One of the founding principles of Education International is the advocacy for free quality public education for all. Education is a human right and a public good. It is the duty of every government to provide free quality public education to its citizens. Education International also believes that literacy is the cornerstone of all sustainable societies, and the key to break the poverty cycle and stop the spread of HIV/AIDS.
Beyond Burma: Lessons in hope for refugee children
Beyond Burma is the second production completed through the EI initiative called Video for Union Educators (VUE). The VUE Project, with assistance from the NEA Foundation, produces short documentaries on themes relevant to the achievement of Education For All and EI's principal aims.
This is the story of a remarkable school for Burmese refugees in the Thai border city of Mae Sot. Together, teachers and students have found an educational pathway leading away from war and repression.
EI’s policy on education is enunciated in various Congress Resolutions, including the following: l: "Global Campaign to Defend and Enhance Public Education" (1998), "Education for All and Combating Illiteracy" (1998), "Educating in a Global Economy" (2001), "Partnerships to Achieve Education for All" (2001), Education For Global Progress (2004), Education - Public Service or Commodity?" (2004), "The Right to Teach: The Right to Learn" (2004), "Combatting Mismanagement and Corruption in Education" (2004), "Promoting Quality Education" (2004), "Community Involvement in Education" (2004), "Information and Communication Technologies" (2004), “Quality Education: Present and Future” (2007), “United for Greater Social Justice” (2007), “The Campaign for Quality Public Education (2011)”, “Sustained Funding for Public Education in the Midst of the Economic Crisis”(2011), “Neoliberal Policies and Austerity Measures (2011), “The Future of the Teaching Profession” (2011) and “Teacher Migration and Mobility”(2011).
The 6th World Congress of Education International, held in Cape Town, South Africa, in July 2011, adopted a comprehensive Policy Paper on Education, Building the Future through Quality Education. This policy statement is underpinned by concepts which are central to EI’s philosophy and which represent the core values and demands of the education union movement. These include quality education as a human right, education provided by public authorities and available freely to all, inclusive education and equality in education and society and high professional status for teachers. Education International's policy states clearly that education is a human right and public good, as stated in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention on the Rights of the Child. Quality education nurtures human talent and creativity, thereby contributing to the personal and professional development of the individual person, as well as to social, cultural, economic, political and environmental development of society at large. It promotes peace, democracy, creativity, solidarity, inclusion, a commitment to a sustainable environment, and international and intercultural understanding. It provides people with the critical knowledge, abilities and skills that are needed to conceptualise, question and solve problems that occur both locally and globally.
The importance of quality teaching for quality education cannot be underestimated. To this end, teachers at all levels of education must be appropriately trained and qualified. Teachers should continue their professional development upon recruitment through a period of induction into the profession with the support by a mentor and should have access throughout their careers to high quality continuous professional development and learning. These opportunities should be provided by the public authorities or other employers at no cost to individual teachers.
Several obstacles hinder access to quality education for all, notably gender inequality, with the world-wide illiteracy rate for women far higher than that for men. The HIV/AIDS pandemic, poverty, violent conflict, child labour, natural disasters and other environmental and human factors continue to undermine the provision of, and access to quality education for all. Free quality basic education needs to be made compulsory, as it is one of the best solutions for combating child labour. Free quality basic education is also a prerequisite for lifelong learning, as people need to develop sufficient literacy skills to be able to participate fully in society. Free quality basic education is the responsibility ofthe state and public authorities. Any economic policy that privatizes and reduces public investment in education will marginalize children and adults living in poverty while reducing the quality of public education.
The Dakar Framework for Action, calling for Education for All (EFA) by the year 2015, requires a great global effort, joining the forces of all governments, civil Society, including non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and education unions, and intergovernmental agencies, including the UN with its specialised agencies and programmes. Governments should implement the recommendation of the Delors Commission to allocate at least 6% of their GNP to education; today, two thirds of the governments fail to achieve this level of investment.
EI believes that global problems need global solutions. Several global measures have to be put in place to achieve education for all: the G8 summit proposal to write off the official debts of the least developed countries, with resources thus saved re-allocated to education and health, all UN member states to allocate 0.7% of GDP to development assistance, both IMF's and World Bank's lending policies that jeopardize the public provision of education must be reformed, and last but not least, national action plans to achieve education for all must be drawn up and implemented in partnership with civil society, including NGOs and education unions.
At the dawn of the new millennium, Education International and its broad coalition of teachers' unions, and development non-governmental organisations joined forces to launch the Global Campaign for Education (GCE). The alliance represents organisations active in 180 countries, including Education International, Oxfam International, Action Aid International, the Global March Against Child Labour, and dozens of regional and national NGO coalitions. Together, they lobby for the attainment of Education For All (EFA) by 2015, in consultation with the stakeholders: teacher unions and civil society organizations.
Every year in April, together with its GCE partners, EI organizes a Global Action Week by mobilizing its affiliated organizations around the world to rally politicians and governments to fulfil their promise made inDakar, Senegal, to provide education to all children by 2015.
For more information, visit our Global Action Week website: www.ei-ie.org/globalactionweek
EI sits on the Editorial Board of UNESCO's EFA Global Monitoring Report, a publication which provides a yearly assessment of the EFA process, and is part of the UNESCO High Level Group on EFA. In 2003, EI undertook a Europe for Education campaign which has enabled the passing of a resolution, at the European Parliament, on increasing development cooperation towards education programs., EI is also a Board Member of the Fast Track Initiative (FTI), a global partnership supporting education financing in developing countries. EI is also addressing the issue of teacher shortage to achieve EFA by 2015 through the Quality Educators for All Project, a joint initiative undertaken with Oxfam Novib.
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