Don’t cut education funding, urge ministers attending UNESCO’s International Conference on Education

Geneva, 28 November

The global financial crisis should not serve as a justification for cuts in education funding, concluded ministers and representatives from 153 countries attending the 48th session of UNESCO’s International Conference on Education which closed on 28 November.

The theme of the week-long conference was “Inclusive Education: The way to the future”, with discussions focused on ways of providing education to the hundreds of millions of people around the world with little or no access to education.

Among those excluded from education are 75 million out-of-school children. More than half of these children are girls and one third are disabled. Most of them live in poor, isolated communities or urban slums. Many of these children are working and many belong to indigenous groups and linguistic minorities, or are living in conflict and post conflict situations.

The excluded also number 776 million adults who lack basic literacy skills, and the many young people in developed and developing countries alike, who drop out of school or leave with no worthwhile qualifications.

Participants at the conference expressed particular concern over the potential impact on these populations of the global financial crisis, which, they warned, “will have a disproportionate impact on the poor – those who carry the least responsibility for these events”.

They stressed that education was fundamental to reducing poverty and improving health and livelihoods. In the current economic situation, they said, providing quality education that addressed the diverse needs of all learners had become even more urgent. “Funding for education,” they said, “should be a top priority and (…) the financial crisis should not serve as a justification for a reduction in the allocation of resources to education at both the national and international levels.”

In their final conclusions, the ministers, education experts and representatives of civil society also proposed several concrete steps that governments could take to improve their education systems and overcome the major obstacles to inclusion, such as the way schools are organized, the lack of articulation between education policies and social policies and attitudes and beliefs.

These steps include: the development of policies that allow excluded groups access to regular school; the promotion of linguistic and cultural diversity as a valuable resource; strengthening the use of information and communication technologies; opening the way for greater participation of those concerned in decision-making; equipping teachers with the skills and materials they need to teach diverse populations and encourage innovative research in teaching and learning.

• Source:UNESCO No. 2008-124
• 28-11-2008