Gordon Brown plans to send 400,000 Syrian refugee children back to school

On Thursday’s program, PBS NewsHour Co-Anchor Judy Woodruff talks with Gordon Brown, the former U.K. prime minister who is now the United Nation’s special envoy for global education. Brown was in Washington, D.C. to announce an international campaign to get 57 million more children into school by 2015.

After discussing that initiative, Woodruff and Brown turned to efforts to educate nearly 500,000 of the 3 million Syrian children displaced by that country’s on-going civil war. Brown is seeking funds to support a program in Lebanon where refugee students share existing schools with local children.

Brown believes the plan could revolutionize education for refugees around the world. A 2011 United Nations study estimated 76 percent of elementary school-aged refugees and only 36 percent of secondary school-aged refugees attend school.