SUBJECT: Education to End Exclusion

As the world is set to learn the biggest lesson on 23 April, constituents of Asian South Pacific Bureau of Adult Education (ASPBAE) released a regional study on the status of the Education for All (EFA) targets which urges all members of the global community especially state leaders to act now to reverse the education disadvantage across the world particularly in the Asia Pacific.

Ten national education campaign coalition partners of ASPBAE in the Asia Pacific will join the Global Campaign for Education's (GCE) World’s Biggest Lesson through various forms of campaigning. ASPBAE partners will contribute to creating a new world record for the most number of people learning about children who miss an education.

“We have to put across a clear message that our leaders have a vital role in protecting and advancing the rights of all children and adults to access quality education and learning opportunities. They should take responsibility for the grim reality that millions of children and young adults in the Asia Pacific remain denied their basic right to education. This injustice has to end now, not later...It is in this context that the Education Watch was launched,” explained Sandra Morrison, ASPBAE President.   

Missing EFA targets

The Asia Pacific Education Watch (EdWatch), a regional study launched and conducted by ASPBAE and the Global Campaign for Education (GCE) in 2007 revealed that Asia Pacific is off track in meeting the EFA targets. Missed targets are most visible in terms of:

•    huge number of out-of-school children and youth;
•    high illiteracy among youth and adults;
•    persisting inequalities in access and performance;
•    gender disparity; and
•    poor quality of education. 

The EdWatch is an independent, community-based, systematic monitoring mechanism for assessing the status of education at the regional, national and local levels, thereby providing well-founded basis for policy advocacy and education campaign work, and strengthening civil society organizations capacities for policy engagement in education.

Disparities, inequity and exclusion   

The Education for All (EFA) Global Monitoring Report 2008, “Education for All in 2015, Will We Make it?” confirmed the fears of many and reiterated what the various review processes in the period similarly reveal: While there are advances in school enrolments, a drop in aggregate numbers of out of school children, gender parities in primary education in some countries – it concluded that progress is far too slow and unless government in the developing and developed countries accelerate efforts to honour their commitments, quality education will remain a privilege only of a few and millions of boys and girls, men and women, will remain denied their right to education. The report further underscored the disparity in attention to the different EFA goals. Adult literacy, life-skills training for young adults and early childhood care and education received very low priority and scandalous neglect by governments and donors.

The findings of the independent studies of the Asia Pacific Education Watch of 2007 not only corroborate this observation but further reveal that the magnitude of the EFA deficit appears far more than what official reports convey – especially among poor and disadvantaged groups.

There are huge numbers of out of school children and youth among the poor. And unsurprisingly, high illiteracy rates among these marginal groups and communities.  In the Philippines, poor communities surveyed reflect 81% of-age participation in primary schools against a national NER of 94%.  The disparity is more in secondary schools with 55% participation in secondary schools among the poor against the national NER of 85.2 %. In Indonesia, large population pockets are being by-passed, with low literacy level and large incidence of out of school children and young people. With the national illiteracy rate figure at 8.8%, poor communities surveyed by Edwatch reveal illiteracy rates of as high as 36.3%.

The PNG and Solomon Islands Literacy mapping exercise underscored the huge gap in functional adult literacy of the poor against what is claimed by official national statistics. Very poor learning outcomes on account of low quality education evidenced the findings of this mapping exercise too with only 19% of those who had completed primary school passing the literacy test conducted by the PNG coalition; the situation similar in the Solomon Islands at 28%. In India, the survey revealed scandalous disregard to maintain safe and healthy learning environments for children: 89% of respondent schools reported insufficient toilet facilities, 70% of schools reporting that toilets were locked and not in use because there was no water supply in the school. In 80% of surveyed schools, there were multiple class teachings done in single rooms. Only one-fourth (25%) of schools had playgrounds.

“Without Governments’ action to immediately reverse these alarming trends in education, we are creating a generation of uneducated people,” Morrison stressed.

(Un) free education

The report also found out that the poorer the country is, the more people that are excluded. The poor are burdened by the high costs of education, creating more and more child workers and street children who also fall victims to different forms of abuse.

A large portion of the family’s income is allocated to costly education in the region. For example, in Indonesia, expenditure per child on education can go upto almost 22% of average household income whereas it could be as high as 33% of the income of the poor in the Philippines.   In Cambodia, the survey revealed that the annual expense for sending one child to a public school is $110 to $153- representing 10% to 19% of annual family income. In Bangladesh, the private cost of education is about $37.40 per year at the primary level going to as much as $164 at the secondary level. Big disparities exist by type of school, between rural and urban, across income groups.

Less priority, low investment

Despite the dismal performance of education in the region, Asia maintained its position as one of the least spenders on education in the world, with only an average of 3.3 percent of its GNP allocated to education, way below the benchmark of 6%. Also, only US$3.4 billion ODA fund is allotted to education as against the required US$ 11 billion each year to reach EFA. This only means that financing gaps and deprioritization of governments to education are very obvious in the region.

With these, ASPBAE calls on governments to:
•    Accelerate initiatives to make education equitable and inclusive;
•    Make quality education and learning truly free for all;
•    Enhance functional literacy to empower youth and adults;
•    Ensure increased, targeted, transparent and well-managed education financing; and
•    Strengthen civil society and community participation to bring about effective education governance.
 
ASPBAE holds governments accountable to the achievement of EFA and calls for governments to:  Put the last First in the QUEUE for EFA’ [Quality Education for the Unreached and Excluded]