Education for All - Global Monitoring Report 2011 - The Hidden Crisis - Armed Conflict and Education

The Dakar Framework for Action on Education for All (EFA) adopted by governments in Senegal in 2000 set six broad goals and a number of specific targets to meet by 2015. The framework was given the subtitle ‘Education for All: meeting our collective commitments’. Ten years later, the overarching message of the 2011 EFA Global Monitoring Report is that governments around the world are falling short of their collective commitment. That stark finding does not detract from some significant achievements. The number of children out of school is falling, gender gaps are narrowing and more children are moving from primary school to secondary education and beyond. Some of the world’s poorest countries1 have registered impressive gains, demonstrating that low income is not an automatic barrier to accelerated progress. Yet the gap between the Dakar declaration and delivery remains large, and there are worrying signs that it is widening. On current trends, there could be more children out of school in 2015 than there are today. Without a concerted effort to change this picture, the Dakar promise to the world’s children will be comprehensively broken. Failure to achieve the goals set at Dakar will have far-reaching consequences. Accelerated progress in education is critical for the achievement of the wider Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in areas such as poverty reduction, nutrition, child survival and maternal health. Moreover, failure to narrow deep national and international divides in opportunity for education is undermining economic growth and reinforcing an unequal pattern of globalization. No issue merits more urgent attention. Yet education has slipped down the international development agenda, barely registering today in the concerns of the Group of Eight (G8) or Group of Twenty (G20). The 2011 EFA Global Monitoring Report is divided into two parts. Part I provides a snapshot of the state of education around the world. It identifies advances, setbacks and a range of policy interventions that could help accelerate progress. Part II turns to one of the greatest barriers facing the Education for All goals: armed conflict in the world’s poorest countries. The Report looks at the policy failures reinforcing that barrier, and at strategies for removing it. It also sets out an agenda for strengthening the role of education systems in preventing conflicts and building peaceful societies.