World education report The right to education Towards education for all throughout life UNESCO PUBLISHING World education report 2000 The right to education: towards education for all throughout life UNESCO Publishing The designations employed and the presentation of the material in this publication do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of UNESCO concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area, or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. Published in 2000 by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization 7, Place de Fontenoy, 75352 Paris 07 SP Cover design by Jean-Francis Chériez Graphics by Visit-Graph, Boulogne-Billancourt Printed by Darantiere, 21800 Quétigny ISBN 92-3-103729-3 © UNESCO 2000 Printed in France Foreword The World Education Report 2000’s focus on promoting reflection on the many different education as a basic human right is a fitting facets of the right to education, extending from choice for the International Year for the Culture initial or basic education to lifelong learning. of Peace. Education is one of the principal The report is also designed to complement the means to build the ‘defences of peace’ in the Education for All 2000 Assessment undertaken minds of men and women everywhere – the by the international community as a follow- mission assumed by UNESCO when the Organ- up to the World Conference on Education for ization was created more than half a century All (Jomtien, Thailand, 1990). This assessment ago. The twentieth century saw human rights process, culminating at the World Education accepted worldwide as a guiding principle. Our Forum in Dakar, Senegal, in April 2000, is lead- ambition for the new century must be to see ing to a global renewal of and re-commitment to human rights fully implemented in practice. Education for All as a bedrock of peace and all This is therefore a good moment for the inter- forms of development, to pledges to intensify national community to reflect on its understand- efforts and accelerate progress towards EFA, and ing of, and commitment to, the right to edu- to the resolve to find new and better ways to cation. Education is both a human right and a achieve EFA goals. The perspectives in this vital means of promoting peace and respect for report should serve both as a backdrop to, and human rights and fundamental freedoms gener- motivation for, this commitment and the new ally. If its potential to contribute towards build- intensive courses of action that it is generating. ing a more peaceful world is to be realized, edu- It is my hope that this report, through its wide- cation must be made universally available and ranging and yet concise overview and analysis, equally accessible to all. will contribute to a better international under- The challenge is daunting. Despite the standing of the nature and scope of the right to progress made in the decades that have passed education, of its fundamental importance for since the Universal Declaration of Human Rights humanity and of the challenges that still lie was proclaimed, there are more than 800 million ahead to ensure its full implementation. illiterate adults in the world today, and nearly 100 million primary-school-age children (and an even larger number of secondary-school-age children) are not in school. Moreover, millions of those who are in school do not benefit from an education of sufficient quality to meet their basic learning needs. These needs are daily becoming more pressing as the vast changes in the world wrought by globalization and the revolution in information and communication technologies threaten to marginalize entire populations still living in dire poverty. This report, the fifth in UNESCO’s biennial Koïchiro Matsuura series of World Education Reports, is aimed at Director-General of UNESCO Contents List of boxes, figures and tables 9 3 An expanding vision of educational opportunity 53 Acknowlegements 13 An expanding vision 55 ‘Lifelong education’ 55 ‘Lifelong learning’ 58 1 A multi-faceted right 15 Secondary education 60 Expansion of opportunities 60 A multi-faceted right 16 Structural changes 62 Commitments to implementation 20 ‘Equal opportunity’ 65 Shifts of emphasis 23 Tertiary education 67 ‘Equally accessible to all on the basis of merit’ 69 2 Towards basic education for all 25 Diversity of provision 70 ‘Fundamental education’ 26 The question of interpretation 26 4 A renewed concern Overlap with adult education for education’s purposes 73 and literacy 28 Eradication of illiteracy 29 Education for peace, human rights ‘Functional literacy’ 29 and democracy 76 World illiteracy at mid-century 30 Education for ‘development’ 82 Alternative strategies 32 Educational choice 85 The Experimental World Literacy Programme and aftermath 34 Secular trends 36 Appendices Elementary education 38 Scope of the challenge 40 I. The writing of Article 26 of the Universal Opening up access, 1950–1970 40 Declaration of Human Rights 91 The non-formal dimension 42 II. Regional tables 111 Towards ‘basic learning needs’ 44 III. World education indicators 121 Monitoring progress 46 IV. UNESCO reports, publications Boundaries 50 and periodicals concerning education 1997–99 173 List of boxes, figures and tables Figures and tables for which no source is indicated have been drawn from the database of the UNESCO Institute for Statistics. In these figures and tables, where a regional breakdown is shown, there is an overlap between the two regions of sub-Saharan Africa and the Arab States (see Appendix II, page 112). Boxes 1.1 The right to education: Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights 16 1.2 ‘The time to learn is now the whole lifetime’ 18 1.3 Meeting basic learning needs 19 1.4 The right to education: Articles 13 and 14 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (1966) 20 1.5 Article 28 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989) 23 1.6 ‘A war can never be reduced to an unpredictable event’ 24 2.1 The content, means and methods of ‘fundamental education’ (UNESCO, 1949) 27 2.2 Census questions on literacy (with instructions to enumerators) used in selected countries in various censuses taken between 1900 and 1948 31 2.3 ‘The largest literacy campaign in history’ 33 2.4 The ‘political option’ in literacy teaching (Paulo Freire, 1921–1997) 35 2.5 ‘We, the leaders of nine high-population developing nations of the world, hereby reaffirm our commitment . to meet the basic learning needs of all our people’ 39 2.6 Primary and secondary schooling considered as ‘successive phases of a continuing process’ 42 2.7 Discrimination in education: definitions from the Convention against Discrimination in Education (1960) 43 2.8 ‘Linear expansion’ in question 44 2.9 ‘Informal education’, ‘formal education’, and ‘non-formal education’ 45 2.10 ‘Broadening the means and scope of basic education’ 49 2.11 ‘The Salamanca Statement’ on Special Needs Education (extract) 50 3.1 ‘The whole of his life is a school for every man’ (John Amos Comenius, 1592–1670) 56 3.2 ‘As adult educators, we could not but turn our eyes and our attention to education as a whole’ 57 3.3 The definition of ‘adult education’ given in the Recommendation on the Development of Adult Education (1976) 58 3.4 From ‘recurrent education’ to ‘markets for learning’ (OECD) 59 3.5 ‘The very conception of secondary schooling is in transition’ (UNESCO, 1961) 61 3.6 Technical and vocational education for lifelong learning 64 3.7 ‘Secondary education should be the time when the most varied talents are revealed and flourish’ 65 3.8 Equality of opportunity in education: Article 4 of the Convention against Discrimination in Education (1960) 66 3.9 ‘Admission to higher education is not a single act but a process covering all the years of education’ 69 10 3.10 Introducing ‘cost-sharing’ into higher education in Kenya 70 3.11 Mission to educate, to train and to undertake research: Article 1 of the World Declaration on Higher Education 1998 72 4.1 Declaration on a Culture of Peace (Articles 1 and 2) 74 4.2 World conferences in the 1990s that had significant recommendations concerning education 75 4.3 Recommendations of the International Conferences on Public Education relating to the contents of education, 1949–1968 77 4.4 Guiding principles of the Recommendation concerning Education for International Understanding, Co-operation and Peace and Education relating to Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms (1974) 78 4.5 Declaration on Education for Peace, Human Rights and Democracy (1995) 79 4.6 A new Civic Education Centre in Estonia 81 4.7 Article 29 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child 82 4.8 Reorienting education towards sustainable development (Agenda 21) 83 4.9 Putting people at the centre of development (1995) 84 4.10 ‘We need a broader conception of development that concentrates on the enhancement of human lives and freedoms’ 85 4.11 Choice of education: Article 5 of the Convention against Discrimination in Education (1960) 86 Figures 1.1 Estimated number of illiterate adults by major region of the world, 1950 and 2000 17 1.2 Estimated adult illiteracy rates by major region of the world, 1950 and 2000 17 2.1 Trends in adult illiteracy in the less developed regions, 1970–2015 36 2.2 Estimated numbers (millions) of literate and illiterate males and females aged 15 and over in the less developed regions, 2000 37 2.3 Gross enrolment ratios in primary education by region, 1970–1997 46 2.4 Estimated numbers of out-of-school