FOCUS AREA › Youth in Action

Across regions, young people and students are organising to confront intersecting crises – from climate breakdown and growing inequalities to shrinking civic space and attacks on rights – and demanding education systems that are relevant, inclusive and accountable. GCE’s strategic plan recognises that this new generation is creating its own structures and activism, and that meaningful participation of youth and students is essential to advance SDG 4 and to revitalise the global movement for education.

GCE envisions education systems where youth and students are recognised as rights-holders and co-creators of learning spaces, with the power to shape policies, budgets and reforms at every level. This includes protecting their rights to organise, assemble and express dissent, and ensuring that youth-led and student-led organisations can participate as equal partners in national coalitions, regional platforms and global decision-making spaces.

Strengthening youth and student structures

Building on the Global Student and Youth Caucus and youth-led COVID-19 recovery initiatives, GCE is consolidating representative youth and student structures within the movement and supporting sustainable mechanisms to resource their participation.​

Enabling meaningful participation and leadership

GCE works to ensure that youth and students are present and heard in education policy dialogues, SDG 4 monitoring processes and key global education fora, and that their perspectives inform GCE’s positions, campaigns and research.​​

Supporting safe civic space for youth organising

Responding to crackdowns, surveillance and criminalisation of student activism, GCE advocates for protection of students’ rights to unionise, protest and engage in academic and political life without fear, including through “student-at-risk” and temporary protection schemes.

Within Youth in Action, GCE and its members focus on:

1. Securing recognition and rights for student and school-student unions, especially where they are banned or persecuted, as a pillar of democratic education governance.​
2. Embedding meaningful youth and student participation in laws, policies and institutional practices, from school governance to national and global education mechanisms.​
3. Ensuring that education reforms – including on climate justice, digital learning, gender equality, disability inclusion and education in emergencies – are shaped with and led by youth and student constituencies.

Youth- and student-led organisations can join GCE as members or through national coalitions, connecting with a global network of activists committed to the right to education. Through global campaigns, the Learning Hub, youth funding mechanisms and cross-regional exchanges, GCE creates spaces for young people to organise, learn from each other and drive collective action for free, inclusive, quality public education for all.