Education
EFA Global Monitoring Report 2010: reaching the marginalized
Economic crisis threatens progress towards Education for All
Authors:
; EFA Global Monitoring Report Team
Publisher:
Education for All, UNESCO, 2010
The aftershock of the global financial crisis threatens to deprive millions of children in the world’s poorest countries of an education, the 2010 Education for All (EFA) Global Monitoring Report warns. With 72 million children still out of school, a combination of slower economic growth, rising poverty and budget pressures could erode the gains of the past decade.
The report assesses global progress towards the six EFA goals to which over 160 countries committed themselves in 2000. It notes the major advances in education over the past decade, a striking contrast with the “lost decade” of the 1990s. Since 1999, the number of children not attending school has fallen by 33 million, and more children are completing a full cycle of primary education.
However, with less than five years to the 2015 target date, the report warns that the window of opportunity for getting on track is closing. Many countries are likely to fall far short of the targets because of the failure of governments to address inequalities and of donors to deliver on pledges. The report’s authors identify sub-Saharan Africa as an area for priority action. With fiscal deficits rising across the region, education spending plans could face painful adjustments.
Extreme and persistent inequalities linked to poverty, gender, ethnicity and language are holding back progress in education, wasting human potential and undermining prosperity. Using a new measurement tool – the Deprivation and Marginalization in Education data set – the report explores the extent of acute disadvantage, using an ‘education poverty’ threshold of four years in school, the minimum required to acquire basic literacy, for young adults in the 17-22 year old age range. The report identifies 22 countries with 30 per cent or more young adults below the four-year threshold, and 11 countries in sub-Saharan Africa that have 50 per cent or more below the threshold.
The report provides a ten-point framework for tackling the challenge posed by marginalisation and accelerating progress towards the EFA goals:
- Set equity-based targets for all of the Education for All goals: governments should also set equity-based targets that focus on the marginalised. These targets could be defined in terms of narrowing disparities based on wealth, gender, language and location
- Develop data collection systems with a focus on disaggregated statistics to identify marginalised groups and monitor their progress: monitoring and measurement should be seen as an integral part of strategies aimed at identifying social groups and regions that are being left behind, raising their visibility and identifying what works in terms of policy intervention
- Identify the drivers of marginalisation for specific groups: poverty, stigmatisation, social discrimination, restricted legal entitlements and weak political representation all play a role – and they combine in different ways in different contexts
- Adopt an integrated policy approach that addresses interlocking causes of disadvantage, within education and beyond: governments need to make achieving greater equity a national policy priority – and they need to communicate the wider social and economic benefits of more inclusive education
- Increase resource mobilisation and strengthen equity in public spending: many governments have increased financing for education since 2000 and given greater priority to basic education. This is a welcome trend, but more needs to be done
- Honour aid donor commitments and convene an Education for All pledging conference: while the performance of individual countries varies, there has been a collective failure on the part of the donor community to back pledges with delivery
- Improve aid effectiveness, with a strengthened focus on equity and conflict-affected countries: donors need to strengthen efforts to implement the Paris agenda on aid effectiveness
- Strengthen the multilateral architecture for aid to education: if the FTI is to have a future, fundamental reform is essential
- Integrate provision by non-government organisations within national education systems: integrating successful interventions by NGOs within national education systems can help achieve a higher level of effectiveness
- Expand the entitlements of the marginalised through political and social mobilisation: marginalisation can only be addressed through processes that empower the marginalised and strengthen their voices in political decision-making.
