We debate it and argue over it. Almost everyone has a strong opinion about it. We certainly have a lot of legislation about it. And although we train and employ professionals to deliver it, an awful lot of us think we know best how it should be done. But what we take for granted is that we have extensive access to education. However, 65 million children in the world do not.

In 2000, world leaders meeting at the UN agreed eight targets for the eradication of poverty worldwide by the year 2015. They are the Millennium Development Goals. The second of these goals is to ensure that by 2015 children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of primary schooling. It is the goal to achieve universal primary education.

Some call it simply ‘Education for All’. For 34 years until 2009, I was a lawyer at the National Union of Teachers of England and Wales, the last 21 of those years as the NUT’s head of legal affairs.

I had the privilege of working closely with teachers and educators of the highest quality and commitment to the values and purposes of education. Chief among these was my good friend and colleague, Steve Sinnott, the NUT’s general secretary from 2004 to 2008.

Throughout his career, both as a classroom teacher and as an NUT leader, Steve had been a strong advocate for universal primary education and had gained a worldwide reputation for his work. When Steve died suddenly in April 2008, we, his close colleagues, knew that the respect he had earned would enable us to maintain the momentum of that work using his name.

That’s how we came to set up the Steve Sinnott Foundation. We launched it in London in May 2009, with the American National Education Association in Washington DC in October 2009 and subsequently at a cross-party event in parliament attended by the secretary of state for education and the then two shadow secretaries of state. We have established an online worldwide community of teachers and educators, and in that community we are providing the opportunity for MDG education project leaders around the world to promote their projects, and exchange information and ideas. We ourselves have taken on a major school reconstruction project in the mountains of West Nepal and a cascading teacher development programme in Sierra Leone. Soon we are opening a model scheme for UK schools to assist in rebuilding classrooms in East Africa.

Investing for the future

We are of course constituted as a charity but our approach is unusual, because we do not believe that educating the 65 million children still ‘out of school’ is something to be paid for out of charitable handouts from the richer world. Education is an entitlement of the children and an investment in the future for us all. Today’s educated children in Africa are tomorrow’s entrepreneurs, business people and lawyers actively participating in and contributing to the global economy, and we all do wisely to invest in these children now.

Recently, Global law firm Reed Smith became our first City of London Foundation supporter and they have agreed to help us raise the profile of universal primary education. The firm has an excellent corporate social responsibility programme which is commitment to education. In London they spend one-on-one time every week with children to help them raise their reading levels and continue to succeed.

In Paris, Reed Smith partners with the French charity Enfance et Partage, working to protect and defend children against abuse. Reed Smith are now sending us the books to help fill library shelves in Tanzania and have offered to assist us with our pro bono needs.

The Foundation welcomes donations and project sponsorship, and we can also easily find places where PCs, Macs, laptops and PDAs that are being replaced will still have a full and active life in Africa, South Asia or South America. But, that apart, it is important just to help raise the profile of, and commitment to, universal primary education.

Legal professionals advocating education for all can make a great contribution. So please join us.

Graham Clayton is director of the Steve Sinnott Foundation