“Teachers are amazing,” says Sarah Brown, the founder and chair of global education charity Theirworld.

She admits to a certain bias - her mother was a teacher - but it is also a conclusion she has drawn from having seen up close the impact of ambitious education projects around the world.

“Everyone’s got a story about a wonderful teacher that made a difference to their lives - teachers are so important,” says Brown, who will be speaking at the Edinburgh Open Education Conference on Friday 7 October.

“I don’t think there’s a person who has success in their lives that doesn’t credit some of that back to a teacher, whether that’s just opening up their love for a subject or a path that they follow,” she tells Tes Scotland.

She is fully aware that such plaudits may be of little help at times when, if budgets are stretched and workload is mounting, “it doesn’t always feel very fulfilling or rewarding”.

But, ”when children stumble”, it is often teachers who “catch and support” them - and “teachers ought to know that they make a difference even on the days when no one’s telling them that”.

Brown, who is also executive chair of the Global Business Coalition for Education, also underlines the importance of the early years.

In 2002, Brown set up the charity Theirworld - originally known as PiggyBankKids - which began as a research fund to tackle complications in pregnancy. In 2004, the charity founded the Jennifer Brown Research Laboratory at the University of Edinburgh, which aims to improve the lives of women and children who suffer complications in pregnancy and the newborn period. It was named after her daughter with former prime minister Gordon Brown, who died in December 2001, 10 days after she was born.

She describes the research laboratory’s work as “just extraordinary” and says it reflects the principles of Theirworld: the charity strives to help children get “the best start in life” and campaigns for “far greater investment” in early learning and preschool education.

Brown is concerned about “woeful under-investment” in the early years around the world” and says that 10 per cent of education budget should go to early childhood education. “Historically, it’s been about 1 per cent,” she says, although she is encouraged that the UN’s Education Cannot Wait fund, the Global Partnership for Education and Unicef are “starting to commit” to 10 per cent.

To bring about any significant policy change, Brown believes, an effective strategy is to get young people in the room with decision makers. 

“What we’ve noticed is that the impact of the young voice inside one of these big rooms where you’ve got leaders is you get that little bit more attention, and get that voice across,” she says, as she has seen through Theirworld’s Global Youth Ambassadors.

This is a “phenomenal network” of young campaigners, aged 18-28, who campaign on local education issues but also “push for global education” and “want to be part of something bigger”.

And such campaigning is more crucial than ever, given the impact of the Covid pandemic. Brown cites recent World Bank figures, which showed that 70 per cent of children in lower-income countries do not have basic levels of maths and English - up from 57 per cent when that was measured before the pandemic.

A highlight of Theirworld’s 20-year history came in 2015, with a campaign for the world’s largest education petition. Some 11 million signatures were gathered, demanding funding for education in emergency situations, a response to a sense of frustration that, during humanitarian crises, education was not a priority.

Education was “always put to the back of the queue”, says Brown, as the attitude was, “Well, let’s deal with today’s emergency and education will just have to wait”.

The campaigning led to an organisation called Education Cannot Wait, which now funds education in humanitarian crises. 

Brown stresses that many refugees will remain refugees for more than 10 years, so “you can’t any longer see it as a temporary crisis, where you deal with the medical care, the shelter, the nutrition - you’ve also got to look at how you can put in education”.

Through her years of work immersed in and campaigning for better education around the globe, a universal truth has emerged: once a family has provided its children with immediate necessities such as food and shelter, they do not take long to start thinking about school.

As Brown puts it: “Every family will always tell you that education is the thing that they want the moment they’re safe and settled - that’s the demand.”

Sarah Brown will be speaking at the Edinburgh Open Education Conference on Friday 7 October, which is free to attend, part of the joint Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference (HMC) and the Independent Association of Prep Schools (IAPS) Enlightened Education Conference, and is supported by Tes.

To register for the free conference a place, click here