Prepared by
Maitrey Environment Education & Research Association
Organised By
ActionAid India
, Catholic Relief Services, Christian Children Fund, CARE, Oxfam (GB) India Trust & Their Respective Partners.
, Catholic Relief Services, Christian Children Fund, CARE, Oxfam (GB) India Trust & Their Respective Partners.
Real education has to draw out the best from the boys and girls to be educated. This can never be done by packing ill-assorted and unwanted information into the heads of the students. It becomes a dead weight crushing all originality in them and turning them into mere automata. Mahatma Gandhi (Harijan 1 December, 1933)
Background
Right now over 100 million children and over 800 million adults in the world, wake up every day without the hope that education offers. Every day that people are denied an education, leaves them in ignorance and in poverty.
Global Campaign for Education was formulated in 1999 as a body constituting of Oxfam, Action Aid, Education International and Global March Against Child Labour in influencing the framework that emerged from the World Education Forum in Dakar in 2000, creating more space for civil society to engage in future education policies. Global Action Week (GAW) celebrations had been integral part of the efforts being made every year by Global Campaign for Education and its networks both nationally and regionally.
Sadly the world remains off-track for achieving even the minimal targets agreed in the MDGs. 100 million children do not attend school; 60% are girls. At current rates of progress, some 86 countries are off track to reach the target of giving all children a complete primary education by 2015[i]. And the picture is even more bleak when analysed on a regional basis; on current rates of progress, Africa will not succeed until 2150. Furthermore, this year the one Millennium Development Goal set for 2005 to achieve gender parity in primary and secondary education – was missed in over 90 countries.
However, major challenges remain; where access to education has improved, systems are struggling to meet increased demand and the quality of education can suffer. And there remain many countries where fees, charges and lack of education infrastructure keep large numbers of children out of school. It is therefore imperative that GCE keeps up the pressure that is starting to see some positive, if slow results.
This Year Global Action Week is called ‘Every Child Needs A Teacher’[1]. It is our opportunity to continue demanding that politicians and officials keep pledges made to ensure that every child is not only able to go to school, but is also taught by a well-qualified teacher in a class no bigger than 40 pupils.
The key messages behind the Global Action Week are:
· Achieving EFA depends on having enough teachers (1:40 )
· Teachers need to be professionally trained, adequately paid and well-motivated for this to happen
· In order to achieve this, there must be sufficient financing for the expansion of education systems
Global Action Week 2006 demands focus on recruitment, training and retention of teachers to enable the expansion of education systems without compromising quality. Both access and quality issues need to emphasised given that poor enrolment and high ‘push-out’ rates are linked to the poor quality of education, as well as discrimination that girls and ethnic and other minority children experience in the classroom. If the world is to get back on track for achieving Education For All, leaders must face up to, and tackle, the looming crisis in the teaching profession.
[1] In this context, GCE uses ‘Teachers’ to encompass all those who educate others in formal and or non-formal settings. The term therefore refers to facilitators, educators, tutors and animators within the formal and non-formal education system.
Uttar Pradesh
Since Independence Uttar Pradesh has witnessed several, central/state government educational programmes aimed towards achieving the goal of Universalization of Elementary Education (UEE). The impact of these efforts became more visible during the previous decade (1991-2001) when there has been a steady and significant growth in the literacy status of the State. With the launch of UPBEP (UP Basic Education Project) in 1993 the efforts to achieve saturation at Primary level by 2007 and at elementary level by 2010 gained tremendous momentum. Since then the State's Education Programmes were being implemented through UP Education for All Project Board. Presently DPEP III is being implemented in 36 districts (2000 – 2005). SSA that commenced in 2001 covers all 70 districts of the State. Hereby all the educational initiatives in the State are implemented under the aegis of SSA.
In 1999-2000 the Department of Education and the Government of Uttar Pradesh, took the initiative to formulate a more focused, State specific Education Policy. This process involved the State Education Department, the State Project Office, SIEMAT, experts from NIEPA and eminent educationists from U.P. Despite this good beginning, which lead to formation of an interim policy document, the State Education Policy is yet to be finalised. There have been no concrete steps to endorse the State Education Policy in the legislature and to involve the larger political leadership in accepting it as a formal policy document of the Government. The need for a clear policy is self evident in a State such as UP that continues to lag educationally despite concerted efforts in the recent past.
The State has made efforts to make education both qualitatively and quantitatively accessible by expanding the schooling system, opening more schools, providing for maintenance, organising training of teachers, administrators and teacher educators and revising curriculum. Given that primary schooling is gradually emerging as a social norm and people want their children not only to go to school but to receive quality education as well. However, their efforts to enroll children in the educational mainstream are in vain when learning is not happening in schools. The status of several lakhs of children in primary schools across the State gets assimilated in one single statement of a disappointed parent in Sitapur district - “ Earlier class two pass could read postcards, now they can’t even write their names”. Those in school are in no better position that those who dropped out – it is estimated that at least one third of those enrolled drop out before they reach class 5. Of these the majority are girls irrespective of social group.
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