For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
September 24, 2007

Fact Sheet: Today's Education Announcement
"Education is vital in every time and place from Lusaka to La Paz, from the United Arab Emirates to the United States of America. By improving education, we can advance the goals that unite people in every country today: healthy lives, and a more hopeful world."

– Mrs. Laura Bush, September 24, 2007

      In Focus: Education

Today’s Action

• Today the First Lady announced that the United States Agency for International Development will launch a major initiative in support of the President’s commitment to basic education in Ethiopia, Ghana, Honduras, Liberia, Mali, and Yemen beginning in Fiscal Year 2008.

• The goal of this initiative is to provide an additional four million students with access to a quality basic education by the end of five years.

• Mrs. Bush also announced that Dr. Thomas Corts of Alabama has been named to serve as Coordinator for the President’s International Education Initiative at the U.S. Agency for International Development.

• Mrs. Bush reiterated the President’s commitment of May 31, 2007, to provide an additional $525 million over the next five years to make our international education programs even more robust.

Expanded Education for the World’s Poorest Children

• Quality basic education is critical for individual as well as national development.

• A major component of this new Presidential basic education initiative is support for a bold, comprehensive approach to basic education, through support for country efforts that have been endorsed by the international Education for All —– Fast Track Initiative.

• The Fast Track Initiative was created in 2002 as a partnership between developing countries and donors to accelerate the delivery of universal primary education in the world’s poorest countries. 

• The Administration has provided $2.3 billion for international basic education assistance since 2002 and requested an additional $535 million in FY2008.

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