UNESCO Confirms that 84 million fewer children are out of school since 1999 at NYC Launch Event of the 2015 EFA Global Monitoring Report

The Global Foundation for Democracy and Development (GFDD) attended the United Nations on Thursday March 6 2015 for the launch of the 2015 EFA Global Monitoring Report – Education for All 2000-2015: Achievements and Challenges (the Report) organized by UNESCO. The report, which provides readers with an assessment of progress, best practices and failures at the national and international levels, stresses that 84 million fewer children are out of school since 1999.

The event included interventions from numerous speakers including presentations by the Under Secretary General for UNESCO, the Assistant Secretary General for UN DESA and Jeffrey Sachs of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network who called for the establishment of a Global Fund on Education to ensure the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goal on education.

Overall, the Report recognizes that significant progress has been made since 2000, although it shows that the international community is far from achieving Education for All. The documents points to inequality in education, and poverty as a barrier to access and learning, with children being the prime victims of these issues.

The greatest progress has been made in gender parity in primary education, as 69% of countries are expected to have reached gender parity by 2015. Globally, the document
praises the fact that 2/3 more children have enrolled in primary school since 1999. Turning to the shortcomings of the international community, the Report notes that 121 Million children and adolescents were still out of school as of 2012, with only half of all countries having managed to enroll all children in school (57 Million children are currently out of school). Pointing to ongoing social disparities, the publication identifies that the poorest children are 4 times more likely to be
out of school and 5 times more likely not to finish primary school than the richest children.

The Report concludes by advising governments on effective action to be taken going forward, calling for the Sustainable Development Goals to include new education targets that are specific, and focus strongly on equity and the needs of the most marginalized and vulnerable.

Stressing the need to improve access to information technology and the quality of
education, Professor Sachs called on everyone to be the highest advocates of education to scale up efforts of the global community in the lead up to the Word Education Forum in Korea next month.

The Report is available online at http://en.unesco.org/world-education-forum-2015/