Chapter 2. Progress towards the EFA goals - Unesco

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0 1 2 0 CHAPTER 2 Education for All Global Monitoring Report Despite encouraging progress, many of the poorest countries are struggling to reach universal primary education Universal primary education Goal 2. Ensuring that by 2015 all children, particularly girls, children in difficult circumstances and those belonging to ethnic minorities, have access to and complete, free and compulsory primary education of good quality. The past decade has seen rapid progress towards universal primary education. Some of the world’s poorest countries have dramatically increased enrolment, narrowed gender gaps and extended opportunities for disadvantaged groups. School completion rates are also rising. These achievements provide a marked contrast to the ‘lost decade’ of the 1990s. But there are limits to the good news. In the midst of an increasingly knowledge-based global economy, millions of children are still out of school and countless millions more start school but drop out before completing primary education. And there is now a real danger that the global economic crisis will stall, and perhaps even reverse, the gains registered over the past decade (see Chapter 1). The post-Dakar record has to be assessed against the ambition set out in Goal 2 of the Dakar Framework for Action: universal primary education by 2015. Is the goal still attainable? The answer will depend on decisions taken over the next two years by national governments and aid donors. The window of opportunity for ensuring that all primary school age children currently out of school complete a full cycle of primary education is rapidly closing. Getting all children into school by 2015 is still feasible, but the goal will not be achieved with a business-as-usual approach. The World Education Forum (Dakar, 2000) gave new impetus to education, both nationally and internationally. Yet the hard fact remains that the world will fall short of the targets set and that far more could have been achieved. Many developing countries could have done much more to accelerate progress, notably through policies to overcome inequalities in education. Meanwhile, donors have a mixed record of delivery on their collective commitment to back national programmes with increased financial support – an issue addressed in more detail in Chapter 4. This section documents progress towards universal primary education. Looking behind the national data, it provides an in-depth look at some of the crucial challenges facing governments in the countdown to 2015. The following are among the key messages to emerge: Out-of-school numbers are dropping for primary school age children, but getting all children into school will require a far stronger focus on the marginalized. When the Dakar forum was held, over 100 million children of primary school age were out of school. By 2007, the figure had fallen to 72 million. This headline figure bears testimony to national governments’ efforts. The bad news is that, on current trends, some 56 million children could still be out of school in 2015. Changing this scenario will require a far stronger commitment by governments to reach girls and other marginalized groups. It will also require a sharper focus on countries affected by conflict or engaged in post-conflict reconstruction. Progress towards universal primary enrolment has been partial and mixed. Despite encouraging progress, many of the poorest countries are struggling to reach universal enrolment. Less attention has been paid to higher-income countries with significant outof-school populations, such as the Philippines and Turkey. Such countries will have to target marginalization far more systematically to deliver on the Dakar commitments. New research indicates that official enrolment data may overstate the numbers of children in school at the appropriate age, suggesting that more needs to be done to address the problem of late entry and dropout. Household survey data for a number of countries indicate overestimates of 10% or more in school attendance rates. Gender barriers remain intact. There has been progress towards greater gender parity in school enrolment. Even so, being born a girl carries with it a significant education disadvantage in many countries. That disadvantage is reflected in the fact that girls still account for 54% of the out-of-school population. Moreover, out-of-school girls are far more likely than boys never to go to school. In twenty-eight countries, there are fewer than nine girls in primary school for every ten boys. Poverty further reinforces gender disparity. 54
PROGRESS TOWARDS THE EFA GOALS Universal primary education Getting children into primary school is just a first step. Universal primary education involves entering school at an appropriate age, progressing through the system and completing a full cycle. Unfortunately, millions of children enter school late, drop out early and never complete a full cycle. More integrated approaches to monitoring are required to measure the real state of progress towards universal primary education. Out-of-school adolescents are often overlooked. Monitoring progress towards international development goals in education focuses on the primary school age group. The situation of adolescents has been subject to less scrutiny. There are some 71 million children of lower secondary school age currently out of school. Many have not completed a full primary cycle and face the prospect of social and economic marginalization. Counting adolescents doubles the global headline figure for out-of-school children. The section is divided into three parts. Part 1 looks at progress towards one of the most important requirements for achieving universal primary education: getting all children into school. It looks beyond the headline numbers to explore the characteristics of the out-of-school population. Removing the barriers that keep children out of school is the first step towards achieving universal primary enrolment – ensuring that the entire primary school age group is in school by 2015. Part 2 looks at enrolment trends. Part 3 examines the problem of retention and progression through primary school, and the transition to secondary education. Numbers of out-of-school children are declining, but not fast enough Malina is a 12-year-old living in a rural area of Rattanak Kiri, a remote hill district in Cambodia. She is a member of a minority ethnic group and has never been to school. Lucy, 12, lives in the slum of Kibera in the Kenyan capital, Nairobi. When she was 8, she enrolled in primary school, but in the second grade she dropped out. She wants to go back to school but has to take care of her brother, and her mother cannot afford the fees, uniforms and books. Victor is 14 years old. He lives on the streets of Manila and makes a living by selling newspapers at road junctions. He went to primary school for four years, but left before completing it and has no prospect of returning. Maria, 15, is in grade 4 of her local primary school in Panama, having started late, repeated two grades and dropped out for a year when she was 12. Compared with the 1990s, the first decade of the twenty-first century has been one of rapid progress towards universal primary education. Out-of-school numbers are falling and more children are completing primary school. Yet the sheer size of the out-of-school population remains an indictment of national governments and the entire international community. Denying children an opportunity to put even a first step on the education ladder sets them on a course for a lifetime of disadvantage. It violates their basic human right to an education. It also wastes a precious national resource and potential driver of economic growth and poverty reduction. As the experiences of the children cited above testify, ‘out of school’ is a simple concept with many meanings. Some children of late primary school age and even secondary school age have never been to school. Others have started school but dropped out. Still others are in a state of flux, moving between in-school and out-of-school status. The out-of-school figures in this section refer only to children of primary school age who are not in school. They represent the tip of the total out-ofschool iceberg, since they do not cover adolescents of secondary school age who have not completed primary school. Even within the primary school age group, data for any one year provide only a static snapshot of a dynamic and complicated picture. The snapshot for 2007, the latest year for which data are available, points to continued progress but still large deficits. There are some remarkable achievements since 1999: Out-of-school numbers are falling. Worldwide, the number of children of primary school age who are out of school has declined by 33 million since the Dakar pledges were made, from 105 million in 1999 to 72 million in 2007. Seven out of every ten out-of-school children live in South and West Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa (Figure 2.7). There were 72 million children out of school in 2007 55
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