The education system in most areas where ActionAid works is in a state of crisis. From the perspective of a poor family, investment in education is an expensive and often unrewarding gamble.

It is never easy to send a child to school when that child could instead be playing an important social or economic role, helping the family survive. It becomes even more difficult when you have to pay for your child to go to school. When your child comes home complaining that they were beaten or that no teacher arrived today, it is hard to keep faith in the value of schooling.

When your child is in a class of up to 100 other children, and when, at the end of the year your child is unable to pass the exams you had to pay for, and has to start again from scratch, it is difficult to know whether to blame your child or the school.

When parents are forced to pay up front to gamble on this sort of education, it is no surprise that some refuse. But education is a right - recognised in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And by unlocking other rights, it is the key that enables people to overcome poverty.

ActionAid works at local, national and international levels to secure education rights. We help communities and governments to develop practical, flexible and innovative solutions, and to ensure that schools are places where the right to education is respected.

We work with people to ensure their governments are held accountable at local and national levels to adequately manage and resource basic education, while forming part of an international alliance to hold UN agencies, the World Bank and developed countries accountable for their promises on education funding.