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PROGRESS ON EDUCATION FOR ALL (EFA) GOALS....continued
There has been remarkable progress towards some of the EFA goals since the international community made its commitments in Dakar in 2000. Some of the world’s poorest countries have demonstrated that political leadership and practical policies make a difference. However, business as usual will leave the world short of the Dakar goals. Far more has to be done to get children into school, through primary education and beyond. And more attention has to be paid to the quality of education and learning achievement.
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Goal 3 — Meeting the lifelong learning needs of youth and adults
Governments are not giving priority to youth and adult learning needs in their education policies. Meeting the lifelong needs of youth and adults needs stronger political commitment and more public funding. It will also require more clearly defined concepts and better data for effective monitoring.
Goal 4 — Adult literacy
- An estimated 776 million adults – or 16% of the world’s adult population – lack basic literacy skills. About two-thirds are women. Most countries have made little progress in recent years. If current trends continue, there will be over 700 million adults lacking literacy skills in 2015.
- Between 1985–1994 and 2000–2006, the global adult literacy rate increased from 76% to 84%. However, forty-five countries have adult literacy rates below the developing country average of 79%, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa, and South and West Asia. Nearly all of them are off track to meet the adult literacy target by 2015. Nineteen of these countries have literacy rates of less than 55%.
- Major disparities in literacy levels within countries are often linked with poverty and other forms of disadvantage. In seven sub-Saharan African countries with low overall adult literacy rates, the literacy gap between the poorest and wealthiest households is more than forty percentage points.
Goal 5 — Gender
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In 2006, of the 176 countries with data, 59 had achieved gender parity in both primary and secondary education – 20 countries more than in 1999. At the primary level, about two-thirds of countries had achieved parity. However, more than half the countries in sub-Saharan Africa, South and West Asia and the Arab States had not reached the target. Only 37% of countries worldwide had achieved gender parity at secondary level.
- There is a confirmed trend towards more female than male enrolments in tertiary education worldwide, in particular in more developed regions and in the Caribbean and Pacific.
- Poverty and other forms of social disadvantage magnify gender disparities. For example, in Mali girls from poor households are four times less likely to attend primary school than those from rich households, rising to eight times at secondary level.
- Once girls are in school, their progress is often hampered by teacher attitudes and gender-biased textbooks that reinforce negative gender stereotypes. These school-based factors interact with wider social and economic factors that influence school performance along gender lines.
Goal 6 — Quality
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International assessments highlight large achievement gaps between students in rich and poor countries. Within countries too, inequality exists between regions, communities, schools and classrooms. These disparities have important implications not just in education but for the wider distribution of opportunities in society.
- In developing countries there are substantially higher proportions of low learning achievement. In a recent Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality assessment (SACMEC II) in sub-Saharan Africa, fewer than 25% of grade 6 pupils reached a desirable level of reading in four countries and only 10% in six others.
- Student background, the organization of the education system and the school environment explain learning disparities within each country. Many essential resources taken for granted in developed countries remain scarce in developing countries – including basic infrastructure such as electricity, seats and textbooks.
Source: EFA Global Monitoring Report 2009, Summary, Overcoming inequality: Why governance matters - Unesco
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