The State of the World's Children 1999 - Press kit
Summary
Education For All: Making the right a reality
The right to education
The history of the education revolution
The World Conference on Education for All
Slow progress on key priorities
The education revolution
Five key elements of the education revolution:
• Learning for life
Measuring learning achievement
Health and learning
• Accessibility, quality and flexibility
Reaching the unreached
Flexible and unified systems
Empowering teachers
Language barriers
Emergency measures
Countering child labour
• Gender sensitivity and girls' education
• The State as key partner
Mobilization
Partnerships
Decentralization
• Care for the young child
Investing in human rights
National and international responsibility
Education: The best investment
The shadow of debt
The human face of capital
Conclusion
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Features
Educating girls: Changing lives for generations
Industrialized countries and the right to education
Investing in education
Peace education: Practice is the best teacher
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Education For All: Making the right a reality
"More than 130 million children of primary school age in
developing countries, including 73 million girls, are
growing up without access to basic education," says Carol
Bellamy, Executive Director of UNICEF. The world can no
longer afford such an enormous waste of human potential.
Nearly a billion people, two thirds of them women, will
enter the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their
names -- much less operate a computer or understand a simple
application form. And they will live, as now, in more
desperate poverty and poorer health than most of those who
can. They are the world's functional illiterates -- and
their numbers are growing.
The consequences of illiteracy are profound, even
potentially life-threatening. They flow from the denial of a
fundamental human right: the right to education, proclaimed
in agreements ranging from the 50-year-old Universal
Declaration of Human Rights to the 1989 Convention on the
Rights of the Child, the world's most universally embraced
human rights instrument. This right has been a topic of
discussion in numerous international meetings over the past
50 years and in every major United Nations summit and
conference of the past decade.
The State of the World's Children 1999 report, by Carol
Bellamy, calls for an expansion of the education revolution
that is occurring throughout the world. This revolution has
two standards -- access to high-quality learning and a child
rights approach. The report highlights key examples both of
individual schools and of entire national education systems
that are putting these standards into practice. All that is
lacking, the report argues, is the political will and the
requisite resources to extend these educational benefits to
all the world's children.
The right to education
An education revolution is absolutely essential. An
estimated 855 million people (more than one sixth of
humanity) will be functionally illiterate at the end of this
century. At the same time, more than 130 million children of
primary school age in the developing countries, including 73
million girls, are growing up without access to basic
education. Millions of others languish in sub-standard
learning situations where little learning takes place.
Fig. 1 Children out of school
Millions Percent
In school 495 79
Out of school 130 21
Source: Facts & Figures 1998, UNICEF, New York,
1998; and World Population Prospects, The
1996 Revision, United Nations, New York, 1997.
Without an education, people cannot work productively, care
for their health, sustain and protect themselves and their
families or live culturally enriched lives. Illiteracy makes
it difficult for them to interact in society in a spirit of
understanding, peace, tolerance and gender equality among
all peoples and groups.
On a society-wide scale, the denial of education harms the
cause of democracy and social progress -- and, by extension,
international peace and security.
The history of the education revolution
The inclusion of the right to education in the Universal
Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 was the beginning of a
broad effort by the United Nations to promote social,
economic and cultural rights in tandem with civil and
political rights.
The indivisibility of these rights is guaranteed by the 1989
Convention on the Rights of the Child, which became binding
international law on 2 September 1990 and has now been
ratified by all but two nations (Somalia and the United
States).
As a result, what were once seen as the needs of children
have been elevated to something far harder to ignore: their
rights.
Articles 28 and 29 of the Convention require countries to
provide free, compulsory basic schooling that is aimed at
developing each child's ability to the fullest. Access to
school and high-quality education are vital to this.
Articles 28 and 29 are buttressed by four other articles
that assert overarching principles of law: article 2, on
non-discrimination; article 3, on the best interests of the
child; article 6, on the child's right to life, survival and
development; and article 12, on the child's right to have
opinions and express them freely.
The vision of education enshrined in the Convention and
other human rights instruments recognizes the right to
education as the underpinning for the practice of democratic
citizenship. The Convention is thus a guide to the kind of
education that is essential both to children's development
and to social progress.
The World Conference on Education for All
The 1990 World Conference on Education for All, held in
Jomtien (Thailand), set out to accomplish for education what
the International Conference on Primary Health Care (Alma
Ata, 1978) had achieved for health. It called for universal
quality education, with a particular focus on the world's
poorest citizens.
Jomtien marked the emergence of an international consensus
that education is the single most vital element in combating
poverty, empowering women, protecting children from
hazardous and exploitative labour and sexual exploitation,
promoting human rights and democracy, protecting the
environment and influencing population growth.
Previously, education had been assessed in terms of gross
enrolment rates at primary, secondary and tertiary levels.
At Jomtien, it became clear that as essential as access is,
counting the number of children sitting on school benches is
only part of the picture. Moving forward, education was to
be assessed in terms of its quality and certain other key
elements. The expanded vision of education embraced at
Jomtien includes an emphasis on basic education, early
childhood care and development, and learning through
adolescence and adulthood. Essential elements also include:
making girls' education a major priority; the recognition
that learning begins at birth; and the acknowledgement that
new partnerships among governments and groups at all levels
are necessary to achieve Education For All.
Modelled on some of the principles that had driven the child
survival revolution that UNICEF had sparked in the 1980s,
the Jomtien conference established six key goals:
• expansion of early childhood care and development,
especially for the poor;
• universal access to and completion of primary education
by the year 2000;
• improvement in learning achievement based on an
agreed-upon percentage of an age group (e.g., 80
per cent of 14-year-olds) attaining a defined level;
• reduction of the adult illiteracy rate to half its 1990
level by the year 2000, with special emphasis on female
literacy;
• expansion of basic education and training for youth and
adults;
• improved dissemination of the knowledge, skills and
values required for better living and sustainable
development.
Jomtien helped move education back to the centre of the
international development agenda after the lost decade of
the 1980s, when debt and structural adjustments had brought
earlier progress in education to a halt. Each major United
Nations summit and conference since Jomtien has recognized
that education, particularly of girls and women, spans and
links these areas of concern and is pivotal to progress in
each.
Slow progress on key priorities
Progress towards Education For All has, however, been much
slower than those who attended the Jomtien conference had
hoped, as a mid-decade review in Amman (Jordan) in June 1996
revealed. There was a sense that a central priority of
Jomtien -- girls' education -- and the conference's
integrated vision of basic education had been overshadowed
by the drive to get all the world's children into primary
school by the year 2000.
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Fig. 2 Net primary enrolment, by region (around 1995)
Net primary enrolment -- the number of children enrolled in
primary school as a percentage of the total number of
children in primary school age group -- is a key indicator
of progress towards the goal of Education For All. Sub-
Saharan Africa and South Asia are the regions facing the
greatest challenges in enrolling all their children in
primary school by the year 2000.
Percentage of all
primary school age
children
Sub-Saharan Africa 57
South Asia 68
Middle East and North Africa 81
Latin America and Caribbean 92
CEE/CIS* and the Baltic States 94
East Asia and Pacific 96
Industrialized Countries 98
* Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of
Independent States.
Source: UNESCO and UNICEF 1998.
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Fig. 3 Reaching grade five, by region (around 1995)
In addition to those millions of children who do not attend
school, many others start school but do not reach grade
five. Completion of grade four is considered one indication
of minimal education attainment. Note the difference in
pattern when this chart is compared to the one on net
primary enrolment (Fig. 2).
Percentage of all
Children who start
school
Sub-Saharan Africa 67
South Asia 59
Middle East and North Africa 91
Latin America and Caribbean 74
East Asia and Pacific 90
Industrialized Countries 99
* Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of
Independent States.
Source: The State of the World's Children 1999, UNICEF, New
York, 1998 (Table 4).
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During the five years following the Jomtien conference, all
evidence pointed to a girls' enrolment rate that was
virtually static.
Overall primary enrolment was the brightest sign of progress
by mid-decade, with some 50 million more children in
developing countries enrolled in primary school than in
1990. Discouragingly, however, this figure only managed to
keep pace with the numbers of children entering the 6- to
11-year-old age group over the period. Regionally, the rates
of progress varied.
The poor quality of the education provided in most of the
countries of the Latin America and Caribbean region -- as
well as the social and economic circumstances of many
students -- has led to both high rates of repetition and
high drop-out rates.
The education revolution
The fact that the Convention on the Rights of the Child
insists on the child's right to a high-quality education is
informing a movement for educational innovations around the
world, says The State of the World's Children 1999 report.
From the Convention's perspective, education encompasses not
only children's cognitive needs but also their physical,
social, emotional, moral and spiritual development.
Education so conceptualized unfolds from the child's
perspective and addresses each child's unique capacities and
needs.
The vision of educational quality enshrined in the
Convention extends to issues of gender equality and equity,
health and nutrition, parental and community involvement,
and management of the education system itself.
Above all, it demands that schools be zones of creativity,
safety and stimulation for children, places where they can
expect to find not only safe water and decent sanitation
facilities, with motivated teachers and relevant curricula,
but also where children are respected and learn to respect
others.
The broad outlines of an education revolution within the
Convention's framework can already be discerned. It has five
key elements that interweave with and reinforce each other:
Learning for life; Accessibility, quality and flexibility;
Gender sensitivity and girls' education; The State as key
partner; and Care of the young child.
Five key elements of the education revolution:
• Learning for life
• Accessibility, quality and flexibility
• Gender sensitivity and girls' education
• The State as key partner
• Care for the young child
Element 1) Learning for life
A comprehensive approach to learning for life includes
helping children develop the literacy, numeracy and
psychosocial skills and the knowledge base that will equip
them to be active and effective participants in the events
of their lives.
To be successful, such an approach calls for curricula and
pedagogies that take into account such factors as gender,
language and culture, economic disparities and physical and
mental disabilities, and enable children to deal with them
in a positive way. It prepares children to appreciate their
own rights and respect those of others.
In this approach to learning, teachers and students need to
relate in new ways, so that the classroom experience -- the
very process of learning -- becomes a preparation for life.
As the principles of the Convention on the Rights of the
Child make clear, teaching must be a process of guiding and
facilitating, in which children are encouraged to think for
themselves and to discover how to learn. The classroom must
be an environment of democratic participation.
Measuring learning achievement
If the success of education is to be gauged by what and how
children learn, better ways must be found to measure the
quality and relevance of education. It is essential that we
develop an efficient system for measuring learning
achievement in its broader, expanded sense -- including life
skills as well as academic prowess. The joint UNESCO-UNICEF
Monitoring Learning Achievement (MLA) project is one of the
most comprehensive attempts yet to devise an international
framework for measuring learning that transcends the
traditional focus on exam results at one pole and simple
school enrolment at the other.
But it is not the only initiative. There is a growing
movement around the world that aims to find ways of
describing learning achievement that go beyond numbers --
ranging from the measurement of basic competencies in
Bangladesh to outcomes-based curricula developed in
Australia, India, Italy and South Africa to the use of
profiles of children's work in the United States and the
reformed school-leaving exams in Slovenia. What all these
developments share is the conviction that teachers must
focus on what children actually learn, and use their
assessments to develop the kind of teaching that facilitates
the learning process.
Health and learning
"There is a strong link between children's health and school
performance," says Professor Dr. Hussein Kamel Bahaa El-Din,
Egypt's Minister of Education, a paediatrician. "This
link ... is a major challenge to educational planners and
policy makers."
In 1995, the World Health Organization (WHO) launched the
Global School Health Initiative and identified four
characteristics of a healthy and health-promoting school. It
is a place of safety, where children are protected from
sexual exploitation and violence; it is a place where
diseases can be detected and often treated; it has a healthy
environment including safe water and sanitation; and it
teaches life skills. Projects in Mauritania, Nigeria and
Thailand are among those monitoring the connections between
children's learning and health.
Element 2) Accessibility, quality and flexibility
The conventional education systems in many countries,
according to the report, are too rigid to reach the children
who, because of gender, ethnicity or poverty, have least
access to school. But Education For All cannot be achieved
unless these children are reached.
Reaching the unreached
Not only do fewer girls than boys go to school, fewer rural
children go than city-dwellers, fewer from ethnic minorities
than from the dominant ethnic group -- and the educational
needs of the disabled are barely considered. Children caught
in emergency situations often face years of disrupted
schooling.
Various means to reach the unreached students are being
developed around the world. Multigrade teaching, for
example, in which children of two or more ages or grades are
taught by one teacher, means education can be provided in
smaller, more local schools. Multigrade education tended to
be regarded as inferior until the Escuela Nueva schools in
rural Colombia showed how new teaching practices,
specifically designed learning resources and community
participation could transform the experience. Many
countries, including Guatemala and the Philippines, are now
adapting the Colombian model to their own circumstances.
Also in the Philippines, 'ambulant' teachers with backpacks
bring school to the children who live in some of the most
rugged provinces. In Cambodia, teachers from different
villages share resources, materials, ideas and teaching
techniques among 'cluster' schools.
Children elsewhere are learning by one form or another of
distance education, often involving radio. First pioneered
in 1924 by the BBC in the United Kingdom, radio has become a
vital educational medium all over the world, particularly in
developing countries where more expensive technologies
remain out of reach. The Dominican Republic, Nepal and
Nicaragua all reach children through the radio waves.
Flexible and unified systems
What these examples in the report have in common, says
UNICEF, is flexibility: a readiness to adapt to local
conditions so as to meet the educational needs of all
children. This is breaking down the traditional divide
between conventional schools and 'non-formal' education
projects.
A unified system, overseen by the State, is being tried in
various countries. The system is still founded on mainstream
public schools but allows them to adapt to local conditions
and community needs. In addition, where necessary,
governments work in partnership with a range of
organizations providing additional, inviting gateways to
learning for the children that conventional schools find
difficult to reach. There are now examples from around the
globe, including one of the most famous, the Bangladesh
Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC), which began in 1985 in
22 villages and by 1998 had 34,000 schools, and one of the
most recent, Uganda's Complementary Opportunities for
Primary Education (COPE) scheme, which for the last two
years has given older children a second chance at school.
Empowering teachers
Teachers are at the heart of the education revolution;
without them, quality is impossible. Teaching conditions,
including salaries, need to be improved worldwide to halt
the vicious cycle of demoralization and decline of the 1980s
and 1990s. At the same time, teachers must reform their
educational practices to be more in keeping with a
child-centred, rather than a teacher-dominated, classroom.
Innovative models of teacher education are springing up
throughout the world. The report includes examples from
Bangladesh, Chile, the former Yugoslav Republic of
Macedonia, India and Zimbabwe.
Language barriers
Another major obstacle to children's access to schools is
that, in many countries, lessons are still conducted in the
former colonial language, despite ample research showing
that students learn more quickly when first taught in their
mother tongue. Projects in Australia, Latin America and
South-East Asia are among those offering mother-tongue and
bilingual instruction to indigenous populations.
Emergency measures
Keeping schools open during armed conflicts and other
emergencies provides children with structure and some sense
of normalcy in the midst of chaos. Teachers and other
professionals can attend to psychosocial and emotional
effects of violence on children; they can teach about
survival and safety and monitor for human rights abuses. In
an effort to restore and protect children's right to
education -- even in emergencies -- UNESCO and UNICEF
developed 'Edukits', educational and teacher training
materials that are sent to affected areas as soon as an
emergency arises.
Countering child labour
The International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates that
there are 250 million children working full or part time in
the developing world. Work prevents many children from
gaining or benefiting from education, but it is equally true
that education systems fail to take into account the special
circumstances of working children. To transform education
from being part of the child labour problem into a key
element of the solution, says the report, entails
considerable innovation and the use of non-traditional
techniques, as demonstrated in programmes in Bangladesh,
Brazil and India.
Element 3) Gender sensitivity and girls' education
Girls have a fundamental right to a high-quality education
that serves their needs, according to The State of the
World's Children 1999. This is too often denied, even for
those who have managed to reach the classroom and then find
their learning and their self-esteem undermined by lessons
and textbooks full of messages suggesting that girls are
less important than boys or by teachers who reward boys with
more attention and offer them more opportunities for
leadership.
Nevertheless, the call to rally the international community
behind the cause of girls' education has had a major effect,
says UNICEF. The strategies that bring more girls into
school have been tested in projects and programmes
worldwide. To protect children's right to education, schools
and education systems must be 'gender-sensitive' and
'girl-friendly'. Key measures that have proven to promote
girls' schooling, and that also enhance the quality of the
school experience for all children, include: offering a
learning experience that is child centred, relevant and
conducted in the local language; recruiting and training
teachers to be more sensitive to gender and child rights;
locating schools closer to children's homes; ensuring that
schools are places of safety, with a supply of safe water
and latrines; and rooting out gender bias from textbooks and
materials.
The global UNICEF Girls' Education Programme is currently
pursuing this goal in more than 50 countries. The momentum
is particularly strong where the need is greatest: in
sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East and
North Africa.
In Africa, the Forum for African Women Educationalists
(FAWE), which promotes girls' education through an
impressive range of initiatives, is collaborating with a
team from Sussex University in the United Kingdom on a major
new girls' education programme called Gender and Primary
Schooling in Africa (GAPS). It studies the educational
conditions of particular countries in depth, then recommends
a package of reforms that it considers will "deliver
schooling for all, at levels of quality and gender equality
which are defensible, within 10 to 15 years."
Element 4) The State as key partner
The State has a vital role in the education revolution,
asserts the UNICEF report. But its role is changing rapidly.
Instead of acting as an omnipotent central authority, the
State is finding it must work in partnership with multiple
sectors of society in order to have a better chance of
achieving the goal of Education For All. It is mobilizing
and coordinating the efforts of others, as well as passing
power to lower levels of the system to improve its
efficiency and responsiveness.
Mobilization
The idea of Education For All was intended to be a rallying
cry to galvanize the international community into action,
from the level of governments and global institutions, right
through private companies and media outlets, to individual
schools and villages. And, the report says, the power of
this idea has been proven.
Brazil, Malawi and the Philippines are among the examples of
entire nations being effectively mobilized to pursue
Education For All. In Brazil, the most visible member of
this campaign has been President Fernando Henrique Cardoso
himself who, soon after he took office at the beginning of
1995, demonstrated that education was his top priority by
teaching the first class of the year at the Jose Barbosa
School in Santa Maria da Vitória, in the state of Bahia.
This was followed by a national campaign and systematic
mobilization process called 'Acorda Brasil. Esta na Hora da
Escola!' (Wake Up, Brazil, It's Time for School!). The
public response to this campaign exceeded all expectations.
Partnerships
The formation of partnerships has become a central concept
in the planning and management of education and is producing
exciting results, according to UNICEF. The State retains
responsibility for setting national objectives, mobilizing
resources and ensuring that educational standards are
maintained. But where a significant number of children are
deprived of education, governments have to create the
conditions in which non-governmental organizations (NGOs),
community groups, religious bodies and commercial
enterprises can all make a contribution.
Education is coming to be seen less as the exclusive
province of governments and more as a vital part of the life
of the whole community. Communities that participate
actively in the running of an educational facility --
whether a nursery, a primary school or a secondary school --
have more chance to make its service relevant and more
incentive to make it successful.
Decentralization
There is increasing recognition worldwide, says the report,
that if schools are to improve the quality of their
offerings and are to be more responsive to the needs of the
communities they serve, the schools have to be given more
autonomy to assess and resolve their own problems.
A recent development in Brazil shows decentralization at its
best. Minas Gerais is one of Brazil's largest and most
developed states. When it examined the reasons for its
appalling drop-out rate -- in 1990, only 38 in every 100
students who had entered primary school completed the first
year -- it soon decided that its top priority was to
decentralize. Power was passed down from the state capital,
where all decisions had previously been taken, to school
boards headed by an elected principal with parents and
school staff represented equally. Community involvement has
already significantly improved educational standards, and
Minas Gerais has inspired many other Brazilian states to
follow its example.
Other successful models for decentralized management of
schools are appearing all over the world: in Asia and in
Chile, El Salvador, Mali, Poland and some other Central and
Eastern European countries. Good management results in
higher-quality education just as surely as good teaching.
Element 5) Care for the young child
Learning begins at birth -- and new research continues to
add to our understanding of the way children develop,
according to The State of the World's Children 1999. There
is growing evidence that the quality of a child's experience
in the first two years of life -- including care and
stimulation as well as health and nutrition -- has a
long-lasting effect on the development of the brain. By the
age of six, when children generally start school, most of
the brain's neural connections are already made: Children's
ability to prosper in the education system has, to an
extent, already been determined.
Given this understanding of the importance of the early
years, any meaningful conception of 'basic education' has to
include programmes promoting early childhood care for child
growth and development (ECCD). There is consensus that child
care and early education are inseparable: Children cannot be
well cared for without being educated and children cannot be
well educated without being cared for. Never again can the
early years be excluded from the world's sense of what is
meant by 'education'.
The ECCD lesson is not simply that looking after children in
their early years will pay dividends in both educational and
social terms. It is also that schools have to change in
order better to serve children's developmental needs. Many
of the same principles that apply in ECCD programmes -- the
need for intersectoral links between education and health or
nutrition, for example, or the advantages of child-centred
teaching methods -- could usefully be put into practice in
schools. Indeed the range of ECCD programmes runs from birth
until eight years of age, well beyond the point at which a
child normally starts school.
In industrialized countries such as Belgium, Denmark, France
and Italy, 80 per cent of three-year-olds attend nursery or
pre-school. And 60 per cent of four-year-olds in Trinidad
and Tobago are enrolled in Servol (Service Volunteered for
All) centres, nursery schools operated at government
request. In 23 Eastern European and former Soviet Union
countries, the Soros Foundation supports new curricula
designed by Children's Resources International, and these
projects are being adapted in Haiti, Mongolia and South
Africa.
Investing in human rights
In the years since Jomtien, significant possibilities have
emerged to advance human welfare. At
the same time, disparities between privileged and poor have
widened and with them the threat of social instability and
civil conflict, making the arguments for the education
revolution as an investment to promote peace, prosperity and
the advancement of human rights even stronger now than they
were a decade ago.
However, without a major change in the approach to
delivering schooling and ensuring learning, it will be
impossible for most poor countries to deliver Education For
All. The pioneering examples in the report clearly show the
way forward. The world now has a much better understanding
of how children learn, what kinds of schooling are most
likely to promote this -- and also how to deliver these more
efficiently. Cost-effective successful models now abound,
and many are simply waiting for the resources and commitment
it would take to 'go to scale' with them -- to apply the
same principles countrywide.
In other words, the education revolution is under way, but
if it is to embrace all schools, in rich and poor countries
alike, it needs to be backed up by sufficient resources and
the requisite political will, both nationally and
internationally.
National and international responsibility
The primary responsibility for basic education rests with
national governments. Many have frankly failed to make it a
sufficient priority. It is standard for developing countries
to plead their own poverty as an excuse for not ploughing
enough resources into the pursuit of Education For All, yet
all the evidence from four decades of development suggests
that even poor countries can work wonders if they only have
the commitment.
UNICEF has made a detailed study of nine countries and the
Indian state of Kerala that have achieved much better
results in health and education than neighbouring countries
with similar incomes. Regardless of their position on the
ideological spectrum, all these countries have given strong
state support for basic social services, refusing to rely on
a trickle-down from economic growth or on the free play of
market forces. In common, they have:
• consistently spent a higher proportion of their per
capita income on primary education than their neighbours,
while also maintaining relatively low unit costs;
• managed to improve quality by reducing pupil-teacher
ratios while keeping repetition and drop-out rates low;
• kept primary schooling free of tuition fees;
• managed (except for one) to achieve universal primary
enrolment including broadly equal participation by girls
and boys -- and the exception, Malaysia, is not far short.
The lesson is clear, says the report: National governments
can and should do much more to fund the push towards
Education For All. But international aid donors and lenders
have, in general, also not significantly increased their
funding of education since Jomtien. The proportion of
bilateral aid committed to education in 1993-1994 was 10.1
per cent, compared with 10.2 per cent in 1989-1990 and with
11.0 per cent in 1987-1988.
Even the World Bank, one of the Jomtien conference convenors
and now the greatest single provider of funds to the
education sector, has an inconsistent record in funding
education in the 1990s. Between 1989 and 1994 the proportion
of Bank lending allocated to education went up from 4.5 per
cent to 10.4 per cent. But by 1997, the proportion had
fallen to 4.8 per cent. The trend seems to be changing
again, and the Bank estimates that it will have allocated
8.6 per cent of its total lending to education in 1998.
More troubling, though, is the alarming fall-off in loans
from its soft-loan subsidiary, the International Development
Association (IDA), to countries in sub-Saharan Africa,
unquestionably the region in direst need of help. IDA lent
$417 million in 1993, but the figure has fallen
precipitously each year since, arriving at a low point of
$132 million in 1996 -- less than its average annual lending
in the pre-Jomtien period of 1986-1990.
Education: The best investment
The World Bank's economic case for investing in primary
education has had increasing influence as its research
documents that the private rates of return -- the amount
earned by individuals in formal-sector employment in
relation to that invested in their education -- appears in
all regions of the developing world to be higher for primary
than for secondary and tertiary education.
In recent years, the Bank has lent its weight to the cause
of girls' education. In a speech in 1992, Lawrence H.
Summers, then Vice-President and Chief Economist of the
World Bank, argued that "investment in the education of
girls may well be the highest-return investment available in
the developing world." Girls' schooling not only cuts child
mortality and improves the nutrition and general health of
children, it also reduces population growth, since educated
women tend to marry later and choose to have fewer children.
The value of investing in basic education -- and especially
in the education of girls -- is now almost universally
accepted. Why, then, has the international community not
rushed to embrace this most essential project, which comes
closer than anything else to being the long-sought magic
bullet that will deliver 'human development' worldwide?
The answer is disappointing but familiar, according to
UNICEF: There has not been sufficient political will. When
the international community decides that something is of
urgent importance, it can move mountains.
The shadow of debt
A way to address the resource problem hamstringing education
is to approach the developing world's indebtedness with the
same sense of urgency and resolve as would accompany an
economic collapse. Developing countries in all regions
except Latin America and the Caribbean are having to pay a
higher percentage of their export earnings in debt
repayments than they were in 1980. The most indebted
countries of all must exist in the shadow of a debt many
times the size of their national income -- Nicaragua's debt,
for example, was a chilling six times the size of its gross
national product (GNP) in 1995. Tanzania, meanwhile, is not
untypical in spending six times more to pay off its debt as
it does on education.
The 1996 initiative of the International Monetary Fund (IMF)
and the World Bank to relieve the most heavily indebted poor
countries at first seemed highly promising but has now
foundered badly. This inertia should embarrass an
international community that responded so swiftly and
munificently to the needs of much richer Asian countries in
1997-1998. When it comes to debt relief, according to a
senior World Bank official with responsibility for African
programmes: "This is clearly an area where we have failed
these countries. The political will to do better just did
not exist."
The human face of capital
The stagnation on debt relief notwithstanding, the
international economic agenda is perceptibly shifting. After
almost two decades in which human development has taken a
back seat to globalization and structural adjustment, we may
be entering an era of investment in 'human and social
capital' that will make the task of spreading the education
revolution worldwide much easier, says The State of the
World's Children 1999. A model is emerging among leading
economists, including those at IMF and the World Bank, that
privatization alone cannot assure long-term economic growth;
equally essential are human capital (a nation's health,
education and nutrition) and social capital (shared values,
culture and a strong civil society).
The new economic thinking will add weight to the 20/20
Initiative advocated by UNICEF and other partners, which
enjoins governments of donor and developing countries to
allot 20 per cent of their official development assistance
(ODA) and national budgets, respectively, to basic social
services. This alone would, if implemented, certainly
liberate sufficient resources to achieve Education For All
within a decade, the cost of which UNICEF estimates to be an
additional $7 billion a year, on average -- less than is
spent on cosmetics in the United States or on ice cream in
Europe annually.
It is clear that the link between human rights and
sustainable human development, envisioned 50 years ago in
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and articulated in
the principles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child,
foreshadowed the increasingly accepted argument for
equitable economic development.
And in this, education's role is especially vital and
unique, as it increases human potential and development at
the individual as well as the social level.
Conclusion
The UNICEF report concludes: "It may have taken almost 50
years for the education rights proclaimed in the Universal
Declaration on Human Rights to be fully accepted. But those
rights are no longer negotiable. It is the world's
responsibility to fulfil them without further delay. We can
move swiftly ahead knowing that Education For All -- making
the education revolution a global reality -- is the soundest
investment in a peaceful and prosperous future that we can
make for our children."
Feature
Educating girls: Changing lives for generations
Q: Why educate girls?
A: Because it's their human right. And
because educated women are less likely to
be oppressed or exploited and more likely to
participate in political processes. In addition,
they are likely to have smaller families, and
healthier and better-educated children.
In many villages in Bihar (India), there are no women who
can read and write. Here, as in six other states in the
country, the Mahila Samakhya programme is mobilizing women
into collectives, teaching them the skills needed to
participate in the decision-making processes affecting the
lives of their families. Five thousand villages have been
reached since 1992. Inevitably, the women, empowered through
this programme, demand an education for their children,
especially for their daughters.
Similarly, traditions concerning girls and women have been
shaken up in rural parts of Upper Egypt, where more than a
half-million girls, 6-10 years old, were not in school at
the beginning of this decade. With government support, local
communities claimed responsibility for their schools. They
trained young women from the area as teachers, recruited a
student body that is 80 per cent girls and created a
curriculum of relevance and flexibility that now serves as a
model for formal schools.
In Burkina Faso, only 9 per cent of women over the age of 15
are literate and only 24 per cent of primary school age
girls are enrolled in school. But the mothers in that
African country are refusing to accept illiteracy as an
inevitable fact of life for their daughters. They have
formed 23 Pupils' Mothers' Associations in order to monitor
girls' enrolment and, as result of their efforts since 1992,
both the attendance and performance of young girls have
improved.
Through initiatives such as these, supported by the global
UNICEF Girls' Education Programme, the world is helping
transform the worrisome state of girls' education. Fifty
years after education was affirmed as a right in the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a decade after that
right was reaffirmed, for all children without
discrimination, in the Convention on the Rights of the
Child, and nearly 10 years after girls' education was
identified as "the most urgent priority" at the World
Conference on Education for All, held in Jomtien (Thailand),
girls around the globe cannot exercise their right to
education as readily as can boys. Of the more than 130
million 6- to 11-year-olds out of school in the developing
world, nearly two thirds are girls.
Without literacy skills, individual girls and women face
dark futures of dependency, and without literate women,
countries face unnecessary hurdles in economic development.
Numerous studies have demonstrated correlations between
women's educational status and every social indicator.
During a speech in 1992, Lawrence H. Summers, then
Vice-President and Chief Economist of the World Bank, argued
that "investment in the education of girls may well be the
highest-return investment available in the developing
world."
In this context, girls and women and the countries
themselves in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and the Middle
East and North Africa are particularly compromised. In each
of these regions, less than 50 per cent of the female
population is able to read and write.
UNICEF's strategy is to get more girls into school and to
keep them there longer by incorporating a gender-sensitive
approach in the classroom. With such an approach, the
subject matter is relevant to the students' lives, the
teacher-student interaction is mutually respectful, students
are encouraged to participate rather than just listen
passively, and their contributions are affirmed. Since this
approach actually benefits all children, boys and girls
alike, improving girls' education is both an end in itself
and a means for ensuring that the goal set at Jomtien --
Education For All -- is met. With Canada and Norway as major
donors, initiatives are under way in 52 countries including
those in sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East
and North Africa.
Approaches vary based on country need. In Asia, the UNICEF
programme supports the Bihar Education project in India,
with its strong emphasis on women's empowerment. In Africa,
UNICEF supports AGEI, the African Girls' Education
Initiative, with its focus on assuring girls' access to
primary schools. And in Egypt, one of the nine countries
targeted by UNICEF and others for special focus in
implementing Education For All, not only are girls going to
the community schools, they are also encouraging their
mothers to attend literacy classes.
The impact is profound. On learning to read and write, one
young Egyptian mother told a visiting evaluation team that
she "can no longer be compared to the water buffalo on the
farm." For her, learning to read and write meant that she
had gained her "full humanness."
• Nearly a quarter of the world's adult population,
two thirds of them women, cannot read and write.
• Not only do fewer girls than boys ever enrol in
school, more girls than boys drop out, repeat
grades or do not finish.
• Ninety-six per cent of the world's children live
under governments that have ratified the Convention
on the Rights of the Child.
Feature
Industrialized countries and the right to education
Of the primary school age population in
industrialized countries, 98 per cent
are enrolled in school.
In industrialized countries, nearly every school age child
attends primary or secondary school. But, once enrolled, do
these children learn to read, write, count and think well
enough to succeed in the labour market? According to an
analysis of 29 member countries by the Paris-based
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
(OECD), the answer is no. A sizeable minority of students --
15 to 20 per cent in many countries -- leave school without
the qualifications necessary for finding and keeping a job.
Nor, the critics say, do students graduate with the life
skills needed to meet the complex challenges of the modern
world successfully: knowing how to manage conflict, respect
diversity, work with others, or how to think critically and
creatively as they go about their daily lives. "Going to
school and coming out unprepared for life is a terrible
waste," says Carol Bellamy, Executive Director of the United
Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF), in The State of the
World's Children 1999, which this year focuses on education.
"Yet for many of the world's children, this is exactly what
happens."
In industrialized countries, one of the most obvious
problems to surface is academic underachievement, especially
in mathematics and science, subjects considered to be the
foundations for employment and success in contemporary
society. In 21 of the 26 countries surveyed by OECD in 1994,
the bottom 25 per cent of eighth-graders scored lower in
math than the average seventh-grader. In France, for
example, underachievement is a common phenomenon in many
urban areas, OECD reports, and 25 per cent of secondary
school students eventually leave school without employable
skills. Similarly, in the United Kingdom, according to
published reports, thousands leave school at age 16 without
useful qualifications, and 80 per cent of them are boys.
Even in countries where students rank high on international
mathematics and science tests, there are concerns about what
values they might be learning in school. The Republic of
Korea, for example, ranks highest among OECD countries when
comparing the average test scores in mathematics achieved by
14-year-olds in the eighth grade and third when science
scores are compared. However, on reviewing a report
submitted by that country on its implementation of the
Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Committee on the
Rights of the Child expressed its concern that the highly
competitive nature of the country's educational system
"risks hampering the development of the child to the fullest
potential of his or her abilities."
And violence, according to many reports, is as major a
problem in schools in industrialized countries as it is
worldwide. It encompasses not just the relatively isolated
incidents of armed children shooting at teachers and
classmates, but it also pervades everyday life. Children in
the United Kingdom, for example, are frequently bullied by
other children in the school yard. In the United States in
1995, 4 per cent of students 12 to 19 years old reported
experiencing violent victimization while in school.
In Sweden, according to some reports, each semester 1,500
boys and 500 girls, on average, require medical treatment
following attacks by other students.
Answers to "What happens after children enter school?" run
like a litany of complaints about education or a list of
necessary corrections. In fact, they are a violation of
child rights as stipulated in the Convention on the Rights
of the Child, an international human rights instrument that
has been ratified by all the world's countries except
Somalia and the United States. Among their rights as assured
by the Convention, children enjoy the right to an education
that prepares them for an active adult life.
Within this context, then, changes in education are
necessary not merely to prepare skilled workers nor solely
to adjust the wrongs of a system. They are needed to ensure
children their full complement of human rights.
• The Convention on the Rights of the Child
is the most universally accepted human rights
instrument ever.
Feature
Investing in education
In the world economy, where defence expenditures
total approximately $781 billion a year, the $7
billion more per year needed for education over the
next decade remains an unmet challenge for the
international community.
By spending $7 billion more each year for the next 10
years -- less than the amount people in the United States
pay annually for cosmetics and Europeans for ice cream --
the dream of educating all children could become a reality.
And universally accessible education, argues UNICEF's The
State of the World's Children 1999 report, leads to fuller,
healthier lives for children, greater social equity and
stability, and higher levels of economic and social
development.
In the world economy, where defence expenditures total
approximately $781 billion a year, the $7 billion more per
year needed for education over the next decade remains an
unmet challenge for the international community. This is
despite the powerful benefits of education -- as the single
most critical element in combating poverty, empowering
women, protecting children from hazardous and exploitative
labour and sexual exploitation, and promoting human rights
and democracy.
Yet recent experience shows that resources can be made
available immediately when the need is deemed great enough.
For example, when the economies collapsed in Indonesia, the
Republic of Korea and Thailand in 1997-1998, the Group of
Seven led the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development (OECD) in mobilizing over $100 billion dollars
in a few short months to rescue Asia's financial 'tigers'.
Imagine what a similar infusion of resources would do for
education. On their own, some countries, in spite of
poverty, have managed to make resources available for
education with significant results. Viet Nam, for example,
with a $290 GNP per capita, has an overall literacy rate of
94 per cent and a female literacy rate of 91 per cent.
Following independence in 1980, when only half the adult
population was literate, Zimbabwe more than tripled the
number of primary school teachers in 10 years and progressed
from enrolling less than half its school age population to
universal enrolment. Today, the adult literacy rate in
Zimbabwe is 85 per cent.
What keeps many other countries from making such a
commitment to education is the debt burden they carry.
Nicaragua's debt, for example, was six times the size of its
GNP in 1995, and Tanzania spends six times more on debt
repayment than on education. The world's poorer nations
carry an incredible $2.2 trillion of external debt,
according to a recent United Nations report, with Asia and
Latin America both accounting for 31 per cent of the total,
Africa 16 per cent and transition areas in Europe and
Central Asia 18 per cent. Debt relief is imperative for many
countries facing "unsustainable debt positions," especially
for the 41 most Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPCs).
• It would take an additional $1.9 billion in
sub-Saharan Africa and an additional $1.6 billion
in South Asia each year for the next 10 years to
educate all children. These two regions have the
highest numbers of children out of school.
Another measure for helping inject more resources into
education is the 20/20 Initiative, an approach advanced by
UNICEF and other partners. It calls for governments of donor
and developing countries to allot 20 per cent of their
official development assistance (ODA) and national budgets,
respectively, to basic social services -- including
education. With these resources, children would be assured
their human right to a basic education within the decade.
All the countries of the world except Somalia and the United
States have ratified the Convention on the Rights of the
Child, which includes the right to a high-quality education.
And 155 countries committed themselves to the goal set at
the 1990 World Conference on Education for All, held in
Jomtien (Thailand). In addition to these legal and moral
obligations, the world community can see that in those
countries jolted by economic crises, earlier investments in
an educated population meant less damage and a greater
potential to rebound more quickly.
How then to explain the fact that under the Lomé IV aid
agreement, only 14 of 70 countries in Africa, the Caribbean
and the Pacific ranked education a high priority, 45 saw it
as a low priority and 6 had no education or training
projects at all?
"The answer is familiar," says UNICEF Executive Director
Carol Bellamy, in The State of the World's Children 1999.
"The political will is lacking."
• Only 56 per cent of boys and 44 per cent of girls
enrol in primary school in the world's least
developed countries.
• Only 60 per cent of boys and 51 per cent of girls
enrol in primary school in sub-Saharan Africa.
Feature
Peace education: Practice is the best teacher
In the past decade alone, the estimated impact of
armed conflict on children includes 2 million
killed, 6 million seriously injured or permanently
disabled, 12 million left homeless, more than 1
million orphaned or separated from their families,
and 10 million psychologically traumatized.
In Colombia, where guerrilla war has displaced an estimated
1 million people since 1980, most of them women and
children, and where children are routinely pressed into
armed conflict, the Children's Movement for Peace mobilized
close to 13 million people -- children and adults -- to
commit themselves to ending violence in their country by
actively working for peace and social justice.
The Children's Movement spent almost all of 1996 campaigning
for peace in a national mobilization effort coordinated by
UNICEF and Redepaz, a network of 400 non-governmental
organizations (NGOs). In October of that year, close to 3
million children, aged 8 to 18, came out to vote on a
special referendum, exercising their human right, as
articulated in the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the
Child, to have their opinions heard on issues of importance
to them.
Admittedly a unique approach to education, the mobilization
effort, nonetheless, taught a country more about peace than
any lecture could.
Where once it was thought that peace education meant
teaching about a defined subject within a formal curriculum,
UNICEF's experience increasingly supports the idea that the
best way to learn about peace is by doing -- by practising
the behaviours that promote peace. In Colombia, the children
did not take any formal exams on peace; instead they pushed
it to the top of the public's agenda, making peace, rather
than violence, the expectation of the general population.
A similar approach to peace education, applied in many
different settings, produces positive results around the
world. In Rwanda's Solidarity Camps, the children who have
survived the conflicts that devastated their countries are
learning about cooperation and conflict resolution through
recreational and cultural activities. In Sri Lanka, where
the armed conflict of the past 15 years continues, conflict
resolution strategies are integrated into the entire
curriculum. Peace is the theme of art and music, travelling
dance and theatre groups, folk stories and poetry, sports
events and science projects in Liberia, Mozambique, Rwanda
and southern Sudan. Primary school curricula have been
rewritten in Burundi, and teachers have been trained in
interactive teaching methods in that country and in Croatia
and Yugoslavia. And Egypt is about to embark on a Values for
Life programme with youth groups and clubs, focusing on
children's rights and on ways of resolving differences.
In Colombia, in October 1997, one year after the children
voted for peace, 10 million adults followed their lead. On a
special ballot cast during local, municipal and provincial
elections, they voted "to build peace and social justice, to
protect life, to reject all forms of violence and to respect
the Children's Peace Mandate." And, via the ballot,
Colombians demanded an end to atrocities and a respect for
international humanitarian law. Just three days after their
vote, then President Ernesto Samper responded to the will of
the children and adults of his country and announced an end
to the conscription of children under 18 into the army.
However, Colombia still allows children with their parents'
permission to enlist and, according to a recent report by
Human Rights Watch, guerrillas, paramilitaries and security
forces continue to use children, some as young as eight
years old, in combat areas. A 1996 report by the country's
public advocate said that up to 30 per cent of some
guerrilla units consist of children.
UNICEF estimates that some 300,000 children around the world
are fighting the wars of adults. Clearly, it remains the
urgent responsibility of the State to protect the rights of
children affected by armed conflict. But at the same time,
peace education is making a difference -- as the next
generation teaches in some instances and learns in others --
about the wiser ways of conflict resolution.
• "Education ... shall further the activities
of the United Nations for the maintenance
of peace."
-- Universal Declaration of Human Rights,
article 26 (2)
• "States Parties agree that the education of
the child shall be directed to: ... the
preparation of the child for responsible life
in a free society, in the spirit of under-
standing, peace, tolerance, equality of sexes,
and friendship among all peoples, ethnic,
national and religious groups and persons of
indigenous origin...."
-- Convention on the Rights of the Child,
article 29 (d)
**** END ****
The State of the World's Children 1999
Carol Bellamy, Executive Director, United Nations Children's Fund
Contents
Foreword by Kofi A. Annan, Secretary-General of the United
Nations
Chapter I
Education For All: Making the right a reality
The right to education
The education revolution
Investing in human rights
Chapter II
Statistics
General note on the data
Explanation of symbols
Under-five mortality rankings
Regional summaries country list
Tables
1 Basic indicators
2 Nutrition
3 Health
4 Education
5 Demographic indicators
6 Economic indicators
7 Women
8 The rate of progress
Panels
1 Education in free fall: A region in the midst of
transition
2 What children understand: The Monitoring Learning
Achievement project
3 Beyond the ruler: Competency-based learning in Tunisia
4 Second-hand computer, first-class vision: Thailand's
CHILD project
5 A Tanzanian school welcomes the disabled
6 The floating classroom: School clusters in Cambodia
7 Joyful learning: Empowering India's teachers
8 Which language for education?
9 A new beginning: Education in emergencies
10 In India: Helping the poor choose school
11 Egypt's community schools: A model for the education of
girls
12 The macho problem: Where boys are underachieving
13 Women educators push the limits for girls in Africa
14 Parent education: Supporting children's first teachers
Spotlights
Sub-Saharan Africa
Middle East and North Africa
South Asia
East Asia and the Pacific
Latin America and the Caribbean
Central and Eastern Europe, the Commonwealth of Independent
States, and the Baltic States
Industrialized countries
Text figures
Fig. 1 Children out of school
Fig. 2 Net primary enrolment, by region (around 1995)
Fig. 3 Reaching grade five, by region (around 1995)
Fig. 4 International milestones for education
Fig. 5 Net primary enrolment, by region (1960-2000)
Fig. 6 AIDS orphans: A looming education crisis in
Sub-Saharan Africa
Fig. 7 Primary enrolment: Where the boys and girls are
Fig. 8 Education's impact on child mortality
Fig. 9 At a glance: The gender gap in primary education
and related indicators
Fig. 10 Generational impact of educating girls
Fig. 11 Who benefits from public spending on education?
Fig. 12 School mapping
Fig. 13 MEENA: An animated advocate for girls' rights
Fig. 14 Cost of education for all by the year 2010
References
Glossary
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