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Progress
towards Education for
All
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Steady progress has been made since 1998,
especially towards universal primary education (UPE) and
gender parity among the poorest countries, but the pace
insufficient for the goals to be met in the remaining ten
years to 2015.
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Encouraging trends represent
considerable achievements in many low-income
countries:
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Primary-school enrolments are up sharply in both sub-Saharan
Africa and South and West Asia, with nearly 20 million new
students in each region.
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Globally, 47 countries have achieved UPE (out of 163
with data available).
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Projections show that 20 additional countries (out of
90 with the relevant data) are on track to achieve UPE by
2015; 44 countries are making good progress but are unlikely
to achieve the goal by 2015.
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Girls’ primary enrolments have also risen rapidly,
especially in some of the lowest-income countries of
sub-Saharan Africa, and South and West Asia.
• Gender and educational quality measures
are increasingly visible in national education
plans.
• Public spending on
education has increased as a share of national income in about
70 countries (out of 110 with data).
• Aid for basic education more than
doubled between 1999 and 2003 and, following the G8 summit,
could rise to US$3.3 billion per year by 2010.
• The Fast Track Initiative has emerged
as a key coordinating mechanism for aid
agencies
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Major Education for All
challenges remain:
UPE is not
assured:
• About 100
million children are still not enrolled in primary school, 55%
of them girls.
23 countries are at risk of not achieving
UPE by 2015, as their net enrolment ratios are
declining.
• Primary-school
fees, a major barrier to access, are still collected in 89
countries (out of 103 surveyed).
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High fertility rates, HIV/AIDS and armed conflict
continue to exert pressure on education systems in the regions
with the greatest EFA challenges.
The 2005 gender
parity target has been missed by 94 countries out of 149 with
data:
• 86 countries
are at risk of not achieving gender parity even by
2015.
• 76 out of 180
countries have not reached gender parity at primary level, and
the disparities are nearly always at the expense of
girls.
• 115 countries (out
of 172 with data) still have disparities at secondary level,
with boys being under-represented in nearly half, in marked
contrast to the primary level.
Quality is too
low:
• Enrolments in
early childhood care and education programmes have remained
static.
• Fewer than
two-thirds of primary school pupils reach the last grade in 41
countries (out of 133 with data).
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In many countries, primary teacher numbers would have
to increase by 20% a year to reduce pupil/teacher ratios to
40:1 and to achieve UPE by 2015.
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Many primary-school teachers lack adequate
qualifications.
Literacy gets short
shrift:
• 771
million people aged 15 and above live without basic literacy
skills.
• Governments and
aid agencies give insufficient priority and finance to youth
and adult literacy programmes.
Aid for basic
education is still inadequate:
• At US$4.7 billion in 2003, bilateral
aid to education – 60% of which still Goes to post-secondary
education – has increased since 1998 but remains well below
the 1990 high of US$5.7 billion.
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Total aid to basic education accounts for only 2.6% of
Official Development Assistance; within this category, adult
literacy’s share is minuscule.
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While aid to basic education will likely increase in
line with overall aid, its share would have to double to reach
the estimated US$7 billion a year necessary just to achieve
UPE and gender parity.
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Disproportionate volumes of bilateral aid go to
middle-income countries with relatively high primary
enrolments.
• By mid-2005,
the Fast Track Initiative had resulted in pledges of only
US$298
million.
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Literacy
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Literacy is:
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A right still denied to nearly a fifth of the world’s
adult population.
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Essential to achieving each of the EFA goals.
• A societal and an
individual phenomenon, with attention needed to both
dimensions.
• Crucial for
economic, social and political participation and development,
especially in today’s knowledge societies.
• Key to enhancing human capabilities,
with wideranging benefits including critical thinking,
improved health and family planning, HIV/AIDS prevention,
children’s education, poverty reduction and active
citizenship.
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The literacy challenge has
absolute and relative dimensions, particularly affects the
poor, women and marginalized groups, and is much greater than
conventional measures indicate:
• In absolute numbers, those without
literacy skills are mainly in sub-Saharan Africa, South and
West Asia, and East Asia and the Pacific. Prospects for
meeting the 2015 goal hinge largely on progress in the 12
countries where 75% of those without literacy skills
live.
• In relative terms,
the regions with the lowest literacy rates are sub-Saharan
Africa, South and West Asia, and the Arab States, all with
literacy rates around only 60%, despite increases of more than
10 percentage points since 1990.
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Illiteracy is associated to a significant extent with
extreme poverty.
• Women are
less literate than men: worldwide, only 88 adult women are
considered literate for every 100 adult men, with much lower
numbers in low income countries such as Bangladesh (62 per 100
men) and Pakistan (57 per 100 men).
• 132 of the 771 million people without
literacy skills are aged 15 to 24, despite an increase in this
group’s literacy rate to 85%, from 75% in 1970.
• Direct testing of literacy suggests
that the global challenge is much greater than the
conventional numbers, based on indirect assessments, would
indicate, and that it affects both developed and developing
countries.
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The literacy challenge can be met
only if:
• Political
leaders at the highest level commit themselves to action.
• Countries adopt explicit
literacy policies to:
Expand quality primary and
lower-secondary education;
Scale up youth and adult
literacy programmes;
Develop rich literate
environments.
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Scaling up literacy programmes
for youth and adults requires:
• Active government responsibility for
adult literacy policy and financing as part of education
sector planning.
• Clear
frameworks to coordinate public, private and civil society
provision of literacy programmes.
• Increased budgetary and aid
allocations. Literacy programmes receive a mere 1% of the
education budget in many countries. An additional US$2.5
billion a year to 2015 will likely be needed to make
significant progress towards the Dakar literacy
goal.
• Basing programmes on
an understanding of learners’ demands, especially their
language preferences and their motivations for attending
class, in consultation with local communities.
• Curricula that build on these demands,
with clearly stated learning objectives and the provision of
adequate learning materials.
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Adequate pay, professional status and training
opportunities for literacy educators.
• Appropriate language policies, as most
countries facing stark literacy challenges are linguistically
diverse. The use of mother tongues is pedagogically sound but
must offer a smooth transition to learning opportunities in
regional and official
languages.
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Developing literate environments
and literate societies requires sustained attention
to:
• Language
policies.
• Book publishing
policies.
• Media policies.
• Access to
information.
• Policies to get
books and reading materials into schools and
homes.
Acquiring, improving and using literacy skills
happens at all levels of education, and in multiple formal and
non-formal contexts. Achieving each of the EFA goals depends
strongly on policies that foster literate societies and set
high standards for literacy, the foundation for further
learning.
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Each year, the Global
Monitoring Report tracks progress towards the six goals agreed by
164 countries at the World Education Forum in Dakar in 2000. This
year it draws on data from the 2002/2003 school year to report on
change since 1998 and to project which countries are likely to
achieve the goals of UPE, gender parity in primary and secondary
education and a 50% improvement in levels of adult literacy by the
target year of 2015. Although these projections may not fully
reflect the impact of recent changes in policies, they are a useful
monitoring tool.
Education
>
Education for All - Global Monitoring
Report