Reaching the marginalized: EFA global monitoring report, 2010; 2010

010CHAPTER 22Education for All Global Monitoring ReportLiteracy remainsamong the mostneglected of alleducation goals30. The target of achievinga 50% improvement inlevels of adult literacyis measured by lookingat the illiteracy rate,reflecting the originalformulation of the goal asexpressed in Jomtien in1990. The adult illiteracyrate is computed bydeducting the adultliteracy rate from 100.Youth and adult literacyGoal 4: Achieving a 50 per cent improvementin levels of adult literacy by 2015, especiallyfor women, and equitable access to basicand continuing education for all adults.Youth and adult illiteracy is the price peopleand countries are paying for the past failures ofeducation systems. When people emerge from theirschool years lacking basic reading, writing andnumeracy skills, they face a lifetime of disadvantageas illiteracy diminishes their social and economicprospects and damages self-esteem. But theconsequences of illiteracy extend beyond theindividual. When people lack literacy, society asa whole suffers from lost opportunities for higherproductivity, shared prosperity and politicalparticipation (Fasih, 2008; Kinsella and He, 2009;UIS, 2008a; UNESCO, 2005). Beyond the individualand social costs, illiteracy is a violation of humanrights and a global blight on the human condition(Maddox, 2008; Oxenham, 2008). Eradicating itis one of the most urgent development challengesof the twenty-first century.The international community has failed to riseto the challenge. At the World Education Forumin Dakar in 2000, governments pledged to achieve a50% improvement in levels of adult literacy by 2015.The pledge was ambitious, but the target wasachievable. Unfortunately, the goal will be missedby a large margin. In a world with 759 millionilliterate young people and adults, there has beena conspicuous lack of urgency and commitmentto literacy on the part of political leaders. The manyexceptions to the rule serve to demonstrate thatfar more could have been achieved – and that farmore can be done to get closer to the 2015 target.Among the key messages of this section:Literacy remains among the most neglectedof all education goals. Progress towards the2015 target of halving illiteracy 30 has been fartoo slow and uneven. With half the period forachieving the target having elapsed, the regionsfarthest behind have travelled between a half andtwo-thirds of the distance required. On currenttrends, there will be 710 million illiterate adultsworldwide in 2015. The evidence from monitoringis clear: unless far more is done to accelerateprogress, the 2015 targets will not be reached.More rapid progress remains possible. Severalcountries have demonstrated through successfulpolicies that more rapid advance towards adultliteracy is possible. The National Literacy Missionin India and the Literate Brazil Programme(Programa Brasil Alfabetizado) both reflect astronger commitment to literacy by politicalleaders. Several countries have developed highlyinnovative programmes through partnershipslinking communities to governments andnon-government groups. Better financing anda renewed effort to reach older adults arecritical to accelerated progress.Far more has to be done to overcome the legacyof disadvantage in literacy. While gender gapsare narrowing, they remain very large – womenstill account for nearly two-thirds of the world’sadult illiterates. Failure to tackle genderdisparities and wider inequalities based onwealth, region, ethnicity and language areholding back progress.This section is divided into two parts. Part 1provides a global overview of literacy and a post-Dakar progress report. It also looks ahead to 2015,providing a projection of where current trends willleave the world in relation to the goal of achievinga 50% improvement in levels of adult literacy.Part 2 looks at some of the countries that aremaking progress and identifies approaches thatare making a difference.Progress since the Dakar forumThe precise meaning of ‘literacy’ continues to besubject to intense academic debate (Benavot, 2008;Fransman, 2005). Unlike the simple dichotomiesused in other areas – such as being ‘in school’ or‘out of school’ – there are no clear-cut dividing linesbetween the literate and non-literate. In any society,there is a continuum of literacy – and people witha fragile hold on literacy in youth can lose that holdin adulthood. However, academic debates overthe precise meaning of the word should not detractfrom common-sense depictions of what theexperience of illiteracy means to those affected.Half a century ago, UNESCO defined a literateperson as someone ‘who can with understandingboth read and write a short simple statement onhis or her everyday life’ (UNESCO, 1958, p. 3).More recently, the Global Campaign for Educationhas extended this basic idea: ‘Literacy is aboutthe acquisition and use of reading, writing and94