| |
| World
Education Forum, April 2000 |
| |
 The
culmination of the global EFA 2000 Assessment, the World Education
Forum, will take place in Dakar, Senegal, 26 to 28 April 2000.
The world community will gather to examine the results of this
ambitious exercise and frame a new action plan for education
in the twenty-first century. |
| |
| The
World Education Forum will draw its inspiration and momentum
essentially from the presence of political leaders, key multilateral
agencies and bilateral donors, as well as representatives of
business corporations and international media. Kofi Annan has
been invited to give the keynote address, and the heads of the
Forum's five convening agencies (UNDP, UNESCO, UNFPA, UNICEF
and the World Bank) will attend. The Forum will build on the
input from country EFA reports and regional EFA meetings held
prior to the conference. |
| |
| EFA
Drafting group to propose new action plan |
| |
| The
EFA Forum Secretariat has established an EFA drafting committee
to come up with a proposal for a new action plan for education
in the twenty-first century. At its first meeting in London
in the beginning of September the committee agreed that a new
action plan should be more specific and more action-oriented,
and should present clear commitments from the international
community. |
| |
| The
committee proposes to include the following themes in a new
plan: early childhood education, universal primary education,
youth and adult literacy, the gender gap and the quality of
education. Cross-cutting issues such as mobilization of human
and financial resources, new information technologies, good
governance and teachers will also be part of the proposal.
|
| |
| The
draft action plan will be presented to the EFA Forum Steering
Committee at its next meeting in Paris (4-5 October 1999). Members
of the committee are: UNDP, UNESCO, UNFPA, UNICEF, the World
Bank, SIDA, DFID, and the Dutch Development Co-operation, as
well as representatives from the South and non-governmental
organizations. |
| |
| Final
countdown |
| |
| The
deadline for country EFA reports is approaching. In the coming
weeks, the some 180 countries participating in the global EFA
2000 Assessment of progress made in basic education in the 1990s
are expected to submit their national reports. The reports will
analyse the problems encountered, the areas in which progress
has been registered, and the human and financial resources needed
to achieve basic education for all. |
| |
| In
the past months, ten regional technical advisory groups (RTAGs)
have organized fifteen technical workshops and reviewed seventy-six
draft reports. In some regions such as East Asia and the Pacific,
RTAGs have employed consultants specifically to assist the national
EFA assessment teams to improve the quality of the drafts. In
other regions, RTAGs have contacted UNESCO's new Institute for
Statistics for assistance in reviewing the statistical data
from the countries. |
| |
| All
national reports should be sent to the nearest RTAG and
to the EFA Forum Secretariat, both as hard copy and electronically.
UNESCO's new Institute for Statistics will also receive a copy
for reference. Based on the reports, consultants will write
regional synthesis reports, which will be presented and discussed
at the up-coming regional EFA meetings. All national reports
will be available on a CD-ROM and on the EFA Forum web site
prior to the World Education Forum in Dakar, Senegal, next April. |
| |
| Regional
EFA meetings |
| |
| 1-3
December 1999: The E9 Meeting in Recife, Brazil, organized
jointly with the UNESCO/OECD World Education Indicators project.
|
| |
| 6-10
December 1999: The All-African Conference in Johannesburg, South
Africa, organized back to back with the biennial conference
of the Association for Development of Education in Africa (ADEA)
. |
| |
| 17-20
January 2000: Regional EFA Meeting for Asia and the Pacific
in Bangkok, Thailand. |
| |
| 24-27
January 2000: Regional EFA Meeting for the Arab States and North
Africa in Cairo, Egypt. |
| |
| Early
February 2000 (exact dates to be communicated shortly).
|
| |
| Regional
EFA Meeting for Europe and North America in Warsaw, Poland.
. |
| |
| Regional
EFA Meeting for Latin America and Caribbean in Santo Domingo,
the Dominican Republic. |
| |
| In
addition, a sub-regional meeting on EFA in the Caribbean will
take place in Kingston, Jamaica, from 6 to 10 December 1999.
|
| |
| The
RTAGs are in charge of organizing and mobilizing financial resources
for the regional EFA meetings. It has been decided that the
agenda, while not limiting itself to the following items, should
review statistical evidence from country reports on educational
development since 1990; look at challenges in the years to come,
including economic, social, demographic, environmental etc issues;
and formulate educational priorities and strategies. The meetings
will also discuss issues of special interest and matters relevant
to local socio/political and economic circumstances. |
| |
| The
regional meetings will serve as a major input to the World Education
Forum in Dakar next April and will discuss a draft action plan
for education in the twenty-first century. Moreover, it is hoped
that the meetings will accelerate the Education for All process
in each region. |
| |
| Thematic
studies |
| |
| Most
of the fourteen thematic studies on educational issues of global
concern are now in a stage of early draft and some of the organizing
agencies (mostly multilateral and bilateral donor agencies)
will call for review meetings of the drafts. The studies will
be presented at the regional EFA meetings and will probably
be discussed during specific roundtables. |
| |
| Up-coming
EFA 2000 analyses the EFA 2000 Assessment |
| |
| The
October issue of EFA 2000, the global newsletter on Education
for All, analyses the global EFA 2000 Assessment process. It
gives an overview of the impressive amount of Assessment activities
undertaken at national, regional and global level in the past
year. It also includes an opinion article by Denise Lievesley,
the director of UNESCO's newly established Institute for Statistics.
The issue will be available online at http://www.education.unesco.org/efa/05EFAbul.htm
as of 10 October 1999. |
| |
| Media
mobilization in Asia |
| |
| As
part of the EFA Forum’s advocacy strategy for basic education,
a workshop for Asian education journalists was organized in
co-operation with the Asian Media Information and Communication
Centre (AMIC), Singapore, in Calcutta, India. Participants from
the major English-language newspapers and press agencies from
India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand and
Malaysia were invited to talk about the importance of quality
reporting on education. They were also briefed on the EFA 2000
Assessment activities. A newsletter, EDUSEARCH, was written
and printed during the workshop and the participating journalists
decided to create a network of education journalists in South-East
Asia. The network will be co-ordinated by Manesh Shresta, Himal
Association, Nepal. |
| |
| New
literacy initiative launched |
| |
| The
Education for All Forum, along with the World Association of
Newspapers and UNESCO, recently launched a new worldwide literacy
initiative that will ask young people "What if there were nothing
to read?". |
| |
| "We
hope to persuade hundreds of newspapers across the world to
co-operate with this project and to address their young readers,
both directly through their own columns and through their established
links with teachers and schools," said the WAN Director General,
Timothy Balding, at a UNESCO ceremony marking International
Literacy Day on 8 September 1999. |
| |
| The
Paris-based WAN, which represents 17,000 daily newspapers in
93 countries, will ask newspapers to print the question and
encourage children to respond, as well as to pursue the project
in schools through their Newspapers in Education programmes.
|
| |
| The
EFA Forum, UNESCO and WAN will present the results of the survey
at the World Education Forum in April 2000. "The hope is that
the survey will give the world community a chance to better
understand the importance of literacy in young people's lives,"
said Svein Osttveit, Executive Secretary of the EFA Forum.
|
| |
| Joint
letter to the editor in the Financial Times |
| |
| On
the occasion of International Literacy Day (8 September 1999)
the Financial Times published a letter to the editor signed
by the heads of the EFA Forum's five convening agencies. The
letter, entitled 'Investment in Education Funds the Future',
draws attention to the urgent need for the private sector to
invest in a literate world. "We call on the corporate sector
to undertake the deliberate act of educational sponsorship,"
the convenors state. |
| |
| Staff
members of the EFA Forum Secretariat: |
| |
Executive
Secretary:
Svein Osttveit
Deputy Executive Secretaries:
Ulrika Peppler Barry
Information Officer:
Anne Müller
Secretary:
Mary Konin |
| |
Assessment
co-ordination:
Warren Mellor (country assessment)
Vinayagum Chinapah (special surveys) |
| |
 |
| |
The Education
for All Newsflash is published by the Secretariat of the International
Consultative Forum on Education for All (EFA Forum). It is a
special information service for professionals involved in the
worldwide EFA 2000 Assessment (1998-2000). The assessment is
a major activity in the follow-up of the 1990 World Conference
on Education for All.
Editor: Anne Müller
Contact: The EFA Forum Secretariat, UNESCO, 7, Place de Fontenoy,
75352 Paris 07 SP, France.
Fax: (33) 1 4568 5629; E-mail: efa@unesco.org
Internet homepage: http://www.education.unesco.org/efa
|
| |
