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Note: This document is from the archive of the Africa Policy E-Journal, published
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Africa: Education for All, 2
Africa: Education for All, 2
Date distributed (ymd): 000425
Document reposted by APIC
+++++++++++++++++++++Document Profile+++++++++++++++++++++
Region: Continent-Wide
Issue Areas: +economy/development+
Summary Contents:
This is one of two postings today containing documents
related to the Education for All theme featured at the
World Education Forum (Dakar 2000), being held in Dakar,
Senegal from April 26-28, 2000. For extensive information on
the Forum see the Forum home page
(http://www2.unesco.org/wef). Additional links are included
in the other posting today, with an article reporting on
African developments in UNESCO'S EFA Bulletin.
This posting features a statement by the non-governmental
Global Campaign for Education. Additional information on the
campaign can be found on the site of Community Aid Abroad --
Oxfam Australia
(http://www.caa.org.au/oxfam/advocacy/education/news)
There is also a campaign web site
(http://www.campaignforeducation.org). Unfortunately it
features graphics-intense, hard-to-print and hard-to-read
pages, but it does have some up-to-date information on
Campaign activities at the Dakar meeting. Oxfam's 1999 paper
"Education Now: Break the Cycle of Poverty" can be found at
(http://www.caa.org.au/oxfam/advocacy/education/report).
Later this week the APIC/ECA Electronic Roundtable will open
its fourth session, on Education and Culture, with initial
panel presentations. To sign up or to review the archive of
earlier sessions, visit the Roundtable home page
(http://www.africapolicy.org/rtable). Additional resources on
education and culture can be found on the Africa Policy web
site at:
http://www.africapolicy.org/featdocs/educ.htm
and
http://www.africapolicy.org/books/educ.htm
+++++++++++++++++end profile++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The World Education Forum in Dakar, success or failure?
Our bottom line position.
April 2000
The Global Campaign for Education, a coalition of civil
society organisations working on education all over the world,
has developed the following core positions on the forthcoming
World Education Forum in Dakar, drawing on regional
consultation processes (including conferences in Johannesburg,
Santa Domingo, Bangkok, Recife and Accra). We will judge the
success of the Dakar Forum on whether it achieves the
following:
1. An unequivocal commitment to free and compulsory education
as a basic right for all children up to the age of 15 by 2015.
Dakar must agree explicit statements opposing all forms of
cost-sharing and cost-recovery in basic (primary and lower
secondary) education. Where it is necessary for governments
to raise additional revenue for basic education, this should
be done through equitable and transparent forms of taxation
rather than through flat-rate fees and unregulated local
levies, which penalise the poor. There should be a direct
recognition that such approaches effectively deny poor people,
and especially girls, their right to education.
In order to ensure that the momentum towards this is
developed, Dakar should agree a commitment to providing free
basic education for all children by 2005 (i.e. removing all
direct costs of basic education by this date). There should be
a re-statement of the commitment to achieve gender parity in
basic education by 2005. There should also be clear statements
made that education is a basic right of all citizens and a key
responsibility of the State.
2. Clear and time-bound processes for countries to agree their
own targets and plans of action for achieving Education for
All goals, with binding mechanisms for civil society
participation.
The Jomtien Declaration failed in large part due to a lack of
targets that were both clear and realistic and also nationally
owned. Signatories to the Dakar Framework must commit
themselves to developing national plans of action for
education by 2002.These plans must be transparently and
democratically negotiated with all significant national
stakeholders, and set out how to achieve national education
goals within the broad framework of the 2015 targets,
and within government expenditure frameworks.
A central part of these plans should be the agreement by 2001
of clear and binding mechanisms for the ongoing democratic
participation of civil society in framing national education
strategies and increasing accountability to citizens and civil
society organisations across all levels of the education
system. An enabling environment for NGOs asnd civil society
coalitions on education is essential if they are to become
constructive partners in achieving education for all.
National action plans must demonstrate how the quality of
education will be improved, to ensure that all formal and
non-formal public education is relevant, responds to local
contexts, and achieves explicit targets for learning
achievement. National strategies should include costed and
practical steps to address the need to bring high-quality
teaching skills and active learning to every public school.
They should also include steps to create decentralised
accountability and democratic oversight at every level of the
education system, from local schools and district authorities
to provincial and national ministries. Specific attention
should be given to developing mechanisms to involve teachers,
parents and children in the management of schools.
Each national plan should include a gender audit to track
trends in and reasons for gender disparities, and the national
education plans must include explicit, costed and time-bound
proposals for removing the causes of these disparities by
2005.
3. Commitment to a Global Action Plan with clear resource
commitments by governments and donors
The Dakar Forum must agree a Global Action Plan that will
ensure that no government that is serious about education is
denied the necessary resources to achieve basic education for
all. This Plan would include a Compact for Africa to address
Africa's particular resource constraints. Such a plan would
require joint government and donor action.
Governments must commit themselves publicly to guaranteeing
their part of the necessary resources for basic education,
including increases in the proportion of GDP allocated to
basic education where necessary (e.g. to a minimum of 4% in
low-income countries). Governments should be urged to secure
increases in revenue from progressive taxation, reduce
excessive military expenditure and other unproductive
expenditures; and prioritise investment in basic education
while ensuring a balanced, poverty-focused investment in upper
secondary and higher education.
Donors must ensure that all governments that are serious about
education have access to the necessary resources to achieve
basic education for all. A key step towards this will be to
increase aid to basic education from the current level of 2%
to at least 8% of total aid budgets, to increase overall aid
budgets and to ensure that low-income countries receive an
appropriate share of aid flows. Grants and debt relief, rather
than loans, should be the main forms of finance for basic
education.
Donors should commit to increased and rapid debt relief,
improving progress of the Heavily Indebted Poor Country
initiative (HIPC2). Debt relief should add to aid flows and
not undermine them, and be linked to the national education
plans in the context of wider poverty reduction plans.
4. Clear commitments made to improving equity in the quality
of education
Poor people generally receive low quality education and
expansion of access has often led to a further loss of
quality. It is essential that quality be recognised as an
equity issue. The challenge should be to work towards equity
in quality. Governments should immediately identify and
reverse existing disparities in per capita funding which
discriminate against rural communities, ethnic minorities and
underdeveloped regions, in order to achieve equitable spending
per learner by 2005. They should further commit themselves to
delivering extra funding to meet the needs of schools in poor
and marginalised areas, in order to bring all schools up to
agreed national standards of quality by 2015 and to ensure
that curricula, teaching materials and methods are responsive
to the needs of marginalised groups..
5. Clear commitments made to improve the quality and nature of
aid to education
The quality of aid must be improved, with a greater focus on
poverty, reduced reliance on expatriate technical assistance
and increased national ownership. Most importantly, education
aid must become truly co-ordinated - with the national
education plans acting as the basis for coordinated
sector-wide budgetary support in the context of national
poverty reduction strategies.
A core code of conduct should be agreed to bind donors to
following good practices in the disbursement of aid to
education. For example, governments should have single
accountability lines rather than having to respond to multiple
and bureaucratic donor requirements. The monitoring and
control of aid programmes should be turned over to government
in partnership with civil society. Consultative Group meetings
should be held in and chaired by the host country, and civil
society groups from that country should be allowed to attend
these meetings. Aid commitments should be provided within a
medium-term framework to ease government planning and ensure
predictable resource flows. An urgent review should be
undertaken by each donor agency to determine the reasons for
non-disbursed aid and to change their own practices and
procedures to increase future rates of disbursement. Donors
should immediately abolish all procedures and requirements
that result in the tying of education aid to donor-country
goods and services, and procurement policy must be reformed to
encourage the development of local contracting. Governments
should decide what technical assistance they need and who
should provide it.
Positive changes to aid must not be contradicted or undermined
by wider institutional policies of the IMF or World Bank.
Policy advice and financial support from the IMF, World Bank
or regional development banks, must keep education in central
focus at all times. All programmes should be designed with
education as an integral part of poverty reduction and human
development. In addition to ensuring that macro-economic
policies and targets prioritise poverty reduction (e.g.
including aid grants in calculations of the fiscal deficit,
reviewing inflation targets etc.), this would also include
ensuring protection of access to basic education during
financial crisis, and support for free basic education.
6. Clear and measurable commitment made to adult literacy and
a re-statement of the vision of life-long learning.
The low priority attached to adult learning in the past decade
must be reversed, with women's literacy accorded the same high
level priority as that accorded to the education of girls. A
clear goal should be established, at least to end gender
disparities in adult literacy by 2010. A clear statement
should be made about the importance of integrating adult
literacy with wider processes of community development and
empowerment.
Since Jomtien the vision of Education For All has been reduced
in practice to "Education For School-Age Children". The
expanded vision must be asserted to prevent utilitarian
interpretations that justify investment in education only by
its knock on effects. Education is a right and that right
starts from early childhood and continues through adulthood
into old age.
7. Strategic recognition of the present and future impact of
HIV/AIDs on education and its resource implications
In the coming decade, particularly in Africa, but increasingly
across the world, HIV/AIDs will have a devastating impact on
education systems. Governments need to develop innovative
responses to ensure that children in families affected by
HIV/AIDS will not lose their access to education. Plans need
to be made now to cope with the loss of teachers and with the
new pressures on children.
8. Democratisation, decentralisation and empowerment of the
present Education For All structures and mechanisms.
The present EFA structures set up after Jomtien are too
centralised in Paris and lack legitimate representation from
southern governments or civil society. This has led to a lack
of ownership and a loss of momentum. Agreement needs to be
reached to ensure strong representation of southern
governments and civil society in international EFA structures
post-Dakar. Resources, technical expertise and monitoring of
progress also need to be decentralised with major investment
in a regional level EFA capacity, particularly for Sub-Saharan
Africa. The building up of human resources at a regional level
must be given priority - replacing the domination of
structures and processes by Northern experts and consultants.
At the same time these more representative international
structures need to be empowered. The right to education is
already enshrined in the Convention on the Rights of the Child
and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but there are no
mechanisms for enforcing this right. National civil society
alliances with legitimate concerns should have the right to
call for the international EFA structures to investigate cases
where there are clear violations of the right to education.
The EFA structures should then have the power to call for an
investigation by the UN Special Rapporteur on Education or the
regional Human Rights Commissions. If these find against a
government they can call for sanctions.
9. A commitment to a mid-term global review and a possible
official UN Conference.
A comprehensive review should be planned for 2006 to identify
progress against the major international targets on education.
Both national and donor action plans should specify mid-term
targets for each EFA goal, and specify explicit additional
resourcing and contingency commitments if these targets are
missed. If the mid-term review shows that a substantial number
of countries continue to be off-track then an official UN
Conference on Education with Heads of State should be convened
for 2010 at the latest. This would help to catalyse the
additional momentum that would clearly be needed with just
five years to go to 2015.
THE GLOBAL CAMPAIGN FOR EDUCATION CALLS FOR THE FOLLOWING
FROM THE WORLD EDUCATION FORUM IN DAKAR:
- An unequivocal commitment to free education as a basic
right for all children up to the age of 15 by 2015;
- Agreement on clear and time-bound follow up processes at a
national level, with binding mechanisms for civil society
participation;
- Commitment to a global action plan with clear resource
commitments by governments and donors;
- Clear commitments to be made to improving equity in the
quality of education;
- Clear commitments to improving the quality and nature of
aid to education;
- A clear and measurable commitment to adult literacy and a
re-statement of the vision of life-long learning;
- A strategic recognition of the present and future impact of
HIV/AIDs on education;
- The democratisation, decentralisation and empowerment of
the Education For All structures and mechanisms;
- A commitment to a mid-term global review and a possible
official UN Conference with Heads of State in 2010.
This material is being reposted for wider distribution by the
Africa Policy Information Center (APIC). APIC's primary
objective is to widen international policy debates around
African issues, by concentrating on providing accessible
policy-relevant information and analysis usable by a wide
range of groups and individuals.
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