Add Your Name to the Big Read!

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"774 million adults can not read this, and 75 million children who are not in school will be denied the chance to learn to read and write.

After reading a story in the Big Read we are asking you to write your name for the millions that cannot.

We are collecting the names to deliver to governments during the week of the 20th to 26th of April 2009 to demand that they take action to make sure that everyone has an education. "

Add Your Name to the Big Read!

"Write your name for those who can't. Everyone should have the chance of a good quality, free, public education that gives them a great start in life. Right now there are 774 million illiterate adults and 75 million children without an education. Education for all is possible! Add your name and we will deliver this to the relevant government officials in demand that they provide everyone with a quality education."

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'18 million more teachers are needed by 2015, for everyone to be educated by this date'

GCE's 2009 Calendar

“Everyone deserves a quality education... yet right now 75 million children and 774 million adults are missing out.

It's the world's poorest who are missing out on an education today. And it's the world's poorest who stand the most to gain if they only had the chance to learn.

Education is imperative to tackling poverty. When individuals have the chance to learn basic life and literacy skills, economies grow faster and poverty rates decline. When people go to school, they are able to eventually earn more money and support their families

• A single year of primary school increases the wages people earn later in life by 5-15% for boys and even more for girls.
• For each additional year of secondary school, an individual's wages increase by 15-25%.
• No country has ever achieved continuous and rapid economic growth without first having at least 40% of its adults able to read and write.

Education is essential to improving health, halting the spread of HIV/AIDS and enabling families to better cope with illness.

• Seven million cases of HIV/AIDS could be prevented in the next decade if every child received an education.
• A child born to a literate mother is 50% more likely to survive pass the age of 5 years.

Education is a human right. Human rights are inherent, every person is born with them and they cannot be given or taken away. Rights establish the basic standards without which people cannot live in dignity.

[…]

In most countries women and girls are last to get the opportunities to learn - often because boys are favoured when families are not able to send all their children to school.

• A third of all children out of school have a disability.
• 60% of all children out of school are girls.
• Nearly 250 million children have to work to help their families.
• Half of the world's out of school children live in communities where the language used in schools is different from that used at home.

When children do make it to school, they often struggle to learn in huge class sizes, from untrained and poorly paid teachers. Without the incentives to stay at school and learn, many children drop out. In sub-Saharan Africa one in three children who start school never get the chance to complete even the basic primary school, let alone progress to secondary school.

• 18 million more teachers are needed by 2015, for everyone to be educated by this date.

Yet everyone has been promised an education“ (GCE,Millions Miss Out)

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Educação Inclusiva

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"Educação inclusiva é uma abordagem de desenvolvimento das necessidades de aprendizagem para todas as crianças, jovens e adultos, especialmente aqueles que são vulneráveis à marginalização e exclusão. O princípio da educação inclusiva foi adotado na Conferência Mundial sobre as Necessidades Educativas Especiais: acesso e qualidade (Salamanca, Espanha, 1994), reafirmada no Fórum Mundial de Educação (Dacar, Senegal, 2000) e apoiada pelas Regras Básicas das Nações Unidas em Igualdade de Oportunidades para Pessoas Portadoras de Deficiências.

Focalizando a promoção dos valores universalmente compartilhados e a diversidade culturalmente sensível dos contextos e métodos educacionais, a UNESCO está trabalhando para promover educação de qualidade como um direito fundamental para todos tratando sobre uma grande variedade de temas, dos quais inclui o respeito pela diversidade cultural e lingüística.

Baseado nos princípios estabelecidos na Declaração Universal sobre Diversidade Cultural, adotada pela Conferência Geral da UNESCO, em sua 31ª. Sessão, em 2 de novembro de 2001, a Organização se compromete em apoiar os Estados Membros que desejam encorajar a diversidade lingüística e o respeito pela língua materna em todos os níveis educacionais; e quando possível, promover por meio da educação a conscientização do valor positivo da diversidade cultural e fazer total uso de métodos culturalmente apropriados de comunicação e transmissão de conhecimento. A busca atual pela educação de qualidade está inextricavelmente ligada aos processos e impactos da globalização. Leia mais (em inglês) (em francês)"

Fonte: UNESCO Brasil

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UNESCO mostra que 77 milhões de crianças no mundo estão fora da educação primária

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O número de crianças que deveriam estar na educação primária mas ainda estão fora da escola diminuiu entre 1999 e 2004 em torno de 21 milhões, sendo atualmente de 77 milhões no mundo inteiro. Apesar da queda, o número ainda é considerado alto e inaceitável. O ensino na primeira infância é o tema do Relatório do Monitoramento Global Educação para Todos 2007 da Organização das Nações Unidas para a Educação, a Ciência e a Cultura (Unesco), que será divulgado hoje (26), em Brasília.

A África Subsaariana, o Sul e Oeste da Ásia são as regiões com a maior concentração de crianças fora da escola, segundo a Unesco. Dois fatores são comuns a essas crianças: moram em área rural e suas mães têm baixa escolaridade.

“Os governos precisam urgentemente identificar os grupos de crianças com maior probabilidade de nunca se matricularem na escola, bem como aquelas que a abandonam”, adverte o relatório da Unesco.

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Education for All. An Imperative for Reducing Poverty [II]

"(...) Access: Incentives and Promoting Inclusion

Poorer countries need to enact policies that will make school free, accessible, and safe for girls and boys, whereas rich countries must live up to promises repeatedly made, and still not fulfilled, to increase aid in support of these policies.

The decision to send a child to school is made in the home. Traditions, poverty, and power sharing in the family can seal a girl's fate. Early marriage, whether to lighten a family's burden or to secure a daughter's future, often cuts schooling short. Conflict, HIV/AIDS, disability, conflict, and child labor practices put millions of children at an extreme disadvantage.

The overriding priority is to eliminate school fees. Countries that have done so in past years (e.g., Burundi, Cambodia, Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, Uganda, Vietnam, Tanzania) have witnessed a surge in enrollments. In Kenya, 1.2 million more students entered the school system after the measure took effect.

For children from the poorest families, removing fees may not suffice. Given the links between low educational outcomes and poverty, providing financial incentives to families is an excellent strategy to increase access for the marginalized. Scholarships, school-feeding programs, and cash transfers to families to cover the forgone wage of a working child have a documented effect on schooling. Brazil's Bolsa Familia program, for example, provides income support to some 10 million children from poor families on the basis of conditions, such as school attendance. The Baljothi program in Andhra Pradesh, the state with the most working children in India, runs 250 schools (31,000 students) located in slums. The Gambia Girls' Scholarship Trust Fund provides full scholarships for tuition, books, and examination fees to one-third of girls in schools with low enrollment and to 10% of girls excelling in science, mathematics, and technology; more than 16,000 girls are taking part.

Quality: Attention to Teachers

Governments of low-income countries face difficult choices in their effort to expand access and provide decent learning conditions. Such governments can achieve much, however, by making better use of existing resources and focusing on several essential dimensions.

Investment in teachers is critical. Balancing time and money spent on initial training and on-the job support for newly qualified teachers is a critical policy question. More countries are moving toward shorter and more school-based training. In Cuba, all preservice training is school based. Such a system requires enough schools to serve as training environments and enough teachers to act as mentors.

Attracting new teachers alone is a concern in many countries. A recent research project³ on teacher motivation in several countries of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia concluded that most school systems in low-income countries were facing a teacher motivation crisis. The study identified key strategies to increase teacher commitment, noting that good housing with running water and electricity is probably the most cost-effective way to attract and retain teachers in rural schools.

Teachers are the most critical influence on learning, but several other factors are important. First, students are not spending enough time learning: Many countries do not reach the broadly agreed benchmark of 850–1,000 hours of instruction per year for primary school pupils. Second, the quality of learning materials strongly affects what teachers can do: National book policies can encourage the development of local publishing and enable schools to choose which books they use. Third, the choice of language of instruction used in school is of utmost importance. About 20% of the world's population has a "local language" as a mother tongue. Initial instruction in the learner's first language improves learning outcomes and reduces subsequent grade repetition and dropout rates. Papua New Guinea, a linguistic mosaic of more than 800 languages, uses more than 400 languages for initial instruction in schools.

Gender-sensitive policies in education and more broadly based gender reforms in society directly improve the quality of education and its outcomes. Strategies to improve the quality of learning must ensure that schools are places where stereotypes are undermined through gender-aware curricula and teacher training. Locating schools closer to home, providing sanitary facilities, and addressing the reality of gender-based violence are all investments that encourage parents to send their daughters to school. (...)" (Nicholas Burnett)

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Education for All. An Imperative for Reducing Poverty

Abstract

"In the year 2000, more than 160 governments adopted six goals aimed at vastly improving learning opportunities for children, youth, and adults by 2015. This article, based on an annual international report that tracks progress toward these goals and levels of aid to basic education, analyzes the significance of expanding learning opportunities for human, social, and economic development. It assesses where the world stands on meeting its commitments—developing nations and donors included. The picture is mixed, with considerable progress in some cases, especially toward universal primary education and gender parity at the primary level. Much less attention is being given to other age groups, notably through early childhood care and education programs and adult literacy—a global scourge affecting 781 million adults. Low education quality, lack of learning opportunities for the most disadvantaged groups, and insufficient aid to basic education are holding many countries back. The article outlines some of the greatest challenges for decision makers: holistic early childhood programs that target the most disadvantaged children; policies to make school free, accessible, and safe for girls and boys; and scaling up adult literacy programs. Education quality—from the recruitment and training of teachers to textbooks, sufficient instructional time, and initial instruction in the mother tongue—has a documented influence on learning outcomes. Increased domestic and international spending on education is essential. Such an agenda requires long-term vision and strong political commitment at the highest level." (Read more)

Table 1. The EFA Goals

1.	To expand early childhood care and education, especially for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children
2.	To ensure that all children have access to and complete free and compulsory primary education of good quality
3.	To ensure equitable access of all young people to appropriate learning and life skills programs
4.	To achieve a 50% improvement in levels of adult literacy by 2015, especially for women, and equitable access to basic and continuing education for all adults
5.	To eliminate gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2005 and achieve gender equality in education by 2015
6.	To improve all aspects of the quality of education so that recognized and measurable learning outcomes are achieved by all, especially in literacy, numeracy, and essential life skills

To cite this article: Nicholas Burnett

Education for All. An Imperative for Reducing Poverty
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (OnlineEarly Articles).

doi:10.1196/annals.1425.002

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