In 2000, the Dakar World Education Forum set the world’s six current Education For All goals, and as we reach the deadline for the achievement of these goals, many countries have fallen far short of the targets. Just one-third of countries have achieved all of the goals, and there remains a clear social divide, with the poorest children five times more likely not to complete primary school than richest.
This week in Korea, education ministers and deputies from 131 countries join the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova, GCE co-founder and Nobel Laureate Kailash Satyarthi and hundreds of civil society representatives from across the GCE movement and beyond to discuss our collective next steps to realise the right of everyone to quality education.
During the event, the Global Campaign for Education is launching its latest report: Time to Get it Right: Lessons from EFA and the MDGs for Education 2016-2030. The report presents a civil society perspective on the last fifteen years of Education For All, and analyses the delivery of EFA from 2000-2015, drawing upon the wide variety of experiences of civil society education campaigns around the worldwide. Importantly, it identifies five key lessons for the future:
- more and better financing for education
- transparent and democratic public education systems
- active and democratic participation of civil society in all decision-making processes
- an emphasis on inclusive and non-discriminatory education
- a focus on true quality in education.