Education for All > Background Documents > Mid-Decade Meeting 1996 > Press Release UNESCO Director-General Opens Mid-Decade Meeting of the Education for All Forum Amman, 16 June 1996 UNESCO Director-General Federico Mayor today announced that there has been "definite progress in basic education" in the world over the past five years, with 50 million more children attending school today than in 1990. Speaking at the opening session of the International Consultative Forum on Education for All in Amman, Jordan, Mr Mayor said that "despite the economic crises affecting so many of the poorer countries in the 90s, the downward trend of falling enrollments that we witnessed during the 80s has been reversed. The first half of the 1990s has proved to be a period of educational recovery." Convened by UNESCO, UNICEF, the United Nations Development Programme and the World Bank, the meeting was organized to assess what is being achieved by governments following the specific commitments made by 155 governments and various donors at the 1990 World Conference on Education for All (Jomtien, Thailand, 1990). In Jomtien, countries pledged to provide primary education to all children, cut illiteracy before the year 2000, and find new ways to meeting the basic learning needs of all. Mr Mayor, who spoke on behalf of the convenors, said that "for the first time, the number of out-of-school children has decreased from an estimated 128 million in 1990 to 110 million today. This is by far less than the projected figure of 148 million for the end of the year 2000. Other "positive news" concerns early childhood development, where reported enrolments have grown by 20 per cent, now reaching 56 million young children, or one out of five children between 3 and 6 years of age. Despite this positive record, Mr Mayor said that not enough is being done to reach the millions of children still out of school. It is "simply unacceptable", he said that in Africa, for example, the number of out-of-school children in the 6 to 11 year age group totals a staggering 39.3 million - two-thirds of whom are girls. He also called attention to the deteriorating status and working conditions of teachers who work in "overcrowded classrooms, for inadequate pay, which force many of them to take up a second job or leave the profession altogether." He expressed the hope that the 45th session of the International Conference of Education, meeting in Geneva next October, will "help draw international attention to (teachers') deteriorating working conditions, and to help identify solutions." The quality of education in schools is "often of an unacceptably low level, and most developing countries still lack the capacity to monitor learning in the classroom." The major problem that needs to be tackled with determination in the years to come, he said, is that of repetition and drop-out, "which is not only a tremendous waste of public resources, but also a tragic waste of talent and morale among the learners." Gender disparities are still "the main constraint to achieving Education for All, despite the solemn declarations by world leaders to invest in women and girls." Two-thirds of the world's illiterate adults, 565 million, are women, he said. "A society which fails to cater for the education of its daughters handicaps its future." Calling for countries to invest at least 6 per cent of their GNP in education, Mr Mayor said that "the funds exist, it is a matter of priorities". Budgets to education could also be secured through "innovative arrangements to ease the crippling burden of debt. In this area, creditors and debtors "must seek imaginative ways to ease these burdens, and in particular to promote debts swaps for education." Also at the opening ceremony, Acting Prime Minister Abdullah Ensour, speaking on behalf of the King, under whose patronage the meeting is held, said Jordan has made a "qualitative breakthrough" in education. He cited the 1988 Educational Development Conference which plotted the course for education in Jordan into the next century. The emphasis, he said, was on "striking a balance between resources and population, as well as opening up to the human experience and inter-acting with the information and technological revolution." He added that in order to address the educational challenge, "everyone has to work together to co-ordinate among the various governmental departments and non-governmental organizations in every country of the world."