EDUCATION GOALS
REMAIN ELUSIVE
IN MORE THAN 70 COUNTRIES
London, November 13 - Some 83 countries
are on track to achieve Education For All (EFA) by the deadline
of 2015 set at the World Education Forum in Dakar (Senegal) two
and a half years ago. However, on present trends, more than 70
other countries will not make it, and some are even going backwards.
This is the conclusion of the 2002 Education For All Global Monitoring
Report: Is the World on Track? launched at a press conference
organized by UNESCO in London today.
"This report shows that while,
in many countries, good progress towards the goals set at the
Dakar Forum is being made, in many others it is insufficent. It
reconfirms the Forum's diagnosis that almost one third of the
world's population live in countries where achieving the EFA goals
remains a dream," says Professor Christopher Colclough, an
eminent British education and development expert who is also Director
of the Report.
The Dakar Forum agreed on six goals,
which were considered to be essential, attainable and affordable,
given strong international commitment and resolve. Those goals
are: to ensure, by 2015, that all children of primary school age
would have more access to and complete free schooling of acceptable
quality; that gender disparities in schooling would be eliminated;
levels of adult illiteracy would be halved; early childhood care
and education would be expanded; learning opportunities for youth
and adults would be greatly increased; and all aspects of education
quality would be improved.
According to the 2002 Report, 28
countries, accounting for over 26 percent of the world's population,
may not achieve any of the three measurable Dakar goals: universal
primary education (UPE), gender equality and the halving of illiteracy
rates. Two-thirds of these countries are in Sub-Saharan Africa,
but they also include India and Pakistan. Another 43 countries,
covering 35.6 percent of the world's population, risk falling
short of at least one of these three goals.
At current rates of progress,
the Report states, UPE is unlikely to be reached in 57 countries
(see tables). Forty-one of these countries, including some Central
and East European nations, have even been moving backwards. The
goal of gender parity was supposed to have been met by 2005. The
Report points out that girls' enrolment improved in all regions
during the 1990s: 86 countries have already achieved gender parity
and another 35 are close to doing so. However, 31 nations remain
at risk of not meeting this goal even by 2015. Finally, unless
a much greater effort is made, a total of 78 countries will not
be able to halve their rate of illiteracy by 2015. These include
four of the world's most populous countries, Bangladesh, China,
India and Pakistan, which alone account for 61 percent of the
world's illiterate adults.
The Report also finds that the
cost of providing Education for All has been underestimated, partly
because the high cost of HIV/AIDS and conflict on education has
not been taken into account. According to the report, HIV/AIDS
alone will add US$975 million to the annual bill for achieving
UPE. Similarly, at least 73 countries are dealing with internal
crises or are engaged in post-conflict reconstruction, greatly
increasing the costs of achieving education for all, and recent
history, states the report, suggests that at least four or five
countries are likely to face major complex humanitarian emergencies
over the next decade.
To meet the expense, major education
and economic reforms will be required in many countries, along
with a significant increase in budgetary resources available for
basic education. Nevertheless, increased external aid will also
be needed to close the financing gap. Previous estimates of the
likely aid requirements have fallen short by about 50 percent,
and according to the report, an extra $5.6 billion will
be needed annually to achieve the UPE and gender goals alone.
However, the Report clearly shows a startling decline in the real
values of both total and education aid between 1990 and 2001 (see
tables). Total bilateral aid to education, for example, which
accounts for 70 percent of all such financial support, fell by
16 percent over the decade. This fall is partly explained, it
says, by conflict, the inability of national institutions to absorb
funds rapidly and the reluctance of some governments to reform
education systems and policies.
The Report questions some aspects
of aid programmes which provide budget support to countries with
well-designed poverty reduction strategies and credible EFA plans.
The problem with this approach, says the Report, is that it tends
to reward those countries with a stable political culture and
a developed policy tradition, and exclude other countries that
are in most urgent need of support. This situation, states the
report, "needs to be reversed: instead of the countries with
the weakest policy environments receiving least attention from
the international community, they actually must receive most attention."
Another contributing factor to
the difficulties of achieving the Dakar goals is the looming global
teacher shortage. According to the report, an extra 15 to 35 million
more teachers will be needed to achieve universal primary education
by 2015. Three million extra teachers are needed for sub-Saharan
Africa alone. Contrary to most other parts of the world, pupil
teacher ratios have been rising again in recent years to a regional
average of 40 students per teacher, compared to 25 per teacher
in Latin America and the Caribbean, East Asia and the Pacific,
and the Arab States and North Africa.
The annual Education For All Global Monitoring Report is prepared
by an independent, international team based at UNESCO in Paris
(France) as part of the follow-up
to the Dakar Forum. It is funded jointly by UNESCO and multilateral
and bilateral agencies, and benefits from the advice of an international
editorial board.
"The Global Monitoring Report is an indispensable tool for
the entire EFA movement," states Koïchiro Matsuura,
Director-General of UNESCO. "The careful and accurate monitoring
of progress towards the achievement of the EFA goals must be the
foundation of not only improved understanding but also more effective
action. By providing reliable data, rigorous analysis and cogent
argumentation, the Report is a safeguard against complacency and
a stimulus to do better."
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COUNTRIES AT
RISK OF NOT ACHIEVING ONE OR MORE OF THE DAKAR GOALS
Countries at risk of not
achieving universal primary education (UPE) by 2015
Total = 57
Bahrain,
Barbados, Benin, Bhutan, Botswana, Burkina Faso, Burundi,
Central African Republic, Chad, China, Comoros, Côte
d'Ivoire, Croatia, Cyprus, Dem. Rep. of the Congo, Djibouti,
Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gabon, Gambia, Georgia,
Guyana, Haiti, Indonesia, Iran, Jamaica, Kiribati, Kuwait,
Kyrgyztan, Lebanon, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali, Mauritania,
Mauritius, Morocco, Mozambique, Namibia, Nicaragua, Niger,
Nigeria, Oman, Paraguay, Saudi Arabia, St. Kitts and Nevis,
St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Syrian Arab Republic, The
Former Yugoslav Rep. of Macedonia, Turkey, United Arab Emirates,
United Republic of Tanzania, Uzbekistan, Venezuela, Yugoslavia,
Zambia
Countries at risk of not
achieving gender parity by 2015
Countries at risk of not halving
adult illiteracy by 2015
Total = 78
Algeria, Antigua
and Barbuda, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Benin, Botswana, Brazil,
Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Cape Verde, Central
African Republic, Chad, China, Colombia, Comoros, Democratic
Rep. of the Congo, Djibouti, Dominica, Dominican Republic,
Ecuador, Egypt, El Salvador, Eritrea, Gambia, Ghana, Guatemala,
Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Honduras, India, Iraq, Jamaica,
Kuwait, Lebanon, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Mali,
Malta, Mauritania, Mauritius, Mexico, Morocco, Mozambique,
Myanmar, Namibia, Nepal, Nicaragua, Niger, Nigeria, Pakistan,
Panama, Papua New Guinea, Paraguay, Peru, Qatar, Rwanda, Saudi
Arabia, Senegal, Sudan, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Swaziland,
Syrian Arab Republic, Togo, Tunisia, Turkey, Uganda, United
Arab Emirates, United Republic of Tanzania, Venezuela, Viet
Nam, Yemen, Zambia
BILATERAL AVERAGE ANNUAL OFFICIAL
DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE COMMITMENTS FOR EDUCATION, 1990-2000 (CONSTANT
2000 $US MILLIONS)
As with total aid, the trend of
bilateral aid flows to education has been downwards - from around
US$5 billion at the start of the decade to less than US$4 billion
by 2000. France, Japan, Germany, United States and United Kingdom
accounted for between 75 and 80 per cent of all bilateral aid
commitments to education between 1990 and 2000 (see below). With
the exception of Japan, where commitments remained relatively
unchanged, real commitments to education for the 'big five' countries
declined dramatically between the early and the late nineties.
The United States, for example, cut its official development assistance
for education by 58 percent, the United Kingdom by 39 percent
and France by 22 percent. Even smaller donors slashed their education
aid. Switzerland reduced its development assistance for education
by 63 percent.
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Contact
Sue Williams
Bureau of Public Information, Editorial Section
Tel: (+33) (0)1 45 68 17 06; Email:s.williams@unesco.org
