Gender and Education for All THE LEAP TO EQUALITY

Chapter 5 - From targets to reform: national strategies in action

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Importance of context The broad relationships set out above are important. But they are limited in their value as predictors of progress unless they are mediated through the particular circumstances of individual countries. For some, the sheer numerical scale of the educational challenge is the defining factor, for others responding to the diversity of their societies is key. Being a small nation-state may limit options, while levels and patterns of poverty circumscribe action in the poorest countries. For an increasing number of states the prevalence of HIV/AIDS and the incidence of conflict will dictate both the policies that are needed and the reforms that are possible.

The challenge of numbers For some countries, the sheer scale of the challenge, in terms of the numbers of people whose educational rights and opportunities are being denied, requires a policy response that is systemic and nationwide. Table 5.1 identifies fifteen countries where more than 1 million children were out of school in 2000. These countries account for about 40% of the global population of out-of-school children and about the same share of the world’s adult illiterates. And this list excludes a number of very large countries for which no data are recorded for 2000, including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, India and Nigeria. Elsewhere, the absolute numbers may not be large by international standards, but those without learning opportunities comprise a very high proportion of the school-age population. Table 5.2 shows seventeen countries (all from the Arab States and sub-Saharan Africa) with a primary-school net enrolment ratio (NER) in 2000 of below 60 (again limited by the fact that NER is unavailable for fifty-two countries worldwide). This table overlaps with Table 5.1 in the case of seven countries: Angola, Ethiopia, Ghana, the Niger, Saudi Arabia, the Sudan and the United Republic of Tanzania. For all these countries and more, piecemeal reform and individual projects will not make the difference. They require a massive expansion of basic education linked to difficult decisions about investment in adult literacy in systems where resources are severely constrained.

The burden of poverty The incidence of absolute poverty relegates education as a personal and family priority, let alone allowing governments to fulfil their educational responsibilities. In Francophone West Africa, poverty is a defining characteristic of life. Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, the Niger, Senegal and Togo are all classified as least developed countries. The Human Poverty Index3 (UNDP, 2003b) ranges from 38.5 for Togo to 61.8 for the Niger and, despite improved economic growth in the 1990s, the gap is widening between those who constitute the 20% poorest and the 20% richest. Climatic instability, a fragile natural resource base, dependence on a small number of exports, the incidence of conflict and the spread of HIV/AIDS is a formidable environment in which to define education policy and make progress towards EFA, although as Table 5.3 shows it was possible during the 1990s to increase the proportion of national expenditure on education in the majority of these countries. Aid dependence is high compared with the average level for the Africa region as a whole, although its per capita level fell in all nine countries during the 1990s. In these circumstances, it is not surprising that the educational indicators of these countries are some of the poorest in the world, as Chapter 2 and the annexes to this report demonstrate. 3. Each year the UNDP Human Development Report explores major issues of global concern, addressing changes in per capita income, human resource development, and basic needs as a measure of human progress, while assessing the role of people in development. UNDP has established three composite indexes: the Human Development Index (HDI), the Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) and the Human Poverty Index (HPI). The latter ranks countries according to their national levels of poverty, illiteracy, unemployment and life expectancy (UNDP, 2003b).

Inclusion: tailoring policies In most of the countries cited above, but also in states with much higher levels of primary-school enrolment and literacy, policies are needed to provide all children with the opportunity to learn. Even in countries where NERs are relatively high (85 and over), context specific solutions are required to meet the needs of those who are difficult to reach by virtue of gender, geography, language, ethnicity, orphanhood, and rural and urban poverty. The incidence of conflict heightens the complexity of the policy response required. The rights of ethnic minorities provide one example. China is confronted with the needs of the least-developed parts of the country, primarily remote rural areas and regions in the west, as well as large migrant communities that have moved into China’s cities (Maher and Ling, 2003). In Viet Nam, in 1998, 82% of ethnic minority children were enrolled in primary school (Viet Nam Poverty Task Force, 2002) compared with 93% for the Kinh majority. In the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, which has 47 officially recognized ethnic groups with 149 sub-groups, a much higher percentage of ethnic minority children have never enrolled in, or attended school, than children who have Lao as their first language (Seel, 2003). The social and economic implications of exclusion also give rise to significant political and educational policy issues in the industrialized world, even when the numbers of people involved are small by world standards. This is an issue which is revisited in the last section of this chapter.

Small states Of the 203 states listed in the annexes to this report, 58 have a population of less than 1.5 million (28.6% of the total); 43 have a population of under 500,000. For many of these countries, primarily in the Caribbean and the South Pacific, EFA policies are constrained by size of population, limiting the ability of governments to offer a complete range of educational opportunities. The implications of out-migration and the intensification of globalization set additional educational challenges for very small societies. Kiribati, (population 83,000) in the South Pacific, has to meet the needs of communities inhabiting islands spread across over 3,500 m2 of ocean (Mackenzie, 2003).