This is why teachers and their unions have started working together with other like-minded organisations over the last number of years in the context of Global Action Week to put pressure on decision makers to get these children into school. But it is not merely a question of access to education.
In many of those countries where schools fees have been dropped and education declared free for all, quality is still a big issue. Because when the dust settles and the situation is assessed, it is often found that Governments are not making the appropriate preparations for a free fees system. The recruitment of teachers is a mere pipe dream, teacher training never gets off the ground and new classrooms remain in blueprint form. This all has major repercussions for the quality of education.
In April 2000 at the World Education Forum in Dakar, Senegal, 185 governments committed to provide Education for All (EFA) by the year 2015. Global Action Week is one of several events organised by the Global Campaign for Education (GCE) to hold governments to account on these commitments. During this week, which generally falls at the end of April, millions of people around the world organise activities in their own country to remind their governments to fulfil the promise made in Dakar.
EFA Goals Agreed in Dakar, Senegal 2000
- Expanding and improving comprehensive early childhood care and education, especially for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children;
- Ensuring that by 2015 all children, particularly girls, children in difficult circumstances and those belonging to ethnic minorities, have access to a complete free and compulsory primary education of good quality;
- Ensuring that the learning needs of all young people and adults are met through equitable access to appropriate learning and life skills programmes;
- Achieving a 50 per cent improvement in levels of adult literacy by 2015, especially for women, and equitable access to basic and continuing education for all adults;
- Eliminating gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2005, and achieving gender equality in education by 2015, with a focus on ensuring girls’ full and equal access to and achievement in basic education of good quality;
- Improving all aspects of the quality of education, and ensuring excellence of all so that recognized and measurable learning outcomes are achieved by all, especially in literacy, numeracy, and essential life skills
Governments have also made commitments in the context of the Millenium Development Goals.
Millennium Development Goals declared in 2000
- Goal 2 Ensure that all boys and girls complete a full course of primary schooling
- Goal 3 Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005, and at all levels by 2015
