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| Overcoming
hurdles to Education for All in Asia and the Pacific
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 Bangkok,
18 January 2000 (EFA Forum) - More than 400 education ministers,
experts and non-governmental organizations from 41 Asia-Pacific
countries today looked at educational progress in the region
and considered ways of moving faster towards the goals of Education
For All in the 21st century. |
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| "The
data we have should not just reside in a report. They must be
used in planning," Ken Vine, education specialist and Asian
Development Bank consultant told the second day of the Asia-Pacific
Conference on EFA 2000 Assessment where subregional and national
reports revealed the range of challenges before the region.
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| The
17 to 20 January 2000 conference is jointly organized by the
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization
(UNESCO), the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), the United
Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP), the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank
(ADB) and the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the
Pacific (ESCAP). |
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| East
and South-east Asia |
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| Despite
"remarkable" progress in education in the last decade, the challenge
now is to find ways to reach the unreached, the participants
said. |
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| The
region must look at the gender and geographical disparities
exposed in country reports and use them to pinpoint other priorities.
"The priority seems to be ensuring access for the excluded,
especially in primary education," said Lourdes de Veyra of the
Philippines. |
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| Another
priority is slashing dropouts and repetition rates. "We're getting
children into school but they're not staying in school," Mr
Vine said. |
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| The
immediate challenge for Thailand and Indonesia is to repair
some of the damage caused by the economic crisis in recent years,
officials from these countries said. "Maybe one generation will
be lost because of the crisis," Dr Indra Djati of the Department
of National Education in Indonesia said. She empasized the role
of "social safety nets" such as scholarships for poor students.
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| South
and West Asia |
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| Home
to half of the world's illiterate population, the education
scene here presents a grim picture. The biggest problem areas
are the overpopulated nations of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh
where high levels of female illiteracy, low incomes, geography
and social biases continue to hobble efforts towards reducing
disparities -- urban and rural, boys and girls, rich and poor. |
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| South
and West Asia has the lowest net enrolment ratio and the largest
number of children not completing Grade 5. "The situation may
appear depressing'', said Prof. J. Tilak of India's National
Institute of Educational Planning and Administration. However,
there is a glimmer of hope in the "educational resurgence" being
witnessed everywhere; in the "wholehearted concern'' countries
have been showing for education, but most of all, in the growing
public demand for education, he pointed out. |
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| Economic
constraints, population growth, ensuring quality and tackling
inequalities within and among countries continue to be the major
challenges for the region, which he described as "an anti-education
society in the midst of a pro-education culture." |
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| Central
Asia |
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| Dramatic
changes in the region in the 1990s have challenged education
systems here which made the EFA 2000 review "a painful exercise",
according to Jorge Sequeira, Director of UNESCO's office in
Almaty. "There is a growing recognition of the decline in education
services due to the economic crunch in Central Asia," he said.
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| Public
expenditures on education and health in the region's nine countries
have plunged to as low as one-fourth of Soviet era levels. Pre-school
enrolment has halved. Although the region universalized primary
education long before the World Conference on Education for
All in Jomtien in 1990, the quality of schooling has been hit
by dwindling budgets. "Today, less money is available for maintenance,
in-service training of teachers and learning materials," he
said, pointing out that in many countries, teachers are paid
late or even not at all. |
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| The
session highlighted the need for management reforms and effective
evaluation measures. For example, there is little information
on primary school attendance. |
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| The
Pacific |
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| Scattered
across millions of square kilometres of ocean, Pacific nations
will have to use information technology to take education to
every household in the remote islands, education ministers and
officials said at the sub-regional roundtable. |
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| "We
need to harness the new technology because classrooms are very
expensive and the cost of the new technology appears to be declining,"
the Education Minister of Papua New Guinea, Professor John Waiko.
"It is very important that we should not be inhibited by the
new technology," he emphasised, asserting that new communication
tools like the Internet can make "absolutely certain" that no
one in the Pacific is deprived of an education. |
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| A
review of regional achievements shows that while the Pacific
nations are spending a much higher proportion of their national
incomes on education compared to Asian and African nations,
much more needs to be done. Retention levels are still not satisfactory
with many students still not staying the full course. "In countries
where enrolments rise steeply, survival rates tend to drop,"
said an expert. |
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| Coming
in for praise was the "huge" role of communities and non-governmental
organizations in basic education, specially in Fiji. Creating
"new space for civil society engagement in education" is one
of the goals that are expected to be set by the World Education
Forum to be held in Dakar in Senegal, from 26 to 28 April. The
Bangkok conference is one of six regional conferences taking
place across the world in the run up to the Dakar conference
that is expected to agree on the agenda for basic education
in the 21st century. |
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contact:
Press Room of the Asia-Pacific EFA 2000 Conference
Imperial Queen's Park Hotel, Sukhumvit, Bangkok
Tel: 2619000 Extn: 5024. *
E-mail: efa2000@unesco-proap.org
For further information on the conference please visit our
web sites:
http://www.education.unesco.org/efa
http://www.unescobkk.org
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