed Andreas Schleicher, Director of Education and Skills at OECD. He has some valuable insights into PISA and its usefulness as an international educational comparison. He’s particularly interesting on the newly launched PISA Happy Life Dashboard which, inspired by Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness Index, tries to measure none elements of well-being. “It’s actually harder to teach trigonometry than to teach a growth mindset” he says. Well worth a listen. Via Spotify, Apple podcasts or here. (And for a critique, see The PISA Happy Life Dashboard: New Direction or Old Problem?)
Voices from the front
The Taliban closed down the internet in Afghanistan for two days from 29-30th September. Read Moska Afghan’s piece on what this felt like for a young girl already deprived of education and work opportunities. Her article ends :
These days, people will often say that life may be difficult but at least there is no war and no killing. “There is no war in a graveyard,” they hear a quick reply.
In related news, Charmagazh, the charity founded by Freshta Karim which brought mobile libraries to 40,000 children a month in Kabul and further afield (over 50% girls), has announced a cessation of their activities. Even such relatively small-scale efforts to provide learning and joy to children have, it seems to me, become the target of a regime obsessed with policing women and girls back into the shadows.
The charity will now take stock and try to focus on where they can continue to help Afghan women and girls the most. In such circumstances, funders with deep pockets, broad commitments and great patience are needed (see here for fundraising drive). No RCT’s, no evidence, no measurable targets, no payments by results – just a belief in the principle that the education of women and girls deserves to be supported.
The debate about smartphones continues. The Guardian recently reported that Sweden intends to ban mobile phones in classrooms for children aged 7 to 16 from autumn next year. Denmark and Norway are set to follow suit. To understand why this might be a smart move read this provocatively titled essay “Why Education Can never be Fun” by Daisy Christodolou – it’s an entertaining read 😊
Oxford Policy Management (OPM) has started a newsletter on LinkedIn. The second issue has a helpful article on “How to scale ECD in refugee settings”. You can find all issues here.
Can’t Wait to Learn also has a useful LinkedIn newsletter. The latest issue has a reflection on implementing a reading game based on phonics – and the lessons, missteps and learning plateaus that were observed from experiments in Sudan, Jordan and Lebanon that led to a better design in Uganda.
Voices from the rear
(Gray and Published Research)
September saw the biennial Oxford Conference hosted by the United Kingdom Forum for International Education and Training (UKFIET). With the demise of USAID, the Oxford conference has assumed even more importance as one of the key global networking opportunities for educators. This year it was attended by more than 700 educators – the most since it began in the 1990s - and with the largest number of bursaries ever awarded.
The conference opened with a moving address from Professor Ahmed Kamal Junina on a video link from Gaza City as Israeli forces were starting to move in.
As with all conferences, there were inspiring presentations and yawn-inducing ones. Generally, the quality felt high this year - so the theme convenors clearly took their role seriously. Post conference there have been a large number of blogs - see here. A series of thematic follow-up seminars has also already started, but with several still to go. Register here : Follow-up Seminars
Right to Play has published a policy brief called “Accelerating Foundational Learning Through Play”.
It was World Teachers Day on October 5th. Lots of homages to teachers were written, but I liked this little nugget from Peps Mccrea on why teaching is way harder than brain surgery, yet its difficulty is constantly underestimated.
And finally
Sir Ken Robinson, everyone’s favourite educator, is always good value. Here he is on divergent thinking. Double click the image.
The relief at a ceasefire should not stop us remembering the 18,000+ children cruelly killed. If you haven’t see it, this Michael Rosen poem is worth a 90 seconds of your time. Double click below.
On the theme of the post-literate society, here’s something not often seen. It’s a brilliant idea to highlight a point - a book reading flash mob on the Copenhagen underground !
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