Gender and Education for All THE LEAP TO EQUALITY

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

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EFA in industrialized and transition countries The EFA Report accords priority to those countries where the challenge of achieving EFA is greatest. This is in accordance with the Dakar Framework for Action, which recognizes the pressing challenges and needs of sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, other countries among the international category of least developed countries, and those nations beset by conflict. The overall assessment of progress towards EFA in Chapter 2 confirms the validity of the Dakar diagnosis. However, this is not to suggest that the Dakar Framework for Action excludes industrialized and transition countries from the need to attain EFA goals and to contribute to post-Dakar activities and processes within their own borders. As Chapter 2 demonstrates, the situation in some transition countries is not significantly better than that in some developing regions. Furthermore in industrialized countries no one would claim that current education provision meets the needs of all groups in society. This section explores how the EFA challenge is understood in a sample of industrialized and transition countries and compares their policy agendas against the EFA goals.

Industrialized countries The terminology of ‘industrialized’ and ‘developing’ countries has many conceptual weaknesses. But it is kept to here to distinguish those countries with high per capita incomes from the rest. Their education indicators at the macro level are well in advance of other groups in terms of enrolment at all levels of the formal system (Statistical annex, Tables 3–7) and of learning outcomes for young people and adults (UNESCO Institute for Statistics/OECD, 2003b; OECD/Statistics Canada, 2000). Very few industrialized countries set their own education policies in terms of Education for All, and only a small minority have produced an EFA plan. The latter include the Nordic countries (Denmark, 2003; Finland, 2002; Iceland, 2002; Norway, 2002; Sweden, 2002). In the United Kingdom, the National Commission for UNESCO has produced a report on the national and international implications of EFA (UK National Commission for UNESCO, 2003). The Norwegian EFA Plan illustrates the way in which some industrialized countries have interpreted the Dakar Framework for Action. It develops an inventory of the challenge that the Dakar agenda represents in the Norwegian context. It concludes that while a distinctive set of EFA-related issues remains to be addressed in Norway, ‘the Norwegian school system is of a high standard in international terms, and these unresolved problems are small in comparison with the challenges in the field of aid and development. Seen from a Norwegian perspective, international development work is therefore the most important focus of EFA’ (Norway, 2002). Norway is typical of most industrialized countries that follow the agenda set in Dakar primarily through their development ministries and agencies rather than through their ministries of education. The Nordic countries recognize that while they may have achieved UPE and gender parity in primary and secondary education, the other goals are less clearly defined and are ‘based on a different logic and are more challenging and future-oriented’ (Denmark, 2003). The Danish EFA plan pinpoints two major trends in education policy development: decentralization and internationalization. From the 1940s to the beginning of the 1970s, new policies were developed at the central level and implemented in a top-down manner. Thereafter, there was greater space for innovation at local level, which became the driving force for change. There is now what is described as a process of governed co-operation, whereby the role of government is to see that there is a continuous and ordered process of negotiation and improvement. At the same time there has been a growing international dimension to education policy and reform. Denmark is a member of UNESCO, OECD, the European Union, the Council of Europe and the Nordic Council of Ministers. Each of these bodies is seen and used by the country ‘as a background of theory, concepts and ideas for a never-ceasing debate on international issues’ (Denmark, 2003). Denmark, like other members of the European Union, participates in the open method of co-ordination, also known as the Lisbon process. This is an activity that selects indicators to compare the educational performance of member states and helps to identify good practice (see Box 5.4). Benchmarks serve to challenge and stimulate those with relatively poor performance. But the Danish EFA plan continues to emphasise the responsibility of member states for the content and structure of their own national education systems (Denmark, 2003). The example of Denmark suggests national policy development being driven by a democratic process of decentralization and inspired by the international context. The Dakar Framework for Action is seen as one of the elements of this. Those few countries that have developed an EFA document appear to have done so with the following objectives in mind: - To improve the domestic education system by reviewing it along the lines of the Dakar goals. In this light, the Nordic countries have exchanged their EFA plans and produced a synthesis document (Nordic Council, 2003). The UK National Commission for UNESCO has organized six national conferences, one for each of the goals. Baltic Sea countries (and observers from the United Kingdom and Belarus) met in Riga in January 2002 (UNESCO 2002a, Box 5.1.) - To be accountable to the world community for the commitment to meet the Dakar goals, again regarding the domestic education system (Nordic EFA plans). - To enhance understanding and awareness of the challenges facing the global community, especially less-developed countries (UK National Commission for UNESCO). - To identify ways in which poor and rich countries can learn from one another’s experience. The report of the UK National Commission for UNESCO identifies the ‘commonalities and contrasts’ between developing countries and the United Kingdom for each of the Dakar goals. It follows that the Nordic and British documents are not action plans. They serve the objectives of review, accountability, awareness-raising and mutual learning, but they do not contain new, financially underpinned commitments to specific short-term action. The United Kingdom National Commission for UNESCO’s report, moreover, is not an official government statement but a public initiative. Fighting polarization and exclusion In the examination of their own national circumstances, the emphasis in the Nordic and British documents is, in the words of the Norwegian plan, on ‘approaches to problems associated with, amongst others, the mentally/physically disabled, minority groups and people with reduced literacy levels’ (Norway, 2002). While the Nordic countries have well-developed and well-resourced education systems in which a majority reach very high levels of competence (OECD/Statistics Canada, 2000), and while educational achievement in the United Kingdom has improved markedly in recent years, there are serious concerns in all these countries for those who do not yet benefit fully from the learning opportunities on offer. More broadly, the American No Child Left Behind policy and the European Union benchmarks regarding school drop-out and basic skills reflect the same concerns for those at risk of exclusion, as shown earlier in this chapter. The Finnish EFA document captures this: ‘Civilization belongs to all. A genuine information society is within the reach of every citizen. Development must not lead to polarization and exclusion’ (Finland, 2002). In the United Kingdom, increased competitiveness between schools is seen as giving rise to tensions between performance and inclusion. There is also a worry that ‘the 3Rs (reading, writing, arithmetic) may squeeze out creative subjects, that examinable subjects will displace other parts of the curriculum, and that the child’s personal development may be sacrificed to the goal of acquiring information’ (UK National Commission for UNESCO, 2003). In this light, ECCE (the first of the Dakar goals) is regarded as playing ‘an important part in levelling out social and learning disparities’, as the Finnish plan puts it (Finland, 2002). Yet, enrolment disparities persist. In Norway, 63% of all children between the ages of 3 and 5 are enrolled, but among minorities the figure is 30%. In the United Kingdom, ECCE has recently been an area of massive expansion with an initial focus on the urban poor. In 2004 there will be free nursery education for all children from age 3. The second goal, UPE, has generally been achieved in all countries. But truancy and drop-out do occur and there is a particular challenge in reaching refugees, asylum seekers and travelling populations. The language of instruction is becoming an issue. The Finnish and Swedish documents indicate that minority children have the right to be taught in their original language, and in Finnish or Swedish as a second language (Finland, 2002; Sweden, 2002). Some other industrialized countries see a dilemma: if education fully respects the languages and cultures of ethnic minorities, this can, in principle, hinder the integration of the children into their home societies in the long term. Free education is also a point of discussion among industrialized countries. In the Nordic countries, this adage is generally understood literally. There are little or no costs involved in schooling, transportation and school meals. A more demanding interpretation is that free education can be regarded as being achieved when a country’s social and income policy (child benefits, student support, social security, minimum wages) is such that any family is guaranteed to be able to afford the costs involved with schooling. This is a medium-term objective in all the countries. Bridges towards a job Goals 3 and 4, meeting the learning needs of young people and adults, represent a special challenge to industrialized countries. On the one hand, there is a tendency towards universal upper secondary education (see Box 5.4), while more than half of the age cohort pursues tertiary education. On the other hand, if an individual does not complete upper secondary education in a country where almost everybody else does, this becomes a strong disadvantage in a comparative sense. Where such disadvantages are concentrated in specific groups, they affect the social fabric. Furthermore, this overall rise of educational attainment encourages people to maximize their stay in education, in order not to fall behind in the increasingly competitive labour market. Thus, young people tend to prefer theoretical pathways that qualify them for further study, rather than vocational ones. This trend poses problems for individuals who have a more practical learning style and are weaker in cognitive learning (OECD, 2000). Half a century of gender parity does not necessarily result in gender equality. In the education sectors of Nordic countries, around 70% of workers in the lower ranks are female. In all industrialized countries there is a group of people for whom the regular education system does not provide the opportunities that fit their learning styles and needs. The International Adult Literacy Study (OECD/Statistics Canada, 2000) suggests that this group ranges from 10%–20% of the population in most industrialized countries. This represents an important message for all countries aiming to reach and serve the ‘last 10%–20%’ of their populations. Innovative policies are needed to address this group. Sweden, the United Kingdom and other countries are experimenting with Individual Learning Accounts. These ensure the right to learn regardless of age, time, place and provider, and encourage the learner to save for this purpose. Earlier, the United Kingdom pioneered the development of National Vocational Qualifications and Accreditation of Prior Learning. The former aim at making vocational pathways more transparent, flexible and hence more attractive. The latter policy allows individuals to make better use of the competencies they have acquired informally in the workplace or in daily life. Guidance and counselling – in relation to both education and the labour market – are crucial to this policy. Lifelong learning strategies are increasingly harmonized at EU level (Colardyn, 2002). Learning at work also takes place in apprenticeship systems. Several European countries have retained these, while the United Kingdom and Sweden have (re)introduced them (OECD, 2000). The innovative Production Schools in Denmark (Denmark, 2003) and the Study and Working Life Centres in Sweden (OECD, 1999) bring workplace learning into the school itself. The Norwegian Competence Reform is a framework that encompasses a number of the policies just mentioned. It also implies the right of any individual to complete upper secondary education and thus to acquire access to tertiary education. Segregated workplaces In relation to Dakar Goal 5, an important message is conveyed by the Nordic and British documents: half a century of gender parity does not necessarily result in gender equality. The Finnish document, for example, states that the ‘last restrictions on women’s university studies were removed in the early 1900s, and already in the 1950s about half of university student were women’ (Finland, 2002). Today more women than men attend higher education in the whole OECD area (OECD, 2001a; OECD-DAC, 2003). In fact, the learning achievement of girls is markedly better than that of boys, as all the documents underline, while the British document even speaks of a ‘crisis in male identity’ (UK National Commission for UNESCO, 2003). But at the same time, strong disparities persist in the choices that women and men make when enrolling in higher education and, earlier, when deciding which subjects and pathways to follow in secondary education (see Chapter 2). As a result, women tend to have less favourable career prospects than men. The Norwegian document states that the country has ‘one of the most gender segregated workplaces in the whole of the OECD’ (Norway, 2002). In the education sectors of Nordic countries, around 70% of workers in the lower ranks are female. At higher levels of education and among education managers this proportion is much lower. The policy responses of the countries include a campaign to recruit more male candidates for teacher training, a network for men working in schools and in teacher training (Norway), and gender-sensitive reviews of curriculum and content in Sweden and Iceland. One of the EU targets for 2015 is to raise the number of graduates in mathematics, science and technology, mainly by making these studies more attractive to young women.

Patterns of achievement A strong commitment to the quality of education (EFA Goal 6) is illustrated by the exceptionally high levels of expenditure on education (as a percentage of GDP) in Denmark, Norway, Iceland and Sweden. More moderate levels are found in Finland and the United Kingdom, while in all these countries the share of private contributions to education is relatively small (OECD, 2001a). In recent surveys that measure learning achievement (UNESCO Institute for Statistics/OECD, 2003b; Mullis et al., 2003), Finland and Sweden tend to perform very well, the United Kingdom being a runner-up. Norway and Denmark seem to lag behind, despite their high levels of expenditure. However, when measuring the competences of adults, the performance of Denmark and Norway is as excellent as that of Sweden and Finland (OECD/Statistics Canada, 2000). One explanation is that young people in Norway and Denmark ‘catch up’ thanks to the generous provision of learning opportunities for adults. Another is that the pedagogies aim at laying the foundation for a life of learning, rather than at the mastery of subject matter at an early age. In either case, the examples of Denmark and Norway question the adequacy of assessments during school age. Nevertheless, disparities in educational achievement appear to persist. Norway addresses these in a broad and coherent approach, consisting of a scheme of grants to encourage, reward and highlight good practice within schools; a ‘Quality Portal’ to help schools in more systematic analysis of data about education quality; and local trial projects to stimulate schools to benefit more from deregulation and decentralization. The major efforts that the United States and the United Kingdom undertake in this respect have been discussed earlier in this chapter.

Transition countries – combating decline The term ‘transition country’ applies to countries moving from planned to market economies, in Europe and in Asia. In education they are broadly characterized by the need to combat the tendency to decline. Primary NERs fell between 1990 and 2000 by a few percentage points in Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Mongolia and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and they fell quite sharply in Kyrgyzstan, Serbia and Montenegro and Slovenia (Statistical annex, Table 5). In the Republic of Moldova and Azerbaijan, primary GERs declined markedly. Pre-primary education seems even more vulnerable to crisis: GER declined between 1990 and 2000 by more than 10 percentage points in Albania, Bulgaria and Hungary, while it collapsed from 72.7 to 34.9 in the Republic of Moldova (Statistical annex, Table 3). In Europe, the transition countries have a rich pedagogical tradition. Most have attained and maintained high levels of learning achievement. In a recent survey (Mullis et al., 2003), the rankings of the transition countries are generally as good as those of the industrialized world. However, as a result of rapid political, social and economic change, the level and quality of the financial, human and material resources available to basic education have declined. In the Russian Federation, for example, the large-scale political and economic transformation that started in 1990 has had a strong impact on many aspects of life. Making a new society and a new economy based on the principles of democracy, federalism, the market and a respect for human rights, while sustaining a decent standard of life for all, has presented a major challenge. One aspect of this has been to try and counteract many new risks confronting young people – especially those faced with neglect, orphanhood, drug addiction and violence (Russian Federation, 2003). The modernization of Russian education is driven in part by a long-term vision of a post-industrial information society that will allow the country to compete in a globalized economy. Aware that there is a long way to go, Russia has set its planning horizon at 2025, with intermediate targets every five years. The Dakar goals are part of this long-term vision but so too is higher education, where reform is underway. The role of private providers will be regulated and student support schemes will enhance access and equity. Another priority is to make vocational education more flexible. The regions in the north, where extreme natural circumstances make provision difficult and costly, and the Chechen Republic, where conflict disrupts the continuity of education, are scheduled to receive special attention. Decline is also threatening the Moldovan education system. As a result of the crisis in pre-primary education, only 20% of 1–5-year-olds now have access to kindergartens, exclusion being particularly severe in rural areas. Pre-school is mandatory at ages 5 to 6, but even at this age only 60% attend. In primary education, the number of out-of-school children has risen sharply, especially ‘in rural areas, where poor families cannot even cover all the expenses needed for clothes, footwear, food, school supplies and textbooks’, according to the Moldovan EFA plan (Republic of Moldova, 2003). Insufficient or non-existent transport facilities and lack of heating in schools often makes going to school, or staying there, physically impossible, especially in winter when schools may even close. An ageing teaching workforce and a deteriorating material infrastructure complete this dark picture of an education system where primary GER fell from 93.1 to 83.8 between 1990 and 2000. In the midst of this period of decline, the country ensured the constitutional right to free, compulsory education (Republic of Moldova, 1994). In the EFA plan, education is seen as a priority branch of production, both as an occupational area in itself and as an area for advantageous investment. A market economy based on private and public property, free initiative and competition is seen as the context for this new education system. Stress is placed on national and universal values and a determination to depoliticize education, avoid excessive centralism and lessen levels of paramilitary training. A national EFA conference in 2001 resulted in the creation of the National EFA Forum and the development of an EFA plan which has three main priorities: good quality early childhood care and education; access to good quality formal basic education, with a focus on children in very difficult circumstances; and appropriate non-formal education and learning opportunities.

A global agenda The pressure to quickly complete this large-scale ‘roll-out’ operation may make it difficult to do justice to the diversity of learning needs that industrialized countries are still struggling with. Based on the above, the following observations can be made regarding the commonalities – concerning EFA – between developing, transition and industrialized countries. A century after the introduction of compulsory education, industrialized countries have not yet achieved high quality for all. The specific learning needs of roughly 10%–20% of the population are not adequately met, even if most of these people attended school. In some countries, half a century of gender parity has not resulted in gender equality. The experience of the transition countries suggests that even the universal provision of primary education – regardless of quality – is a fragile achievement and is not resistant to socio-economic crisis. In some industrialized countries, the concept of education as a national service that is distributed in a more or less uniform way throughout the country is losing its credibility. Decentralization, in order for schools to be more responsive to a diversity of demand at a local level, is an important issue (Istance and Kobayashi, 2003). Developing countries, in their turn, face the challenge of achieving universal access to education within a relatively short time-frame. The pressure to quickly complete this large-scale ‘roll-out’ operation may make it difficult to do justice to the diversity of learning needs that industrialized countries are still struggling with. There is a temptation for developing countries to first accomplish the expansion of capacity and then address the more specific needs of certain groups and communities. The experience of northern countries suggests that this is to be avoided. Having developed their education systems in response to industrialization and the emergence of the nation-state (Barber, 2003), countries in the north now find themselves ‘concerned about the education system’s capacity to change quickly, at a time when many factors are combining to influence the shape of tomorrow’s schools. …This means rethinking the way in which much education is currently organized, with the objective of … making it more accessible to … adults returning to learn, the disadvantaged and those with disabilities’ (OECD, 1996b). Bold experimentation is said to be needed, ‘in order to arrive at imaginative solutions devised for the real challenges being confronted on the ground’ (Johansson, 2000). Thus, the quality of education, with a focus on groups at risk of exclusion, appears to be an important feature of policy in of industrialized, transition and developing countries. Decentralization can be instrumental for schools in trying to respond to a diversity of needs but, as shown earlier in this chapter, many countries are wrestling with it and seeking to prevent harmful side effects. This points to the importance of strengthening school management. Teachers, too, are high on the global agenda (UNESCO/ILO, 2002). Many developing countries need to ensure the ‘supply’ of sufficient numbers of teachers during a phase of rapid expansion – sometimes impeded by HIV/AIDS – while transition and industrialized countries are faced with ageing teaching workforces and a low level of interest among young people in entering the profession. In all countries, solutions that predominantly address the quantitative aspect of the problem will have repercussions on the quality of teachers. This is all the more important as teachers are critical to the innovation of education and the improvement of learning achievement among low-performing groups (OECD, 2001b). There are also discrepancies between the various policy agendas. While UPE is one of the core goals for developing countries, universal upper secondary education is clearly the next frontier for industrialized countries. Higher education is seen as crucial for countries to become and remain competitive in the global knowledge economy. The expansion of higher education raises searching questions of affordability, privatization and equity in the North, while the South is still wrestling with more basic education priorities. The two come together, however, around the issue of global trade in higher education services. Focus on groups at risk of exclusion is an important feature of policy in industrialized, transition and developing countries. Vocational education is important in all regions but not always for the same reasons. For developing countries, strengthening vocational education may help to better reap the benefits of educational expansion. For industrialized and transition countries, the challenge seems rather to raise the esteem of this sector that is so often regarded as second rate in comparison with theoretical pathways into university. Lifelong learning, too, has different connotations. For developing countries, the emphasis is on meeting the learning needs of youth and adults, partly to compensate for a lack of good initial schooling. Industrialized countries tend to adopt a ‘cradle-to-grave’ interpretation (OECD, 1996a) in which all initial learning from early childhood on aims at building the motivation and skills needed for a life of recurrent learning in multiple settings. Although this vision is in essence equally relevant to developing countries, their immediate policy priorities tend to be to provide as many people as possible with at least some basic skills. Among all commonalities and discrepancies between policy agendas, one thing seems absolutely unique for transition countries. They face a double challenge. On the one hand they need to restore and ensure the continuity of the purely operational functioning of the education system. This is a matter of training teachers, printing textbooks and repairing school buildings, not unlike the situation in many developing countries. On the other hand, and at the same time, transition countries are pressed by the forces of globalization to quickly regain lost ground – in an economic sense – vis-à-vis the industrialized countries. In today’s world, this can no longer be accomplished by a strategy of low-skilled and low-cost labour, as the Russian and Moldovan EFA plans underline. Fortunately, there still is an impressive intellectual, pedagogical and technological heritage that can support transition countries in their double challenge. But there is a risk of ‘lost generations’, and this heritage seems to be in danger. Most industrialized and transition countries have achieved the goals of UPE and gender parity, but they have not achieved gender equality and the other goals. There is clearly a case for ‘mutual learning’ between countries of the South and the North.