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Education

“The foundation for every state is in the education of its youth” – Diogenes Laertius

If all young children were to receive a good quality basic education lasting for a minimum of four years, the problem of illiteracy would be resolved in the space of a single generation. Yet every day, roughly 120 million young children are denied access to a necessary human right: basic education. More than 50 per cent of these children are girls.¹

• Overview and quick facts
• What you need to know
• How you can help
• Great resources

Overview and quick facts

For every year of quality education that a child receives, their adult earning potential increases by a worldwide average of 10 per cent. ² Despite the fact that much recent progress on this issue has been made, millions of adults and children remain functionally illiterate. Basic education is the building block for higher learning. It opens the door to freedom from poverty and hunger and the learning of conflict resolution skills.

Education can also teach essential knowledge of health issues to young people. This information can protect them throughout their lives from deadly diseases such as HIV/AIDS and help them as adults to raise healthier children.

Basic education affects all aspects of people's economic and social lives. In the workplace people require basic numeric skills to make their businesses run smoothly. In order to understand their potential for the future young women and men need the basic knowledge and tools to make the right decisions. In order to prevent being exploited children need to understand what is going on around them well enough to choose a safe and productive path.

It is therefore critical that every girl and boy has access to basic education. Governments need to redouble their efforts to bring into reality commitments they have made to provide free, compulsory basic education for all children.

Why we should care

"Education is the best provision for old age" - Aristotle

We all know the importance education has played in our own lives. Imagine being denied your right to learn, to read and write, and how difficult your life might be as a result. Too many children and adults face this unnecessary tragedy. Independence to choose one's destiny in life is lost when these rights are not respected or taken seriously. If only it could be better understood that basic education has great power to change lives.
It is widely and generally accepted that education gives the highest rate of return of any social investment. In short, basic education is the key to societal economic and social development. It is the first and most important step we take into the adult world.

Definitions-What is basic education?

Basic education is the foundation for a child's education, allowing them to understand their environment and build on their present knowledge and skills. It includes early childhood development, primary education, extra-curricular chances for learning and training for parents and caretakers. This education must be free, relevant to the child and geared toward being locally and nationally sustainable.

Quick facts

• Roughly 120 million primary-school-age children around the world are denied the chance to go to school.⁴ These numbers are equivalent to every child in North America and every child in Europe being denied schooling

• Three-quarters of these 120 million children live in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia⁵

• More than 50 per cent of children not attending school are girls⁶

• More than 95 per cent of children with disabilities in the developing world do not attend school ⁷

Only 62 per cent of students in Africa complete primary school.⁸

• More than 800 million adults cannot read or write. Two thirds of these adults are women.⁹

• Gender disparities exist at all levels of education, even though educating girls and women leads to reduced fertility rates, reduced infant and maternal mortality, improved family health and nutrition, and improved economic and social stability.¹⁰
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What you need to know!

Background Information

"Education is a peacebuilding by another name" - Kofi Annan, UN Secretary General

Find out more about education for children. Here is some useful background information to get you up to speed on the issue.

The benefits of education

Personal development — Education empowers people and gives them a sense of dignity and self-worth. It puts them in a better position to make informed decisions about their families and their communities.
Health — Access to education, especially for girls and women, has a positive impact on family health. It can, for example, reduce infant and maternal mortality rates and the incidence of HIV/AIDS. Moreover, education contributes to a better understanding of choices for reproduction. Educated women, for example, have fewer and healthier children.
Social development — Education contributes to characteristics of good citizenship, empowers people to become active citizens and promotes the economic and social development of communities. Education also fosters democracy, equality, justice, dignity and respect for human rights.
Human-capacity development — Education builds a person's skills and capabilities, helping that person to become a more productive member of their community. Each year of basic education increases a person's productivity and earning potential, with the greatest proportional gain occurring as a result of primary education.
Environmental sustainability — Education can promote sustainable development; it can allow people to better understand their environment and to participate in ecologically sound development practices.

What governments are doing

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights: Adopted in 1948, the governments of the world committed to guarantee everyone the right to a free education (at least in the elementary stages) (Article 26).

The Convention on the Rights of the Child: Governments promised to make primary education free, compulsory and accessible for all. The Convention was ratified by every country except the U.S. and Somalia.

The World Education Forum: Meeting in Dakar in April, 2000, government leaders from 164 countries promised to provide universal good quality education and to dramatically reduce adult illiteracy. The countries in attendance adopted the Dakar Framework for Action, committing themselves to six goals. These goals are to ensure that by 2015:
• All children of primary school age have more access to free schooling of an acceptable quality.
• Gender gaps in schooling access would be eliminated.
• The level of adult illiteracy would be halved.
• Early childhood care would be expanded.
• Learning opportunities for youth and adults would be greatly increased.
• All aspects of education quality would be improved.

So far, the goals have only been partially met

• More than half of the 28 countries that are not expected to meet the goal are in Africa¹¹
• International support must increase dramatically for these countries to reach the goal by
2015.¹²
• From 1998 to 2002, the world's net enrollment ratio for primary school increased by only one percentage point.¹³
• Enrollment increases were significant in Africa and South and West Asia. Each region saw an increase of nearly 20 million primary school students between 1998 and 2002. High fertility and the AIDS pandemic in these regions will make it impossible for them to keep up with past progress without more international help.¹⁴
• At the current rate, 24 countries are unlikely to reach gender equality in schools by 2015.¹⁵ [top]

How you can help

Get Involved

Here are some ideas of how you can help meet the challenge and tackle this issue.

Here are a few ideas:

• Raise funds for Free The Children’s schoolbuilding projects: For more information and to receive a Brick by Brick kit, contact our youth programming director or visit our schoolbuilding page.
• Check out the Global Campaign for Education website: Sign onto their listserve to receive information and stay informed (www.campaignforeducation.org )
• Contact Oxfam Canada and get involved in their "Education Now: Break the Cycle of Poverty" campaign: They have put out a special publication on education which includes excellent information, a petition and a card you can mail to the Canadian government. (www.oxfam.ca)
• Talk to your friends and organize an Education for All campaign
• Talk to your teachers: Find out what the teachers' organization in your province or state is doing. Find out if they will give you support and work together on a campaign.
• Write a letter to your prime minister or president: Ask your government to show leadership in supporting and implement the Education for All Campaign. In Canada, the address is: Honorable Prime Minister, House of Commons, Ottawa, K1A 0A6. No stamp is needed.
• Contact your local or national newspaper or radio station. Ask them to write some articles on the Education for All campaign. Tell them about what you are doing. This is an important issue that people need to hear about in the media. The kind of life millions of children will have is at stake!
Commitments made by you:
The Global Campaign for Education: A global initiative for basic education to mobilize political will and new resources in support of national education plans to realize the 2015 targets.
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