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EFA - Global Monitoring Report 2003/04
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Gender and Education for All
THE LEAP TO EQUALITY
FOREWORD - by Koïchiro Matsuura, Director-General of UNESCO

gmr_dg.jpeThe goals of Education for All (EFA) are centrally concerned with equality. If children are excluded from access to education, they are denied their human rights and prevented from developing their talents and interests in the most basic of ways.

Education is a torch which can help to guide and illuminate their lives. It is the acknowledged responsibility of all governments to ensure that everyone is given the chance to benefit from it in these ways. It is also in the fundamental interests of society to see that this happens – progress with economic and social development depends upon it.

Nevertheless, millions of children around the world still fail to gain access to schooling, and even larger numbers among those who do enrol leave prematurely, dropping out before the skills of literacy and numeracy have been properly gained. A majority of such children are girls. As a result, the scourge of illiteracy still affects more than 850 million adults, almost two-thirds of whom are women.

The World Education Forum held in Dakar, Senegal, in April 2000 adopted six major goals for education, two of which also became Millennium Development Goals later in the same year.

The Dakar goals covered the attainment of Universal Primary Education (UPE) and gender equality, improving literacy and educational quality, and increasing life-skills and early childhood education programmes, and were to be achieved within 15 years. However, the gender goal was judged to be particularly urgent – requiring the achievement of parity in enrolments for girls and boys at primary and secondary levels by 2005, and of full equality throughout education by 2015.

As this issue of the Global Monitoring Report goes to press, the world is two years away from the date by which the gender parity goal is to be achieved. It is, then, timely that the report should pay particular attention to the progress being made with its implementation – and with that of the longer-term goal of achieving gender equality in education. The report shows that, while many countries are likely to miss the 2005 goal, this circumstance could change quickly if appropriate changes in policy were made. However, achieving equality throughout education is more profoundly challenging. Educational inequality is caused by deeper forces in society that extend well beyond the boundaries of educational systems, institutions and processes.

The report demonstrates that changes in a wide range of economic and social policies – as well as in education itself – will be needed if gender equality in education is to be attained.

I am convinced that the world is on the path towards gender equality in education, but there remains some way to travel. This report provides a map for at least the first part of the journey. The united efforts of governments, NGOs, civil society, the corporate sector and the international community will be crucial to ensure maximum possible progress as the route unfolds.

Koïchiro Matsuura
Director-General of UNESCO
 
 

 

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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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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