With a healthy mix of nervousness and excitement, kids across Australia are grabbing their backpacks and sunhats as they start the new school term. But millions of children around the world won’t be as fortunate to pass through school gates this year. This includes around 175 million children of preschool age, and 179 million children who aren’t enrolled in high school. Before Australian students finish this academic year though, there will be a major opportunity for their government to show support for all children’s right to access an education.
Let’s start with the good news. Over the past several decades, the world has made significant progress in ensuring that children can benefit from free primary education. Back in 1948, Australian diplomat William Hodgson was a leading drafter of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which declared that everyone has a right to education, and that it should be free and compulsory, at least at the primary school level.
Around that time, fewer than half of the world’s children aged 5 to 14 were enrolled in school. Australia had guaranteed free education for children since 1908, but in 1948, many other countries were just establishing mass education. Today, about 90 percent of children globally complete primary school. Measured in the millions of lives improved by the experience, knowledge, and skills that primary education provides, this progress is phenomenal.
But beyond primary education, the world has a long way to go. Globally, only around half of preschool-age children are enrolled in pre-primary education—learning before Year 1—and progress is stalling. In the Pacific islands, about four-out-of-ten children are missing out. Only about two-thirds of the world’s children continue to high (or secondary) school, and fewer than 60 percent complete it.
On January 19, Papua New Guinea’s education minister announced that their government would make education tuition-free from early childhood through secondary this year. But most Pacific islands do not yet guarantee a full course of free education.
Meanwhile close by, here in Australia, 92 percent of children are enrolled in schooling the year before Year 1—in what’s known as kindergarten, transition, prep, reception, or pre-primary, depending on the state or territory a child lives. More than 90 percent of children in Australia complete high school.
Free education before Year 1 has been shown to contribute to more young children being developmentally on track for literacy, numeracy, social-emotional, and health milestones. It also combats inequalities caused by a parent’s income. Free secondary education results in more children ready to find work as adults, earn more, and escape or avoid poverty. Universal free education could transform millions of lives.
Every Australian most likely knows from their own experience that primary education alone is insufficient to prepare children to thrive. That’s why there’s growing support for a proposal to create a new treaty to update international law, which currently only guarantees free primary education. Child and youth advocates for the right to education, scholars, and international children’s rights experts are supporting this initiative.
Last July, under the leadership of Luxembourg, the Dominican Republic, and Sierra Leone, the United Nations’ preeminent human rights body, the Human Rights Council in Geneva, established a process to consider and draft this new treaty, aiming to recognise that every child has a right to early childhood care and education, to free public pre-primary education, beginning with at least one year, and free public secondary education.
Although Australia participated constructively in the negotiations around the decision, it was not among the 49 countries that put forward their names to support the initiative. Australia already exceeds the minimum requirements envisioned by the proposed treaty, through the provision of the free year before Year 1, as well as free high school. So supporting the international initiative would require no extra government spending.
Of course, as Australia’s Thrive by Five campaign and others argue, there’s still plenty more to do to strengthen the early learning and childcare system domestically. Australia’s track record at the national, state, and territory level of increasing commitments to early childhood education would give Australian diplomats plenty of examples to share as an inspiration to others.
When Victoria passed its 1872 Education Act establishing free and compulsory education, it was a world leader. Now, Australia should lead again by championing the new treaty when drafting begins in September 2025, and by recognizing that the free education that helped build its prosperous society should be a right for all the world’s children.
Australia’s early and vocal backing for a strong treaty would inject valuable momentum into the upcoming negotiations, affirming that children around the world deserve the same opportunities as children in Australia to be preparing for an exciting new school year.
