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EFA - Global Monitoring Report 2003/04
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Gender and Education for All
THE LEAP TO EQUALITY
Chapter 5 - From targets to reform: national strategies in action
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A-crowded-class-in-Cambodia.jpgAchieving greater gender equality within and through education will not happen easily. But it is clear that progress is possible and that the benefits will be far-reaching. These are major messages of this year’s report. It is also clear that national policies and reforms designed to achieve all the EFA goals will fail in the absence of strategies to address gender-related inequalities of access, participation and learning and recognition of the gender-differentiated social and economic outcomes in society as a whole. This is just as true for industrialized and transition countries as for South Asia, the Arab States and sub-Saharan Africa, where the challenge of achieving gender equality appears most daunting.

The next two chapters recall some of these issues and revisit the gender dimensions of EFA. However, their main purpose is to offer an analysis of the national policies and reforms that can make a substantial contribution to achieving EFA (Chapter 5) and to assess the extent that international co-operation in education is making a difference (Chapter 6).
Analysis of the policies required to achieve gender equality makes clear that while major changes can be made within education systems, many fundamental changes lie outside the competence of education ministries and institutions. Broader political and social measures have to be taken if the promise of better social services is to be realized.

While governments are responsible for enabling their citizens to benefit from the right to a good education, these functions extend well beyond specific, technical educational responses, important as these are. Ensuring the equitable allocation of resources to education, strengthening public service institutions and engaging in dialogue with civil society are characteristics of broad-based government reform and not of sector strategies alone. Without attention to this broader environment of good governance, education-specific policy levers are likely to fall well short of their intended outcomes. At the same time, good education is itself a powerful force for bringing about the wider social and economic changes on which its own development depends.

It is clear too that the complementarities of basic social services should be exploited more effectively (UNDP, 2003b). This is not a new message, but the nexus of health, education, water and sanitation does need to be seen in a more unified way. A cross-sectoral approach is required if the many positive relationships between basic education, better health and nutrition, safe water and good sanitation are to reap their substantive human benefits. In addition, for many countries, any assessment of policy and its impact on better education that fails to take account of HIV/AIDS and of the effects of conflict on the lives of millions of people, will be seriously limited in its analysis and application (UNESCO, 2002a).

With this as background, seven main areas of analysis follow:
- Patterns of performance – what drives progress?
- Importance of context
- Commitments and time-bound targets
- Evidence of national reform
- Participation – is civil society involved?
- Decentralization – is it making a difference?
- Making primary education affordable.

The chapter concludes with a brief examination of EFA and its policy implications in transition and industrialized countries.


Without attention to good governance, education-specific policy levers are likely to fall well short of their goals.

 
 

 

Executive summary HOME
Chapter     1   
Rights, equality and
Education for All
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Chapter   2   
Towards EFA: assessing
progress
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Chapter   3   
Why are girls still
held back?
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Chapter   4   
Lessons from good
practice
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Chapter   5   
National strategies in action
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  • Patterns of performance - what drives progress?
  • Importance of context
  • Commitments and time-bound targets
  • Evidence of national reform
  • Participation - is civil society involved?
  • Decentralization: is it making a difference?
  • Making primary education affordable
  • EFA in industrialized and transition countries
  • Chapter   6   
    Meeting our international commitments
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    Chapter   7   
    Gendered strategies for EFA
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    Statistics Regional Overviews
    Background Papers

    Acknowledgements Foreword Text Boxes
    References

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