7.5 million children, adults, teachers joined politicians in over 100 countries to learn about the importance of everyone having the chance for a quality education.

Pictured left: Klipfontein - one of 11 schools brought the lesson by The Forum

More than 7.5 million children, adults, teachers and campaigners took part in the Global Campaign for Education’s “World’s Biggest Lesson”. The world record for the largest simultaneous lesson in history has been broken already – and the numbers are still coming in.  The World’s Biggest Lesson focused on providing a quality basic education to everyone especially the 72 million children and 774 million adults who are currently missing out.  All over the world politicians and ministers went back to school, were taught the lesson by children before being asked what they planned to do to make sure everyone gets a quality education.

The Global Campaign for Education is still collecting verification forms from around the world, but an early count shows that the world record has been broken. The total attempting the record is at least seven and a half million people.  The country with the highest recorded count is Bangladesh, with 2.5 million people taking part in over 25,000 different locations across the country.  Millions also took part in the lesson in Vietnam and in an impressive campaigning effort a million took part in the lesson in the Palestinian Territories.

Click here for the full GCE media release

In South Africa the lesson was coordinated by The Forum which, in partnership with help2read, brought the lesson to over 700 school children at eleven primary schools in some of the most disadvantaged areas of Cape Town.

Click here for the full Forum media release

Media Coverage of the event in South Africa:

•  Helping Children Learn Their ABCs Tygertalk 1.32 Mb
• NGOs Take the World’s Biggest Lesson to Schools in Cape Town (SANGONeT 23rd April 2008)
• Disadvantaged Schools to Teach ‘World’s Biggest Lesson’ (Skills Portal, 23rd April 2008) 
• Disadvantaged Schools to Teach ‘World’s Biggest Lesson’ (BuaNews, 22nd April 2008)
• GCE breaks record for biggest lesson ever (SANGOCO Northwest)

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