PRESS CONFERENCE ON EDUCATION FOR ALL

Press Briefing

PRESS CONFERENCE ON EDUCATION FOR ALL

At a Headquarters press conference today, the Director of Communications and Education of Oxfam America, Peggy Connolly, told correspondents that she feared the agreements that would be reached at the Education for All Conference beginning today in Dakar, Senegal, would be long on principles and short on practical solutions and financing mechanisms.

Ms. Connolly, speaking in support of the Global Campaign for Education, a coalition of 400 development non-governmental organizations and teachers unions from 180 countries, was joined at the press conference by United States Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney and Cheryl Mills, Senior Vice-President of Oxygen Media. The coalition convened a forum today in Dakar, with the United Nations, to address the reasons why the promises made 10 years ago at the first Education for All Conference in Jomtien, Thailand, have not been kept.

After decades of work on social and economic justice issues, Oxfam America knew first-hand that the end of poverty began in school, Ms. Connolly continued. Some 180 governments would be represented at the Dakar conference, and she hoped they would muster the political will necessary to provide primary education to all children in the world.

However, what world leaders might call a "plan" for universal education could look and feel like a bad case of déjà vu, she explained. Ten years ago, in Jomtien, Thailand, the same countries -- both rich and poor -– had promised that every primary school-age child would be in school by the year 2000. Ten years later, that promise had clearly been broken, with some 125 million children still not attending school.

In an increasingly knowledge-based global economy, the cost of that failure rose daily, she continued. Uneducated children grew up to become illiterate adults, with limited scope for economic prosperity, and lower life expectancies. In Ghana, where education was a matter of life and death, the child of an educated mother had twice the chance of living to the age of five as the child of an illiterate mother.

The consequences of the education crisis were even more far-reaching, because two out of every three children not in school were female, she added. Societies that prioritized educational opportunities for boys were, in fact, institutionalizing systemic discrimination against women.

Oxfam's concerns about the Dakar conference were a consequence of four fundamental problems, Ms. Connolly continued. First, governments had failed to acknowledge both the scope of the problem and their own failure to deliver on the promises of 10 years ago -– what she called "the ostrich factor". Second, there had been inept political leadership, whereby United Nations agencies, the World Bank and bilateral donors had failed to prepare for the event in such a way as to ensure that sound solutions would result from it.

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Third, she continued, rich countries were indifferent. They did not acknowledge that putting kids in school meant providing additional financial resources, through increased aid and debt relief, and preferred talk to action. Last, poor countries were indifferent. They, and not just industrialized countries, had reneged on the promises of the last conference. Ultimately it would be up to developing countries to find solutions and to protect the rights of their children to education, but many gave priority to military spending over education.

To justify their broken promises, many countries said that rapid progress towards education for all was unaffordable, she explained. The price tag was $8 billion annually, which seemed staggeringly high, but only represented four days of global military spending. The Dakar conference must agree on concrete strategies to raise additional resources, through increased international aid and debt relief, and through shifts in spending priorities at the national level.

The Education for All Conference was the latest in a long line of United Nations conferences, she said, and most had done little more than produce wish lists, targets not aligned with viable strategies, and wonderful photo opportunities. If the conference continued that tradition, it would not just undermine the cause of education for all children, but also the credibility of the United Nations and the international system. Dakar was a call to action; an urgent call, that could not be overstated. Today's children were tomorrow's business leaders, teachers and technologists. They were citizens of an interdependent world that could not afford to leave large segments of its population behind.

Cheryl Mills, of Oxygen -– a convergent media enterprise focused on issues of most concern to women -– stated that the Education for All Conference was a discussion that the developed world ignored at its own peril. She endorsed the global campaign for education and the principles that were being set forth in Dakar.

Without basic literacy, people in every country were automatically limited in their capacity to participate in ordinary civic and economic life, Ms. Mills said, and that was as true in poor countries in Central America or sub-Saharan Africa, as it was in the United States. When 125 million children were not able to attend school, the world had a problem. When two thirds of them were girls, it was not just those children, but ultimately their children that risked never receiving an education, or gaining the attendant economic prosperity and health care benefits. The global future was just as tied to the future of young girls as to young boys.

In every country in the world, education and literacy were demonstrably linked to escaping from poverty, she said. In poor countries, children of literate mothers went to school longer, received better medical care, and had a better chance of making it out of poverty. Ten years ago, world leaders had believed they could bring together the resources and the commitment needed to ensure that by 2000 all children would have access to education. They failed because they chose to fail. The necessary funds were not a problem, as a small

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percentage of global military expenditures would put all children through school. All people must unite behind the Dakar aspirations.

United States Congresswoman Maloney said she supported the educational commitments made in Thailand 10 years ago. The Dakar meeting would examine how close the international community was to achieving its goal of education for all. The goal must be achieved, she said, because another generation could not be allowed to grow up illiterate, and thereby banished to a life of never-ending poverty. Commitments to assist developing countries to provide education to the millions of young children who so desperately needed it must be met.

The United States had taken some steps towards meeting the goal by its efforts to ban child labour, she said, thus allowing children the opportunity for schooling. However, taking children out of factories did not mean they would attend the neighbourhood school. In many areas there were no schools, and transport to the nearest school was enormously expensive. Families wishing to educate their children faced the added expense of purchasing uniforms and books. To send just one child to school could cost some families one third of their family income, she noted, and that was too high a price for the world's poor to pay.

The United States had contributed to programmes, such as the international programme for eliminating child labour, that helped bring children out of dangerous work situations, the Congresswoman continued It had also committed more than $100 million in aid funds to address educational issues, such as teacher training. However, those efforts must be expanded, and support must also be given to move children into a constructive school environment. By increasing its contribution to the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) debt relief programme and the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) funding, the United States could take an important leadership role in working towards honouring the commitments made 10 years ago to the young people of the world.

However, the United States could not do it alone, she said, and that was why industrialized nations, developing countries, non-governmental organizations and world leaders must work together to create a world where the opportunity to go to school was not a privilege, but a right. A comprehensive approach was needed, involving local communities, funding and global support. Schools must be located in communities, and action must be taken to ensure the costs of books, clothing and other essentials were not be overbearing or impossible for poor families.

The World Bank had once argued that an investment in primary schooling for young girls could well be the wisest economic investment for developing countries, she said. Given current budget battles, where every effort was made to find the best way to stretch every dollar and to maximize its impact, she could think of no sounder investment than that made in the education of young people.

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