Civil society organizations welcome the announcement from the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) that it will not resume its investments in K-12 private schools, following the release of an independent evaluation by the World Bank Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) on the IFC’s investments in this area. In 2020, the IFC instituted a temporary freeze on all direct and indirect investments in for-profit fee-charging K-12 private schools.

In April, the Sciences Po Law School Clinic students who are currently collaborating with RTE on a project on territorial inequalities in higher education in France won the prestigious Anthony Mainguené Prize.

On 16 May, RTE hosted an international and trilingual discussion on privatisation in higher education, bringing together academics from three continents to discuss how the commercialisation of tertiary education is affecting students, teachers and institutions across the world.

In the lead up to the third UNESCO  World Higher Education Conference, the Right to Education Initiative hosted the event ‘Taking stock: the right to higher education in France’.

The UNESCO World Higher Education Conference, to be held between May 18-20 in a hybrid format, online and live from Barcelona, provides an opportunity for civil society organisations, academics, state representatives, and international organisations to come together and discuss the challenges and opportunities relating to the right to higher education.

This year’s Comparative International Education Society (CIES) conference, held between 18 and 22 April, enjoyed the return of presencial participation after two years of a purely online format. The theme of this year’s hybrid conference was  ‘Illuminating the power of Idea/lism’. During and in the lead up to the conference, RTE co-organised a workshop and participated in a session.

On 20 April 2022, a roundtable on the current landscape for the right to education in Latin America brought together civil society representatives from across the continent, in addition to regional human rights body representatives, and academics.

A new brief from RTE presents a detailed analysis of the early childhood care and education (ECCE) related content in the reports by Special Rapporteurs on the Right to Education between 1999 and 2021. This research investigates the different dimensions of ECCE referred to in both thematic and country visit reports published by the four successive Special Rapporteurs, namely Ms. Katarina Tomasevski (Croatia 1998-2004), Mr. Vernor Muñoz Villalobos (Costa Rica 2004-2010), Mr.