Human Resources Development Section

Enhancing access, equity and quality

The world observed the tenth anniversary of the World Declaration on Education for All in Dakar, Senegal in April 2000 at the World Education Forum. The Forum adopted the Dakar Framework for Action, thereby re-affirming the vision of Education for All (EFA). As the Jakarta Plan of Action on Human Resources Development also emphasizes, education and training are the most critical processes for increasing the productivity of human resources. The other key recent regional documents, including the Asia-Pacific Position to the Lisbon World Conference of Ministers for Youth ("the Asia-Pacific Position"), adopted at the Second Asia-Pacific Intergovernmental Meeting on Human Resources Development for Youth, June 1998, Bangkok, also promote the concept of "education as a human right" and call for further strengthening of this notion. From these recently adopted international instruments, "access, equity and quality" appear to emerge as the key themes in education in the Asia-Pacific region.

A. Access and Equity

In preparation for the World Education Forum, countries undertook the EFA 2000 Assessment exercise to assess achievements since 1990, and identify outstanding challenges. The EFA 2000 Assessment results demonstrated that significant progress had been made since 1990 in the world (including the Asia-Pacific region) toward realization of the goal of Education for All (EFA). Primary school enrolment outpaced the growth rate of the school age population and nearly 400 million children had enrolled by year 2000, as compared with 331 million in 1990. The regional synthesis report of the EFA 2000 Assessment noted that in East Asia and the Pacific, large gains had been made in increasing the enrolment in primary education in nearly every country of the subregion, resulting in close to universal primary school enrolment by the year 2000 (UNESCO-PROAP, 2000). The report also highlighted the achievements in reduction in gender and provincial disparities in that subregion. In South Asia, the enrolment rates increased from around 50 per cent in 1990 to over 70 per cent by 1999.

However, there are new as well as remaining challenges. The Dakar Framework of Action identified, inter alia, HIV/AIDS as the new challenge to EFA and called upon governments to "make maximum use of education's potential to transmit messages on prevention and to change attitudes and behaviours" regarding HIV/AIDS. Further, the EFA 2000 Assessment also revealed that, among the six "target dimensions"[1] of EFA, the efforts in the 1990s focused on formal primary education enrolment, thus largely bypassing youth and other important target groups of EFA, such as adult women. Many young people in the region have thus been left without a second chance to receive the most basic level of education, and many of them run the risk of living the rest of their lives in the darkness of illiteracy.

The World Programme of Action for Youth identified the lack of educational opportunities for the more disadvantaged subgroups of youth: girls and young women, migrants, refugees, displaced persons, street children, indigenous youth minorities, young people in rural areas and young people with disabilities, which also reflects the reality of the Asia-Pacific region. In particular, it must be noted that, 75 per cent of the world's illiterate people reside in South Asia, and literacy rates among women in many countries of the subregion are about half that of their male counterparts. The regional synthesis report on the EFA 2000 Assessment reported that gender disparity in favour of males remained a characteristic of the South Asian subregion. Thus, equity continues to be a major concern in the Asia-Pacific region.

In this context, the importance of non-formal education (NFE) and non-state actors should be recognized. In the past, NFE has often received a diminishing share of total government education budget. Paradoxically, this reduction in budget has coincided with an increasing demand for NFE programmes and services from groups such as children who had dropped out of formal schooling, youth seeking to acquire life skills, migrant workers and their families, and rural women wanting to develop employment related skills.

The Jakarta Plan of Action on Human Resources Development advocates a comprehensive view of education, encompassing the formal education system at all levels as well as lifelong education in the form of adult and continuing education in non-formal settings. The Braga Youth Action Plan ("the Braga Youth Action Plan") adopted at the Third World Youth Forum, August 1999, Braga, also called on governments to "recognize and promote the importance of non-formal education, being integral to the full development of individuals and societies and therefore being complementary to formal education." The youth representatives in Asia, at the Asia-Pacific Youth Forum convened by ESCAP in May 1998, further expressed the need to "provide additional opportunities in non-formal education for the training of young people, not only for the world of work, but also for imparting life skills". Educational opportunities through non-formal education are in demand not only in order to increase the access of the disadvantaged sectors of society to basic education, but also to meet the diverse educational needs of the people in the region at different stages of their lives.

B. Quality

The issue concerning quality of education continues to be an important challenge. "Quality" of education, particularly for youth, requires several different levels of discussion. Three different aspects of "quality" are discussed in the following, namely, 1) issues related to problems of drop-outs and repetition; 2) relevance of education to gainful employment; and 3) usefulness of education as a means of empowerment.

1) Issues of repetition and drop-out rates: The poor quality of teaching staff, physical environment and teaching materials often discourages students from regular attendance at school and serves to increase drop-out rates. It has been widely observed in the Asia-Pacific region that national education programmes concentrate on enrolment figures and fail to implement remedies for absenteeism, drop-outs and students repeating their grades. The EFA 2000 Assessment results noted that many governments in the region had started paying attention to the "quality" issue and allocated more resources towards development of curriculum and training of teachers. Such a trend had been supported by many donor organizations including the United Nations agencies.

2) Relevance of education to gainful employment: The second aspect of concern related to quality is the efficiency and effectiveness of the education system in providing adequate productive human resources to meet the requirements of the rapid socio-economic and technological changes taking place in the region. Under the present rapidly changing needs of the labour market, workers have to be equipped with marketable skills that can be readily acquired. The Government representatives of the Asia-Pacific region committed themselves to "ensuring the linkage and matching of education with the needs of industry, business and the employment market, wherever possible; and setting up extension services and other internship schemes, such as career education orientation, information dissemination programmes and networking, to enable young people to enter employment, as well as to create employment opportunities to meet the requirements of social, economic and technical changes (the Asia-Pacific Position)."

3) Usefulness of education as a means of empowerment: Another important aspect of quality of education, apart from the relevance of education in the work place, is the role of education as a means to empower young people. The purpose of education should be more than employment generation; it should be used to promote democracy and good governance and the building of civil society. Youth education is therefore a major instrument for constructive change. Youth education is a binding factor in achieving progress in the areas of health, employment and participation. Further, education, particularly for youth, can contribute to empowerment of women through gender sensitization at various educational levels. There should be a continuous effort to review the quality of education in order to ensure that the full potential of youth can be developed.

In addition, education for youth should aim at nurturing new values for them to live in a globalizing world. Today's youth need to grow up as global citizens, no matter in what corner of the earth they are born. They need to learn to respect different cultures, religions and ethnicities and to be tolerant to differences, based on a non-discriminating, appropriate knowledge of multiple values. Likewise, young people should be encouraged to consider a broad range of possibilities in selecting their own future, including their career options and lifestyles, not bound by conventional values sometimes imposed by the existing formal education systems. Existing formal education systems in Asia and the Pacific, even the most successful, often pre-select "elites" of society at a young age, and unjustly define a narrow range of possible "successes" in life for them.

In this regard, the Braga Youth Action Plan calls on governments to "analyze and review their formal education policies to incorporate…global citizenship education, emphasizing universal concepts such as peace, human rights, intercultural understanding, environmental protection, sustainable development and gender equity." Education in the future should enable young people to liberate themselves-their ideas, values and options for careers. Training in such areas as independent thinking, effective communication, and consensus-building are essential elements for the preparation of young people for effective participation in public affairs.

In summary, enhancement of the quality of education is a major challenge in the Asia-Pacific region, in order to ensure its relevance to gainful employment and its usefulness for assisting young people in their transition to full adulthood and active citizenship, as well as to nurture their idealism and creative thinking, so that they may become change agents in creating their own future.

1. The six dimensions included: 1) expansion of early childhood care and development; 2) universal access to completion of primary education; 3) improving learning achievement; 4) reduction of adult literacy rate; and 5) expansion of provision of basic education and training in essential skills required by youth and adults.