The Global Action Week for Education (GAWE) is a flagship event for the civil society education movement, and has been running successfully since 2003. In 2016 the choice was made to focus on Financing education, and it remained a core focus area in 2017 and 2018 (with a broader theme around accountability and civil society participation), especially in 2018 following the Dakar replenishment conference. This continuity is considered important, and new themes should priorities linkages with the previous years. Education financing is key to achieve all the SDG4 targets by 2030 and thus education financing should remain at the heart of campaigns as an underlying theme with connections to all other themes. Education budget monitoring, and privatization will be the main topics at the heart of 2019 financing campaign, along with the 4S framework and Tax Justice

We are at a critical point that demands stronger commitments of all partners to ensure the timely delivery of free quality education for all as set out in the Education 2030 agenda: children starting school in 2019 will complete their 12 years basic education by 2030. It is an ideal moment to interrogate stakeholders on their commitment, and to assess if the fundamental human right to free inclusive quality public education for all will became a reality.
Tanzania, like other African countries is at a critical point in ensuring delivery of the Education 2030 Agenda. 2019 is an important year for education. In the United Nations system, the Sustainable Development Goal 4 on education will be under review at the High-Level Political Forum (HLPF). This year’s HLPF will happen at the head of States level at the same time as the UN General Assembly in September 2019. Thus, the following needs to be reviewed for the realization of this goal:

• Focus on the most vulnerable and discriminated ones would allow to maximize the SDG impact, so “leaving no one behind” actually poses a strategic focus on these populations.
• Increasing access to education cannot be achieved without responding to social and cultural context where children, youth and young adults live and learn, including in conflict and disaster settings.
• Quality public education for all promotes the principles of human rights and contributes to social justice, inclusion and cohesion: education empowers youth to understand, embrace and claim human rights, and become active citizens.
• Adequate education financing, according to the international state obligations, is a pre-requisite for the full implementation of a progressive human rights-based agenda.
• Efficient utilization of the allocated funds is equally important for ensuring the delivery of rights to quality education.
• SDG4 targets are intertwined and interrelated, so a holistic focus is necessary for the full realization of the human right to education.

For these reasons GAWE 2019 will focus on the overall SDG4 targets and focusing on claiming the right to education with the theme “My Education My Right”. This theme can have specific focus depending on Tanzania context where it has been contextualized to “Quality Education, My right”. GAWE 2019 will be commemorated in Handeni District Tanga region from 27th to 31st May 2019. Tanga was selected due to the fact that it has many public schools compared to any region in the country. This signifies that a good number of students have access to education which perpetuate enforcement of education as the right.

Handeni district was selected due to significant improvement in provision of education compared to other district in the region. Handeni has significantly reduce dropout rates to ensure students stays in school and enhance completion rate, In 2016 handeni had a dropout rate of 18%, in 2017 48% while in 2018 was controlled up to 77%. On the other hand performance rate have also improved significantly over time. In 2016 district performance rate was 62.4, 2017 73.55 while in 2018 has improved to 81.64. For these reason TEN/MET chose Handeni District as a control district in promoting rights to education to raise public awareness on claiming rights to education and a modeling district to others to ensure promotion of education as the rights.