Increasing Access and Equity
The education of females, minorities, the disadvantaged,
displaced, and disabled, dominated the discussions on priority populations. The
thematic roundtable on women's education and the illustrative roundtable on the
education of the girl-child in the South Asian context brought out the manifold
effects of not only providing educational opportunity to females, but also
ensuring equitable quality.
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The most urgent priority is to ensure access to, and improve
the quality of, education for girls and women, and to remove every obstacle that
hampers their active participation. All gender stereotyping in education should
be eliminated.
World Declaration |
The inter-generational effects of a mother's education on that
of her children, on infant mortality and overall family size and well-being, and
on her economic productivity, were added to the strong view that gender equality
as a moral imperative must be a central goal of education for all. Economic and
cultural factors were raised as primary barriers to female education, with
deeply-rooted systems of patriarchy espoused as the underlying culprit in
many corners of the world. Strategies to over-come gender bias were
categorized into three fundamental types: (a) welfare-oriented; (b)
enablement-oriented; and (c) empowerment-oriented. Several concrete actions were
suggested, such as increasing the number of female teachers, providing
incentives to female teachers to work in rural areas, modifying curriculum and
the school calendar, establishing single-sex classrooms, inter alia. An
additional key point was raised noting that gender discrimination should not
focus on women only as "clients" of education but also on their role as "agents"
of education.
The thematic roundtables on language and culture discussed the
need to promote the educational opportunity of minority peoples, refugees, and
the disadvantaged. Those who plan literacy programmes often overlook the fact
that written language is the necessary medium of literacy. However, of the 4000
languages spoken in the world, only about 300 are in regular use in written
form. This condition alone leaves many minority cultural groups on the margins
of basic education systems. Refugees and displaced persons suffer similar
problems of access and equity as they move between language groups. The
illustrative roundtable on rural education in Nepal and Afghanistan particularly
captured the special needs of nomadic, displaced, and isolated populations.
Finally, the case for giving particular attention to the educational needs of
disabled learners was effectively made in several roundtables and was reflected
in the final text of the World
Declaration.
