1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, United Nations, Paris 1950 Inter-American Seminar on Primary Education, UNESCO/OAS, Montevideo 1951 The 14th International Conference on Public Education adopts a recommendation on compulsory education and its prolongation, IBE, Geneva Creation of the UNESCO Institute for Education (UIE) in Hamburg, Germany 1952-1956 Regional conferences on compulsory and free education, Bombay, Cairo, Lima 1955 Creation of an International Institute of Child Psychology in Bangkok 1955-1960 Curriculum Consultative Committee 1956 Regional seminars on curriculum development, Geneva, Lima, Karachi

EXPANDING AND IMPROVING BASIC EDUCATION FOR CHILDREN UNESCO’s pursuit of its goal to develop primary education coincided with a similar thrust in Member States following an explosion in the demand for education after the Second World War and after decolonization, which led to general consensus in favour of universal primary schooling. In the 1950s, UNESCO embarked upon a campaign for universal compulsory schooling, supporting Member States in their efforts, whilst encouraging their educational activities to incorporate the Organization’s own objectives: equal access to education and the development of international understanding. The 1960s proved to be a turning point when UNESCO endorsed a strategy of overall development of all levels of education, of which primary instruction made up the base. In the 1970s, emphasis was on improving relevance and quality. Towards the end of that decade, when it became clear that the objective of universal primary education was losing ground, the Organization sought to develop schools simultaneously with non-formal structures as alternatives for all those without access to school. Since the 1980s, the expansion of primary education and literacy education for both young people deprived of schooling and adults are carried out together and are integrated within regional programmes. The Jomtien Conference revitalized the international community’s commitment to basic education for all which has been given top priority in UNESCO’s Medium-Term Strategy 1996-2001. EXPANDING PRIMARY EDUCATION The adoption by the United Nations in 1948 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights enabled UNESCO to extend its educational activities beyond its constitutional mandate. (1) Under the terms of Article 26 of the Declaration which establishes the right to education, education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. At this point UNESCO became committed to promoting the universalization of primary education and conducted activities promoting international consultation into the search for, and the application of, appropriate concrete measures. Before ’ meetings, policy guidelines for educational action were essentially defined by the International Conference on Public Education (ICPE), convened jointly since 1947 by UNESCO and the IBE. (2) In 1950 during preparations for the 14th session of the 1951 ICPE on compulsory education and its prolongation the Secretariat, wishing to provide a solid base for deliberations, commissioned case studies on compulsory education in six countries, three of which had already achieved this objective. (3) The recommendation adopted by this Conference set out a detailed framework of action which, whilst proposing that countries plan the extension of primary education, also dealt with legal and administrative issues, as well as those of a purely pedagogical nature, such as teacher-training, and school buildings. The Conference also appealed to the United Nations and the World Bank for funds, and requested UNESCO to organize regional conferences to implement this recommendation. These regional conferences (4) permitted the scope of this undertaking to be measured; (5) for Latin America they resulted in the launching of a first ten-year Major Project on the Extension of Primary Education and, for Asia the adoption of a Plan for the Development of Primary Education (Karachi, 1960). In support of this undertaking, UNESCO also established international educational research centres – the UNESCO Institute for Education in Hamburg in 1951 – and the Institute for Child Psychology in Bangkok in 1955, and set up a Curriculum Consultative Committee which functioned from 1955 to 1960.

1950 - 1960 NO SCHOOLS TODAY FOR ONE CHILD IN TWO by Leo R. Fernig There are about 550 million children aged 5-14 in the world today and 300 million boys and girls are enrolled in school. For 250 million no schooling is available. Very roughly, but conservatively, it would take $90,000 million to accommodate these children, and another $10,000 million a year to run the new schools. The economic, social and individual effects of this deprivation are well known. The provision of education is indispensable for economic and social progress. Throughout the world, a satisfactory balance has not yet been reached between the social programmes which help to preserve life and the programmes that are aimed at improving the condition of life. Education is one major element of the latter group, and there is a constant struggle to get ahead of increases in population. Around 1950, about 56 per cent of the world adult population was literate, but only 48 per cent of the children were going to school, meaning that the number of future illiterates was likely to be greater than in the past. By heavy sacrifices, countries raised the proportion of school enrolments to 55 per cent five years later; however, even this will not be enough to ensure a more literate future generation than in the past. Four components: students, classroom, teacher, system First, the students. They are there, numerous enough; but one cannot achieve an efficient education simply by providing the buildings and the teachers these students lack. It must be remembered that poverty and malnutrition accompany illiteracy; a minimum welfare service is indispensable to encourage school attendance and to enable children to profit from tuition. Next the plant, covering buildings, equipment and teaching supplies. Provision of buildings is costly, as everyone knows; $100,000 for an elementary school. The greatest variation in costs occurs at elementary level, where standards vary greatly and many areas create such schools at as low a cost as $500 - $1,000. The education development schemes in Tropical Africa have revealed the risk of overtaxing the local economy and the need for the possibility of carry-over from one fiscal year to the next. Moreover, too little in general is known about low-cost school building construction and the use of local materials. Research here might produce great savings. It must be noted that teaching supplies are indispensable for an efficient school system, and the production of them is urgently needed. Alongside students and buildings, there is a need for teachers – perhaps the greatest need of all. The education of teachers is the investment part of the education budget and a fairly costly one, since the majority of teachers-to-be have to be assisted during their course of training. In rural elementary education as in general and vocational secondary schooling, the demand for teachers is perhaps the point where development programmes do the most good: but action here requires not only setting up and staffing or the improvement of teachers colleges, but also the provision of funds for maintaining such schools at an efficient level of intake. Last, the area of the school system as a whole, including educational administration, planning and research – aspects which lie close together – is one of world concern. The existing programme of UNESCO reveals how resources may be applied internationally to the solution of national needs. UNESCO at present provides some measure of educational assistance to a large number of its Member States in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Funds for the provision of equipment are negligible. Each project aided by UNESCO could be considerably expanded were funds to become available. The UNESCO Courier, March 1960.

Mahatma Gandhi (India) The schools established after the European pattern were too expensive for the people, and therefore they could not possibly overtake the thing. I defy anybody to fulfil a programme of compulsory primary education of these masses inside of a century. This very poor country of mine is ill able to sustain such an expensive method of education. Our state would revive the old village schoolmaster and dot every village with a school both for boys and girls. Speech given in London, 20 October 1931, (Quoted in Education for All, Innovations, No. 3) Jaime Torres Bodet (Mexico) Director-General of UNESCO from 1948 to 1952 In the world, so long as there are two groups of peoples – the one privileged, supplied with first-class universities, laboratories and libraries, the other backward, for whom even a primary school is a luxury, there can be no true international peace of a just and lasting character. Address to the Second National Conference of the National Commission of the United States of America for UNESCO, April 1949 Luther H. Evans (United States) Director-General of UNESCO from 1953 to 1960 In [developing] countries, radically new thinking about the curriculum is necessary. On the one hand, the curriculum should be related to the prevailing culture and on the other, it should be based on the political, social, economic and health needs of the country. It should at the same time be related to the psychological needs of children growing in a particular environment, and adapted to their abilities and interests. Address to the Eighth session of the General Conference of UNESCO, Montevideo, 1954

                               

FOOTNOTES:

(1) The Constitution only explicitly mentions popular education.

(2) Between 1947 and 1960 ICPE adopted many recommendations on primary education, in respect of both administrative aspects (free materials, canteens, school buildings), and those of an educational nature (teaching reading and writing, sciences, mathematics, hygiene, geography, international understanding, school textbooks and teacher-training). In 1934, the ICPE had already drawn up Recommendation No.1 on compulsory education.

(3) Australia, France and Great Britain on the one hand, Ecuador, Iraq and Thailand on the other. The ILO had prepared a study on working children and compulsory education.

(4) Bombay (1952) for South-East Asia, Cairo (1955) for the Arab States, Lima (1956) for Latin America.

(5) Surveys conducted at the time by expert teams at the request of Member States highlighted needs. In Afghanistan, 10 per cent of boys and less than 0.5 per cent of girls of school age attended school. In India, whose Constitution had fixed 1961 as the year to apply free and compulsory education, there were only enough schools for a quarter of school-age children, and the estimated cost of schooling exceeded the combined total of the federal budget and the budgets of local governments. In Thailand, four-fifths of teachers were unqualified. Enrolment rates in Latin America varied from 20 per cent to 70 per cent according to the State.