REPORTS

Elusive goals

T.K. RAJALAKSHMI

IN April 2000, the World Education Forum held in Dakar, Senegal, adopted six major educational goals, two of which were to become Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The goals included achieving universal primary education and gender equality and improving literacy and educational quality by 2015. That was a long way to go, but the nations agreed at Dakar to realise a more immediate and urgent goal - gender parity in the enrolment of girls and boys at primary and secondary levels by 2005 and full equality at all levels of education by 2015. However, even the immediate goal is far from being realised.

A report of the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), which monitors the global progress in meeting the Education for All (EFA) targets, paints a dismal picture.

The report, "Gender and Education for All - The Leap to Equality", points a finger to the unfulfilled targets and highlights the undeniable link between poverty and enrolment levels in schools. It reiterates the prevalence of social norms and cultural practices that work against the enrolment of girls. It also takes a hard look at the functional notion of education or literacy where quality takes a beating. It notes with alarm the increase in child labour, the feminisation of the workforce and their links with poverty and the inability to secure good education.

The report's assessment involves contextualising the problems. It has not only listed the various education-related problems faced by nations, but tried to give a realistic picture by apportioning responsibility. Running into 415 pages, the statistically rich report may well end up being a bitter pill for several countries. Its message is clear: If the governments are not able to meet the goals by 2005, they are less likely to fulfil the rest of the MDGs by 2015, the eradication of poverty being one of them.

The report reveals that there has been a shift towards greater gender parity, particularly at the primary level, where the ratio of girls to boys enrolled increased from 88 to 94 per cent between 1990 and 2000. In sub-Saharan Africa, South and West Asia and the Arab countries, where gender inequalities are the worst, enrolment of girls had increased. But on the whole, the report states that 60 per cent of the 128 countries for which data were available were unlikely to reach the gender parity goals by 2005. Twenty-two countries were likely to achieve such parity by 2015. However, the apparent silver lining is that there are national policies and international legal obligations that can be put to effect to achieve these goals. However, only financial commitments to the educational sector and a lasting conviction that it is quality and not quantified education that matters will help produce results.

ONE novel aspect of the report is the introduction of the EFA Development Index (EDI), which has incorporated data based on four indicators - Universal Primary Education (UPE, which is measured by the net enrolment ratio), adult literacy (literacy rate of the 15 and above age group), gender parity (average value of the gender parity index in primary and secondary education and in adult literacy) and the quality of education (continuation of studies up to primary grade 5). India is ranked 76th among 94 countries for which the EDI has been computed.

Union Human Resource Development Minister Murli Manohar Joshi expressed his dissatisfaction with India's ratings and claimed that the U.N. body had used data from Census 1991 and not the more recent Census 2001 to compute the country's EDI. Enrolment and literacy figures, according to the Minister, had increased over the last decade. The point is that increased enrolment does not signify anything substantial as long as the dropout rates continue to be high, sex-ratios are unfavourable (in fact, according to Census 2001 there is little reason to suggest that the lot of the girl child has improved even if enrolment rates per se have gone up) and novel forms of discrimination accompanied with banned customs like dowry continue to be practised.

PRAKASH SINGH/AFP

Globally, an estimated 104 million children of primary school age were not enrolled at the turn of the millennium. Girls comprise 57 per cent of all the "out of school" children.

The report also uses the Gross Enrolment Ratio in pre-primary education as an indicator to monitor the progress towards the Dakar goals and finds that some of the positive changes might not be real. Although the total enrolment in primary education has increased and the enrolment of girls has increased at a faster rate than that of boys, enrolment ratios do not convey information about actual school attendance. An estimated 104 million children of primary school age were not enrolled at the turn of the millennium, with most of the "out of school" children concentrated in the countries of sub-Saharan Africa and South and West Asia. Girls comprise 57 per cent of all the "out of school" children. Therefore, there appears to be little room for complacency. The report cautions that high levels of access and enrolment do not themselves guarantee that the achievement of Goal 2 of the EFA is at hand. The report notes that for "all children to have access to and complete free and compulsory primary education of good quality - it is necessary that pupils proceed through the educational ladder as smoothly and efficiently as possible".

The report is somewhat sceptical about the success of adult literacy programmes. While overall literacy rates may have improved, women still constitute the majority of illiterates in developing countries. Although adult learning, argues the report, brings benefits such as better livelihoods and improved oral and written communication skills, the range of evidence of the impact of such programmes is not substantial. Moreover, there cannot be any substitute to formal education.

A comparison of the countries with respect to their progress in achieving the EFA goals shows that it is the nations of sub-Saharan Africa that run the risk of not meeting the targets. However, the report cautions that if previous trends continue, China and India too run the risk of not achieving gender parity, even by 2015. The EDI for countries in South Asia continues to be low. Overall, primary school enrolment rates are low, gender ratios are highly unequal, illiteracy is widespread and drop-out rates are high, which mean that the majority of children never reach the fifth grade.

WHY are girls left out? The report suggests that one reason is that gender equality in education will not be possible without a wider social change. But it is pertinent to ask whether it is the people or the governments that would bring about this social change. It is perhaps a combination of both, but evidently the latter is far more infrastructurally equipped to facilitate the process of social change. The report squarely lays the responsibility on the state to achieve the EFA goals. It is noteworthy that the report makes repeated references to Kerala, where educational indicators among women and literacy indicators are high and where basic education is universal.

At a time when the withdrawal of the state from the public sector is the trend and the tendency is to repose faith in non-governmental institutions, the observations in the report are quite revealing. Making a case for more government intervention, it says: "The state must play the leading role in promoting equal Education for All. This has been the case in most of the countries in which considerable progress has been seen. Legislative changes promoting gender equality are important for creating an enabling environment for girls' education. Strong public commitment is indispensable, because civil society inputs cannot be guaranteed; changes in the social and financial environment may mean that NGOs [non-governmental organisations], faith-based or private providers, may not always play a consistent role." The report also calls upon governments to go beyond compulsory school legislation, which, it says, will be ineffective until a broad-based system of rights is provided, such as property rights for women. Such legal measures which ensure that women are not discriminated against can, at least, counter-weigh the social norms that have a lasting influence on life decisions.

The report contains an important, albeit brief, section on economic factors of women's work, structural adjustment and globalisation. The increase in women's participation in the global economy has often coincided with a deregulation in the conditions of work and in work-related entitlements. Increased participation in global markets does not necessarily imply that women's economic rights can be exercised or that their entitlements can be accessed. In several of the transition economies, overall cuts in public expenditure have affected the education sector disproportionately, household expenditures on schooling have been curtailed and living standards have plunged.

The report repeatedly underscores the importance of the formal system of education and the role of governments in providing it to all children. The danger is that as nation-states try to meet the quantitative targets by 2015 or 2005, they may make compromises on the qualitative aspect of education. It has been observed - and the report cites some examples - that such measures do not have a lasting impact. While reform is necessary within the existing system of formal education, the answer certainly does not lie in more non-formal and alternative forms of education.

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