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| Personal
Reflections on the EFA Decade |
| By
Angela W. Little |
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|
 In
April 2000 the World Education Forum will meet in Dakar, Senegal,
to review progress towards the vision for Education for All
(EFA) presented at the Jomtien conference in Thailand in 1990.
My involvement in the EFA process over the past decade has
taken several forms - as researcher, analyst, evaluator, teacher,
conference convenor, practitioner, planner. This article presents
a set of personal reflections on EFA.
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| My
first lesson in what came to be known as EFA was learned some
time before the Jomtien conference itself. It was a lesson about
the role of advocacy in making education happen. At a meeting
convened by UNICEF in New York, James Grant convinced UNESCO,
the World Bank and UNDP that they should jointly mount a fresh
commitment to the achievement of education for all. In contrast
to the previous commitments to Universal Primary Education made
regionally and under UNESCO's mandate, in Addis Ababa, Santiago
and Karachi some thirty years earlier, this commitment would
be global. Significantly it would involve political and financial
commitment from four powerful United Nations agencies. |
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| The
tone of the meeting was upbeat. Buoyed up by UNICEF's successful
immunization programme of the previous decade, Grant was particularly
optimistic about the prospects for EFA. I was surprised by his
confidence. The discourse of global advocacy, finance and policy,
of global targets and of dialogue with Kings and Presidents,
was unfamiliar. And education for all seemed to me to be a very
different proposition from immunization for all. Far removed
from the day to day realities of education in poor countries,
ambitious targets of EFA by the Year 2000 were being discussed
in New York. I felt a little uncomfortable. No one could doubt
the ethical nature of the target. But how realistic were the
vision and the targets for all countries? Where was the analysis
of the conditions that lead, in different contexts, to the achievement
of EFA? Was the problem merely a question of finance? What conditions
needed to be or be put in place to translate the vision of EFA
into reality? And what kind of education, and more especially
what kind of learning, based on whose values and for whose ends?
|
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| Thinking
about implementing EFA |
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| These
questions were to remain with me throughout the decade as I
worked in one way or another for EFA. The goals of United Nations
agencies, and global and regional banks seemed to be remote
from the day to day realities of making EFA happen on the ground.
Convinced that many potentially fruitful discussions between
different stakeholders were being frustrated by an absence of
shared language, I set about some modest building of bridges
of understanding. My particular concern was to open the black
box of learning and educational change for those more comfortable
with questions of the external efficiency and effectiveness
of education. Questions of the contribution of EFA to societal
and economic change and development were related but separable
from questions about the conditions that lead to EFA. And while
acknowledging the indispensable role of educational finance
as one such condition, there seemed to be me to be very many
more of equal if not greater importance. At Jomtien (1)
I proposed a simple scheme to aid non-educationalists to think
about education and learning. Learning for all on the ground
could happen only when students had reasons to learn, when they
and their parents valued the content and outcomes of learning,
and when teachers learned to effectively build bridges between
culturally unfamiliar and familiar knowledge. |
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| Developing
the theme at a conference at the Institute of Development Studies
in Sussex I suggested that international goals and targets might
meet the needs of international financiers who, remote from
the day to day implementation of EFA, needed to understand an
incomprehensible reality.(2)
I suggested further that world declarations can often succeed
in mobilizing international financial resources for national
system-level reform. But whether that reform is matched by changes
in the organization of relationships on the ground, in the classroom,
requires an understanding of local culture by international
and national planners and policy-makers, and access to resources
and professional support by teachers; twin conditions observed
all too seldom. I became even more convinced of the need to
build bridges between the different discourses of the social
sciences, and especially between economists on the one hand
and anthropologists and cultural psychologists on the other.
Culture and Learning,(3)
(edited with Bob Teasedale (and based on the work of our PhD
students), and Education, Cultures and Economics: Dilemmas for
Development,(4) (edited
with Fiona Leach and based on an Institute of Education conference
in 1995), contribute to this end. |
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| Doing
EFA |
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| Meanwhile
I was determined to bring together practitioners who for many
years prior to Jomtien had been striving to achieve many of
the goals embedded in the EFA declaration, especially those
of access to and quality in primary education. Listening to
some officials in development agencies in the early 1990s, one
might have imagined that EFA was a new concept, a new goal of
society, a new objective for development projects. And yet for
years many policymakers and practitioners in different parts
of the globe had been working for this concept within national
policy and programmes and within international projects.
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| The
potential to learn from the experience of implementing EFA was
immense, a fact which led to our Institute of Education conference
in 1991 at which the implementors of six primary education programmes
in five countries reflected on their experiences of conditions
for success and failure. Financial security was indeed a condition
of success but so too were strong educational leaders at the
school and system level. Teachers who understood the home cultures
of their students, teachers who engaged in low-cost materials
production were important.(5)
Micro-systems for planning and monitoring the implementation
of activities also appeared to be critical for the empowerment
of implementors on the ground. I emphasise the term micro-systems
for monitoring, as these were systems developed near the ground
by implementors for implementors(6). |
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| Lying
somewhere between implementation near the ground and EFA targets
set by international agencies are national policy, national
plans and national budgets for EFA. As we approach the end of
the Jomtien decade there are some who feel that the commitments
made by some national leaders to the World Declaration on EFA
were mere lip service. Even policies for EFA are empty political
gestures if not matched by detailed and implementable plans
and budgets for educational access, quality, relevance and efficiency.
Yet planning for EFA requires changes in internal practices
and budgetary procedures that are by no means automatic. To
bring about change in systems to support EFA, a critical mass
of Ministers, permanent secretaries, planners, managers and
accountants need vision, dedication, commitment and hard work.
And in decentralised systems of educational planning and management
these needs are magnified several times over (7,8).
|
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| Analysing
EFA |
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| As
a researcher perhaps the most satisfying reflection over the
past decade has been the systematic analysis of a particular
case of achievement of EFA. |
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| Sri
Lanka is hailed for high standards of education and other aspects
of human and social development, despite rather modest levels
of economic growth. At Jomtien, Sri Lanka's success in achieving
near universal access to free primary education was noted. Less
well known is the part played in this success by the plantation
community. Historically, much of the achievement in EFA in the
country as a whole was underpinned by economic revenues generated
by the labours of the plantation community, a community which
itself benefited little. Yet, even among this community, the
picture has been changing over the past twenty years. Over the
period 1981/2 to 1996/7 the national literacy rate as a percentage
of the population aged 5 and over has increased from 85.4 to
91.8 per cent. Among the plantation community the increase was
from 64.8 to 76.9 per cent; and among plantation females from
52.6 to 67.3 per cent. |
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| Labouring
to Learn: Towards a Political Economy of Plantations, People
and Education in Sri Lanka(9)
analyses the achievement of EFA among the Sri Lankan population
as a whole and among the plantation community in particular.
The impact of Jomtien on progress in the plantation schools
in Sri Lanka in recent years has been slight. Of much greater
importance has been the specific nature of national and local
politics over the past two decades. The broader ethnic crisis
and charismatic leadership of the plantation trade union cum
political party have played an important part in the story of
educational progress and the achievement of EFA. This is not
to say that Jomtien and EFA have played no part. They have provided
an enabling framework for those external agencies that continued
to support the development of schools in the plantations through
the Ministry of Education. Without the finance the Ministry
would have been unable to support development. Without Jomtien
and EFA, external agencies may have been unable to convince
domestic constituencies to support the Ministry over such a
long period of time. |
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| Which
brings us back to New York, Jomtien, advocacy and analysis.
Labouring to Learn demonstrated that in the case of one marginalized
community at least sustained educational progress has depended
on a complex interplay of forces for change - economic, political,
social and cultural - originating at the local, national, regional
and global level. It suggested that the EFA declaration may
have contributed to progress. Advocacy for progress is one of
the factors in the analysis of progress at the national and
sub-national level. At the same time, it would be an error,
in this case, to overplay its influence. A world declaration
may be a necessary tool in the struggle for human progress and
in the mobilisation of international finance. But it is certainly
not sufficient in determining what happens nationally and locally
on the ground.(10) |
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| And
so to Dakar - where a global assessment of progress towards
EFA and a further commitment to EFA will be made. Let those
who participate in this arena review, reflect and commit to
a global ideal. Let them analyse the diversity of conditions
that have made EFA possible in different contexts. And let them
also encourage a diversity of regional, national and local commitments,
targets, plans, strategies and actions. The realization of global
ideals and, more especially, the realization of national and
local ideals require the design and implementation of local
plans. |
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| And
let Dakar encourage a discussion of who 'says' as well who 'pays'
for EFA. In the past, who pays for EFA - as between parents,
communities, organizations, national governments and international
agencies - has tended to exercise many more minds than who 'says'
for EFA. Naturally money becomes the 'bottom-line' question
for those whose job it is to hatch, match and despatch financial
resources for education. But finance is a means to the end of
EFA. Other, and possibly more fundamental, questions are: Who
wants EFA and why? What will be its content and method? How
will it be assessed? Who is planning it? Who is managing it?
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| Angela
W. Little is a professor of education in the University
of London. |
| Please
note that this article was published in the EID Review 99, Educaton
and International Development Group, Institute of Education,
University of London. Website: http://www.ioe.ac.uk/eid
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1 Understanding
Culture: a precondition for effective learning. Roundtable paper
presented at the EFA Conference, Jomtien, 1990, Paris, UNESCO,
pp 73
2 Education and Development: Macro Relationships and Microcultures,
Institute of Development Studies Silver Jubilee Papers, no 4,
Sussex, 1992, pp 24 (ISBN 0 903715 74 0)
3 Culture and Learning (ed. with G.R.Teasedale), Prospects,
Vol XXV, no 4, UNESCO (ISSN 0033 1538)
4 Education, Cultures and Economics: Dilemmas for Development
(ed. with F.E.Leach), New York, Garland Books, 1999, pp 403
(ISBN 0-8153-2783-8)
5 Beyond Jomtien: Implementing Primary Education for All (ed.
with W. Hoppers and R. Gardner) Macmillan, pp 262 (ISBN 0 333
59441 X )
6 Insider Accounts: the monitoring and evaluation of primary
education projects in Sri Lanka, Education Division Monograph
No 65, SIDA, Stockholm (ISSN 0283 0566)
7 Planning Guidelines for the development of medium and long
term provincial education plans, Ministry of Education and Higher
Education/Primary Education Planning Project, Isurupaya, Sri
Lanka, 1999, pp 92 (ISBN 955-8264-00-8)
8 Primary Education Reform in Sri Lanka, Educational Publications
Department, Ministry of Education and Higher Education, Isurupaya,
Sri Lanka, forthcoming, 2000
9 Labouring to Learn: towards a political economy of plantations,
people and education in Sri Lanka, Macmillan Press, 1999, pp
324 (ISBN 0-333-67429-4)
10 Post-Jomtien Models of Educational Development: Analysis
vs Advocacy, Key note address at the Nordic Association of Educational
Researchers in Developing Countries Annual Conference, May 1999,
Vasa, Finland |
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