Strategic Plan

The Global Campaign for Education (GCE) is a civil society movement founded in 1999 to provide a unified platform for education advocates across the world. Our members include national education coalitions, regional networks, international NGOs, teachers’ unions, youth and student formations, and other civil society organisations, all working together for strong, publicly funded education systems that leave no one behind.

GCE promotes and defends free, public, quality education as a basic human right and mobilises public pressure so that education systems are inclusive, equitable and adequately resourced.

The 2023–2027 Strategic Plan is built around members’ priorities, identified through a global consultative process that involved all GCE constituencies. It defines a shared framework that guides joint advocacy while allowing coalitions and members to adapt actions to their own contexts.

At the heart of the strategy is one overarching goal:

Reignite and grow the influence of the global movement for education, positioning GCE as the voice of civil society in education policy and decision-making.

This goal is supported by four strategic objectives that strengthen GCE as a movement:

• Step up our influence through advocacy and campaigning.
• Diversify and grow our membership, network, and reputation.
• Grow our collective ability to influence through knowledge, learning and tools.
• Strengthen our sustainability and accountability as a global movement.

Advocacy and Campaigning Priorities
GCE’s worldwide advocacy is anchored in three interconnected global priorities and a set of foundational asks that define the movement’s rights‑based agenda.

Transforming Education

GCE advocates for profound reforms so that education systems provide relevant knowledge, skills, values and attitudes for just, sustainable and peaceful societies, with a strong focus on climate justice, digital inclusion and lifelong learning. Education must equip learners to navigate an uncertain future while enabling them to lead transformation in their communities and beyond.

Education in Emergencies and Crises

With an estimated 222 million crisis‑affected children in need of educational support and thousands of attacks on schools and universities in recent years, GCE calls for crisis‑sensitive planning, the Safe Schools Declaration, and guaranteed, non‑discriminatory access to education for refugees and all learners on the move. The movement demands that students, teachers and education personnel are protected, that schools remain safe spaces, and that education responses are locally led and firmly rooted in human rights.​

Education Financing

GCE campaigns for increased, equitable and accountable public investment in education, from early childhood through to adult learning. This includes fairer taxation, closing the annual financing gap in low‑ and lower‑middle‑income countries, ending the harmful privatisation and commercialisation of education, and ensuring that funding reaches those most marginalised.

Across all its work, GCE advances a set of cross‑cutting foundational asks:

• The right to lifelong learning for all people, across formal, non‑formal and informal education from early childhood to later life.
• Equality and inclusion in and through education, including gender equality and the rights of people of all sexual orientations, gender identities and expressions, and sex characteristics, as well as those marginalised by disability, race, ethnicity, location, migration status and other factors.
• Recognition, fair remuneration and decent working conditions for teachers and education support personnel, with strong professional development and union engagement in shaping education systems.
• Meaningful participation of students and pupils, including their right to organise in democratic student unions and to shape education policies and institutions at all levels.

The Strategic Plan is underpinned by a clear theory of change that connects member action, secretariat support and board oversight to impact on education policies, budgets and decisions. Together with members, GCE will coordinate advocacy in key global spaces, produce evidence and tools, build capacity to influence, foster peer learning, and grow strategic alliances beyond the education sector.

Implementation is guided by a milestone plan that sets out annual campaigns, research outputs, learning initiatives, partnership development, monitoring and evaluation processes, and the design of the next strategic period. Progress will be reviewed through annual reporting, a mid‑term review and a final evaluation to ensure accountability to members and to the right to education movement.

You can download the full GCE Strategic Plan 2023–2027 for detailed information on our analysis, priorities, theory of change, milestones and monitoring framework