Guidelines for the Future

The Executive Director of UNICEF, in a statement on goals and challenges for the future, considered the Conference a milestone in strongly affirming four important principles to guide the pursuit of EFA:

First, the six concrete goals from the Framework for action speak for themselves as beacons to guide and encourage countries in setting their own goals towards Education for All. Second, we can also carry with us the commitment in the Declaration to eradicating the educational inequalities which discriminate against girls and women.

Third... we must emphasize our new yardstick of success - namely that of learning achievement, not merely enrolment and access.

Finally, the contribution of NGOs to the success of this Conference is truly unique... we need your partnership.

Pointing to the $50 billion ($5 billion annually) - required to achieve universal primary education in the 1990s, he stated: "This is clearly a substantial but not impossible sum:

A three percent increase in education budgets annually would be required over the decade. Only half of one percent of official development aid, less than $300 million annually, is now devoted to supporting basic education; a shift in aid priority is clearly required."

Action to ease the crippling burden of debt, as recognized in the World Declaration and called for in particular by delegates from Latin America and Africa, is urgently needed. The support of Ministries of Finance and Planning was also called for to work out financing of the priorities of EFA.