Education for all
In 1990 the international community, on the initiative of UNESCO and the World Bank, co-organizers of the Jomtien Conference in Thailand, mobilized to set the ambitious target of making universal access to basic education a priority for governments and international aid by the year 2000.
Significant progress has been made, particularly in Asia and Latin America, but mobilization of national governments and official development assistance has not kept pace with the challenge. Ten years on, in 2000, 875 million adults were still illiterate and 113 million school-age children were deprived of any possibility of schooling, 60% being girls. One in four children still do not complete primary school, in Africa it is one in two.
The Dakar Forum in 2000 gave new impetus to the “Education For All” global partnership by focusing on six goals:
- Expanding and improving comprehensive early childhood care and education
- Ensuring that by 2015 all children have access to, and complete, free and compulsory primary education of good quality
- Ensuring that life-skills are acquired
- Achieving a 50 per cent improvement in levels of adult literacy
- Eliminating gender disparities
- Improving all aspects of the quality of education
These goals are linked to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), two are even the same: achieving universal primary education and promoting gender equality. But Education For All also indirectly works towards achieving other MDGs thanks to the impact it has on the sanitary and environmental behaviour of populations.
The Dakar Forum commitment on financing is clear: “no countries seriously committed to education for all will be thwarted in their achievement of this goal by a lack of resources”.
In 2002 this commitment was realized through the Fast-Track Initiative, a global partnership to fast track the achievement of universal primary education. Countries with sectoral policies considered “credible” benefit from this programme. The aim is for donors to work towards the common initiative of accelerating the pace of primary schooling.
Since 2000 aid amounts for education have risen and stood at 1.9 million dollars in 2003, representing 3% of total official development assistance. However, financial resources must be scaled up further as recent analyses estimate that 5 to 6 billion dollars are required annually in order to achieve universal primary education and this is only one of the 6 Dakar goals.
Further challenges to achieving Education for All
In addition to a lack of funding, the Fast Track Initiative has identified three major challenges to achieving Education for All:
- A political deficit: many countries still do not have a global education policy mobilizing sufficient resources. The Fast Track Initiative provides for technical support to these countries through the Education Program Development Fund.
- A Capacity deficit: the implementation of effective policies comes up against the lack of capacities of States at both central and local levels. Capacity building programmes aim to fill this gap.
- An information deficit: a lack of statistics and dissemination of information between central and devolved administrations hampers efficient system piloting and reduces effectiveness.