The right to education - Asia Pacific Knowledge Base on Open and ...

46World <strong>education</strong> reportup the <strong>education</strong>al requirements of children andyouth in any rural area and <strong>to</strong> plan provisions formeeting them’, there was a need <strong>to</strong> identify a‘package’ but not necessarily a ‘minimum’ one.Why not a maximum one?For these reasons, the less restrictive term ‘basiclearning needs’, which evoked the idea of a ‘foundation’rather than a ‘minimum’, came <strong>to</strong> be preferredinternationally in the course of the 1970sand 1980s. It was eventually adopted by the WorldConference on Education for All, <strong>to</strong>gether with itscorrelate ‘basic <strong>education</strong>’ (i.e. <strong>education</strong> designed<strong>to</strong> meet ‘basic learning needs’). Since then,the notion of ‘basic <strong>education</strong>’, whether for children,youth or adults, has generally been unders<strong>to</strong>od<strong>to</strong> overlap with the notions of ‘elementary’and ‘fundamental <strong>education</strong>’ as utilized in the UniversalDeclaration of Human Rights, but theredoes not exist an internationally agreed text thatactually says so. In so far as there is such an overlap,it can plausibly be argued that the spirit of theDeclaration requires that basic <strong>education</strong> <strong>to</strong>o‘shall be free’, just like ‘elementary and fundamental<strong>education</strong>’.Moni<strong>to</strong>ring progress<strong>The</strong> increased willingness of policy-makers inmany countries in the 1970s <strong>to</strong> recognize that nonformal<strong>education</strong> could help <strong>to</strong> meet the learningneeds of social groups that were not beingreached by the formal school system did notimply a lessening of efforts <strong>to</strong> expand the coverageof the formal system.Primary enrolment ratios in most of the world’sless developed regions continued their upwardtrends in<strong>to</strong> the 1970s (Figure 2.3), and thenumbers of out-of-school children levelled offor even declined (Figure 2.4). <strong>The</strong>se trends continuedin<strong>to</strong> the 1980s except in sub-Saharan Africawhere enrolment ratios stagnated or declined andthe numbers of out-of-school primary-age childrenrose.Figure 2.3Gross enrolment ratios in primary <strong>education</strong>by region, 1970–1997Gross enrolment ratio (%)12011010090807060501970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995Sub-Saharan AfricaCountries in transitionArab StatesEastern <strong>Asia</strong>/OceaniaLatin America/CaribbeanSouthern <strong>Asia</strong>More developed regions<strong>The</strong> goal of universal primary <strong>education</strong> inAfrica by 1980, defined in broad terms by theAddis Ababa Plan as a gross enrolment ratio of100 per cent, was not attained despite the impressivegrowth of enrolment up until then. <strong>The</strong> samegoal for <strong>Asia</strong>, set by the Karachi Plan, was attainedin Eastern <strong>Asia</strong>/Oceania but not in Southern <strong>Asia</strong>.<strong>The</strong> World Conference on Education for All resetthe goal of universal primary <strong>education</strong> <strong>to</strong> theyear 2000, as a result of which the decline inenrolment ratios that began in sub-Saharan Africain the 1980s appears <strong>to</strong> have been halted or evenreversed. Still, the overall gross enrolment ratiofor this region does not appear <strong>to</strong> have recovered<strong>to</strong> the level it had already reached in 1980 (Figure2.3). <strong>The</strong> prospect of faster progress in thedecade ahead is uncertain. UNESCO’s most recentrevised (and still provisional) projections, basedon trends up <strong>to</strong> 1997, foresee little change in the