Stolen Futures: Our new report on tax justice and the Right to Education

As a former school teacher, what I was perhaps most excited about when I joined the Tax Justice Network was the opportunity to work with, and learn more about how tax injustice impacts students and teachers around the world. At the same time, it felt scary because this is surprisingly (or perhaps not) still a new topic for most teachers like myself. It’s also a topic that people – particularly those with power and influence over decisions on global tax rules – have an interest in making look complicated and inaccessible, so that they can continue to make decisions without much accountability from the people affected by those decisions.

When I sat down on a unextraordinary morning to start drafting a “tax justice and education” report, I had one big cup of coffee in my hands and two questions on my mind:

What is my purpose in writing this report? And how can it be helpful to other people?

Not very easy questions to answer as you can imagine.

My purpose in writing this report is to make people angry, as angry as I am. Angry to know that students and teachers worldwide have had their futures, opportunities and work conditions stolen from them. Angry to know that the reason we still have 250 million kids out of school, and the reason teachers are regularly being overworked and underpaid, is not because governments don’t have enough money to fix the problem. Quite the opposite. It’s because our governments have made a political choice to not fix the problem so that a small group of people – who already own way more than they should – can own even more.

And how could making people angry be helpful? Because this is not a fight that one person, group or organisation can win on its own. We need more people like you and I around the world to call upon their governments to do their part.

One of the key learnings I’ve taken away from this research is that this has to be an intersectoral and collaborative debate. People from across the tax justice and the education policy movements have to work together to bring this conversation to the big tables, just like how we worked together writing this piece with invaluable input from education partners.

So, before you go on and read the report, here’s a summary of what to expect:

The report starts off with a crash course for newcomers to tax justice and education financing to get up to speed and learn how the two movements are connected. It then models what our public education systems could look like if we had fair tax systems that take into account human rights and inequalities – just like they should.

Here’s what the report finds:

At this point you’re hopefully thinking, “Well then, what can I do about it?”.

We’ve got you covered. The report delves into a whole set of policy solutions on education and tax (like the ABCs of tax justice), at the national and international level. These are policy solutions we can all take to our governments and demand they take immediate action.

Feeling anger when discussing injustice is normal and necessary, but just as important is finding, and holding on to, the inspiration to change things for the better. The findings of our report are enraging – the rights of millions of children denied – but they also make clear what our communities have to gain, what exciting future we can usher in, by securing just tax policies.

We always welcome feedback to help improve our research and reports where possible. If you have any comments and feedback you’d like to share on this report, please email [email protected].