UniCredit Foundation and Teach For All sign a 5.5 mln euro Pan-European partnership

A March UNICEF report found that educational inequality in Europe and Central Asia had been deepened by the COVID-19 pandemic, despite continued efforts by governments, with school closures affecting 63 million learners.

The report also observes that 3% of primary school age children in Eastern Europe and Central Asia were not in school, compared with 1% in Western Europe, from 2013-2019. Romania, one of the UniCredit territories supported by the TFA partnership, has a particularly high rate of primary school age dropouts: 12% for boys and 13% for girls.

11.1% of young men and 8% of young women in the EU are early leavers from education and training, according to Eurostat. Leaving education early has life-long ramifications, cutting off employment opportunities which can lead to reduced potential earnings, compromised mental health and social exclusion.

Since launching their collaboration with a roughly 2 million euro-investment in 2022, UniCredit Group and Teach For All have already made a profound impact on young people's education across Europe. Together they successfully trained and supported 592 diverse fellow teachers within the Teach For All network in Europe, improving the educational experiences of over 40,600 students across the continent in just one year.

Our new 5.5 million-euro partnership will help the UniCredit Foundation and Teach For All to deliver even bigger and better results, empowering the Teach For All network teachers in training and local communities to reimagine the education systems in under-resourced areas and build more inclusive school environments that offer quality education for all children, year on year. The Foundation and Teach For All's network partners will train over 1,400 extraordinary teachers, providing education to over 83,000 students by 2026. In addition, network partners will develop the leadership skills of more than 3,600 alumni and more than 10,870 system-wide teachers.