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| From
the Department for International Development |
| UNIVERSAL
PRIMARY EDUCATION:THE KEY TO POVERTY REDUCTION |
| Speech
by the Rt Hon Clare Short, Secretary of State for International
Development |
| World
Education Forum, Dakar, April 27, 2000 |
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| In 1990,
at Jomtien in Thailand, the world set targets for improvements
in education for all. None of these have been fully met. We
meet in Dakar to ensure that we do much better. The focus of
this Forum must be on action. Not setting new targets or issuing
grand declarations, but putting into effect policies that will
deliver on existing international commitments. Above all, this
meeting needs to reaffirm political commitment to the two core
international targets on education - universal primary education
by 2015 and the elimination of gender disparity in primary and
secondary education by 2005. There were a number of other important
education targets set at Jomtien and we should make plans for
better progress on these. But I'm going to focus today on these
two targets - which are the most important of the Jomtien targets
- and suggest how we can make faster progress on providing educational
opportunity to all of the world's children. |
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| This is
not only right in principle; it is also the absolute key to
economic and social progress. If the world's poorest countries
can ensure that all their children, including the girls, get
the opportunity of a good education then massive development
progress is possible. But if they fail - if the world's poorest
people continue to be denied this opportunity - not only will
the terrible poverty of the 1 in 5 of humanity who live in abject
poverty be perpetuated, but the gap between the world's rich
and poor will grow. |
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| The world
is entering a new phase in its economic history. The new technologies
are creating a new knowledge-based economy. If we do not make
very rapid progress in education for those who are excluded,
the poor of the world will be even more marginalised in the
world economy. Capital is now plentiful. The new technologies
can be made available to any country that organises itself in
a way which attracts inward investment. And that investment
will create the possibility of the rapid economic growth essential
to the reduction of poverty. But these benefits will only flow
to the countries that educate their people. Bridging this education
divide, opening up educational opportunity to all - this is
one of the biggest challenges we face in the 21st Century. |
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| I want
to use the limited time available here to set out some priorities
for action - some bottom line commitments against which this
meeting can and should be judged. |
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| First,
this Forum needs to agree a strong commitment by national governments
to the targets of Universal Primary Education and gender equality.
It is not enough to say it; we need to mean it. We know from
the assessments made by Education For All and from other studies
that the single most important requirement for progress on Universal
Primary Education is high-level political commitment in each
country. Where that commitment exists, real progress is possible.
Where it is lacking, progress will be much slower or simply
not happen at all. |
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| One test
of this political commitment is the allocation of adequate resources
to basic and primary education. To make faster progress, governments
must give priority to Universal Primary Education, and provide
the finance for it. |
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| But just
as important is the effectiveness of education spending. We
know that there are real differences of performance - in levels
of primary school enrolment and in the quality of education
provided - between countries which spend similar amounts on
education. Those countries which have been most successful in
boosting enrolment, in retaining children in school and in improving
quality are those that have put in place reforms that deliver
quality and include all children. |
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| The crucial
shift is towards a focus on learning outcomes - on the quality
and relevance of the education that children receive and the
educational achievements they attain. That means the development
of committed and well-motivated teachers, the provision of appropriate
curricula and educational materials, the involvement of parents
and wider civil society and the appropriate use of technology.
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| Let me
just say a few words about civil society and about the role
of technology. In education, as in development more generally,
an active civil society has a crucial part to play - in keeping
governments to their commitments, in speaking out on issues
of quality and equity, and in urging faster progress. Without
the voices of civil society - and the most important part are
the community groups closest to the people - the education targets
are unlikely to be reached; and they certainly won't be sustained. |
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| There has
also been considerable discussion about the role of technology
- and rightly so. There is a real danger of a new divide, with
much of Africa and south Asia having little access to the new
technologies that are transforming the world. I believe we must
find urgent ways of bridging this gap. Last month, the British
Prime Minister, Tony Blair, outlined an initiative for using
the new information and communications technologies - starting
in Africa - to accelerate the education and training of teachers,
and to improve the quality of teaching. This could help us deliver
quality primary education and also create an enhanced higher
education capacity, with growing numbers familiar with and having
access to information technology. We will be taking this initiative
forward in discussion with governments and others over the next
year. |
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| Second,
this Forum needs to recognise that educational objectives cannot
be pursued or achieved in isolation. Education and skills are
the commanding heights of a modern economy. That means placing
them at the very centre of a government's economic and development
strategy. A high-quality, equitable education system depends,
above all, on good economic policy that generates the growth
necessary to fund and sustain that system. This economic growth
depends in turn on an expansion of educational opportunities.
But this approach to education also means addressing the barriers
that impede the educational development of the poor and recognising
the links between education and other areas of policy. |
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| The biggest
barrier is poverty itself. In most countries with the worst
education indicators, most children - particularly girls - from
the poorest households have no schooling. And of the children
who do enrol, it is overwhelmingly the poor, especially girls,
who drop out of school. Many education systems impose costs
of access - school fees and the requirement for school uniforms
- which are a further barrier to education for the poorest.
And, of course, many children have to work to supplement the
meagre incomes of their families. |
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| A policy
for improving the educational opportunities of the poor needs
to address these issues together, to reduce the direct and indirect
costs that make education prohibitively expensive for them,
and to enhance the income levels of parents so that they are
no longer so dependent on the work of their children. |
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| The other
great barrier to educational progress is poor health. Inadequate
diet, malnourishment, lack of clean drinking water - these are
all major barriers to learning and educational progress. But
the greatest challenge is HIV/AIDS, which is threatening to
overturn the progress in education enrolments reported to this
Forum. Unless governments take stronger action to address this
challenge, the education and development gains we have made
will be lost and further progress jeopardised. |
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| Third,
this meeting needs to send a clear signal that the international
community will back meaningful reform. It is vital that the
Framework for Action that we will launch tomorrow makes clear
that funding agencies will allocate significant additional resources
to support primary and basic education, where governments are
committed to this objective and have put in place the appropriate
policies to deliver on it. Too much of development assistance
still goes to support higher education - often educating the
sons and daughters of the elite at the expense of the poorest.
This needs to change. |
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| The British
Government has committed an additional £300 million to basic
education in the last three years. And we have focused most
of these resources in the poorest countries in sub-Saharan Africa
and south Asia - the regions with the worst education indicators.
We intend to do more. |
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| This session
is devoted to resources. I am clear that we should support with
the necessary resources any government that is committed to
Universal Primary Education. But I do not support a call for
new separate funds for education, new conditionality or a new
set of education objectives. |
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| Progress
on education must go together with progress on other essential
development objectives. I believe that the key to this is the
Poverty Reduction Strategy process, agreed at last year's annual
meeting of the World Bank and the IMF. This was strongly supported
by many developing countries because at last the Washington
institutions have recognised that developing country governments
and their people must lead their own development. Countries
are invited to design their own Poverty Reduction Strategy,
setting out the steps they are going to take to make progress
on the international development targets, including those for
education. |
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| In the
first instance, this applies to countries qualifying for debt
relief under the revised HIPC initiative. However, it is agreed
that ultimately all development resources from the World Bank
and the Fund should be allocated in support a nationally-agreed,
nationally-led poverty reduction strategy. |
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| Obviously
support for basic education would be a key component of these
strategies in every country. And where governments have good
policies, especially on education, then funding must be made
available. |
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| At the
same time, funding agencies need to spend those resources in
new ways. Not supporting a multitude of isolated education projects
which crumble when external funding comes to an end, but working
with governments - helping them to deliver high-quality education
for all their children and to do so sustainably into the future. |
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| Fourth,
I hope that this meeting will agree that we need to make much
faster progress in improving educational opportunities for girls.
Not just saying it, but meaning it - and setting out the practical
steps we can take to do this. |
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| This is
an issue of entrenched inequity in education systems. The denial
of educational opportunity to any child is a violation of their
human rights, but for girls in particular it is also profoundly
damaging to development. The evidence is now beyond dispute.
Educating girls, even just to primary level, is the most effective
development intervention any country can make. I welcome the
fact that Kofi Annan has singled out this issue as a major priority.
He is right to do so. But it is important that this commitment
to girls education is fully integrated into national education
and development strategies. |
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| Fifth,
we need to give much greater priority to educational statistics.
If we are serious about measuring progress against the education
targets then we need to have confidence that the figures we
use are accurate. All too often they are not. |
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| The Education
for All 2000 assessment therefore represents a very important
advance. It has provided us with the richest store of information
on basic education that the world has ever gathered. It is vital
that we put this resource to good use. Good statistics can help
promote evidence-based policy making, by telling us what works
in education, and what doesn't. They also allow us to make comparisons
between the performance of countries - why some countries are
doing better on girls' education than others - and how we share
these lessons. |
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| But we
also need to build up national and international capacity to
produce and use statistics. Over time, every country should
have the capacity to produce its own data on education, to assess
and monitor its own progress. I believe that investing in statistical
capacity should be a priority for governments and for funding
agencies. At the international level, too, we need to do better
at producing and using data. I believe that the new UNESCO Institute
of Statistics has an important role to play here - in building
capacity, analysing data and contributing to the development
of effective development strategies. |
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| This
takes me to priority number six - the need to use this Forum
to drive this agenda forward. |
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| I believe
we must now move away from these large-scale forums which only
take place every five or ten years. Such gaps are too large
to permit us to drive forward progress effectively. Whatever
mechanisms for follow-up to Dakar are agreed this week, we must
make sure that they do the following: support countries' own
data-gathering to monitor their own progress; give added strength
to regional structures so that they can aggregate data across
countries; and regularly feed into international statistical
analyses like the current Education for All assessment. |
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| But this
must be done routinely and regularly. This information is gathered
annually by government systems; it should be also published
yearly. That way we can all see where the constraints and sticking
points lie, and adapt our policy responses accordingly. |
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| The new
post-Dakar machinery should also promote the ideals of Education
for All in all relevant international meetings, ensuring that
universal primary education remains at the top of the development
agenda. And it should foster co-operation between the key institutions
and help them to work together to achieve the international
development targets. |
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| Conclusion |
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| These are
the British Government's priorities. Other speakers have outlined
theirs. I believe that we need to agree on a core set of objectives
at this meeting, and then get on with the business of implementing
them. The challenge is a huge one. But the prize is very great.
We are the first generation in the whole of human history that
has the chance to eradicate basic illiteracy from the human
condition. And we can do this within fifteen years. Let's resolve
today - together - that we will do what needs to be done to
make this happen. Press Enquiries: 0207 917 0533 Public Enquiries:
0845 3004100 |
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