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A TIME FOR ACTION
Placing Education at the Core of Development |
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DAKAR, April 27, 2000 - The World Bank here today announced
a "fast track" plan to jumpstart governments into providing
free basic education for all children by the year 2015. World
Bank President James D. Wolfensohn told an international conference
on education that no country with a viable and sustainable plan
for achieving Education for All (EFA) will be unable to implement
it for lack of external resources. |
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"Donors must be ready to respond more quickly and help countries
which are ready to move to meet these goals," he said at the
"World Education Forum"-a follow-up to the 1990 education conference
held in Thailand. |
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"The World Bank has fulfilled its EFA commitments made in Jomtien
in 1990, and subsequently in Beijing in 1995," Wolfensohn said.
The World Bank has doubled its lending for education from US$918.7
million to an average of US$1.9 billion a year. "But we still
have a long way to go. Too many people are still excluded from
education because of poverty, poor policies, and corruption.
Some 125 million children are still out of school, and nearly
1 billion are illiterate-the majority girls and women. |
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| "We
will have to be open in the interim to innovative ideas", he
said, adding that "country ownership and leadership is key to
moving forward. We must place education at the center of development."
As of now, only 3 percent of the global education funding-which
totals about US$120-130 billion--comes from overseas development
assistance, half of which comes from the World Bank. Close to
3/4 comes from governments and around 1/4 from the private sector
and communities. |
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Wolfensohn paid tribute to the efforts of the non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) involved in the Global Campaign for Education.
"They have played an important role in pressing for action especially
on their call for free basic education as a right for all children
up to age 15 by the year 2015. They're contributing to strengthening
partnerships between all players in this most important development
initiative." |
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Further, Wolfensohn added that education is a critical means
of addressing the challenges and opportunities of the technological
revolution. |
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The World Education Forum convened partners from government,
UN agencies, the World Bank, NGOs, and academia to determine
the direction education is to take in the new millennium, both
in their own countries and around the world. |
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