Over the last decade, consen-sus has grown about the kindsof changes needed if learn-

ing is to occur. More important still,these are not ideas dormant in acade-mic papers or debated at internationalconferences, but they are being putinto practice all over the world, inpilot projects and at the national scale.Nor are the resulting success storiesisolated events that would be impossi-ble to replicate in other contexts orcultures. Rather they are practicalproof of the ‘education revolution’,whose principles are now broadlyunderstood and shared and whosecentral elements are emerging in vary-ing configurations around the world.

If access to quality learning is oneguiding light of this revolution, theother is child rights. In article 28, theConvention on the Rights of the Childestablished the right of all children,without discrimination, to education.The Convention also provides aframework by which the quality ofthat education must be assessed. Ifchildren are required to sit in an over-crowded classroom mindlessly par-roting what the teacher says, theirlearning and developmental needs are

clearly not being fulfilled. The Con-vention guides us, therefore, in article29, towards a more child-centredmodel of teaching and learning, onein which students participate actively,thinking and solving problems forthemselves, and in this way develop-ing the self-esteem that is essential forlearning and decision-making through-out life.1

A vision of quality in educationguided by the Convention can neverbe limited to the lesson plans of theteacher or the proper provision ofclassroom equipment. It extends farbeyond, into questions of genderequality, health and nutrition; intoissues of parental and communityinvolvement; into the management ofthe education system itself. And thebenefits and impact of quality educa-tion also make invaluable contribu-tions to all areas of human develop-ment, improving the status of womenand helping to ease poverty.

The education revolution is re-shaping the edifice of education. Un-der its aegis, schools must becomezones of creativity, safety and stimu-lation for children, with safe waterand decent sanitation, with motivatedteachers and relevant curricula, wherechildren are respected and learn to re-spect others. Schools and other learn-ing environments also need to offeryoung children in the early primary

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The education revolution

The Convention on theRights of the Child guidesus towards a more child-centred model of teachingand learning, one in whichstudents participate actively,thinking and solvingproblems for themselves.

Photo: As much as 60 per cent of newHIV infections in sub-Saharan Africa mayoccur among young people 10-24 years old.Schoolboys in Malawi watch an AIDSprevention drama.

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Learning for life in the 21stcentury requires equippingchildren with a basiceducation in literacy andnumeracy, as well as themore advanced, complexskills for living that canserve as the foundationfor life.

grades a nurturing experience thateases their transition into systems alltoo often not designed to do this. Theelements of this revolution are alreadychanging schools around the world.

Element 1. Learningfor life

Going to school and coming out un-prepared for life is a terrible waste.Yet for many of the world’s children,this is exactly what happens.

Educators around the world haverecently begun to focus on the gap be-tween what is taught and what islearned, and the large numbers ofchildren caught in that abyss. A WorldBank survey in Bangladesh found thatfour out of five of those who had com-pleted five years of primary schoolingfailed to attain a minimum learningachievement level, while those whohad completed three years of school-ing scored approximately zero onthe same low measure of learningachievement.2 The rights of these chil-dren are not being met.

Surveys such as these generally as-sess basic levels of literacy and nu-meracy — levels of reading, writing,speaking, listening and mathema-tics — which, of course, are criticaltools for further learning. The surveysdo not even attempt to measure thesuccess of teaching children skillsnecessary for survival, for a life withdignity and for coping with the rapidand constant change that typifiesmodern life.

Learning for life in the 21st cen-tury requires equipping children witha basic education in literacy and nu-meracy, as well as the more advanced,complex skills for living that canserve as the foundation for life — en-abling children to adapt and change asdo life circumstances. A lack or inad-equacy of basic education can seri-ously jeopardize the possibility of

lifelong learning and can widen thegap between those who can and can-not profit from such opportunities.

In this approach to learning, teach-ers and students need to relate in newways so that the classroom experi-ence — the very process of learn-ing — becomes a preparation for life.As the principles of the Conventionon the Rights of the Child make clear,teaching must be a process of guidingand facilitating, in which children areencouraged to think for themselvesand to learn how to learn. The class-room must be an environment of de-mocratic participation.

The learning environment mustalso be transformed to one that is ac-tive and child-centred. It must belinked to the development level andabilities of the child learners. Childrenmust be able to express their views,thoughts and ideas; they need oppor-tunities for joy and play; they needto be comfortable with themselvesand with others; and they should betreated with respect. In this kind ofenvironment, children develop a senseof self-esteem that, when combinedwith basic knowledge, skills andvalues, stands them in good stead,enabling them to make informed de-cisions throughout life.

The physical environment is im-portant too, helping children feel safe,secure and nurtured. Buildings andfurniture should be child-friendly. Toomany children perch on furniture builtfor adult bodies in classrooms withwindows and doorways designed byadults for adults.3

The comprehensive approach oflearning for life enables individuals tointegrate more effectively into theworld of work and society. It calls fora curriculum and a teaching approachthat take into account such factors asgender, language and culture, eco-nomic disparities and physical andmental disabilities and enable chil-

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has posed an enormous life-skillschallenge. To meet it, training in thetechniques of conflict resolution isbeing introduced to students in coun-tries with a recent history of violence,such as Colombia, Sierra Leone andSri Lanka.

Measuring learningachievementIf the success of education is to begauged by what and how childrenlearn, better ways must be found tomeasure the quality and relevance ofeducation. The emphasis must be onassessing how well education systemsare meeting their responsibility toprovide for the educational rights oftheir youngest citizens in terms ofwhat they learn. Such information canbe used to adjust policy, introduce re-alistic standards, help direct teachers’efforts, promote accountability andincrease public awareness and supportfor education.4

Unfortunately, most of the mecha-nisms in place test children as part ofa selection process rather than ad-dressing whether they have had suffi-cient opportunity to acquire theliteracy, numeracy, life skills and val-ues needed throughout life. There areinteresting efforts emerging, however.To date, the joint UNESCO-UNICEFMonitoring Learning Achievement(MLA) project represents one of themost comprehensive attempts to de-vise an international framework formeasuring learning that transcendsthe traditional focus on exam resultsor school enrolment5 (Panel 2).

The MLA project is not the onlyinitiative. The Minimum Levels ofLearning (MLL) project in India istaking a fresh look at what kinds ofskills can and should be measuredboth in and out of school.6 And inBangladesh, the Assessment of BasicCompetencies (ABC) project is usingthe same techniques as immunization

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dren to deal with them in a positiveway. Learning systems are neededthat help children and societies re-spond both to their local needs and thechallenges of globalization. The keyfeatures of such systems include em-phasis on human rights and the trans-mission of knowledge and skills thathelp each person realize individualpotential and social good, and ulti-mately help alleviate and even elimi-nate poverty.

Within this broader definition oflearning to which every child has aright, the Jomtien conference gavenew prominence to the idea of ‘lifeskills’. The definition of life skills isevolving to encompass psychosocialskills of cooperation, negotiation andcommunication, decision-making, andcritical and creative thinking in prepa-ration for the challenges of modernlife. It is an education in values andbehaviour.

Life skills are those that childrenneed in order to cope with issues andproblems related to the entire spec-trum of their survival and well-being,including knowledge about health,nutrition and hygiene. A grounding inlife skills prepares children to dealpractically and resourcefully withpeople and situations they encounteron the streets and in the fields, help-ing them manage finances, interact insocial and family dynamics, appreci-ate their own rights and respect thoseof others.

While important in early child-hood education and primary schools,where emphasis is placed on generalsurvival skills rather than academicability, life skills become even morevital in adolescence when the risks ofexploitative child labour, HIV/AIDSand teenage pregnancy increase, re-quiring children to make ever morecomplex and difficult behaviouralchoices. The alarming proliferation ofcivil conflict in the developing world

Innovative learning systems that respond tolocal needs and the challenges of globalizationhave the potential to alleviate, even eliminate,poverty. A girl in India.

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Panel 2

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The first-ever attempt on aglobal basis to help countriesuncover and understand the

trends, weaknesses and strengths oftheir education systems is bearingfruit, with some findings strikinglyconsistent across countries. For in-stance, pupils in urban schools per-form better than those in ruralschools; girls’ performance is betterthan that of boys in the lower grades,but later, due to diverse cultural andsocio-economic factors, begins to de-cline; and pupils from private schoolsgenerally outperform those frompublic schools.

These profiles are emerging fromthe project on Monitoring LearningAchievement (MLA), a collabora-tion between UNESCO and UNICEFlaunched in September 1992. Theproject’s central team at UNESCOheadquarters in Paris has overseen itsdevelopment from a pioneer phasein five countries (China, Jordan, Mali,

Mauritius and Morocco) to its currentembrace of 27 countries at three dif-ferent stages of implementation.

Its goal is to help countries mon-itor their performance in meeting‘minimum basic learning compe-tencies’ — in other words, accept-able levels of learning in literacy,numeracy and life skills — througha child-centred approach. From thedata collected, countries then areable to:• identify the factors promoting or

hindering learning achievementin primary schools;

• understand the role of keyparticipants;

• analyse problem areas; • propose policy changes and prac-

tical measures to improve thequality of education.Specific recommendations that

have emerged, for example, werethat classroom practices must be im-proved in Sri Lankan primary schools;

the most urgent need in Nigerian pri-mary schools is to ensure effectiveteaching and learning of the Englishlanguage; and in Mozambique, thepriority is to develop children’s criti-cal thinking and problem-solvingskills.

The addition of life skills to themore normal ‘3Rs’ (reading, writingand arithmetic) is important sincemost testing excludes this elemententirely. In China, for example, chil-dren were shown to be gaining anadequate understanding of reading,writing and mathematics. But theirlearning achievement in life skillswas significantly less, which ledto the recommendation that “theteaching-learning process in Chinaneeds to emphasize more problem-solving skills and the ability to applyknowledge in dealing with real-lifeproblems.”

While the project has the samebroad goals, each government devel-ops its own country-specific monitor-ing system. This country-specificdesign is important, since conditionsdiffer so markedly. If monitoring is tobe meaningful, it has to take into ac-count not just local cultural differ-ences but also the type of school, itslocation, its way of organizing classesand so on. Questionnaires are filled inby the pupils themselves, their par-ents, their class teacher and theirhead teacher so as to build up ascomplete a picture as possible of thechild’s learning environment, both inschool and at home.

The project investigates three majorareas of life skills: health/hygiene/nu-trition; everyday life; and the socialand natural environment. Again,some of the skills assessed withinthese areas are common to all whileothers are country-specific. All the pi-oneer nations, for example, wanted

What children understand:The Monitoring Learning Achievement project

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surveys to assess the ability of chil-dren aged 11 and 12 to read and un-derstand a passage of text, write aletter communicating a simple mes-sage, solve mental arithmetic prob-lems and demonstrate life skills. Theproject has successfully shown thatmeaningful data can be gathered atlocal levels and at very low cost. Theresults showed a distressingly lowlevel of learning — only 29 per centof all children and 46 per cent of thosewith five years of schooling satisfiedbasic education criteria.7

There is a growing worldwidemovement to discard numerical rank-ings and instead describe learningachievement, as in the profiles teachersdo of children’s work in the UnitedStates and the reformed school-leaving examinations in Slovenia. Inthe outcomes-based curricula used inAustralia, India, Italy and South Africa,learning objectives are unambigu-ously stated and understood by bothteachers and students at the outset.Teachers then observe and describehow well children demonstrate — ver-bally, in writing or in performance —their grasp of the learning goals.

These developments share a con-viction that what is needed is a focuson what children actually learn, andthat assessments should be used to de-velop the kind of teaching that facili-tates the learning process (Panel 3).

This concept of learning achieve-ment has economic as well as educa-tional implications. If class repetitionsand drop-outs — indicators of ineffi-ciency and poor quality — can bereduced, limited resources will stretchmuch further. A survey of LatinAmerican education in the 1980sshowed that, on average, a child took1.7 years to be promoted to the nextgrade and that each year 32 millionstudents repeated grades in primaryand secondary schools, representingan annual waste of $5.2 billion.8

A survey of Latin Americaneducation in the 1980sshowed that, on average, achild took 1.7 years to bepromoted to the next gradeand that each year 32 millionstudents repeated grades inprimary and secondaryschools, representing anannual waste of $5.2 billion.

Photo: A class in China, where anassessment of learning achievementshowed that the country has done well ingiving pupils a good grounding in literacyand numeracy but requires a greateremphasis on life skills in the curriculum.

children to be able to recognizethe symptoms of the major child-hood diseases. Jordan wanted itschildren to know about the harm-ful effects of coffee and tea.

The MLA project makes it pos-sible for participating countries toexchange information, and conse-quently, those joining the schemelater have benefited from the ex-perience of the five pioneers,avoiding pitfalls and putting theirmonitoring structures in placemore quickly. This is not just as aresult of international seminars ofthe participating nations, thoughthese have also been useful, butdue to specific ‘mentoring’: China,from the original group, has actedas adviser to Sri Lanka from thenext batch of countries, for exam-ple, just as Jordan has helpedOman.

In all these cases, better moni-toring of learning achievement ishelping governments to skirtsome of the deepest potholes inthe road to Education For All.

Panel 3

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Astork has nested in theminaret of the white-paintedmosque across the road.

Below, two children are tying up thedonkeys they have ridden from theirhomes to this school in the peacefulvillage of Mahjouba in north-westernTunisia. In the school courtyard,dozens of birds warble from almondand apricot trees shading a vegetablegarden and a rabbit hutch. On theright are five classrooms decoratedwith large murals painted by the chil-dren. On the left is a large multipur-pose room hosting a school libraryand extracurricular activities — theroom is a vital resource in a schoolwhere students have to use the class-rooms in shifts.

The school in Mahjouba is a typi-cal example of Tunisia’s integratedschool development project, whichwas begun in 1992 in the gover-norate of El Kef on the Algerian bor-der. In this area, more than 40 per

cent of the population is illiterate andmore than 10 per cent lives in ab-solute poverty.

The project aimed to enhance theperformance of 30 of El Kef’s ruralschools through improved teachingmethods, while also developing theinfrastructure (building compoundwalls and multipurpose rooms, forexample), providing safe water andplanting vegetable gardens or fruittrees to provide learning opportuni-ties for the students. Teaching meth-ods pioneered by Mahjouba andother schools in El Kef have sincebeen introduced in 475 primaryschools across the country.

The new framework, devised by anational steering committee of ex-perts from UNICEF and the Ministryof Education, is called ‘competency-based teaching’. This term refers to asystem based on the skills or ‘com-petencies’ children should be able toacquire, which become the key focus

of teaching, remedial and evaluationsystems. Teachers run regular as-sessments in order to observe whatcompetencies children have acquiredand which areas need additionalattention.

In many parts of the world teach-ing is based on assumptions, and alltoo often lack of comprehension andlearning only show up in end-of-yearexaminations, with many studentshaving to repeat a year because theirproblems weren’t diagnosed earlyenough to be addressed. The resultsfrom El Kef are still preliminary butare nonetheless encouraging: Thepass rate at the end of grade six hasincreased from 46 per cent in 1991 to62 per cent in 1997.

Unexpected responses that mighthave earned a pupil a rap on theknuckles in the past are now seen byteachers as a normal part of thelearning process, which can be usedto assess learning achievement.

Samir Elaïd, who has taught at theMahjouba school since 1987, agrees.The academic results also indicatethe value of the system: Three yearsago, 10 of the 30 pupils in his thirdgrade class had to repeat a year,whereas in 1998 only 4 have had todo so.

Abdallah Melki, principal of theMahjouba school, is another convert.A 50-year-old with a ready smile, hewas initially uncomfortable with thenew methods but now feels they arehighly effective, especially for prob-lem students. His one regret is thatthe competency-based approach hasso far been limited to three subjects:Arabic, French and mathematics.Competency-based science teachingwill be introduced in the 1998/99school year.

The Mahjouba school has alsohelped to pioneer three other innova-

Beyond the ruler:Competency-based learning in Tunisia

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Low-income countries spend,on average, four years’ worthmore resources to produce aprimary school graduate thanthey would if there were norepeaters or drop-outs.

According to a World Bank publica-tion, low-income countries spend, onaverage, four years’ worth more re-sources to produce a primary schoolgraduate than they would if therewere no repeaters or drop-outs.9

Teachers, policy makers and stu-dents in many countries, nevertheless,still accept it as natural and inevitablefor children to repeat grades becausethey have ‘failed’, which contributesto a vicious circle of low expectations,damaged self-esteem and further fail-ure. Repetition may even be seen asevidence of high standards in schools,when the reverse is probably true.10

In recent years, countries haveexperimented with automatic pro-motion — the norm in most of theEnglish-speaking world. Myanmar,confronting a serious crisis in educa-tion, has replaced year-end examswith an ongoing assessment of stu-dents’ learning achievement. Teach-ing and management skills are alsobeing upgraded. As part of the AllChildren in School project, schoolsare given initial incentives, in theform of chalkboards, toilet facilitiesand teaching kits, that are tied to suc-cess in meeting annual targets: a 10per cent increase in enrolment, reten-tion and completion rates over theprevious year’s rates as measured bycommunity members. As a result, inthree consecutive academic yearsfrom 1994 to 1997, an average of 65to 70 per cent of all project schoolsmanaged to meet their annual targetsand received roofing sheets to up-grade or extend school facilities.11

Health and learningHealth and adequate nutrition are pil-lars of learning throughout life. Butchildren in most of the developingworld contend with frequent episodesof respiratory illness and diarrhoeaduring their school years that can

Photo: Regular assessments of students’academic progress in Tunisia have reducedrepetition rates by identifying learningproblems early on. A Tunisian boyreads from a chalkboard.

tions. In the first, students sign acontract with the teacher on thework to be accomplished in a cer-tain period: for example, twopages of spelling and one ofmathematics in the coming week.Teachers in El Kef have found thatthis agreement helps childrenbuild a greater sense of responsi-bility for their own learning.

The second divides the classinto groups of three or four. Stu-dents work individually on thesame assignment, then discusstheir results and come up with ajoint answer. In a slight variationof this system, groups are madeup of students of different levelswho work together and help oneanother.

The third innovation is thepractice of stronger pupils ‘tutor-ing’ weaker ones and offeringthem advice and explanations. Atthe Mahjouba school, for exam-ple, Wahida tutors her friendHanene who is glad of the help.Hanene herself chose Wahida asher tutor because they are friendswho walk to school together eachmorning.

On Wahida’s part, she hasfound that her studies are muchmore interesting and she under-stands them better since herlearning has been gauged by reg-ular assessments.

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Somjai is in grade three of herprimary school in north-eastThailand. In her first year she

made good progress, but by the endof grade two she was faltering andher test scores were low.

Now, with this downward trendcontinuing, her teacher refers toSomjai’s computerized learningprofile. From it she learns that Som-jai was often absent during hersecond year, that she rarely attendsthe health clinic despite her poornutritional status and that shehas three younger siblings and adivorced mother.

The teacher decides to visit themother in case Somjai is missingschool to care for her siblings whileher mother works. She will suggestthat the younger children attend thecommunity day-care centre, or shemight persuade the school authori-ties to talk to local officials about

starting an income-generating projectin the community.

Somjai is a good example of theChildren’s Integrated Learning andDevelopment (CHILD) project in ac-tion, which started when the headteacher of a small, rural, primaryschool in the poorest region ofThailand wanted his 150 students tohave access to a computer.

The head teacher wrote to theInstitute of Nutrition at Mahidol Uni-versity asking if they knew of anyonewilling to donate a computer. He ex-plained that it would be used notonly in the classroom, and to im-prove the school’s administration,but also to track changes and influ-ences in the community from whichthe students were drawn.

The response to this modest re-quest for a second-hand computer hasalready grown far beyond a networkof computers in rural schools into a

dynamic and distinctive example ofchild rights in action that could yetinspire similar ventures worldwide.

Launched in two schools in oneprovince in January 1997, in thecourse of a year the CHILD projectspread to 25 schools, 38 communi-ties and some 3,000 children in theprovince. The project, run by MahidolUniversity with UNICEF support,creates an early warning system thatintegrates educational with commu-nity indicators to help all childrenachieve their maximum learning po-tential — particularly those with spe-cial educational needs.

Schools compile a child’s learn-ing profile (ideally computerized, inspreadsheet form), comprising socialand family factors that might affectlearning. Teachers and communitiesthen use these over time to makeinformed decisions and propose ac-tions in an integrated, holistic way.

The early expansion of the schemeis a sign of its success. Its rapidspread has also meant changes infocus to address the diversity of so-cial conditions of the new schoolsand communities.

For example, in several commu-nities protein energy malnutrition,iodine deficiency disorders and irondeficiency anaemia are threateningchildren’s health and thus their abil-ity to attend school. In other commu-nities where parents migrate to seekwork, increasing numbers of childrenare being left in the care of grand-parents who have limited knowledgeof modern basic health care.

Concentrating on learning alone,therefore, has proved insufficient inthe effort to facilitate children’s learn-ing. For this reason, the CHILD proj-ect now redefines its objective asstrengthening and preserving chil-dren’s rights, in line with the Con-

Second-hand computer, first-class vision:Thailand’s CHILD project

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subvert learning. Even in the state ofCalifornia (United States), where stan-dards of water and hygiene far exceedthose in developing countries, gas-trointestinal diseases account foraround a quarter of all days lost fromschool.12 Other serious health com-plaints that plague school age childrenin the developing world includemalaria, helminths (parasitic worms),iodine deficiency and malnutrition.Health hazards like these do not sim-ply keep children out of school, lead-ing them to underachieve or repeatgrades, but can permanently impairtheir ability to learn.

“There is a strong link betweenchildren’s health and school perfor-mance,” says Professor Dr. HusseinKamel Bahaa El-Din, Egypt’s Ministerof Education, himself a paediatrician.“This link between health and educa-tion is a major challenge to educationalplanners and policy makers. Rapidinterventions and serious preventivemeasures must take place. In Egypt,we strongly believe that education isthe vehicle of preventive medicine,which is the medicine of tomorrowand the medicine of the majority, atrue democratic trend.”13

Egypt has launched a comprehen-sive package of reforms aimed at gen-erating healthy and health-promotingschools. The package includes:† regular medical checks for all

schoolchildren;† a school nutrition programme,

with special help for rural areas;† free health insurance for school-

children;† the integration of health and nutri-

tion messages into the curriculum;† child-to-child programmes to pro-

mote health in the community.14

Egypt’s efforts to make schoolsand students healthier are resulting inhigher and earlier enrolment, lowerrates of absenteeism and drop-out,and better learning achievement.

Photo: The CHILD project creates anearly warning system, looking at health,nutrition and other factors that can affectlearning. Children in class in northernThailand.

vention on the Rights of the Child.This holistic and practical view ofchild rights enables communitiesto see the connections betweenpoor learning in school and health,nutrition and other factors.

As a result, communities havebecome more active participantsin their own and their children’sdevelopment. They are undertak-ing a wide range of activities toincrease children’s access to pri-mary and secondary education,upgrade the quality of schoollunch programmes and improvewater supply and sanitation facili-ties. Communities are setting upday-care centres and establishingvocational training centres foryouth who are returning to theirvillages due to the recent eco-nomic crisis.

A teachers’ workshop in Egypt, whereeducation is considered preventive medicine.

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Research also shows that improve-ments in the health of schoolchildrenreduce the transmission of disease inthe community,15 with children prov-ing to be exceptionally effective ashealth promoters themselves, passingon what they learn to siblings, friends,family members and other adults.16

Findings like these led the WorldHealth Organization (WHO) to launchthe Global School Health Initiative in1995. The World Bank has alsoshown interest in investing in schoolhealth programmes, which it views asone of the most cost-effective ways ofimproving public health, noting thatthe number of schools and teachersfar exceeds the number of health cen-tres and health workers.17 It is impor-tant to point out, however, thatteachers should not be expected to fillthe role of health workers. Teachers,with demanding jobs of their own,cannot be expected to succeed wherehealth centres have failed, especiallywithout extra resources.

What are the main characteristics ofa healthy and health-promoting school?† A place of safety. Teachers need to

act as protectors of children, safe-guarding their rights within school,not least the right to be free fromsexual exploitation and violence.Schools must be supportive andnurturing places for children withspecial needs, including those withdisabilities or with HIV/AIDS.

† A healthy environment.All schoolsneed safe water and sanitation.Without these, children are unableto practise what they learn abouthygiene.

† A place where diseases can bedetected and often treated. Someillnesses and unhealthy condi-tions — such as parasitic infec-tions, micronutrient deficienciesand trachoma — can be simplyand affordably treated by healthworkers or teachers. Teachers can

also be trained to recognize chil-dren with visual and hearing de-fects, which are often mistaken forlearning disabilities.

† A school that teaches life skills.Children need more than informa-tion to make healthy choices. Theymay need to develop technicalskills in first aid or learn to use oralrehydration salts to treat diarrhoea.They also need to learn how tomake decisions and to negotiateand resolve conflict — criticalskills in leading healthy lives out-side the school gates.18

Education’s ripple effect is beingdemonstrated in many countries. TheClean and Green Schools programmein Mauritania calls for teams of stu-dents, parents and teachers to evaluatethe state of their local school and drawup plans to improve it that includehealth education classes based on theFacts for Life booklet.* If it provessuccessful, the programme could beexpanded nationwide at low cost andcould help lower the country’s highinfant mortality rates.

In Thailand, schools covered bythe CHILD project monitor the con-nections between children’s learningand health (Panel 4).

In two Nigerian villages, a 20 percent gain in life expectancy occurredwhen the only intervention was easyaccess to adequate health facilities, a33 per cent gain when the mother hadreceived schooling but lacked accessto health facilities, and an 87 per centgain when health and education re-sources were combined.19 Far fromforcing a trade-off or clash of priori-ties among competing worthy goals,joint health and education initiativeswork together to accelerate the educa-tion revolution.

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School health programmes are among themost cost-effective ways to improve publichealth. In Thailand, girls plot connectionsbetween groups at risk of contracting AIDS.

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* Facts for Life is an inter-agency publica-tion that presents practical ways of pro-tecting children’s lives and health.

Element 2. Access,quality and flexibility

Children have a right to go to schooland to receive an education of goodquality. The conventional educationsystems in many countries, however,are too rigid to reach the childrenwho, because of gender, ethnicity orpoverty, have least access to school.But Education For All cannot beachieved unless these children arereached. The challenge for schoolsis to be flexible enough to adapt tothe needs of the most disadvantagedchildren while offering educationof sufficient quality to keep all stu-dents once they have arrived. It isno coincidence that the poorest, mostindebted nations are farthest fromthe goal of Education For All. Onaverage, nearly half the childrenin the 47 least developed countriesdo not have access to primaryeducation.20

Various cost-effective ways to in-crease enrolment and improve thequality of education are being investi-gated, and countries need to select ap-proaches that address their distinctneeds. A recent UNICEF study of fivelow-income African and Asian coun-tries21 shows, for example, that double-shifting (in which a teacher and aclassroom serve two separate groupsof children on the same day) to im-prove access is already common in VietNam and would be useful in BurkinaFaso and urban areas of Bhutan. InMyanmar, however, it would be inap-propriate since there is no shortage ofclassrooms, nor are teachers’ salarieshigh. Freezing higher education sub-sidies would be a reform worth pursu-ing in Burkina Faso and Uganda,which spend a disproportionate amounton these relative to primary schooling,but would be of less value in Myanmarand Viet Nam. Other solutions arebeing sought in the countries ofCentral and Eastern Europe and the

The conventional educationsystems in many countriesare too rigid to reach thechildren who, because ofgender, ethnicity or poverty,have least access to school.…It is no coincidence that…on average, nearly halfthe children in the 47 leastdeveloped countries do nothave access to primaryeducation.

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former Soviet Union, a region ofabout 115 million children where dis-parity in access is a growing problem.

One method of increasing accessthat could be widely applied is to re-duce the cost of building schools byusing locally available constructionmaterials. A World Bank study of sixAfrican countries showed that build-ing brick-and-mortar schools to inter-national standards was more thandouble the cost of working with localmaterials.22 Even this estimate mayhave understated the possible savings.

When Malawi launched its policyof universal free primary education in1994, it also began discussions withagencies such as UNICEF and theWorld Bank on designs for its majorschool building programme. Theeventual design has proven both ser-viceable and sustainable at aroundone quarter of the cost of a more stan-dard model.23 Similarly, with supportfrom UNICEF, communities in Maliare using a variety of durable localmaterials such as kiln-hardened bricksto build schools that meet Ministry ofEducation standards but cost two-thirds less than regular schools.

As ways are explored to meet theneeds of unreached children, thegrowing role played by educationproviders other than governmentsneeds to be kept in mind. Amongthese new providers are NGOs, reli-gious organizations, private schoolsand communities. These all need to beacknowledged and accommodatedwithin a new diversified system ofeducation in which the State plays itsessential role by setting standards.

Reaching the unreachedAccess remains a problem for thedisadvantaged in any society. TheConvention on the Rights of the Childis the basis for inclusive educationsystems where no child is excluded ormarginalized in special programmes.

Panel 5

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The happiest day of MartinaMukali’s life was the day herparents told her she could go to

school. Then eight years old, Martinatravelled with her mother, a nurse,from her home in Morogoro region tothe capital, Dar es Salaam, 200 kmaway, to attend the Uhuru Mchangan-yiko Primary School. In the UnitedRepublic of Tanzania, nearly a third ofall primary school age children arenot in school. For Martina, who wasborn blind, the opportunity was reallya dream come true.

Established in 1921, the UhuruMchanganyiko Primary School is oneof the oldest in the country and thefirst to accept children with disabili-ties alongside other children, in theclassroom and in all other activities.Of the 1,200 current students, 62 areblind, 11 are deaf-blind and 55 havemental disabilities. Like the otherblind students, Martina resides at theschool; she visits her sister in Dar esSalaam on weekends and holidays.

It is difficult for children with phys-ical and mental disabilities to over-come the grave problems limitingtheir access to education. Fewer than1 per cent of children with specialneeds make it into education systemsin the developing world, according toUNESCO. Children in rural areas arethe most seriously isolated.

In Tanzania, education is not free —students must pay fees and buy uni-forms, exercise books and other ma-terials — but the major costs ofdisabled children’s schooling arecovered by the Government. Board-ing costs, school fees, medical ex-penses and learning materials forthose who come from outside Dar esSalaam are also provided.

Martina, now 17, has achievedmore than many of her sightedpeers. Her classmates help her navi-gate the campus, and she reads andwrites in Braille and loves to sing.She says, “I can do everything thatyou can do except cook, and that is

only because nobody has botheredto teach me!” Her love of life andlearning are infectious and inspireher classmates and all who meet her.

At the Uhuru Mchanganyiko Pri-mary School, blind students are inte-grated from the third year, or Class 3,onwards. Before they begin regularclasses, they are oriented to theschool campus — dormitories, class-rooms and playground — and giveninstruction in mathematical symbols,elementary Braille and basic life skillsconsisting of personal care and hy-giene. Eight specialist teachers andeight blind teachers — themselvesgraduates of the school — work to-gether with teachers of geography,history and social studies, preparingall their materials in Braille and dic-tating them to the students. Braillecourse materials are produced at aprinting press on-site. Students inneed of extra help can attend specialclasses after regular school hours.

Of the deaf-blind students, fourlive on the school campus. The otherseven live at home, and speciallytrained teachers work with their par-ents and other family members onways to improve communication andinteraction with these children.

One of every five students —and the majority of the disabledstudents — enrolled in the UhuruMchanganyiko Primary School goeson to secondary school. Many stu-dents find work or begin trades onfinishing primary school, so hands-on vocational training in carpentry,masonry and brick-making is offeredto boys and girls at the end of the pri-mary school programme.

One child with mental disabilitieswho thrives in the carpentry classesis Kenny Lungenge, 15 and livingwith his mother, an onion vendor, inDar es Salaam. When he first arrived

A Tanzanian school welcomes the disabled

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Who are the excluded? Girls arethe large majority of children out ofschool, and they must be a priorityfor recruitment. Also, proportionatelyfewer rural children attend than city-dwellers, and proportionately fewerchildren from ethnic minorities or in-digenous groups go to school thanchildren from the dominant ethnicgroup. The disabled are barely consid-ered (Panel 5). Children caught in theturmoil of armed conflict or otheremergencies face the loss of years ofschooling. Some 8 million children insub-Saharan Africa alone will havelost their mothers or both their parentsto AIDS, and many of these orphanswill never enrol or will have to dropout of school (Fig. 6).

And lack of minority access is aproblem in many countries, for exam-ple, in Niger, where only about a thirdof children enrol. It is a vital issue inChina, which comes close to achiev-ing universal primary enrolment buthas to work much harder to enrol Mus-lim girls from Ningxia Hui Auton-omous Region than Han Chinese boysin Beijing, for instance.24

Distance from the school reducesattendance. Studies in Nepal haveshown that for every kilometre a childwalks to school, the likelihood ofschool attendance drops by 2.5 percent.25 In Egypt, if a school is onekilometre instead of two kilometresaway, enrolment goes up 4 per centfor boys and 18 per cent for girls.26

To reach unreached children, edu-cational policy makers can learn muchby sharing successes. In fact, oneof the most hopeful aspects of theeducation revolution is the way inwhich creative initiatives are pilotedin one part of the world and applied inanother.

Multigrade teaching, in whichchildren of two or more ages orgrades are taught by one teacher, isone example. The practice has long

Photo: Blind since birth, Martina Mukali,17, uses a Braille typewriter to take notesin a class at the Uhuru MchanganyikoPrimary School in Dar es Salaam.The school was the first in Tanzaniato integrate disabled students.

at the school five years ago, heknew nothing about basic hy-giene or about how to communi-cate with other children. Today heinteracts with his peers and isable to craft beds, bookshelvesand cupboards. His friend Hus-sain Ali, who also is 15 and hasmental disabilities, has masteredbasic arithmetic and civics andreads at Class 2 level. Hussainalso studies masonry.

The Uhuru Mchanganyiko Pri-mary School achieves these richresults with threadbare resources.The dormitory facilities are spare,and there are no live-in special-ized staff to look after the blindand deaf-blind children. Teachingmaterials, classroom furniture,and supplies and equipment usedin vocational training are in shortsupply. Still, the school is suc-ceeding in eliciting communitysupport. There are plans to in-volve parents and the communityin fund-raising activities, to sensi-tize the public about the disabledand to market products the stu-dents make, with proceeds to di-rectly benefit them.

As the school’s appointed time-keeper — a Class 6 student —strikes the rim of an old car wheel,sounding the end of another dayand calling the children to after-noon assembly, the disabled min-gle with the other children, distinc-tions among them blurred by thehope and energy of schoolchildrenending their school day and at thethreshold of life.

been a necessity in small villageschools that can only afford oneteacher, and it was the norm in mostrural schools of the industrializedworld in the early decades of this cen-tury. It tended to be regarded, how-ever, as an inferior model of educationuntil the Escuela Nueva schools inColombia demonstrated how well-designed lesson plans and teachingmaterials, bolstered by the support ofthe communities, could ensure a posi-tive multigrade experience.

Rural schools in Colombia in theearly 1980s were few and of poorquality. Some 55 per cent of 7- to 9-year-olds and a quarter of all 10- to14-year-olds in the countryside hadnever attended school, and one thirdof all first-graders dropped out.27 TheEscuela Nueva approach changedthese statistics, and its evident successin a small number of schools has ledthe Government to extend the sys-tem countrywide. Multigrade teach-ing makes it possible for a completeprimary school to be located close tochildren’s homes in sparsely popu-lated rural areas. Escuela Nuevateachers benefit from detailed guidesand lesson plans as well as regulartraining to help them adapt lessons tothe local situation. In keeping withthe principles of the Convention onthe Rights of the Child, teachers be-come facilitators rather than authorityfigures.

Another advantage of EscuelaNueva is that children move to thenext grade at their own pace — whenthey achieve a set of objectives —rather than by passing an exam at theend of the year. Grades, therefore, arenot repeated. Apart from avoiding thestigma of being ‘held back’, studentswho have been sick or had to work inthe harvest can resume their studieswhenever they return. When com-pared with regular schools, EscuelaNueva’s children not only score higher

in achievement tests but also showimproved self-esteem, creativity andcivic-mindedness. Drop-out rates arealso much lower.28

A number of countries have beeninspired by the Colombian model andhave adapted it to their own circum-stances. Guatemala, for example,employs the Escuela Nueva method-ology in its bilingual primary schoolsfor indigenous children. In the Philip-pines, educational planners launchedtheir own special multigrade demon-stration schools after a visit to Colom-bia. Multigrade schools had, in fact,existed in the nation since the 1960sbut had a poor reputation — locatedin distant, disadvantaged areas, theytended to be staffed by inexperienced,unsupervised teachers and to haveinadequate facilities.

The country’s new multigrade ap-proach, however, has won approvalfrom teachers, local communities andstudents. Thirteen-year-old AdonisCorisay, for example, planned to giveup his studies after grade four, hislocal school’s highest level. When thenew multigrade school at Poyopoystarted offering grades five and six, hewas inspired to continue despite atwo-hour walk to school. “Now Iwould like to finish high school. ThenI will continue on to college so I canbecome a mechanical engineer. Iwould like some day to assemble myown car, which I will use in the moun-tains.” The project expanded from 12schools in 6 disadvantaged provincesin the 1996/97 school year to 24schools in 12 provinces in 1997/98.29

Another way of reaching the hard-to-reach in the remote mountainousregions of the Cordillera in thePhilippines is the Cordillera MobileTeaching project, which brings ‘school’to the children, carried by a teacherwith a backpack. First tested in 1989in Ifugao Province, one of the poorestand most rugged regions of the coun-

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Fig. 6 AIDS orphans: A loomingeducation crisis in sub-SaharanAfrica

HIV/AIDS is having a devastating impact onchildren in sub-Saharan Africa. Over 90 per centof all AIDS orphans — children who have losttheir mother or both parents to AIDS — live in sub-Saharan Africa.

Many of these orphans risk never completingbasic schooling. Lack of resources limits responses,but among the measures in place are free primaryeducation policies in Malawi and Uganda thatprovide vital support for orphans. Malawi has alsodeveloped a national orphan policy and is focusingon community care approaches, and South Africa istesting community-based care initiatives. Far moreneeds to be done to meet the crisis, and ensuringthe right of orphans to an education must be anessential part of these efforts.

Source: Report on the Global HIV/AIDS Epidemic, June 1998,UNAIDS and WHO, Geneva, 1998.

Geographical distribution of deaths attributable to HIV/AIDS

Sub-SaharanAfrica 83%

Asia 6%

Latin America/Caribbean 5%

Other 6%

AIDS orphans in eight African countries

Country Cumulative total (1997)

Burkina Faso

Congo, Dem. Rep.

Ethiopia

Kenya

Malawi

Tanzania

Uganda

Zimbabwe

200,000

410,000

840,000

440,000

360,000

730,000

1,700,000

450,000

try, the mobile teaching approachhas not only increased enrolment butalso produced test results matchingor surpassing those of conventionalschools. In 1993, it was extended tomountainous areas throughout theregion. ‘Ambulant’ teachers nowtrek into the mountains to divide aweek of teaching between two learn-ing centres, kilometres apart, reachingchildren who would otherwise nothave access to schooling and savingother students a hazardous hike ac-ross mountains and rivers.30 TheCambodian cluster schools are an-other example of shared resources inremote areas (Panel 6).

In many countries, children in re-mote regions have gained access tolearning by some form of ‘distanceeducation’, often involving radio. TheUnited Kingdom’s BBC pioneeredthe transmission of educational radiobroadcasts as early as 1924.31 Sincethen, radio, television, and audio andvideo cassettes have become vitaleducational media, particularly in de-veloping countries where more ex-pensive technologies remain out ofreach. Through Interactive RadioInstruction (IRI), a technique devel-oped in Nicaragua in the early 1970sby a team from Stanford University,students answer questions, sing songsor complete practical tasks during care-fully timed pauses in the broadcast,with the teacher acting as facilitator oreven participant in group work.

Radio lessons like these must betailored to the needs of their audi-ences and use the full potential of themedium, including drama, sound ef-fects and music. From the first, theaim has been to improve quality ofeducation rather than just providelearning at a distance. And whilemore high-tech options now com-mand attention, IRI continues to bequietly effective on a mass scale. Astudy in the Dominican Republic

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compared children who had 5 hoursof radio instruction a week (plus halfan hour of follow-up activities) withstudents with 10 or more hours of in-struction in regular schools. The IRIstudents showed similar results inreading and writing and significantlybetter results in mathematics.32

Radio has also proven a highly ef-fective tool for reaching pre-schoolchildren. In Nepal, two series of 20programmes have been developed forthree- to five-year-olds and their care-givers. Each programme has beenbroadcast over national radio twice aweek and is an effective way of con-veying important information to re-mote mountain communities aboutthe health, nutrition and stimulation ofyoung children. But with a cast thatincludes characters such as a talkingbird and a pet elephant, the pro-grammes can also be used by commu-nity day-care centres or informalfamily groups.33

Flexible and unified systemsThe hallmark of all these approachesis flexibility, in which the approachesadapt to local conditions to meet theeducational needs of all children. Thisattribute was once confined only toso-called ‘non-formal education’proj-ects that multiplied in the 1970s, par-ticularly in South Asia, as concernedorganizations tried to fill the myriadcracks in the education system byreaching out to working children, thedisabled or girls.

One of the most famous of thesewas launched by the Bangladesh RuralAdvancement Committee (BRAC) in1985. Long recognized for its work inrural development, credit and health,BRAC aimed initially to providebasic literacy and numeracy to 8- to10-year-olds (with special emphasison girls) in 22 villages, but met withsuch immediate success that it ex-panded at fantastic speed. By the end

For girls and many among ethnic minorities,the poor and the disabled, school remainsinaccessible. Ensuring the right to EducationFor All is essential. In Bolivia, a teacherhelps a child to write in a pre-schoolprogramme for children of working mothers.

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Kampong Prahok school is impos-ing, brightly painted and modernlooking. It is also a houseboat

moored among the wood and bam-boo houses of a floating village atthe northern end of Cambodia’sTonle Sap lake. When the villagersfloat their homes to more shelteredwaters at the start of the rainy sea-son, they tow the school with them.

The wooden base of the school isstabilized under the water by a steelhull balanced on two sides by sturdybamboo poles, roped together toform thin logs. A corrugated roofkeeps out the monsoon rains. There isa small teachers’ office and two class-rooms that can accommodate up to80 students. The village children puntgondolier-style or paddle their canoesto the school, fastening them to therailings of its exterior boardwalk.

Kampong Prahok school is notunique — in fact, it is part of a clusterof such floating schools.

In mid-1993, UNICEF, in coopera-tion with the Cambodian Govern-ment, established the cluster schoolsin seven target areas of rural, urbanand minority populations. The majorobjective of the clusters is to redressimbalances in school quality by shar-ing resources, administration andoften even teachers, to improve theweaker schools without diminishingthe stronger ones. Government policynationalized their development in1995. In total, 631 clusters have beenestablished across the country, 44of which UNICEF supports as ofmid-1998.

Over time, experience has shownthat parents move their children tocluster schools because they realizethat these schools offer good teach-ers, new or refurbished buildings andbetter equipment. Surveys indicatethat enrolment rates in these schoolsare substantially higher than the na-tional and provincial averages and

drop-out rates are much lower, espe-cially in urban areas.

The cluster system makes it possi-ble to stretch scarce teaching re-sources and equipment by makingthem available via a common re-source centre. Such centres canserve as a location for classes.

Given these advantages, it is nowonder that cluster schools are pop-ular. Nevertheless, the floating fish-ing community had to work hard tobring a cluster school to Tonle Sap.Parents from the area journeyed fortwo days to the Provincial EducationOffice to insist that someone visittheir community to help them planthe schools. The officials arrived afew months later to find a function-ing parent-teacher association de-spite the fact that there still was noschool and that all the association’smembers were illiterate.

“It was a difficult area,” says SiengSovathana, Deputy Director of theProvincial Office of Education. “Weused to have an enrolment rate ofaround 15 per cent because we onlyhad one school.” Now, with UNICEF’shelp, four floating schools move withthe villages, and the old school build-ing has been renovated as a resourcecentre. Enrolment is up to 60 per cent.“As a result of the cluster schoolsystem,” says Ms. Sovathana, “we’veseen an increase in enrolment, im-proved quality of education and areduction in drop-out rates and in thenumber of children who have torepeat a year. Also the administrativework has improved remarkably.”

This is not to say that KampongPrahok is without problems. Theteachers in the floating schools haveno boats, for example, so wheneverthey want to go somewhere, theyhave to borrow one from the stu-dents. And Chhorn Rey Lom, a 13-

The floating classroom:School clusters in Cambodia

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BRAC is a significantsuccess, an exception tothe general belief thateducational projectsaiming simply to fillin the cracks end upoffering inferioreducation to the poor,disadvantaged, disabledor girls.

of 1992 there were 12,000 BRACschools,34 and in 1998 some 34,000.35

A BRAC school usually comprises30 children, around 20 of whom aregirls, who live within a radius of twokilometres and are taught in a simplerented room. Two thirds of the teach-ers are female, drawn from the localcommunity and paid only modestwages. But they are among the mosteducated people in the community,having completed 9 years of educa-tion and 15 days of initial training,plus 1 or 2 refresher days eachmonth. BRAC staff visit them weekly.Parents make no financial contri-bution but are expected to attendmeetings.

The school is a typical villagestructure with a thatch or tin roof andearthen floors. Each has a chalkboardand charts, and teachers are providedwith materials such as workbooks andteaching notes, picture cards andcounting sticks. Each student receivesa slate, pencils, notebooks and texts.The school aims to help childrenachieve basic literacy, numeracy andsocial awareness.

Students also spend 40 minutes aday on physical exercise, singing,drawing, crafts and reading stories,activities that the children love andthat thus help boost attendance.Teachers ask pupils to help each otherwith assignments, and comprehensionis stressed rather than memorization.36

The schedule is flexible; school isheld for 3 hours a day, 6 days a week,268 days per year. But the time of dayis selected by parents, and the schoolcalendar can be adapted to fit localneeds such as the harvest. BRACschool graduates are eligible to moveon to the fourth grade of the formalprimary school system, althoughnot enough of them do so — manyfamilies find they cannot afford theextra costs associated with the publicsector.37

Photo: By sharing scarce resources andpooling teachers, school clusters are able toreach more students and redress imbalancesin educational quality. The KampongPrahok floating school in Cambodia.

year-old student who is about tocomplete grade two, faces theprospect of having to give upschool when she has barely be-gun, as the Kampong Prahok clus-ter presently offers only the firsttwo grades. “I will have to stopstudying,” she says, “and workand fish to help my parents. I wishwe had more grades and moreschools in this community.”

But on the whole, the advan-tages of the cluster system out-weigh any problems, according toMs. Sovathana. “It means the big-ger schools with more resourcescan help the poorer schools. Firstwe group the schools, then wegroup the head teachers so theyall know what’s going on. Thenwe group the teachers so they canhelp each other with teachingtechniques and exchange ideasand experiences. Finally we groupthe communities.”

In a country like Cambodia,with its grim recent past of suffer-ing and civil war, clustering schoolscan serve an extra purpose.“Since 1979 people do not talkfreely to each other, or sharethings with each other,” saysPawan Kucita, UNICEF EducationOfficer in Phnom Penh. “The clus-ter’s concept of sharing resources,materials and ideas, betweenschools and between villages, canonly help. We look at the schoolas an agent of change in thecommunity. It is one mechanismwe can use to build harmony insociety, a willingness to shareand develop together.”

BRAC is a significant success, anexception to the general belief thateducational projects aiming simply tofill in the cracks end up offering infe-rior education to the poor, disadvan-taged, disabled or girls who need it.And even BRAC has trouble provid-ing a reliable bridge for its studentsinto mainstream schools.

Now what is being increasinglyadvocated in many countries is a uni-fied system overseen by the State andfounded on state-supported schoolsbut much more responsive to localconditions and community needs andat times bringing in partner organiza-tions that open learning opportunitiesfor children who are not being reachedby conventional schools. The old di-vide between ‘non-formal’ and ‘for-mal’ education is thus becomingirrelevant. In such a system, theState’s role is to set standards andensure that the different approachesencompassed by the system conformto these standards.

There are now examples world-wide of public education systems that:† adapt the annual calendar and daily

schedule of schools to local circum-stances, such as the agricultural sea-sons in rural areas, and use shorterschool hours more effectively;

† locate schools closer to children’shomes, which particularly increasesgirls’ attendance;

† involve parents and the local com-munity in the management ofschools;

† make increased use of paraprofes-sionals and volunteers from thelocal community;

† adapt the curriculum to localneeds;

† eliminate gender bias in curriculaand related materials;

† exercise more flexibility in evalu-ating and promoting students tominimize the need for them to re-peat whole years.

In the more inclusive concept ofeducation, diverse approaches com-plement each other in the push toachieve Education For All. TheUgandan Government has taken thebold step of guaranteeing free primaryschooling to four children from eachfamily. It has also piloted the Com-plementary Opportunities for PrimaryEducation (COPE) scheme in fourdistricts over the last two years, togive older children who have missedearlier educational opportunities asecond chance at school.

The project embodies many of thegood practices from programmes inother parts of the world that havereached out to marginalized children.The classes are small (30-40 pupils),and the curriculum is skills orientedand enriched with life skills, coveringonly four subjects: mathematics, sci-ence, English and social studies. Thetiming is flexible (three hours a day),and teachers assess children continu-ally rather than in terminal exams.The participation of parents and thecommunity is encouraged.38

The national officer responsiblefor COPE, George Ouma Mumbe, be-lieves the project’s schools are alreadychanging the lives of child labourersand other children previously un-reached by the system. “By givingthem specially trained teachers, syl-labus and teaching methods, they areable to pick up quickly because oftheir superior age,” he says. “It isamazing how fast these kids learn.” 39

Perhaps the most significant ele-ment of programmes such as COPE isthat they accommodate and encour-age accelerated learning opportuni-ties, so that children who are over agein a class can advance quickly throughthe system to catch up with theirpeers. Enormous numbers of over-agelearners repeating grades clog educa-tion systems throughout the world asa consequence of system failure. A

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A boy clasps his exercise book in Uganda,where the Government, in its push to achieveEducation For All, now guarantees freeprimary schooling to four children from each family.

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strategy that aims to accelerate stu-dents’ movement through the educa-tion system has enormous potential interms of both meeting their rights andincreasing the system’s efficiency. Thefull implications of accelerated learn-ing programmes for curricula and forpupil flow have not yet been fullyworked out, but they make a verypowerful argument for flexibility.

Empowering teachersTeachers are at the heart of the educa-tion revolution, but many feel undersiege. Once viewed as wise, respectedcommunity leaders bringing the torchof learning to the next generation,their diminished and demoralized sta-tus is a worldwide phenomenon. In1991, the second International LabourOrganization’s (ILO) meeting on theConditions of Work of Teachers con-cluded that the situation of teachershad reached “an intolerably lowpoint.” Working conditions were dras-tically eroded, producing an exodusof qualified and experienced teach-ers.40 When UNESCO sought theviews of national authorities for aconference on the role of teachers in1996, only a handful of wealthy in-dustrial countries (notably Austria,Canada, Finland, Germany and Swit-zerland) differed from the majorityview that the standing and pay ofteachers were cause for anxiety.41

The profession was hit hard by thefinancial austerity of the 1980s in thedeveloping world. When governmentscut public spending as part of struc-tural adjustment programmes re-quired by the World Bank and theInternational Monetary Fund (IMF),education budgets (comprised largelyof teacher salaries) suffered. Over the1980s and 1990s, teachers in Africaand in Latin America experienced ageneral lowering of real income, withrapid and substantial reductions insome cases.42

The erosion in salaries in Africa,for instance, has meant that primaryschool teachers often receive less thanhalf the amount of the household ab-solute poverty line.43 Many teachershave been forced to supplement theirmeagre incomes by offering privatelessons or running their own busi-nesses, to the detriment of their regu-lar attendance and performance inschools — a phenomenon that hasspread now to countries in EasternEurope, and in Central and East Asia.Even when resources are abundant,governments are more likely to spendon expanding schooling than on wages.

Teaching conditions need to be im-proved worldwide to halt the viciouscircle of demoralization and decline.But the social standing of teacherswill not recover until the quality of theeducational experience they provideimproves. One route to this goal is theirreadiness to alter classroom practicein line with the Convention on theRights of the Child. Another lies insociety’s responsibility to offer boththe conditions that will encouragemore highly qualified candidates toenter the profession and the kind ofeducation for teachers that preparesthem for the child-centred classroomsof the future.

In Togo, for example, more than athird of primary teachers only have aprimary education themselves, and 84per cent of secondary teachers havenot completed a teacher educationcourse. In Uruguay, one of LatinAmerica’s more prosperous nations,only a third of secondary teachershave completed university; 70 percent have had no teacher education.44

In the United States, more than 12 percent of newly hired teachers enter theclassroom without formal courses ineducation, and another 14 per centhave not taken enough such courses tomeet state standards. Some teachersare recruited on the basis of tests that

39

The erosion in salariesin Africa has meant thatprimary school teachersoften receive less than halfthe amount of the householdabsolute poverty line.

If the medium of instructionin school is a language notspoken at home, particularlywhen parents are illiterate,then learning problemsaccumulate and chancesof dropping-out increase.

teachers, and innovative models ofteacher education are springing upthroughout the world. One majorstrategy — little replicated elsewherebut proving that effective teacher edu-cation can be delivered at relativelylow cost — is ZINTEC (ZimbabweIntegrated Teacher Education Course).Emerging from Zimbabwe’s need todeliver on its promise of universalprimary education, ZINTEC offeredrecruits four months of intensive, resi-dential education at the beginning of afour-year programme, three years in-service education using a distance-mode package coupled with super-vision by college lecturers and otherregular school supervisors, and a finalfour months’ residential course.49

In India, teacher education initia-tives have aimed to counteract oldpatterns of teacher-pupil interactionand inspire people with a sense ofclassroom possibilities through theShikshak Samakhya (Teacher Em-powerment) programme in MadhyaPradesh state. Here, teachers experi-ence an explosion of ideas, knowl-edge, skills and interactive activities,a wide range of colourful and attractiveteaching-learning materials, differentmethods of teaching, collegiality andpeer-group support.50 This alternativeparticipatory education method in-volves teachers working with one an-other, with the aim of empoweringthem to make their own decisions.Shikshak Samakhya has succeeded inoverturning the low morale endemicamong teachers in Madhya Pradesh.It has also moved the teacher educa-tion process closer to the active, par-ticipatory environment embodied inthe ‘Joyful Learning’ initiative that istransforming the classroom experi-ence in 11 Indian states (Panel 7).

In 44 schools of the formerYugoslav Republic of Macedonia, theActive Teaching/Interactive Learningproject has changed traditional class-

do not evaluate teaching processesand methodologies but instead exam-ine basic skills and general knowl-edge — criteria that offer no insightinto their abilities as educators.45

In the past, wealthier governmentshave viewed teacher education as alengthy process of theoretical study incollege. Developing countries facedwith the impossibility of financingthis industrialized world model haveoften resorted to crash courses result-ing in only minimal exposure to edu-cational methods for teachers alreadypoorly prepared.46 Between these twoextremes is a new model of teachereducation that forms an essentialcomponent of the education revolu-tion. Part of this is a revision of theconcept of school supervisors and in-spectors who are trained to serve aspedagogical advisers — experiencedprofessionals who can guide teachersand help resolve problems in a contin-uing process rather than evaluateteachers in a judgemental way.

No workable education system canstop at the primary level. The focus ofthe Jomtien decade was understand-ably on guaranteeing universal pri-mary education, but as more childrencomplete the first years of schooling,the greater the need for secondaryschool, especially since it is from thelatter pool of students that futureteachers should be drawn. Teachertraining costs as much as 35 times theannual cost per student of a generalsecondary education.47 This experi-ence of secondary education mustmirror the participatory, gender-sensi-tive, child-centred model set out bythe Convention on the Rights of theChild, as teachers are overwhelm-ingly likely to replicate the educationalmodel they themselves experienced inschool.48

Those who do not complete sec-ondary school will still, however,need preparation for their role as

40

41

Education Workshops) in Chile.“Tired of always doing the samethings, of working alone, of the fear tochange. I try to do many things. I havealways been in favour of change. Iwould like to believe that all of us walktogether towards the same goal.” 54

Language barriersAnother major obstacle to children’saccess to schools is that, in manycountries, lessons are still conductedin the former colonial language — forexample, in many of the English-,French- and Portuguese-speakingAfrican countries that have the lowestlevels of primary enrolment in theworld. If the medium of instruction inschool is a language not spoken athome, particularly when parents areilliterate, then learning problems ac-cumulate and chances of dropping-out increase. On the other hand, thereis ample research showing that stu-dents are quicker to learn to read andacquire other academic skills whenfirst taught in their mother tongue(Panel 8). They also learn a secondlanguage more quickly than those ini-tially taught to read in an unfamiliarlanguage.

In the 1990s, several Latin Amer-ican countries modified their educationlaws to affirm the rights of indigenouspeoples, leading to participation bythe indigenous in educational decision-making as well as in planning, imple-menting and evaluating educationalpolicy and programmes. In Bolivia,for example, indigenous organiza-tions developed an intercultural bilin-gual education programme, and inAndean and Amazon Basin countries,indigenous groups participated in thedevelopment of human resource train-ing programmes. A case study on theBolivian programme documentedgirls’ and women’s enthusiasm aboutbilingual education as a means to in-tercultural communication. The Latin

room practices by facilitating teacher-student-parent partnerships. Chil-dren’s ages and aptitudes form thebasis for the planned work, writingtasks are varied, and readings encom-pass a wide range of purposes.51

And in Bangladesh, where mostprimary school teachers require stu-dents to learn by repetition, someclassrooms are benefiting from theIntensive District Approach to Edu-cation for All (IDEAL). This project,a partnership between UNICEF andthe Government, educates teachersabout the different ways in whichchildren learn — each according toindividual strengths. For example,some children learn better by doing,others prefer to listen, and still othersto visualize. To make the classroomenvironment more friendly, enjoyableand sensitive to students, especiallygirls, IDEAL teachers use participa-tory methods. The value of this ap-proach has been obvious to manyteachers: “I have been dreaming ofthis sort of classroom organization forthe last 35 years,” said Abdul MajidMollah, head teacher of a primaryschool in Jhenaidah. “My dream hascome true.” 52

The Bangladesh educators are notalone in discovering the magical in-teraction with children who want tolearn. “We were very worried whenwe started the course, but now weknow we can teach the new way andwe enjoy it,” said a teacher learningnew techniques in the Lao People’sDemocratic Republic. “It’s more funto teach now,” he adds. “Things runmore smoothly when the childrenenjoy it.” 53 In bringing learning alivefor children in their care, teachers arerecovering their own sense of self-esteem and mission. “I came becauseI am tired of what happens in myschool,” said a teacher explaining whyhe had attended the Talleres deEducación Democrática (Democratic

Research shows that learning in the mothertongue in the early grades builds a vitaleducational foundation and bolsterschildren’s confidence and self-esteem.Students in an outdoor French class in Benin.

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The first hint that this school isdifferent is the building’s col-our — a warm, inviting pink. In-

side, the difference from other Indianschools is even more palpable. It isnot just the animal and floral decora-tions painted on the whitewashedupper walls, nor the displays of chil-dren’s artwork, nor the metre-high‘blackboard’ — the black-paintedlower wall — that runs all the wayaround the room. The most strikingdifference is in the atmosphere.

Both the children and the teacherare clearly enjoying their work. Theywant to be here. A more dramaticcontrast with the dismal rote-learningthat has been the standard practice inIndian classrooms for generationscould not be imagined.

This is a bal mitra shala — a child-friendly school — and it is part of thestrategy of Shikshak Samakhya, theteacher empowerment programmethat has rejuvenated primary schoolsin the Indian state of MadhyaPradesh. The word ‘strategy’ is care-

fully chosen: This is a different modelof teacher education, a change inclassroom process and practice anda very effective motivation pro-gramme, but it is much more thanthe sum of these parts. For almostthe first time, the education sys-tem — the planners and administra-tors — have placed their faith in theteachers at the grass-roots level.And they have been rewarded by themost heartening success stories.

The district where this venturebegan was not an easy place for apilot scheme. Dhar has long beenclassified as ‘backward’: Scheduledtribes comprise more than 75 percent of the population, people regu-larly migrate to cities to find workand school attendance is poor.

In 1992, when the programmewas launched on 5 September —Teachers’ Day — in 186 primaryschools and 23 cluster resource cen-tres, local teachers initially saw it asyet another wearisome governmentprogramme. But Shikshak Samakhya’s

great strength is the way it motivatesteachers. From the first, they were in-volved in designing and developingthe scheme so that they soon claimedit as their own. The new approachspread rapidly to neighbouring dis-tricts, and the commitment of theoriginal teachers to supporting theircolleagues in areas new to thescheme has been vital.

By 1995, Shikshak Samakhya wasachieving national notice — pro-grammes inspired by it are now op-erating in 10 other Indian states,under the generic name of teacherempowerment or ‘joyful learning’.Joyful learning refers to the move-ment whereby teachers pledge toteach with enthusiasm and to incor-porate song, dance and the use ofsimple, locally made teaching aids,bringing children more actively intothe learning process. Programmesare supported by several UnitedNations agencies, including UNICEF,the United Nations DevelopmentProgramme (UNDP) and the UnitedNations Population Fund (UNFPA).

The programme has helped teach-ers regain the pride and respect thatIndian tradition affords their profes-sion, says Sardar Singh Rathore, ahead teacher from Dhar. Such re-spect had eroded in the past twodecades. “Not only are they enjoyingtheir teaching in the classrooms, butthey have been able to make it so in-teresting that children are eager tocome to school,” said Mr. Rathore. Afurther benefit has been increasedenrolment in the schools served, es-pecially of girls and working children.

Teachers in the programme attenda two-day initial orientation sessionwhere they learn about the new phi-losophy from other teachers and aregiven practical training in preparingthe new classroom aids. The teacher

Joyful learning:Empowering India’s teachers

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American experiences in generalhave also demonstrated that involvingthe ethnic groups themselves canstrengthen solidarity among peopleand raise awareness about gender andother kinds of discrimination.55

There are also innovative bilingualeducation programmes providing rep-licable models all over the world. InViet Nam, the Kinh majority com-prises 87 per cent of the population.The remaining 13 per cent is com-posed of 53 separate ethnic minoritieswho live in remote hill regions andcoastal areas with the lowest school-enrolment rates in the country. Since1991, the Government has been tryingto extend primary schooling to the hillregions via a multigrade teachingproject. The language of instruction isVietnamese, but fast-track training isoffered to potential teachers fromethnic minorities. UNICEF and theWorld Bank have also sponsored thedevelopment of bilingual books inethnic minority languages, such asBahnar, Cham, H’Mong and Khmer,and are setting up special literacy pro-duction centres that will employ localteachers, writers and illustrators whospeak and write the local languages.

The model for this effort is theIntelyape project, which developedArrernte literacy materials withAboriginal Australians in the town ofAlice Springs — another example ofhow the education revolution appliesinnovations from one part of theworld to another.56

Emergency measuresThe impact of armed conflict on chil-dren is so deep and all-encompassingthat it is almost impossible to measurefully. We can estimate the deaths in adecade (2 million) and serious injuries(6 million), the numbers orphaned orseparated from their families (1 million),and those left homeless (12 million).57

But we cannot know the exact num-

In armed conflict, educationcan serve to both heal andrehabilitate. Keeping schoolsopen, or reopening them assoon as possible, provideschildren with structure andsome sense of normalcy inthe midst of chaos.

Photo: New teaching techniques thatactively engage children in the learningprocess are rejuvenating education inIndia, making school more enjoyable forteachers and students. Here, a teacherand pupils in India.

education itself is conductedalong ‘joyful learning’ lines, withthe extensive use of songs, rid-dles and group activities.

Built on the premise that a mo-tivated teacher and a satisfiedstudent are the best way of trans-forming an education system,the teacher empowerment/joyfullearning strategy is based on thebelief that primary teachers canbe motivated and successful ifthey receive sufficient trust, sup-port and guidance. Parents willsend their children to school if thelearning experience is made rele-vant, effective and enjoyable.

“Seeing the children both learn-ing and longing to go to school,the parents and community havecome forward to support theteacher and the school,” continuesMr. Rathore.

The virtuous-circle effect couldnot be clearer: India’s investmentin the strategy has succeeded inempowering teachers and makinglearning and teaching fun. It hashad a positive impact on chil-dren’s learning achievements.The strategy has also crossed na-tional boundaries and has influ-enced planning in neighbouringBangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan.The founding principles of teacherempowerment and joyful learningthus hold lessons not just for therest of India but for the world as awhole.

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School can be an alien and daunt-ing place for the many millionsof young children who begin

classwork in a language differentfrom their own. Compelled to adopta second language when they are asyoung as four, five or six, these chil-dren must give up an entire universeof meaning for an unfamiliar one.They may also come to believe thatthe language they have known frombirth is inferior to the language ofschool. In learning complex subjectssuch as mathematics and reading,they must undergo one of the great-est challenges they will ever face, yetthe linguistic skills on which much oftheir cognitive faculties rest havesuddenly been deemed irrelevant tothe task at hand.

As these building blocks of knowl-edge crumble, so can the children’sself-esteem and sense of identity. It isno wonder that so many of themstruggle to stay in school and suc-

ceed. A recent study in Zambia, forexample, showed that students whobegan school using English insteadof their mother tongue did not ac-quire enough reading proficiency tolearn well by grades three to six.

Experts increasingly recognizehow important it is for children to usetheir mother tongue when they beginschool. Use of this tongue validatestheir experiences. It helps them learnabout the nature of language itselfand how to use language to makesense of the world, including all as-pects of the school curriculum.

The mother tongue is an essentialfoundation for learning. But acquiringproficiency in a national language —or in even a third, internationallanguage such as French or English —also has advantages. It broadenscommunication and, later on, affordsgreater opportunities for higher edu-cation and jobs. Aboriginal educatorsextol such two-way learning, which

helps students participate in the com-munity and in the wider world as well.

After the first few grades — atleast by the end of primary school —students who begin studies in theirmother tongue should therefore ide-ally add a national language. Thiscould be, for example, a Western, for-mer colonial language, such as Frenchin Senegal, or a dominant indigenouslanguage, such as Hindi in India. As-certaining which national languageto introduce in schools, however, canbe a matter of political debate.

In many countries, the two-language education ideal is rarely at-tained, despite the fact that mostpeople in the world deal with morethan one language in their daily lives.Cultural and political considerationsoften come into play. Many parentsand decision makers, for example,advocate teaching in the national lan-guage from the start as a way to as-similate children into the dominantculture. For this reason, some parentswill not send their children to a schoolthat uses only the mother tongue.

Shortages of materials and train-ing programmes have also hinderedthe two-language goal. To begin with,teachers may not speak the local orindigenous languages of their stu-dents, and they are often hard-pressed to find curriculum materialsin these languages. Moreover, eventeachers proficient in a local tonguewill require training in how to teachthe national language as a secondlanguage in the later grades.

For governments, the costs of de-veloping learning materials andteacher-education courses can beenormous, especially where manylanguages exist. West Africa, for ex-ample, has 500 to 1,000 languages.Yet those costs need to be weighedagainst the price society pays for

Which language for education?

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bers of children who are spirituallyscarred and emotionally damaged bythe violence they have seen and, insome cases, been forced to take partin; by the massive disruptions in thesocial fabric of their lives; and by theincreasingly frequent experience ofbeing the targets of attacks.

In armed conflict, education canserve to both heal and rehabilitate.Keeping schools open, or reopeningthem as soon as possible, provideschildren with structure and somesense of normalcy in the midst ofchaos. Teachers and other profession-als can attend to the psychosocial andemotional effects of violence on chil-dren. They can teach about survivaland safety and monitor for humanrights abuses.

In an effort to restore and protectchildren’s right to education in emer-gencies, UNESCO and UNICEF de-veloped the ‘Edukit’ concept, inwhich educational and teacher train-ing materials are sent to the affectedareas as rapidly as possible. Childrenget pens and paper, chalk and erasers,notebooks and exercise books. Teach-ers receive curriculum guides, teach-ing materials and textbooks. Anddisrupted communities gain a start onrebuilding. First used in Rwanda andSomalia, Edukits have been sent toAfghanistan, Ghana, Iraq, Liberia,Mali, the Republic of Moldova, SierraLeone, Somalia, Sudan, Tanzania andZambia.

There are also programmes to helpmake schools places where peace ispractised and learned. In Lebanon andSri Lanka (Panel 9), educational ap-proaches born in conflict have becomepart of the national curricula. Childrenare taught problem-solving, negotia-tion and communication skills and re-spect for themselves and others; theycome to know that peace is their right.The goal is to reconcile divided com-munities and prevent future conflicts.

Education helps restore normalcy and healthe trauma after armed conflict. Attentivestudents in Angola, which has endured 30years of conflict, use educational materialsprovided in a UNESCO-UNICEF ‘Edukit’.

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Photo: When children as young as four,five or six are compelled to adopt asecond language, they give up a universeof meaning for an unfamiliar one. Girlsattend an English class in Pakistan.

high drop-out and repetition ratesin schools where such languageprogrammes do not exist.

Whether they learn a secondlanguage in first or fourth grade,children often struggle with a newlanguage, which can be radicallydifferent from their own in termsof vocabulary, sentence structureand meanings. For example,Khmer, an indigenous languageof Viet Nam, uses a script derivedfrom a South Indian alphabet,whereas Vietnamese, the nationallanguage, uses the Roman alpha-bet. Most children learn a writingsystem from scratch in the earlygrades, but those learning to writein a new language have to over-come the obstacle of attachingsymbols to unfamiliar words.

Countries, such as Ecuador,have made considerable progressin bilingual education. Bolivia re-cently passed its Education ReformAct in support of the right to amother tongue. Burundi, Kenya,Rwanda, Somalia, Tanzania andZimbabwe have introduced mother-tongue instruction in primaryschools, and villages in BurkinaFaso have introduced it in com-munity-managed schools. Educa-tion policy in Papua New Guineaallows communities to decide thelanguage of instruction for gradesone and two. In Nepal, UNICEFsupports government efforts toproduce learning materials in fourlanguages.

Early mother-tongue instructionis a key strategy to reach the morethan 130 million children not inschool — and help them succeed.

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It is 7:30 a.m. on a misty Monday,and the morning haze is mixedwith the smoke of campfires drift-

ing across rows of tightly packed,blue plastic ‘homes’. Dressed in herbest — a striped sweater drooping toher knees, donated by someone fromanother continent — Veridiane joinsthe trail of small figures swingingempty plastic bags. The line of chil-dren snakes its way to a clearing undera wide acacia tree called ‘school’.There are benches of stones or logslovingly aligned by parents. Theteacher welcomes Veridiane and theothers to their first day of school.

Such sights were typical in refugeecamps in Tanzania after the massive in-flux of 500,000 refugees from Rwandain 1994. From these first days of‘schools under trees’, emergency edu-cation eventually reached 65 per centof all the children in the camp, provid-ing much needed stability in their lives.

Veridiane and the other refugeeswere forcibly repatriated to Rwanda

in December 1996. By then, a newwave of refugees from civil conflict inBurundi and the Democratic Re-public of the Congo had arrived inTanzania.

Many lessons learned from theRwandan refugee experience wereapplied: Within a few weeks of theirarrival, ‘schools under trees’ beganwith materials provided by UNICEF,the Office of the United Nations HighCommissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)and others. For the 58,000 Burundianchildren, textbooks identical to thoseused in their schools at home wereprinted and distributed. The 20,500Congolese children in the campswill also soon receive educationalmaterials.

The curriculum, the same as thatused in the children’s country of ori-gin, is recognized in many cases byschool systems at home. So it wasthat six Congolese children, by agree-ment with both Governments in-volved, took the Democratic Republic

of the Congo’s national examina-tions in 1997, which were conductedin Tanzania. Negotiations continuewith the Burundian Government overrecognition of camp-acquired quali-fications, so that children will nothave to repeat a grade when theyfinally return home.

Some elements of refugee school-ing nevertheless remain particular tothe situation. For example, childrenare taught English and Kiswahili inTanzania’s camps so they can commu-nicate with surrounding communities.Child rights are taught through the useof illustrated booklets produced byKuleana, an NGO based in Mwanza(northern Tanzania). Conflict resolu-tion is also a vital part of the schoolcurriculum — as well as of adult-education initiatives in the camps.

In phased approaches to educationin emergencies around the globe,children suffering from psychosocialstress should have their needs ad-dressed first. Before more formalizedcurricula and pedagogic responsescan be organized, recreational pro-grammes — sports, drama and art —can give children opportunities to ex-press and release their feelings. Inacute crisis situations, training pack-ages such as the Teaching Emer-gency Package (TEP), developed byUNESCO, UNICEF and UNHCR forRwanda, are instrumental as an earlyresponse to educational needs.

However, none of these shouldbe considered stopgap measures.On the contrary, emergency situa-tions can provide a new beginning,laying the groundwork for educa-tion systems that are more sensi-tive to child rights and that includeeducation in democracy, humanrights and peace — topics that arestill too infrequently addressed inmainstream classrooms.

A new beginning:Education in emergencies

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Education systems failto take into account thespecial circumstancesof working children.Most working childrenwant to go to school.

In Croatia, where children have en-dured bitter civil war, an innovativeproject offers children in primaryschools 20 weeks of training that aimsto address psychosocial stress, in-crease bias awareness, promote con-flict resolution and teach ways ofachieving peace. It is one of the vari-ous approaches being used to helpmitigate the effects of conflict on chil-dren, as well as to address their veryspecial educational needs.

A collaboration between UNICEF,CARE, Canada’s McMaster Univer-sity and the Croatian Ministry ofEducation, the project was begun withfourth-graders during 1996 in one ofthe four war-affected areas of thecountry with the purpose of helpingchildren resolve everyday problems,build their self-esteem and improvetheir communication skills. As of the1997/98 school year, the project wasin place in all four war-affected areas,with Mali Korak (Little Step), a localNGO, handling the teacher educationcomponent.

Successful results include reducedpsychosocial stress, improved class-room atmosphere and positive atti-tudes towards school, parents and lifein general. The hope is to extend thiskind of training to teachers and stu-dents in all eight grades of primaryschool and to adolescents in youthassociations.

Countering child labourThe majority of out-of-school chil-dren are likely to be working. ILOestimates that there are 250 millionchildren working full or part time inthe developing world.58 Work preventsmany children from gaining or bene-fiting from education, but it is equallythe case that education systems fail totake into account the special circum-stances of working children. Mostworking children want to go to school.To attract out-of-school working

Photo: In Tanzania, ‘schools under trees’,like this one, provide stability and educa-tional continuity to refugee childrenfrom neighbouring countries.

The UNICEF-supported Educa-tion for Peace project has grownout of Lebanon’s 16 years of civilwar. Launched in 1989 in collabo-ration with the Lebanese Govern-ment and 240 NGOs, the projecthas trained 10,000 young peoplewho have, in turn, organized edu-cational activities reaching ap-proximately 200,000 children. Thegoal is to promote peace and aculture of reconstruction and rec-onciliation; emphasis is placed onchild rights and child develop-ment, conflict resolution and envi-ronmental education.

In Sri Lanka, in its 15th year ofcivil conflict, the Education forConflict Resolution project isweaving the values of tolerance,compassion, understanding andpeaceful living, appreciation ofother cultures and non-violentconflict resolution into school cur-ricula. Since the project began in1992, it has reached more than1 million primary school childrenand trained more than 75,000 ad-ministrators and 30,000 studentleaders. In 1999, the project will beintroduced into Sri Lanka’s sec-ondary schools.

In a world where nearly 50 mil-lion people have been uprootedfrom their homes, either forcedto flee across borders as refu-gees or displaced within theirown country’s borders — 1 inevery 120 of the world’s popula-tion — the new understanding ofhow to educate people in emer-gency situations has never beenmore urgently needed.

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In Andhra Pradesh, India’s fifthlargest state, 75 villages are childlabour-free because their children

are enrolled in school, due in largepart to the efforts of the M. Venkat-arangaiya Foundation (MVF) over thepast seven years. From the inceptionof the programme in 1991, MVF ef-forts have been guided by two inter-related objectives: No child shall go towork; all children shall go to school.

The MVF programme began infive villages by enrolling 16 children,all girls, in school. By 1998, more than80,000 children, 5 to14 years old, boysand girls alike, from 500 villages wereenrolled by MVF in government-runschools throughout the rural areas ofthe Ranga Reddy district.

“The essence of the programmelies in making the community acceptthe idea that no child should work,”explains Shanta Sinha, the Founda-tion’s Secretary-Trustee and a professorof political science at the University

of Hyderabad. “This in itself is an ex-tremely difficult task since an enor-mous conflict of interest is involved.To the parent it means an immediateloss of a helping hand, while to theemployer it implies the loss of an ac-cessible labour force. To the teacherit results in a large increase in thenumber of children to teach, whilethe community as a whole takes onadditional responsibility.”

Even more difficult than resolv-ing these conflicts of interest istransforming the social values andcultural norms that support the con-cept of children working. How MVFaccomplished this shift is a modelof community organizing and con-sensus building among parents andthe children themselves, with teach-ers, many of whom have joined to-gether in a ‘Forum for Liberation ofChild Labour’, youth volunteersknown as ‘education activists’, localofficials and employers. First, MVF

contacted every family directly withthe help of the volunteers to deter-mine the status of each child in thedistrict. Children 5 to 8 years oldwere enrolled in regular schoolsand children aged 9 to 14 were sentto special night schools or residen-tial camps for three months in thesummer as a sort of ‘bridge course’,preparatory to being enrolled inregular schools. The experiences andprogress of both groups of studentswere monitored by committees ofparents.

Simultaneously, MVF held publicmeetings, poster campaigns andrallies. Parent-teacher associationswere activated at the village level andadministrative committees at the dis-trict level. “Just as community pres-sure is built up to encourage parentsto send their children to school,”says Professor Sinha, “employers arealso encouraged to stop hiring chil-dren. There have been a number ofinstances where employers have,under pressure from the community,come forward to sponsor for edu-cation children whom they onceemployed. The community has re-sponded by honouring these formeremployers.”

With the increased number ofchildren in school, the teaching stafffaced new demands. Additionalcommunity teachers, funded par-tially by the community and many ofwhom were first-generation literatesthemselves, were hired to serve thestudents as a link between the worldsof work and school. Governmentteachers were supported by MVFthrough workshops that focused onteachers’ attitudes towards theworking child attending school forthe first time, and others that ad-dressed the specific problems ofworking children.

In India:Helping the poor choose school

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children into school, to retain all chil-dren there to an appropriate age andlevel of learning, and to reintegratechildren who have dropped out, edu-cation must be structured to fit thespecific needs of working children,their families and communities (Panel10). In particular, agricultural anddomestic labour, the most hiddenforms of child labour, which impactdisproportionately on girls, must beaddressed.

To transform education from beingpart of the child labour problem into akey part of the solution will entailconsiderable innovation and the useof non-traditional techniques. It willinvolve upgrading teacher educationand school materials, and introducinggreater flexibility and creativity intoeducation management, teaching andlearning methods, curricula, schoolschedules and locations. It means mo-bilizing civil society, especially chil-dren. Children are participating inplanning their own school activitiesmore regularly, for example, inEscuela Nueva in Colombia, wherechildren’s councils are commonly heldas part of education for citizenship.

UNICEF is cooperating with gov-ernments on a number of approachesto meet the educational needs ofworking children. Scholarship pro-grammes in Brazil have provided ed-ucation grants to the poorest familiesas an economic incentive to reducethe drop-out rate. For example, theBolsa Criança Cidadã, a federal gov-ernment programme in regions of thecountry where child labour is preva-lent, gives grants to families and tomunicipal education secretariats toexpand sports, cultural activities andschool tutoring when child workersare in school. Working children in theFederal District are targeted by theBolsa-Escola programme, which pro-vides the equivalent of a minimumwage (about $100 a month) to their

Photo: Social values and cultural normsthat support the idea of child labour mustbe changed to keep children in school,something that requires the involvementof the entire community. A girl works ina tea shop in India.

As the programme matured,MVF’s role evolved. In 1997, theFoundation trained more than2,000 youth volunteers, govern-ment teachers, ‘bridge course’teachers, women leaders, andelected and NGO officials.

In contrast to most pro-grammes, MVF provides no eco-nomic incentives or recompenseto either the children or their fami-lies. Yet the approach has been sosuccessful that the state govern-ment is now duplicating it in othervillages. How does MVF explain itsexperience?

“The view of the Foundation,”says Professor Sinha, “is that inmany cases children have beenput to work because they werenot in school rather than the otherway around.” MVF’s experiencesclearly refute the prevailing theorythat economic necessity makespoor parents choose work fortheir children rather than school.The poor families of Andhra Pra-desh, given the opportunity andencouraged to do so, readily with-drew their children from work andenrolled them in school.

“We seem to have hit upon anagenda that is close to parents’hearts for what they wanted fortheir children,” says ProfessorSinha. “The programme strikesa chord.”

A girl casts her ballot during a studentcouncil election in Colombia, where childrenregularly participate in planning schoolactivities.

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Surprisingly, educational inno-vations are more easily foundin the deprived rural communi-

ties of Egypt’s south than in Cairo’swealthy neighbourhoods. Where thedesert meets the lush agriculturalfields next to the Nile and wheremountains loom over the valley, time-honoured traditions are giving way tochild-centred schools that are attract-ing the most estranged students: girls.

About 25 per cent of southernEgypt’s rural population resides inisolated, sparsely populated ham-lets at least 3 km from the nearestvillage school. Girls are most affectedby these conditions. In most ruralareas in the south, girls’ net enrol-ment rates range from about 50 percent to 70 per cent, compared with72 per cent nationally. In the mostextreme situations in some remoteareas, only 12 girls are enrolled forevery 100 boys.

In Asyut, Suhag and Qena —among the most deprived gover-norates in the south — close to 200

community schools have been estab-lished. Their success, in reducing theobstacles to girls’ education and infostering the active participation ofboth girls and boys in the classroom,has led to the integration of their prin-ciples of quality teaching and learn-ing into the formal education system.

Nadia, who thrived in the child-centred environment of the AlGaymayla hamlet school, is now anadolescent, with sound self-esteemand solid educational skills. Currentlyattending a preparatory middle schoolin Om Al Qossur village, Asyut, sheplans to pursue her education all theway through university, an aspirationemphatically supported by her family.

“When she was only in the thirdgrade she could read and write withgreater ease and proficiency than herolder brother who had attended thenearest village school. We then beganto rely on her for advice. She becamethe one to write our confidential let-ters to her uncle who is workingabroad in the Gulf,“ said her father.

Nadia’s middle-school teachersquickly noticed her academic prowessand her active participation in class,leading them to approach the com-munity school project for guidanceabout their new methods of activelearning, including self-directed activ-ities, learning by doing, working ingroups and children’s participation inmanaging the classroom.

It is the accomplishments of stu-dents like Nadia and 4,000 other chil-dren who have become active learnersthat have prompted Egypt’s Ministryof Education and the Governmentto expand the community school proj-ect. A number of elements are goingto scale, such as training teachers andprincipals in active learning pedago-gies, developing self-instructionalmaterials and piloting flexible pro-motional systems that advance chil-dren when they complete levels oflearning rather than when they passa specific exam.

The community schools began in1992 through strong partnershipsamong the Ministry of Education,communities, NGOs and UNICEF.Combining multiple grades in oneclass, they represent a model of activelearning especially attractive to girls,based on the principles of communityownership and parents’ participationin their children’s education. True tothe principles contained in the Con-vention on the Rights of the Child, theschools foster creativity, critical think-ing and problem-solving skills as thebasis for lifelong learning.

With support from the CanadianInternational Development Agency(CIDA), the community schools arebeing integrated with a governmentinitiative begun in 1993 called the’one-classroom’ schools, which alsotarget girls in deprived rural hamlets.The schools are operating in more

Egypt’s community schools:A model for the education of girls

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Discrimination againstgirls is the largestimpediment to achievingEducation For All.

families, a subsidy lost when theirchild’s attendance falls below 90 percent during the school year. Linkedwith efforts to improve the quality ofprimary education, the programmeshave reduced drop-out rates.

In Bangladesh, a memorandumof understanding (MOU) has beenboth a rapid and creative response indeveloping non-formal approachesfor children formerly working in thegarment industry. Signed by theBangladesh Garment Manufacturersand Exporters Association (BGMEA),ILO and UNICEF in July 1995, theagreement stipulates that childrenunder 14 be removed from the work-place, placed in schools and given amonthly stipend. Lessons learnedfrom the MOU have been incorpo-rated into a basic education pro-gramme for hard-to-reach urbanchildren.59

Element 3. Gendersensitivity andgirls’ education‘Growing tomatoes’ is the topic oftoday’s agricultural lesson in the al-Akarma community school in UpperEgypt. In the middle of the lesson,Nagwa raises her hand. The teachergives her permission to speak, andNagwa very politely but assertivelycorrects the teacher’s information onhow and where tomatoes grow. Theteacher thanks Nagwa and encour-ages the class to applaud her.60

This is a gender-sensitive class-room in action. The subject matter isrelevant to the students’ lives; theteacher-student interaction is mutu-ally respectful; a girl is encouraged toparticipate rather than just listen pas-sively; and her contribution is thenaffirmed (Panel 11).

Investing in education systems tomake them inclusive benefits all chil-dren. Unfortunately classrooms like

Photo: A girl in a classroom in Asyut,Egypt.

than 2,000 communities acrossthe country.

The integration of the two pro-jects began in earnest in 1995. Byministerial decree, an EducationInnovation Committee (EIC) wascreated to bring the two initiativescloser together and to incorporatethe best practices of the projectsinto the formal basic educationsystem at large, to encourageinnovations in education as anongoing process. Active learningand child-centred class manage-ment are being incorporated intothe formal schools.

EIC sits in the heart of theMinistry of Education, with mem-bership drawn from universities,the national literacy agency, themedia and the staff of the Ministryof Social Affairs. Recently, theMinistry of Education proposedthat NGOs, community members,businessmen and women as wellas health and environment offi-cials also be included.

With such evident demandfrom communities, parents andpolicy makers for quality educa-tion, a movement is on its way,with community schools viewedas a catalyst for social change andpersonal transformation. The questfor quality learning with commu-nities taking responsibility andownership of their schools isbuilding a solid foundation forsustainable development and life-long learning. Some refer to it asa silent revolution: a cherishedcollaboration for community learn-ing and empowerment.

Nagwa’s are still very much the ex-ception. Discrimination against girlsis the largest impediment to achievingEducation For All.

Girls’ right to a high-quality edu-cation that serves their needs is all toooften denied, even to those who reachthe classroom. Their learning andself-esteem can be undermined bylessons and textbooks filled with im-plicit and explicit messages that girlsare less important than boys. Theirteachers — women and men alike —may praise boys more, reward themwith attention and offer them moreopportunities for leadership. At school,girls may be routinely assigned house-keeping tasks that would only begiven to boys as a punishment.

A gender-sensitive class shouldcontain roughly equal numbers of girlsand boys, and their performanceshould be at parity, but many classesin the world do not fulfil that mostbasic criteria. For example, of the es-timated 130 million out-of-schoolchildren aged 6 to 11 in the develop-ing world, 73 million are girls.61 Theimportance of reducing this gendergap by targeted strategies to promotegirls’ education has been stressedthroughout the 1990s. It loomed largein the World Declaration on Edu-cation for All in 1990, adopted by 155countries: “The most urgent priorityis to ensure access to, and improve thequality of, education for girls andwomen, and to remove every obstaclethat hampers their active partici-pation. All gender stereotyping ineducation should be eliminated.” 62

(See Figs. 7 and 9.)These words were carefully chosen

to focus not only on the quality of theeducation available to girls and theneed to remove all barriers to attend-ing school, including those related tocultural tradition or lack of politicalwill, but also related to the physicalaspects of the problem, such as lack

of school places or appropriate facili-ties. Many girls drop out of school atthe onset of menstruation, whichmakes them particularly vulnerablewhen there are no separate toilets.

The broad social benefits of edu-cating girls are almost universallyacknowledged. They include thefollowing:† The more educated a mother is, the

more infant and child mortality isreduced (Fig. 8).

† Children of more-educated motherstend to be better nourished and suf-fer less from illness.

† Children (and particularly daugh-ters) of more-educated mothers aremore likely to be educated them-selves and become literate (Fig. 10).

† The more years of education wom-en have, the later they tend tomarry and the fewer children theytend to have.

† Educated women are less likely todie in childbirth.

† The more educated a woman is, themore likely she is to have opportu-nities and life choices and avoidbeing oppressed and exploited byher family or social situation.

† Educated women are more likelyto be receptive to, participate inand influence development initia-tives and send their own daughtersto school.

† Educated women are more likelyto play a role in political and eco-nomic decision-making at commu-nity, regional and national levels.While the bigger global problem

concerns girls’ lack of access to aquality education, a problem in boys’education appears to be looming. It isclear that in some regions boys’ enrol-ment is lower and their drop-out rateshigher. This is a long-established phe-nomenon in countries with pastoral tra-ditions such as Lesotho and Mongoliawhere boys have always been ex-pected to tend the herds. But it is also

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Fig. 7 Primary enrolment:Where the boys and girls are

As this scatter diagram of boys’ and girls’ net pri-mary enrolment rates in all developing countriesshows, more boys than girls are enrolled in coun-tries where overall enrolment is low and genderparity is greater at higher overall enrolment levels.Higher boys’ enrolment can be seen in the lowersection of the chart, while higher girls’ enrolmentcan be seen in the upper section.

Source: The State of the World’s Children 1998, UNICEF,New York, 1997 (Table 4).

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a growing problem in the Caribbean,where girls are not only staying inschool longer, but significantly out-performing boys at primary and sec-ondary levels. These findings arepossibly the first reflection in the de-veloping world of a ‘boys’ education’problem that exists in industrializedcountries (Panel 12).

To protect children’s right to edu-cation, schools and education sys-tems must be ‘gender sensitive’.What does this mean? In practice,most reforms to improve quality andguarantee child rights will also makeeducation more gender sensitive.Key measures proven to promotegirls’ schooling and enhance thequality of the school experience forall children include:† Offering a child-centred learning

experience in the classroom thatelicits the best in each individual,starts from the life and environmentof the community and includeslearning in the local language.

† Recruiting and training teachers tobe sensitive to gender and childrights. In some areas, more womenteachers are needed to serve as rolemodels for girls as well as to en-sure that parents are comfortablewith the classroom environment. AUNICEF study of countries thatachieved universal primary educa-tion early in their developmentprocess shows that these countriesdid exactly that — they employeda much higher proportion of womenteachers.63 The goal for all teach-ers, male and female, however, isto create classrooms in which girlsand boys can contribute equally.Recruiting more women teacherswill be of limited use if girls’ needscontinue to be disregarded. Theeducational process must change.

† Rooting out gender bias from theimages and examples found intextbooks and materials. Since

these images tend to show males inpositions of activity, power and au-thority, their elimination may seemlike a reform detrimental to boys.In reality, boys benefit from curric-ula that encourage them to behaveon the basis of who they are ratherthan on what society expects themto be. Thoughtful revision of text-books, classroom materials andlesson plans is likely to increasetheir general quality and relevanceto all children’s lives.

† Giving the local community morecontrol over and involvement withschools and ensuring that parentsand families are involved in achiev-ing gender sensitivity in education.

† Ensuring that principals, supervi-sors and other administrators aresensitive to gender issues, whichwill result in schools where girlsand boys have a good learning en-vironment that is safe and clean.This would include facilities thatdo not discourage girls’ attendance.It would also include a better gen-der balance among principals, su-pervisors and other administrators.

† Collecting education statistics andensuring they are disaggregated bygender, to get a true picture aboutgirls’ access to and participationin education. Data disaggregatedby geographical location, socio-economic group and, where rele-vant, ethnic and linguistic groupwill help identify other possibleareas of discrimination as well.

† Providing programmes that fosterearly childhood care for childgrowth and development (see ‘Ele-ment 5. Care for the young child’).All children’s self-esteem and pre-paredness for school are enhancedby this kind of pre-school care andstimulation, but girls’ stayingpower in primary school seems tobe increased even more than thatof boys.

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Fig. 8 Education’s impact on child mortality

A 1997 UNICEF study examined the impact ofhealth, nutrition, water and sanitation and educa-tion interventions on health in nine countries andthe Indian state of Kerala, all of which had madesignificant reductions in infant mortality. Of theinterventions, education was found to have thegreatest impact on health indicators, includingrates of infant and under-five mortality, lifeexpectancy at birth and total fertility. By way ofexample, the graphs below show a drop in theinfant mortality rate preceded by a rise in primaryenrolment in the Republic of Korea and Costa Rica.

Republic of Korea

Costa Rica

Source: Santosh Mehrotra and Richard Jolly, eds.,Development with a Human Face, Clarendon Press,Oxford, 1997.

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Less than 5 5-14 15 or more No data Industrialized countries

Fig. 9 At a glance: The gender gap in primaryeducation and related indicators

Industrialized countriesNet enrolment: 98% point difference between boys’ and girls’ enrolment: 0% of central government expenditure to education: 4GNP per capita: $27,086

CEE/CIS* and Baltic StatesNet enrolment: 94% point difference between boys’ and girls’ enrolment: 1% of central government expenditure to education: 6GNP per capita: $2,182

Latin America and CaribbeanNet enrolment: 92% point difference between boys’ and girls’ enrolment: 0% of central government expenditure to education: 11GNP per capita: $3,681

Percentage point difference between boys' and girls' primary school enrolment

The gender gap in primary education, shown on this map, is the percentage point differencebetween boys' and girls' net primary school enrolment. In most developing countries, boys'enrolment exceeds that of girls. The difference islargest in South Asia, where boys' enrolmentexceeds girls' by 12 percentage points, in the Middle East and North Africa by 11 percentagepoints and in sub-Saharan Africa by 9 percentagepoints. There is no difference between boys' andgirls' enrolment in industrialized countries.

Source: UNESCO and UNICEF, 1998, for net enrolment;The State of the World’s Children 1998 and The State ofthe World’s Children 1999 for percentage point differencebetween boys’ and girls’ enrolment, per cent of centralgovernment expenditure to education and GNP per capita(1996); UNAIDS for HIV/AIDS figures; ILO for child labourfigures.

Note: The map does not reflect a position by UNICEF onthe legal status of any country or territory or the delimita-tion of any frontiers. Dotted line represents approximatelythe Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir agreed upon byIndia and Pakistan and the respective China and Indiaboundary claims.

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Numbers to noteOver 8.2 million children aged 14 or younger have lost their mother or both parents to AIDS — 7.8 million in sub-Saharan Africa alone — and thatnumber is increasing by 50,000 a year. In developing countries, about 250 million children between the ages of 5 and 14 work — around 153 million inAsia, 80 million in Africa and 17.5 million in Latin America. These millions of child workers and AIDS orphans are at risk of being denied their right tobasic education, making it all the more difficult to lift themselves out of poverty and exploitation.

Sub-Saharan AfricaNet enrolment: 57% point difference between boys’ and girls’ enrolment: 9% of central government expenditure to education: 14GNP per capita: $528

East Asia and PacificNet enrolment: 96% point difference between boys’ and girls’ enrolment: 1% of central government expenditure to education: 11GNP per capita: $1,193

South AsiaNet enrolment: 68% point difference between boys’ and girls’ enrolment: 12% of central government expenditure to education: 3GNP per capita: $380

Middle East and North AfricaNet enrolment: 81% point difference between boys’ and girls’ enrolment: 11% of central government expenditure to education: 14GNP per capita: $1,798

For a list of countries in each region, see the Regional summaries country list on page 122.

*Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States.

Heads of schools andadministrators mustpromote high-quality,child-centred learningand ensure that schoolsare safe places, wheregirls feel respected andare safe, physicallyand intellectually,from teasing,rowdiness, violenceand sexual harassment.

† Locating schools closer to chil-dren’s homes. This can be achievedthrough school mapping to iden-tify the least served locations, andby establishing small multigradeschools in remote rural areas. Thesemeasures make schooling more ac-cessible to all children but particu-larly encourage girls’ enrolment.

† Scheduling lessons flexibly toallow children to participate whomight otherwise be deterred byfamily responsibilities in the fieldsor the household.

† Offering free education, or ensur-ing that children are not deniededucation because their parentscannot afford it. Faced with achoice between sending their sonsor daughters to school, poor fami-lies often send their sons.Gender sensitivity is not merely a

facet of the education revolution butis woven into its very fabric. Measuresaimed at girls’ participation advancethe cause of universal education onevery front.

A gender-aware approach must,therefore, inform decision-making atevery level of the system. At the na-tional level, decisions about educationmust be based on gender-specificinformation to ensure equality as anabsolute priority. Sufficient resourcesmust also be found so that families nolonger have to bear the direct andindirect costs of schooling.

Heads of schools and administra-tors must promote high-quality, child-centred learning and ensure thatschools are safe places, where girlsfeel respected and are safe, physicallyand intellectually, from the teasing,rowdiness, violence and sexual ha-rassment that overwhelms them in somany schools.

Teachers must use gender-sensitivematerials and monitor their own bias,making sure that girls participate asfrequently as boys and in the same

ways. They also need to include inthe curriculum material about wom-en’s contributions to society andthe local community, especiallywhere that contribution is hidden orundervalued.

The global UNICEF Girls’ Edu-cation Programme is currently pursu-ing these goals in more than 50countries, including the three regionswith the widest gender gap: sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and theMiddle East and North Africa. Thelatter two face a long and challengingroad to equity but have at least in-creased girls’ enrolment in primaryschool over the last decade.

In the Middle East and NorthAfrica, progress has been notable, butwithin the region, however, countrycircumstances vary widely. Bahrainand Jordan have completely elimi-nated the gender gap in primaryschooling, and Saudi Arabia has nearlydone so. Morocco, on the other hand,has a 19 percentage point differencebetween boys’ and girls’ enrolment.

In general, though, most countriesin the region show substantial pro-gress, which reflects the priority thatgovernments and international agen-cies have placed on improving girls’educational opportunities since theJomtien conference.

All 17 UNICEF country pro-grammes in the region have a signifi-cant female education component; aiddonors have been particularly favour-able to this area; and countries havebeen persuaded of the need to educategirls — not least by the growing needfor a better trained and qualifiedlabour force. The Government of Iran,in recent years, has been particularlysupportive of education for rural girlsand women.

In sub-Saharan Africa, on the otherhand, girls’ net enrolment rate, at 51per cent, is lower than it was in 1985.The region’s gender gap is smaller

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only because the boys’ enrolment ratehas fallen even more.

At the Pan-African Conference onthe Education of Girls, held inOuagadougou (Burkina Faso) in 1993,UNESCO recognized that Africa islagging behind other regions andcalled on African governments, re-gional, bilateral and internationalagencies and NGOs to make girls’education a priority.

Fortunately, energy is being de-voted to progress in the 1990s withevery prospect that it will pay signifi-cant dividends over the next decade.The African Girls’ Education Initia-tive, supported by UNICEF, now op-erates in over 20 countries and hassubstantial financial backing by theCanadian and Norwegian Govern-ments to carry it through to the end of1999.64

The Initiative is helping countriestry different approaches to close thegap between boys’ and girls’ enrol-ment, but one common measure is toimprove education systems overall inorder to better the educational experi-ence of girls.

In Mali, for instance, constraints togirls’ education are seen in the broadcontext of weaknesses in the entirebasic education system, so that ratherthan using a piecemeal project ap-proach, the focus is on decentralizedplanning and making the curriculummore relevant. Preliminary results areencouraging. In participating schools,girls make up a much larger percent-age of the student population thanthey do in schools in neighbouringvillages.65

Zambia’s Programme for theAdvancement of Girls’ Education(PAGE) has targeted gender issueswithin the system by using a host ofinitiatives ranging from piloting itsown single-sex classes (no results areavailable to date), to increasing paren-tal support for girls’ education via

joint pupil-parent sessions. The at-tempt to reach out to parents —which has helped encourage ruralparents to evaluate how they allocatehousehold tasks to their sons anddaughters — is a recognition thatgender sensitivity begins at home andin the community and cannot be leftto the school alone.

At school and community meet-ings organized by PAGE, attitudes to-wards girls’ education remain divided,but it is clear that the dialogue hashelped reduce entrenched opposition.The seven provinces not included inthe original programme asked to join,resulting in the Government’s launchof PAGE in 1998.

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Fig. 10 Generational impact of educating girls

The benefits of girls’ education accrue from generation to generation. Educated women are likely to havesmaller families and healthier children who themselves are likely to be better educated than children ofuneducated women. Over time, lower child mortality leads to behavioural change, lowering fertility. Smallerhousehold size improves the care of children, and lower fertility reduces the size of the school age population.

Source: Santosh Mehrotra and Richard Jolly, eds., Development with a Human Face, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1997.

Seeks medical attention sooner for herself and her children

Provides better care and nutrition for herself and her children

Marries later

Educated girl

Has fewer children

Higher probability of survival for herself and her children

Better learning/education

Lower total fertility

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Parents look after girls more,”says 16-year-old SebastianBrizan. “Boys need protection,

too.” Sebastian, who lives in Trinidadand Tobago, feels that both parentsand schools pay less attention toboys than to girls. He started skip-ping school at the primary level. Hesays that he found school boring andfelt the teachers lacked commitment.Ultimately he failed the Common En-trance Examination — a test requiredfor entrance into secondary school inthe English-speaking Caribbean.*

In the Caribbean, unlike the ma-jority of the developing world, boysare doing significantly worse thangirls at school: Fewer boys pass theCommon Entrance Examination andthey are more likely to drop out ofschool. Part of the problem seems tobe that boys grow up with rigid ideasabout gender roles.

*The exam will be abolished in Trinidad andTobago in the 1999/2000 school year.

“ I never wanted nobody to teaseme and call me a ‘sissy’,” says 17-year-old Algie, from Dominica, onwhy he used to skip classes. It hasbecome routine for boys in theCaribbean to perceive academic ef-fort as ‘sissy’, ‘effeminate’ or ‘nerdy’.

“The boys don’t utilize educationin the same way,” says a femaleteacher from St. Vincent and theGrenadines. “Much of it has to dowith image. They don’t want to beseen as a nerd, and a nerd is some-one who works hard at school.” Ateacher from Barbados agrees: “Theyalso prefer to be seen not working. It’snot popular to be male and studious.It’s not macho.”

The problem is exacerbated bythe low proportion of male teachersin the Caribbean — especially inJamaica — where positive educa-tional role models for boys are ashard to come by as they are for girlsin many developing countries. This isalso true of primary schools in the in-

dustrialized world, where boys aretaught almost exclusively by women.The problem of boys’ educationalunderachievement is currently ring-ing alarm bells there, too.

As recently as the early 1980s, thedominant concern in the industrial-ized world was, as in most develop-ing countries now, with female ratherthan male underachievement. Butnow girls are routinely surpassingboys in average educational attain-ment. Some observers link this trendto changes in the economy and jobmarket. These observers believemen’s traditional role has been takenaway, and the resultant feeling ofhopelessness is percolating througheven to boys who are quite young.

Yet in Nigeria, as in many coun-tries in Latin America, it is preciselyboys’ greater access to the labourmarket that is proving a problem. Ineastern Nigeria, the number of boysdropping out of school is spiralling:In the states of Abia, Anambra,Enugu and Imo, 51 per cent of boyswere out of school in 1994 and 58 percent in 1996.

Chima Ezonyejiaku is one of them.His father is a retired head teacher andhis mother still teaches in a villageschool, yet Chima has abandoned hisstudies to apprentice himself to awealthy trader in the town of Onitsha.Like most of his friends, he feels thatschool is a waste of time and wants tobegin the process of making money.

Boys like Chima are unlikely to goback to school and need special edu-cational opportunities tailored forthem. UNICEF is assisting the Niger-ian Government and Forward Africa,a local NGO, to provide non-formaleducational opportunities in localmarket places, mechanic workshopsand Koranic schools. New curriculaand instructional materials address

The macho problem:Where boys are underachieving

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At the national level, meanwhile,Zambia’s Ministry of Education hasagreed on the following 10 criteria bywhich inspectors will judge whether aschool is gender sensitive, whichcould prove useful to other countriesas well:1. At least 45 per cent enrolment ofeach sex.2. A completion rate of 80 per cent.3. A girls’ progression rate of 85 percent.4. At least 40 per cent of teachersfrom each sex.5. The head teacher and deputy shouldbe of opposite sex.6. A catchment area of no more than5 kilometres.7. Separate toilet facilities for eachclass of 40.8. Gender-sensitive teaching.9. Use of gender-sensitive materials.10. Active parental and communitysupport.

As these criteria make clear,‘gender-sensitive’ means a concernfor gender equality that also benefitsboys. PAGE points to a survey in onearea that showed the programme hadsucceeded in increasing the numberof girls passing the grade seven finalexam, while the number of boyspassing the exam had increased evenmore.66

“Getting girls into school is merelythe first step on a long rugged roadthat is filled with ruts and roadblocks,some cultural, others economic,” 67

said Priscilla Naisula Nangurai, ahead teacher in Maasailand (Kenya),speaking of the pressures for girls todrop out of school. Ms. Nangurai wasone of a group of ‘dynamic Africanheadmistresses’ profiled by the Forumfor African Women Educationalists(FAWE) to promote girls’ educationby providing positive role models.

A remarkable organization in itself(Panel 13), FAWE is collaboratingwith a team from the Institute of

Photo: In the Caribbean, initiatives aimedat keeping boys in school offer practicalas well as academic skills. Boys learncarpentry at a vocational trainingcentre in Haiti.

the realities of young boys andgirls outside the formal schoolsystem. Classes and school hoursare flexible, and instructors em-phasize reading, writing and sur-vival skills for present-day life.

When Sebastian failed Trinidadand Tobago’s Common EntranceExamination, he was lucky to enrolat the Cocorite Learning Centre.UNICEF in the Caribbean supportschildren at risk of staying out ofschool — particularly boys —through assistance to centressuch as Cocorite. There, he says,the students are taught right fromwrong; teachers talk to him“about life” and give him guid-ance. He is able to gain practicalas well as academic skills thathelp keep him interested. He nolonger skips school because oneof the teachers checks up on himand ensures that he doesn’t.

The focus is on improvingoverall life skills — includingnegotiation, coping, decision-making, critical thinking, conflictresolution, interpersonal relation-ships and communication — andproviding vocational training withan emphasis on building self-esteem and confidence.

In the Caribbean, as elsewhere,the need is to transform the edu-cation system so that it is ‘gendersensitive’ — ready to address inschool and, where possible, out ofschool, the social and culturalproblems of being a girl or a boy,which may impede children’s ed-ucational development. And thatchange is just beginning.

Girls’ learning and self-esteem can beundermined by lessons and textbooks filledwith implicit and explicit messages thattell them girls are of less value than boys.A schoolgirl participates in class in Ghana.

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Impassioned about making a differ-ence in girls’ education in Africa, 60visionary and influential women —

current and former ministers of edu-cation, university vice-chancellorsand education specialists — makeup the Forum for African WomenEducationalists (FAWE). The organi-zation’s agenda on behalf of Africa’syoung women and its expectationsof Africa’s policy makers are clear.“Girls and women are the intellectualresource in Africa that will contributeto the crucial change that the conti-nent is looking for,” says Dr. EddahGachukia, FAWE’s Executive Director.“Girls must not only be educated,they must also be accorded the op-portunity to use their education andtheir skills to make decisions aboutand be participants in the develop-ment of Africa.”

And FAWE insists that problems —even the unmistakable issue of fund-ing — are solvable. “We at FAWEnever want to hear resources cited asan excuse for the lack of Education

For All,” Dr. Gachukia told UNICEFduring an interview in her downtownNairobi office. “Africa has the re-sources, internal and external. WhatAfrica needs is to manage these prop-erly for the benefit of everybody.”

With 26 associate members, com-prising male ministers of educationand senior policy makers, and 31 na-tional chapters in all areas of sub-Saharan Africa, FAWE has workedsince 1992 to promote Education ForAll, especially for girls, through ad-vocacy, concrete actions and policyreforms. Now, after six years of oper-ation, FAWE’s mission extends be-yond just access to education andimproving its quality.

In certain ways, FAWE’s mem-bers — accomplished in their individ-ual spheres and working together asa network of professionals acrossnations, sectors and disciplines —personify the organization’s vision ofeducated women actively engaged inthe public life of Africa. In 1994, forexample, citing research findings,

they successfully lobbied the minis-ters of education in several Africancountries to change policies thatexcluded pregnant girls from re-entering school. “The message hasbeen,” says Dr. Gachukia, “that edu-cation is the right of every child, eventhe girl who becomes pregnant, andnot a privilege for those who do notbecome pregnant.”

Through FAWE’s national chap-ters, the organization supports grass-roots efforts with grants and awardsto individuals and institutions thathave found cost-effective, innovative,replicable ways of promoting girls’education and gender equity in edu-cation. By the end of 1997, FAWE hadawarded more than 40 grants in 27countries.

“We do not compete with othergirls’ education programmes, we rec-ognize them as partners,” explainsDr. Gachukia. “All we do is link themto policy makers so that their localideas can gain national and regionalrecognition and support.”

FAWE’s most prestigious award isthe Agathe Uwilingiyimana Prize forinnovative achievements in femaleeducation in Africa. The Prize, firstawarded in 1996, is dedicated to thememory of the late Rwandan PrimeMinister, a dedicated educationalistand a FAWE member, who had beena teacher in a girls’ secondary schooland once served as Minister ofEducation. Projects in eight countries(Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana,Guinea, Kenya, Malawi, Sierra Leoneand Zambia) have been recognizedfor their success, and the lessonslearned through them have beendocumented and shared.

The organization’s greateststrength, according to its ExecutiveDirector, is in policy outreach. In 1995,in Ethiopia, Guinea and Tanzania,

Women educators push the limitsfor girls in Africa

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Even when a countrymanages to offeruniversal primaryschooling — as manycountries do in East Asia,the industrialized worldand non-indigenousparts of Latin America —the need for gender-sensitive educationremains.

Development Studies at SussexUniversity (United Kingdom) on amajor new girls’ education pro-gramme, Gender and Primary School-ing in Africa (GAPS). The aim ofGAPS is to adapt the influential re-search and financial modelling in thebook Educating All the Children* tothe practical needs and cultural cir-cumstances of various African coun-tries. It recommends a package ofreforms that will “deliver schoolingfor all, at levels of quality and genderequality which are defensible, within10 to 15 years.” 68

Each country’s national govern-ment takes joint responsibility for theresearch project. The first three coun-tries studied — Ethiopia, Guinea andTanzania — have moved into the sec-ond phase in which the reforms willbegin to be implemented, and re-search is now under way in a secondgroup of countries.

Reform proposals are bold andwide ranging, charting a route bywhich Ethiopia might plausibly movefrom its current primary gross enrol-ment rates of 39 per cent for boys and24 per cent for girls to 102 and 106per cent, respectively, over a 15-yearperiod. They include cost-saving re-forms such as automatic promotion ingrades one to five, and increasingdouble-shifting to 75 per cent at bothprimary and secondary levels.

The cost of such a dramatic in-crease in educational provision wouldinevitably be high, especially sinceit depends for its overall successupon “quality-enhancing and gender-equalizing reforms,” such as increasedspending on learning materials, higherwages for teachers, and subsidies forstationery and clothing material to 50per cent of rural girls. Nevertheless,

Photo: FAWE believes that girls’education is the key to Africa’sdevelopment. Here, girls stand in thedoorway of a classroom in Malawi.

FAWE began its programme ofStrategic Resource Planning (SRP)in collaboration with the Instituteof Development Studies, SussexUniversity (United Kingdom). Theproject has since expanded toGhana, Malawi, Mali, Senegal,Uganda and Zambia. Through SRP,the organization assists ministriesof education to identify specificproblems affecting girls, collectand analyse data and develop arange of policy options to closethe gender gap and assure pri-mary schooling for all.

“We present the findings ofSRP for each country and we in-vite everyone — community mem-bers, teachers, donors, policymakers — to sift through the find-ings and recommendations,” saysDr. Gachukia, explaining that part-ners at the national level are thenready to work together to put theirrecommendations into action.“We believe that this strategymakes everybody involved feelpart and parcel of the process andwhatever policy that emerges.”

In the final analysis, as effec-tive as its programmes and activi-ties have been, FAWE’s mostvaluable contributions to Africa’sdevelopment may well be in thedemonstrated capabilities of theorganization’s members to changethe consciousness — minister byminister, country by country —about what to expect of girls.

*The book referred to is by Christopher B.Colclough with Keith Lewin (ClarendonPress, Oxford, 1993).

the model suggests that Ethiopia,which has farther to travel than manyother countries to reach schooling forall,69 could achieve the goal by acombination of increased spending,modest economic growth and tar-geted aid.

Guinea, meanwhile, is working toovercome some of the social and cul-tural factors inhibiting girls’ educa-tion. It has reduced direct costs ofschooling through tax relief and byabolishing compulsory uniforms. Asthe primary reason girls drop out ofschool in Guinea is to marry, theGovernment has also made it illegal toforce a girl into marriage before theninth grade. To address the secondmajor cause of dropping-out amonggirls — domestic responsibilities andhousehold chores — it has introduceddevices such as mechanical mills andhas dug wells to reduce girls’ burdens.It has also passed regulations specify-ing the times and parameters forchores in school, ensuring that thesefall equally upon boys and girls.70

Even when a country manages tooffer universal primary schooling —as many countries do in East Asia,the industrialized world, and non-indigenous parts of Latin America —the need for gender-sensitive educa-tion remains. Indeed, at the juniorsecondary level, girls face serious ob-stacles in continuing their education.It is particularly critical for girls tocross the precarious bridge from pri-mary to secondary school in South-East Asia, because, when they enteradolescence, many face the risk ofbeing recruited into the sex industryand other hazardous and unhealthywork settings.

Pregnancy, another risk during thisperiod, leads in many countries togirls’automatic expulsion from school,in contravention of the Convention onthe Rights of the Child (article 2). Thesuspension or exclusion of pregnant

girls from school was the subject of a1997 ruling by the Committee on theRights of the Child.71

Botswana is addressing the dis-crimination through a pilot projectthat gives pregnant girls three months’maternity leave, during which theywould keep in touch with school viaextension courses. When they returnto school, their baby would be caredfor in a centre located alongside thejunior secondary school. In return,girls would work in the day-carecentre, which would double as a liv-ing classroom, teaching parenting andlife skills to both male and femalestudents, and aiming to reduce thenumber of adolescent pregnancies.Community response has been posi-tive. Popular demand, in fact, forcedBotswana’s Government to permitpregnant students to take examsand be readmitted to their originalschool.72

Work is a major factor in denyingmillions of girls their right to education:

Asabe Mohammed, a 14-year-oldfood hawker from the village of Soroin Nigeria, had been on the street sell-ing food cooked by her motherthroughout her primary school years.“I think I was not that big when Istarted hawking food,” she com-mented, pointing to a seven-year-oldgirl. But Asabe had a second chance,attending the Soro Girl-Child Edu-cation Centre, established in May1993 as part of an initiative byUNICEF and the Nigerian Govern-ment to give out-of-school girls theopportunity to acquire basic educa-tion and then feed into mainstreamsecondary schools. In September1997, Asabe was among the 35 girlswho graduated at a colourful cere-mony. She received a post-literacycertificate as well as prizes for excel-lence in arithmetic, writing and tai-loring and is now enrolling in a juniorsecondary school in Darazo, about 30

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Household responsibilities keep millionsof girls out of school. This invisible barrierneeds to be broken to assure their rightto education. A class in Bangladesh.

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kilometres away. Those girls who willnot be continuing their education havebenefited from the training and arenow setting up their own businesses intrades such as embroidery, tailoring,knitting and soap-production.73

There are girls like Asabe in virtu-ally every town and village of the de-veloping world. This is why thesuccess of gender reforms in educa-tion may have to be judged, not justby their results in terms of enrolmentrates or even learning achievement,but by the extent to which they changethe lives of girls for the better.

Element 4. The Stateas key partner

The obligation to ensure all children’sright to education and to achieveEducation For All lies with nationalgovernments. But within this en-compassing obligation, many actorsplay vital roles in delivering high-quality basic education to all children,from central to local governments,from international agencies to localcommunities, NGOs and religiousgroups. Only the State, however, canpull together all the componentsinto a coherent but flexible educationsystem.

Historically, provision of educa-tion in developing countries has goneawry because governments have fo-cused on higher education to the detri-ment of primary and secondary levels.As inheritors of colonial educationsystems, most developing countries,immediately after independence, pre-ferred to use limited resources to cre-ate universities and schools aimed atmeeting the needs of industrialization.Many countries continue this focus onhigher (tertiary) education to thedetriment of primary and secondarylevels (Fig. 11). The most extreme ex-ample is the Comoros, which spends8 per cent of GNP per capita on each

pre-primary or primary pupil and1,168 per cent on each collegestudent.74

There are many countries wherethe imbalance is almost as alarming.The inevitable result is that universalprimary education has not beenachieved. In the minority of countriesthat have accomplished that goal, theState provided the policy and leader-ship, and in most cases became themain provider of primary education,working in partnership with commu-nities, private schools and the privatesector. In many of these cases, theconcentration of state resources onprimary education meant a greater re-liance on other providers for sec-ondary education.

The most critical role of the Statein education is as a guarantor of chil-dren’s right to basic education. Exper-ience in the last few years has led to amore textured understanding of therole of the State, and of the State it-self. It is no longer useful to think ofthe State in monolithic terms as a sin-gle national authority, but better to un-derstand that the State’s authorityexists at all levels from the national orfederal to the local, and the roles thatthe State will play with regard topolicy, funding and provision oftenvary significantly from one level toanother.

The Convention reiterates and re-inforces the responsibilities of theState vis-à-vis children’s education ina number of clauses. Article 28 en-sures the right of children to educa-tion, and article 29 elaborates a visionof quality education that fulfils thatright. The State, therefore, must en-sure that children successfully com-plete primary education and must setstandards to ensure minimum levelsof quality and learning achievement(see ‘Element 1. Learning for life’).

Buttressing these are article 3,which calls upon States to ensure that

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Fig. 11 Who benefits from publicspending on education?

On average 33 per cent of public spending on edu-cation benefits the richest fifth of the population,while only 13 per cent benefits the poorest fifth.Public expenditure on basic social services such asprimary education benefits society more equitably,while spending at the tertiary (university) levelbenefits the richest fifth of the population.

Source: The World Bank, as cited in UNDP, UNESCO, UNFPA,UNICEF, WHO and the World Bank, Implementing the 20/20Initiative: Achieving universal access to basic social services,UNICEF, New York, 1998, pp. 8-9.

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13

0 20 40Percentage of public spending

Poorest fifth Richest fifth

Beneficiaries of public education

Education

Beneficiaries of public education expenditure at the primary vs. tertiary level

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3

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0 20 40 60 80Percentage of public spending

Tertiary (university) level

Primary level

Poorest fifth Richest fifth

Above all, the State, asa vital role player in theeducation revolution,must supply thepolitical will to makethings happen.

the best interests of the child are takeninto consideration in all decisions andactions concerning the child, and arti-cle 2, which mandates that Statesprotect children from all forms ofdiscrimination; article 2 encompassesthe educational ostracism of girls,who represent nearly two thirds ofout-of-school children in developingcountries. Thus States must imple-ment all key policy measures provento increase the chances of girls’ enter-ing and staying in school (see ‘Ele-ment 3. Gender sensitivity and girls’education’).

States can use a variety of ap-proaches to protect these rights,including legislation. Laws appearmost useful in holding a State itselfresponsible for meeting its own oblig-ations, one of the most important ofwhich is ensuring that all childrenhave access to school. Others are re-ducing exploitative child labour andmobilizing society in support ofEducation For All.

Above all, the State, as a vital roleplayer in the education revolution,must supply the political will to makethings happen. Irrespective of howflexible and diverse the educationsystem becomes, the State must stillbe involved in planning for the entiresystem, designing and supervising thecurriculum, educating teachers, set-ting standards, contributing to schoolconstruction and paying salaries. Butits role is also changing rapidly.Instead of acting as an omnipotentcentral authority, States are findingthat partnerships with multiple sec-tors of society offer a greater chanceof achieving Education For All, andmany are passing power to lowerlevels of the system to improve effi-ciency and responsiveness.

MobilizationEducation For All was intended togalvanize the international commu-

nity into action — from the level ofgovernments and global institutions,to private companies and media out-lets, to local schools and villages. The1990s has witnessed the power of thatconcept.

Brazil offers an important exampleof mobilization and partnership thatembrace the whole society beyond theeducation sector and the traditionaleducation constituency. In 1993, Bra-zil’s nationwide mobilization effortculminated in a ‘National Week onEducation for All,’ resulting in a 10-year plan that led to concrete govern-ment action on many fronts. In 1995,the new Brazilian Government ex-panded actions that included transfer-ring federal funds to local schools andmunicipalities, improving the nationaltesting of students’ learning achieve-ment and using television as the me-dium for a national distance-learningteacher-education programme.75

The Government’s most importantrole has probably been to mobilize thewhole nation behind the universal ed-ucation campaign. The most visiblemember of this effort has been Pres-ident Fernando Henrique Cardosohimself who, soon after he took officein January of 1995, demonstrated thateducation was his top priority byteaching the first class of the year atthe Jose Barbosa School in SantaMaria da Vitória, in the state of Bahia.This was followed by a national mo-bilization campaign called ‘AcordaBrasil. Esta na Hora da Escola!’(Wake Up, Brazil, It’s Time forSchool!).

The public response exceeded allexpectations. A round of debates tookplace throughout the country. A toll-free telephone service, Fala Brasil(Speak Brazil), was established formembers of the public to express theirviews on education and issues con-cerning the Ministry of Education’sprogrammes; it receives an average of

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1,500 calls per day. A national data-base was set up to record successfuleducational projects or innovationsand make them available for replica-tion or adaptation in other regions. Itbecame available on the Internet inSeptember 1997.76

Brazil put into practice almost allof the key guidelines for successfulmobilization:

† clearly articulating the goal and vi-sion, with specific time objectives;

† monitoring progress frequentlyand effectively via a few clearlydefined indicators;

† placing the goal of universal basiceducation at the very centre of na-tional life;

† building a national consensus sothat the results survive changes ofgovernment;

† using the power of the new infor-mation and communications tech-nology effectively;

† identifying, emulating and creatingsuccess stories.77

Other countries have successfullymobilized for Education For All.Since 1995, the Philippines has desig-nated the last Monday in January asNational School Enrolment Day(NSED). On that day every year,schools throughout the country stayopen from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. to enrolchildren eligible to begin first gradethe following June. The aim is notonly to increase enrolment via mediaattention to NSED, but also to helpeducation authorities plan for thenumber of teachers, classrooms andmaterials required the followingacademic year. On NSED, childrenreceive medical and dental examina-tions, an arrangement that also helpsprepare schools for students withspecial needs.78

This kind of national mobilizationraises public expectations. It also

creates challenges for the authorities.In the first years of NSED, there werestill shortages of teachers and class-rooms when the children arrived atschools the following June.79 Never-theless, the Philippine EducationMinistry was sufficiently flexible toback up the mobilization campaignwith a far-reaching decision. It as-signed the best teachers, especiallythose gifted in language, to the firstgrades to ease the transition fromhome to school and make children’sfirst experience of education as posi-tive as possible.

The power of an idea to mobilizeenthusiasm and resources has alsobeen evident in Malawi. There, in1994, the new government marked itsbreak with the autocratic era of theformer President Hastings KamuzuBanda by proclaiming universal freeprimary education. At a stroke, themove released children’s familiesfrom the crippling dual burden of pay-ing school fees and buying schooluniforms, producing a massive leap inenrolment from 1.9 million to 3.2 mil-lion children, including broadly equalproportions of girls and boys.80

The bold approach clearly hadmajor implications for the Govern-ment’s budget, but it caught the imag-ination of international donors andlenders to such an extent that Malawihas been able to sustain and refine itscommitment in the succeeding years.Rewarded for its daring, Malawi hasreceived high levels of internationalaid and loans for building classrooms,educating teachers and improving ed-ucational supplies.

Mobilization campaigns can tapnew funds for education, though thebenefits to society of involving theprivate sector are not restricted tomoney. In Brazil, the Itaú Bank, thesecond largest private bank in thecountry, and the Odebrecht Foun-dation have worked closely with the

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Education, key to human and socialdevelopment, needs to assume a place at thecentre of nation’s lives. Two boys readtogether in the Philippines, where theGovernment has launched a nationwidecampaign to increase school enrolment.

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A community thatparticipates activelyin the running of aneducational facility —whether a nursery,primary school orsecondary school —has greater opportunitiesto make educationalservices relevant anda greater incentiveto make them work.

Government and UNICEF to supportand promote education and childrights in the media and through fund-raising campaigns.

The two donors have also providedconcrete support for projects. The ItaúBank donated all the equipment forthe Fala Brasil education telephonecentre, trains the operators and main-tains it;81 additionally, it funds an Edu-cation and Participation prize toacknowledge the work of NGOs,community groups and trade unionsand supports NGOs with trainingand networking opportunities. TheOdebrecht Foundation was a strongsupporter of Brazil’s Statute of Chil-dren and Adolescent Rights, one ofthe world’s most creative responses tothe Convention on the Rights of theChild, and a partner in national mobi-lization efforts for Education For All.

PartnershipsThe formation of partnerships has be-come a central concept in planningand managing education, especially insituations where significant numbersof children are deprived of education.The State retains responsibility forsetting national objectives, mobilizingresources and maintaining educa-tional standards, while NGOs, com-munity groups, religious bodies andcommercial enterprises can all con-tribute, making education a more vitalpart of the life of the whole community.

The role of local communities ex-tends far beyond raising money forschools, although in some countries‘partnership with parents and localcommunities’ means ‘fund-raising’.The costs of sending children toschool have, in fact, risen markedlyfor families. A 1992 household bud-get survey in Kenya showed thathouseholds directly contributed 34per cent of the total cost of primaryeducation.82 Cambodian householdscontribute three quarters of the total

cost of public primary education, andthose in Viet Nam contribute half 83 —a dramatic departure from the totallyfree education offered until recently.The inevitable effect of these costs isa decline in the enrolment and reten-tion of children in school. Studies car-ried out in two African and threeAsian countries by UNICEF confirmthat private costs are a major factor indiscouraging school attendance.84

Partnership with a community maywell lead to more funds becomingavailable, but this should be a by-product of the collaboration ratherthan its only goal. If parents are askedto contribute more money but have novoice in the organization and manage-ment of schools and see no improve-ment in educational quality, they andtheir children will soon disappearfrom view.

On the other hand, a communitythat participates actively in the run-ning of an educational facility —whether a nursery, primary school orsecondary school — has greater op-portunities to make educational ser-vices relevant and a greater incentiveto make them work. Any project has ahigher chance of success if it is basedon the expressed needs of the commu-nity and if that community is a keyactor in its implementation, monitor-ing and evaluation (Fig. 12).

“We decide what’s good for ourchildren and we are capable of doingsomething about it,” says EnamulHuq Nilu, chair of a school manage-ment committee in Jhenaidah SadarThana (Bangladesh).85 His school ispart of the IDEAL project, which hasaimed to reinstitute the communityand parental involvement in primaryschools that ended when the nationalGovernment assumed control in 1973.Through a local planning process fa-cilitated by government and UNICEFofficials, members of the school man-agement committee, parents and

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Fig. 12 School mapping

Legend

Village boundary

Primary school

Dwelling places

Handpump

Place of worship

Boys attending school

Boys not attending school

Girls attending school

Girls not attending school

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This map was created as part of the Lok Jumbish project in the Indianstate of Rajasthan by a team of villagers, trained by a local organizationworking in cooperation with Lok Jumbish. It is based on a householdsurvey conducted to ascertain whether boys and girls aged 6 to 14 wereattending school regularly. The survey became the basis of a provisionalplan for school improvement after its findings were presented to thecommunity for discussion.

Such village school mapping surveys, being conducted in small com-munities around the world, help to gauge educational needs by identify-ing pre-school age and school age populations. Well-defined surveyscan provide communities and local and regional education planners with

accurate and timely information that can be used to improve educationalefficiency, including school coverage and existing and future teacherand capacity needs. Analysis of the data can contribute to a betterunderstanding of the reasons for low enrolment, or the low rate ofattendance of girls, for example.

The surveys are especially useful when reliable data are lacking orwhen aggregated data at the national or regional level do not capturethe particulars of the local situation. Reliance on community members inall stages of the process — collection, analysis, verification and use ofdisaggregated data — enhances their stake in their children’s educationas envisaged in the Convention on the Rights of the Child.

Source: ‘Lok Jumbish, 1992-1995.’ Lok Jumbish Parishad, Jaipur, India, n.d.

teachers work together to write ayearly plan for the school that is thenmonitored by all involved.86

A similar philosophy underpinsthe CHILDSCOPE project in theAfram Plains district of Ghana. Itsmain strategy has been to empowerthe communities surrounding its 11primary schools to identify impedi-ments to their children’s educationand devise their own solutions. Par-ents actively participate in the educa-tion and development of their children,with resulting improvements in liter-acy, numeracy and general enrolment,particularly that of girls. In addition,the project’s holistic approach has ledto a greater community awareness ofthe health and nutritional needs of de-veloping children.

As the CHILDSCOPE projectillustrates, schools can serve as vitalchange agents. They can reach out tolocal communities in partnership withother agencies, for example, to iden-tify children who may need protec-tion. In this sense, teachers and schoolemployees are the local agents of theMinistry of Education, assuming ameasure of responsibility for tracingchildren who do not appear in schooland whose rights are more likely to beendangered.

Partnership in the service of Edu-cation For All involves all segments ofsociety in guaranteeing child rights.For it to work, however, the Statemust be prepared to relinquish someof its decision-making powers tolower levels of the system.

DecentralizationImagine you are a teacher in a pri-mary school in a rural district. Youhear that a family member has diedand wish to attend the funeral. Insteadof asking your head teacher or boardof school governors for permission,you must make your request to a min-istry official in the distant capital.

There, your plea will be dealt with bybureaucrats who have never met you,have never seen your school and donot know what provision might bemade to cover your absence. This wasthe rule until recently in Venezuela,which had one of the most centralizededucation systems in the world.87

On the surface, the organization ofpublic schooling is remarkably simi-lar throughout the world. Individualschools are managed by a headteacher or principal. At the districtlevel, an administrative body offerssupervision and technical support. Astate or provincial education agencymay be available only in larger coun-tries, but nearly all countries have anational education ministry that plansand has administrative responsibilityfor the system as a whole.

Centralized control may be moreefficient when it comes to text-books — ensuring that children in allparts of the country have access toquality material and that the materialdoes not promote ethnic hatred, forexample. But there is increasingrecognition that if schools are to im-prove and be more responsive to localcommunities, they have to be givenmore autonomy to assess and resolvetheir own problems.

Decentralization is an importantoption, but one that carries a cost. It islikely to require more careful plan-ning, more expensive training, moreextensive data collection and evenmore staff and resources. Decentraliz-ation should be selected not becauseit is the cheapest option but the best,and it strengthens the State’s commit-ment to and ability to achieve Educa-tion For All.

As experience is increasingly re-vealing, decentralization becomesmost dynamic when control of schoolsis redistributed, concentrating powernot entirely in the hands of headteachers but involving the community

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Parents and local communities must be theState’s vital partners in school managementto ensure that educational services are relevantto the community’s needs. Children learn tocount in a mathematics class in Benin.

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in management through creation of agoverning body with membershipdrawn from parents, teachers and thewider community. Decentralization,so conceived, should be a tool to en-courage partnerships and mobiliza-tion — key features of the educationrevolution.

The recent experiences of theBrazilian state of Minas Gerais, oneof the country’s largest and most de-veloped states, shows decentralizationat its best. After examining the rea-sons for an appalling drop-out rate —in 1990, only 38 in every 100 studentswho had entered primary school com-pleted the first year — the state madedecentralization the top educationalpriority. It also shifted decision-making from the state capital toschool boards headed by an electedprincipal and composed of equalnumbers of parent representatives andschool staff. The boards were origi-nally responsible for the financial andadministrative issues with which par-ents felt comfortable, but they arenow involved in pedagogy as well.Community involvement and localcontrol have already significantlyimproved educational standards: In1994, 11 per cent more students com-pleted their first year than in 1990;grade repetition tumbled from 39 percent in 1990 to 19 per cent in 1994.

Ana Luíza Machado Pinheiro,Secretary of Education for MinasGerais, says, “Three or four years ago,when the schools were falling apart, ifyou put forward a pedagogical pro-posal people would say: ‘What for, ifwe have no desks and no teachingmaterials? If the school is in a chaoticsituation, how are we going to implanta new pedagogical proposal?’ Today,with the schools all neat and tidy,everybody is talking about quality.” 88

Contrary to expectations, partici-pation in schools has been greatest inpoorer communities, and it is these

schools that have registered the great-est student improvement. The MinasGerais model has inspired many otherBrazilian states to follow its example;it is particularly attractive because itrequires no additional resources butsimply better management of what isalready available.89

Other successful models of decen-tralized school management are ap-pearing throughout the world. InPoland and some other Central andEastern European countries, decen-tralized school systems are a reactionto the former highly centralized so-cialist systems. In Asia, school clus-ters — in which schools are groupedtogether to share resources, save costsand maximize community mobiliza-tion — have proved particularly use-ful. The strengthening of schoolclusters has been a vital part of theContinuous Assessment and Pro-gression System (CAPS) project inMyanmar, which aims to reduce drop-out and repetition rates at the primarylevel. The effectiveness of schoolmanagement flowing from the clustersystem is as important as teacher edu-cation, child-centred learning or com-munity mobilization in terms ofkeeping children in the classroom.Good management generates higher-quality education just as predictablyas good teaching.90

Decentralization can create educa-tional opportunities for groups thatmay be traditionally excluded from acentralized education system. ElSalvador’s EDUCO (Programa deEducación con Participación de laComunidad) project, for example,which vests control of schools and pre-schools in community associations,targets children mainly in rural areas.The needs of ethnic minorities forspecial provisions, such as teaching intheir own language, are more likely tobe recognized by a local teacher thana national education authority.

Good managementgenerates higher-quality educationjust as predictablyas good teaching.

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The recruitment of more girls intoschool can be improved through de-centralization. In the Mopti andKayes regions of Mali, where girls’enrolment rates are very low, district-level teams, including local NGOs,work intensively with communities toelect and train school managementcommittees responsible for ensuringgender parity, among other things.Mauritania places a high priority onthe decentralized collection of dataabout girls’ education through localeducation management committeesand regional observatories.

In fact, the almost universallyacknowledged need for better educa-tional data broken down by gender —on enrolment and drop-out ratesand on learning achievement — canbe met much more easily throughdecentralization.

Yet, as the accelerating process ofglobalization causes national govern-ments to privatize an increasing num-ber of functions, decentralization maybe undertaken in the interests of cost-cutting or privatization. Public educa-tion in this event is likely to beweakened, with access to education aswell as the quality of that educationfalling in lower-income regions sim-ply because they have fewer resourcesto devote to schooling. Inequality ofthis kind mushroomed, for example,after Chile introduced a voucherscheme in 1981 that siphoned off stu-dents from public into private schoolsand public school revenues dropped.91

In addition, decentralization places ad-ditional demands on local professionaland administrative capacity, and if notaccompanied by a strong and effectiveprogramme of strengthening that capa-city, it can result in a decrease in qual-ity and substantially higher costs.

Decentralization can provide enor-mous benefits if undertaken from aposition of strength and commitmentto educational equity and quality and

community empowerment. The mostsuccessful examples occur when anational education ministry is alsostrong and not driven by the dictatesof finance constraints — and wherethe education ministry can intervene,as necessary, to stop emerginginequalities.

Element 5. Care forthe young child

The principle that learning begins atbirth was reaffirmed in the Jomtienconference’s World Declaration onEducation for All.92 Awareness of thecentral educational importance of theearly years has grown along with pro-grammes that put this concept intopractice.

Every year new research adds toour understanding of the way childrendevelop. The rapid development of ayoung child’s brain depends largelyon environmental stimulation, espe-cially the quality of care and interac-tion the child enjoys. Recent work inmolecular biology has establishedthat brain development in the firstyear of a child’s life is more rapid andextensive than had previously beenthought. By the time of birth, a childhas 100 billion neurons in the brainlinked by complex nerve junctionscalled synapses.93 These synapses arethe connections allowing learning totake place, and in the first few monthsafter birth their number increasestwentyfold.94 Physical, mental and cog-nitive development all depend on thesecommunication links in the brain.

The good nutritional health of botha mother (while pregnant and lactat-ing) and baby is vital not just for childsurvival and physical growth, but formental development and future edu-cational prospects.95 In addition, thereis convincing evidence that the qual-ity of the care — including nutrition,health care and stimulation — a child

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On average, nearly half the children in the 47least developed countries do not have accessto primary education. Girls in a primaryschool class in Niger.

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receives during the first two to threeyears can have a long-lasting effect onbrain development. And beyond that,attention to child development at leastthrough age eight is crucial in helpingchildren reach their potential.

Given this significance of early nu-trition and care, any meaningful ap-proach to ‘basic education’ has toinclude early childhood programmesthat promote child survival, growthand development. There is a growingconsensus that childcare and early ed-ucation are inseparable: Children can-not be well cared for without beingeducated and children cannot be welleducated without being cared for.96

The world is finally recognizingthat a child’s rights to education,growth and development — physical,cognitive, social, emotional andmoral — cannot be met without acomprehensive approach to servingtheir needs from birth. It is acknowl-edging that the mental, social andemotional development of pre-schoolchildren has a huge impact on theirability to thrive in the classroom andlater in the adult world.

Childcare: A socialimperativeFamilies are the first line of love, careand stimulation for their children, andparents are the first, and most impor-tant, teachers (Panel 14). But increas-ingly the nurture and stimulation soessential to a child’s physical, emo-tional and intellectual developmentare being provided today in a patch-work of formal and informal servicesprovided by governments, businesses,NGOs and others.

Full-scale kindergartens or daycare for all children are not the onlyway of meeting children’s and fami-lies’ needs for good quality childcare.Expansion of ECCD (early childhoodcare for child growth and develop-ment) services, though rapid, has been

hampered by many governments’misconception that the Western modelof formal, prohibitively expensive,pre-school centres is the only way tomeet children’s needs in the earlyyears.

Research suggests that structuredday care outside the home is the mosteffective — a Turkish study between1982 and 1986 showed it to achievebetter results in all measures of psy-chosocial development. Nevertheless,the same survey showed that childrenwhose mothers cared for them athome but received training and someoutside support gained significantlyover children whose mothers receivedno training. The children tested higherin language use, mathematics andoverall academic performance duringthe five years of primary school anddemonstrated better levels of socialintegration, personal autonomy andeven family relationships. As adoles-cents in 1992, more of them were stillin school than peers whose mothershad not received training.97 The mostpractical, low-cost way for a develop-ing country to pursue the manifoldbenefits of ECCD, therefore, is to tryto raise parental awareness of childdevelopment issues.

The better the care and stimulationa child receives, the greater the bene-fit — for the national economy aswell as the child. For example, chil-dren with good early childhood expe-riences (health, education, nutrition,stimulation, growth and development)are less likely to ‘waste’ public fundsby dropping out of school or repeat-ing grades; they will also suffer lessfrom illness and be more productivein adulthood.

Often, formal programmes havebeen used to ensure that children areready for school, especially in caseswhere parents have to work andcannot provide the primary care fortheir children. Few developing coun-

The world is finallyrecognizing that a child’srights to education, growthand development — physical,cognitive, social, emotionaland moral — cannot be metwithout a comprehensiveapproach to serving theirneeds from birth.

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Panel 14

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In most societies, the home and fam-ily are the most powerful socializersof children. Children’s learning be-

gins at birth and continues throughearly childhood, serving as a strongpreparation for schooling. The role ofparents and other caregivers becomesespecially important, therefore, infostering the social, intellectual, emo-tional and physical characteristicsthat will enhance children’s laterlearning, both in school and in life.

Cultures have long perfectedways of transmitting knowledge tochildren, and the common wisdomof societies provides a basis for childcare and development that is usuallywell adapted to the needs of the par-ticular situation. But the world ischanging, and sometimes parents,especially young ones, can benefitfrom new information and knowl-edge now available about children’shealthy growth and development.

“Many times local or traditionalpractices are sound, but increasinglythey do not take advantage of all thatis known,” says Dr. Robert Myers, the

founder of the Consultative Group onEarly Childhood Care and Develop-ment, an inter-agency group, and aninternational authority on ECCD.

Indeed, recent studies on child-rearing practices by UNICEF and theLatin American Episcopal Confer-ence have found that many parentsare aware of ‘new’ information on chil-dren’s development, but that the in-formation is often not put into practice.

Parent education programmes canfill this knowledge gap, helping par-ents and other caregivers understandwhat is needed for better child devel-opment, adopt good child-care prac-tices and effectively use existingservices directed at children’s health,nutrition and psychosocial develop-ment needs. Such programmes alsobolster parents’ self-confidence, mak-ing it easier, in turn, to promote theirchildren’s development.

Innovative programmes that sup-port and educate parents and othercaregivers are in place around theworld, from Cuba to Indonesia, Chinato Turkey. They have proven popular

because they reach large numbers ofpeople through existing communitynetworks at a relatively low cost.

The results are tangible and im-pressive. In Mexico, parents whohave been trained in the nationwideInitial Education Programme, whichtargets caregivers of 1.2 million ofthe country’s poorest children underthe age of three, say that their attitudesabout child-rearing have changed.Many add that they now recognizethat traditional punishments for chil-dren are often inappropriate. Thisnon-formal programme, run by theGovernment with UNICEF support,reports that gender roles in childcareare also changing. In remote rural vil-lages, it is the fathers who attend thetraining sessions.

A parent training programme inTurkey has become a model of non-formal, multipurpose education de-signed to keep children in school andlearning. Group discussions are heldon such topics as children’s health,nutrition and creative play activities,and mother-child interaction. In fol-low-up studies of the first pilot proj-ect, significant differences were foundin cognitive development betweenchildren whose mothers had under-gone the training and those who hadnot. As hoped, children in these fami-lies stayed in school longer. Since ex-panded, the programme is conductedin cooperation with the Turkish Min-istry of Education and has servedmore than 20,000 mother-child pairs.

For 15 years, the Promesa (Pro-mise) project in Colombia has servedabout 2,000 rural families. It began byencouraging groups of mothers tostimulate the physical and intellectualdevelopment of their pre-school chil-dren by playing games with them inthe home. Gradually, the mothers inthe groups started to discuss health,

Parent education:Supporting children’s first teachers

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tries have the budgets to match thelevel of childcare in industrializedcountries such as Belgium, Denmark,France and Italy, where 80 per centof three-year-olds attend nursery orpre-school.98

Trinidad and Tobago, however, en-rols around 60 per cent of four-year-olds in nursery schools operated, atthe Government’s request, by Servol(Service Volunteered for All). Each ofthe Servol pre-school centres hasbeen requested by local communities,which have formed an eight-personschool board to provide and maintainfacilities and pay the portion ofteacher salaries not covered by thesmall government subsidy.

Teachers in the Servol centres donot try to pressure young children intoreading, writing and counting but aimto give toddlers a positive self-imageand develop their resourcefulness,curiosity and sense of responsibility.Parent education is fundamental:‘Rap sessions’ are held in whichteachers explain the harm done tosmall children by both excessive dis-cipline and neglect, and they commu-nicate the importance of hygiene andnutrition.99

Servol’s model of nursery schoolwas a significant and successful de-parture from facilities in which tod-dlers were expected to sit quietly atdesks and listen to the teacher. Manyformerly communist countries havebeen struggling to make the samekind of transition. One of thestrengths of the old political system inthe former Soviet bloc was its exten-sive provision of nurseries for thechildren of working parents. Whileclean, safe and cheap, however, manyfollowed a rigid curriculum in whichall children did largely the same thingat the same time.

In response to declining pre-schoolenrolment and availability, teachersin 23 Eastern European and former

The better the care andstimulation a childreceives, the greaterthe benefit — for thenational economy aswell as the child.

Photo: In Colombia, a mother holds herbaby daughter. She was chosen by herneighbours to run a home day-care centrefor local children and trained to meet theirhealth, nutrition and developmental needs.

nutrition, environmental sanitationand vocational training. Over time,the project expanded, with resi-dents spontaneously organizingthemselves to solve other family orcommunity issues.

In the Philippines, the ParentEffectiveness Service combineshome visits by volunteers withregular parent discussion groups.An evaluation of the programmeshowed that it has contributed tothe development of parents’ knowl-edge and related skills in the areasof health, parenting, ECCD, childdiscipline and husband-wife rela-tionships. In selected regions, par-ent discussion groups were sup-ported by a 30-minute weekly radiobroadcast, ‘Filipino Family onthe Air’, which covered 26 top-ics, including child rights, gender-sensitive child-rearing, childrenand the media, and child abuse.

Parent education activities aremost effective when they comple-ment and reinforce more formal,organized service programmes,and in fact can sustain children’sgains in early development evenif a programme or child-care cen-tre disappears.

Yet “parent education pro-grammes are no panacea,” saysDr. Myers. To rely on them alone,without the range of more formalprogrammes such as child-careand health services, deprives par-ents of the full range of supportthey need — including resources,facilities, time and information —for their children’s growth anddevelopment.

Rigid approaches to pre-school education, inwhich children are expected to sit quietly andlisten to the teacher, are gradually giving wayto more child-centred models. In Romania,a child plays with a toy at a crèche thatencourages creative learning activities.

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Soviet Union countries are movingdown a different road today. Fundedby the Soros Foundation, they arelearning a new curriculum designedby Children’s Resources International(CRI) containing the best techniquesof early childhood education. Em-phasizing child-centred education andchild-initiated play, the Step by Stepcurriculum has proven so popular thatthe project has expanded to Haiti,Mongolia and South Africa and hasdeveloped curricula for infants andtoddlers and for children up throughage 10.100 Another initiative, fundedby Save the Children (United States)in Bosnia and Herzegovina and inCroatia, combines structured play toenhance children’s development withstrong parental and community in-volvement, keeping costs low.101

The Lao PDR is another former‘command economy’pursuing change.Since 1989, the Government has soughtexternal partners, including Save theChildren Fund (United Kingdom) tohelp it introduce more child-centredteaching methods in schools and nurs-eries. The changes in the 1990s havebeen profound, according to MoneKheuaphaphorn, director of the DongDok kindergarten. In the old days,teachers did a lot of talking and thechildren could only be listeners; theyhad very little chance to participate….Teaching aids and toys were not usu-ally available and, if there were any,they didn’t relate to the topic andweren’t attractive to children…. Theactivities were controlled by teachersand the children had no access to freeplay or choice. Now the philosophy is‘learning through play’ which in-cludes many activities…. To sum up:The new way of teaching helps chil-dren become happy, healthy andcreative. Since the implementationthere have been regular whole-schoolmeetings and monthly classroommeetings with parents so as to ensure

parents can support their children’slearning and also contribute to theschool when it is needed. Parents arehappy to see their children’s skills andbehaviour change and that the schoolhas become an attractive place forchildren.102

The new child-centred approachhas also made it possible for the LaoPDR to launch a successful project in-tegrating children with special needsand learning disabilities into theschool system at the kindergartenstage. The sensitivity and responsive-ness of a modern pre-school centrehas worked to make education moreaccessible to those children, such asgirls and minorities, who have tendedto be excluded from the traditionalschool system.

Every indicator points to the factthat poor children benefit most —both in psychosocial and educationalterms — from ECCD programmes.103

This finding makes such interventionsparticularly appropriate for impov-erished communities. The PrathamMumbai Education Initiative in thecity of Mumbai (formerly Bombay) isoffering child-centred nursery educa-tion to 30,000 children aged three tofive from slum communities. Its chiefaims are to foster a love of learning inpoor communities and prepare chil-dren as much as possible for the chal-lenges of schooling.104 Pratham, anNGO, is confident that the Initiativewill cover the city by the year 2001and is also campaigning for anamendment to the Indian Constitutiongiving all children under eight theright to education.

Intersectoral linksThe lesson of ECCD for EducationFor All is that all schools can andmust change to serve children’s devel-opmental needs. Many of the sameprinciples of ECCD programmes —the need for intersectoral links

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between education and health ornutrition or the advantages of child-centred, flexible teaching methods —could usefully be put into practice inall schools, especially in the earlyprimary grades.

Until recently, health and nutritionworkers tended to concentrate onhelping children survive their first fewvulnerable years, while educationexperts focused on school enrolmentor improving teaching and learning.Their work rarely connected, but thatsituation has changed. The educationsector’s increasing work with pro-fessionals in health and sanitation,nutrition and family planning — forg-ing and strengthening ‘intersectorallinks’ — represents another vital as-pect of the education revolution.

Since 1987, ECCD programmes inNigeria have steadily expanded. Eachcentre offers free immunization andconcentrates on children’s nutrition;many programmes have, in fact, advo-cated deworming to control parasiticinfection in children. From the start,the aim of the project was to providelow-cost community-based care, sincepre-school facilities had previouslyreached only 2 per cent of childrenfrom wealthier families, even in urbanareas. Even these programmes paidlittle attention to health, nutrition, andthe psychosocial and cognitive as-pects of child development.

The successful strategy has been toreach children wherever they are.Culturally acceptable ECCD facilitieshave been located in market places,churches, mosques, community hallsand annexes to primary schools, andthe UNICEF-supported project hashome-based facilities in poor areas,serving around 175,000 children. AnNGO network plans to extend ECCDservices to all Nigerian children undersix years of age.105

The need for a coordinated, inter-disciplinary approach to children’s

education, health and nutrition is mostvital in the early years of life. In orderto achieve this goal, collaborationamong a variety of partners, such astrade unions, the private sector, NGOsand religious groups, is needed. Chil-dren must be better prepared forschool, and ECCD, whether providedat home by parents or in formal kin-dergartens, has proven to be the bestmeans. Schools must also be betterprepared to receive young children ina welcoming, suitable environment;they must then educate those childrenand ultimately enhance their capacityto take advantage of that education.Based on the evidence flowing infrom around the globe, that lesson issinking in.

Globalization andlearning

Virtually all the elements of the ‘ex-panded vision’ of education thatemerged from Jomtien can be, andhave been, put into practice, as wehave described, in various ways ineducation systems around the world.What that vision could not have anti-cipated was the extraordinary pace ofpolitical, social, economic and tech-nological changes the world would gothrough, and which would have greatimpact on education.

For instance, while the Jomtien vi-sion stressed the importance of theState working in partnership withcivil society to ensure access to qual-ity education for all, it did not counton the rapid emergence at the end ofthe cold war of a plethora of new na-tion States, many of which had to dealwith problems of tenuous authority,limited capacity and precarious re-sources. The need for partnership sud-denly became even more urgent, asdid the recognition that the State neednot be the only provider of education.The focus on human rights recast the

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Education for Development builds bridgesacross continents and cultures by promotingunderstanding, tolerance and friendshipamong young people worldwide. Byencouraging them to cooperate, to thinkcritically and analytically, to solve problemsand to participate actively in learning, ithelps lay a foundation for peace, globalsolidarity, social justice and environmentalawareness. Started by UNICEF in 1992 toacquaint young people and educators in theindustrialized world with global issues andUNICEF’s role in promoting development,Education for Development programmes arenow being used by educators throughout theworld to promote global citizenship. Studentsin the United States attach strings to a mapto indicate trade links between countries.

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Spurred by a desire to go to school like her brother, a girl in a South Asian villagelearns to count and wins her right to go to school. Her name is Meena, and shestars in a series of 13 animated films created by UNICEF offices in South Asiaand the international animation company Hanna Barbera.

The Meena series evolved based on extensive research by UNICEF inBangladesh, India, Pakistan and Nepal to identify characters, settings and story-lines that struck a common chord among the region’s diverse population. Theresulting stories are full of adventure and fun, but at their heart lie the real-lifeproblems faced by girls in South Asia.

Meena’s resourcefulness in dealing with issues such as unequal access toeducation, food and health care, AIDS, the practice of dowry, early marriage and

others have made her a positive role model for girls and a powerful advocatefor the rights of all children.

The first episode has been dubbed into 30 languages and broadcast in allfour South Asian countries, as well as on Turner’s Cartoon Network, and willbe shown soon in China, Myanmar and countries in the Middle East. In 1998,the full 13-episode series was aired for the first time by television broadcastersin Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, and a radio programme, co-produced by the BBC World Service, was launched in India. Mobile filmunits and a comic book series have brought Meena and her message to overone million rural people throughout the region. The potential audience forMeena materials in South Asia alone is estimated at over 500 million people.

Fig. 13 Meena: An animated advocate for girls’ rights

principal role of the State as guarantorof every child’s right to a qualityeducation.

So while in many cases the Statecontinues to be the principal providerof basic education, in others it is justone in a broad range of different orga-nizations providing basic education. Itretains, however, the important role ofproviding leadership, developing pol-icy and standards, and articulating thenational vision. And in every case theState is accountable for ensuring theright of every child to a high-qualitybasic education.

While the Jomtien vision recog-nized the importance of the process ofglobalization, few in 1990 could haveanticipated how quick the pace wouldbe in the last eight years. Computerprogrammers in the Philippines nowwrite programmes for software devel-opers in the United Kingdom, whilelawyers in India draft briefs for legalfirms in the United States.

From the intermingling of culturesand the growing dominance of certaincultures and languages of the ‘globalvillage’, two strong trends haveemerged — heightened demand forschools to teach an international lan-guage that will give access to theglobal village, and an increasing con-cern for education to help preserveand protect cultural and ethnic iden-tity and diversity. Education thus isbecoming a key strategy to provideaccess to a world that is increasinglyinterdependent and also to help en-sure the survival of cultural and ethnicidentities.

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Nor could virtually anyone in 1990have foreseen the extraordinarilyrapid growth of modern communica-tion and information technologies.The Internet existed then but attractedvery little attention. The meteoric ad-vance of information processing andelectronic communication technolo-gies has created the possibility forchanges in education that were nottaken seriously in 1990.

Suddenly, and at an awe-inspiringpace, new possibilities are arising fortransforming the education vision ofJomtien into reality, using not onlymass media and radio as Jomtien pro-posed, but also the new informationand communication technologies,which are already transforming teach-ing and learning in privileged com-munities. As potent as they are, unlessaccess to them can be assured for theless privileged, they will simply serveto widen the existing learning gap be-tween communities and countriesrather than bridge it.

In the years since Jomtien, signifi-cant possibilities have emerged to ad-vance human welfare. At the sametime, disparities between the privi-leged and the poor have widened, andwith them the threat of social instabil-ity and civil conflict, making the ar-guments for the education revolutionas an investment to promote peace,prosperity and the advancement ofhuman rights even stronger now thanthey were a decade ago. The next sec-tion, ‘Investing in human rights’,looks more closely at the argumentsfor that investment.

Recent technological advances have thepower to transform education, but unlessaccess to these new technologies can beassured for all, they will simply widenthe learning gap between rich and poor.Children sit at a computer terminal inthe United States.

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