Education for All - Global Monitoring Report 2002 - Is the world on track?

This Report is about opportunities to learn. Its primary purpose is to assess the extent to which the benefits associated with education are being extended to all children, youths and adults around the world and whether the commitments made two years ago in April 2000 at the World Education Forum in Dakar are being met. It offers an interim answer to the question as to whether the world is on track to achieve Education for All (EFA) in 2015. The World Education Forum (2000) agreed on six EFA goals, which were considered to be essential, attainable and affordable given strong international commitment and resolve. The Dakar Framework for Action declared that by 2015, all children of primary-school age would participate in free schooling of acceptable quality and that gender disparities in schooling would be eliminated. Levels of adult illiteracy would be halved, early childhood care and education and learning opportunities for youth and adults would be greatly increased, and all aspects of education quality would be improved. In the same year, the Millennium Development Goals were agreed, two of which - universal primary education (UPE) and the elimination of gender disparities in primary and secondary education - were defined as critical to the elimination of extreme poverty. The Report is presented in six parts. Chapter 1 reaffirms why Education for All is of such overriding importance. Chapter 2 updates our understanding of progress towards, and prospects for, achieving the six EFA goals. Chapter 3 examines the international response to the call for EFA National Action Plans, the engagement of civil society in planning, and whether the distinctive challenges of HIV/AIDS, and conflict and emergency are being confronted. Chapter 4 assesses the costs of achieving the EFA goals and the availability of the resources to secure them. Chapter 5 explores whether the international commitments made in Dakar, and subsequently, are being met and, if so, by what means. Finally, Chapter 6 pulls some of these threads together as a basis for looking forward and identifying opportunities for sustaining the momentum generated by the World Education Forum.