All governments, rich and poor, as well as the UN and World Bank should:

- acknowledge that the key problem in ensuring universal education is not lack of public resources (as evidenced in high and increasing military expenditures) but the global political will to tackle economic exclusion from education;

- reaffirm education as a public responsibility and eliminate financial barriers so that all children, no matter how poor they are, can go to school;

- end contradictory policies and institutional rivalries between global educational organizations;

- realistically monitor the cost of education imposed on families and the children themselves, hidden behind the confusing vocabulary of ‘fee-free’ rather than free education;

- ensure forms of international cooperation that facilitate, rather than hinder, free and compulsory education for all children;

- immediately and concertedly prioritise universal free and compulsory education so that all children stay in education until the minimum age of employment – at least 14.