Education For All
:: Policy ::
The EI World Congress passed the following resolutions on EI's role and position on the provision of free quality public education for all: "Global Campaign to Defend and Enhance Public Education" (1998), "Education for All and Combating Illiteracy" (1998), "Educating in a Global Economy" (2001), "Partnerships to Achieve Education for All" (2001), Education For Global Progress (2004), Education - Public Service or Commodity?" (2004), "The Right to Teach: The Right to Learn" (2004), "Combatting Mismanagement and Corruption in Education" (2004), "Promoting Quality Education" (2004), "Community Involvement in Education" (2004), "Information and Communication Technologies" (2004).
Education International's policy states clearly that education is a human right, as stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Apart from that, it is a crucial investment in a better future for any economy in the world. It also has some implications on the teaching profession and quality thereof, as teachers have been recognized as inherent and essential to the Education For All (EFA) process.
Two main obstacles stand in the access to education. The first is Gender Inequality, with the world-wide illiteracy rate for women far higher than for men. The second is the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The education sector in countries that are facing widespread illiteracy is now being destroyed by the disease.
Free quality basic education needs to be made compulsory as it is the only solution to combat child labour. Free quality basic education is also a prerequisite for lifelong learning, as people need to develop sufficient literacy skills to be able to participate fully in society. Free quality basic education is the responsibility of a government. Any economic policy that privatizes and reduces public investment in education will marginalize children and adults living in poverty while reducing the quality of public education.
The Declaration of Dakar, calling for Education for All (EFA) by the year 2015, requires a great global effort joining the forces of all governments, the civil Society including non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and education unions, and intergovernmental agencies including the UN with its specialised agencies and programs. Governments should implement the recommendation of the Delors Commission to allocate at least 6% of their GNP to education; Today, two thirds of the governments fail to achieve this level of investment.
EI believes that global problems need global solutions. Several global measures have to be put in place to achieve education for all: the G8 summit proposal to write off the official debts of the least developed countries, with resources thus saved re-allocated to education and health, all UN member states to allocate 0.7% of GDP to development assistance, both IMF's and World Bank's structural adjustment policies that jeopardize the public provision of education must be reformed, and last but not least, national action plans to achieve education for all must be drawn up and implemented in partnership with the civil society, including NGOs and education unions.