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Key issues : Education for All
After 10 years of Education for All movement, Dakar World Education Forum brought together governments, international agencies, donors and NGOs to review the progress made. After Dakar, where do we have to focus our efforts? Is Education for All really for ALL? What is the way forward?
The Dakar Framework for Action emphasises that the heart of Education for All activities lie at the country level. The country reports prepared for the World Education Forum, and the Regional Action Plans provide the framework for national action. At the international level, the Framework for Action draws out the range of actions that the international community should engage with.
The Dakar Framework for Action is accompanied by the 'Notes on the Dakar Framework for Action' which provide details on each goal and suggest strategies for pursuing the goals. These 'explanatory' notes are based on the many suggestions provided before and during the World Education Forum, and from the strategy sessions carried out in Dakar. The Education for All Assessment, including overview reports from more than 180 countries, provides a solid analysis of the achievements and pitfalls of the past decade.
The Dakar Framework acknowledges the major education conferences throughout 1990s, such as the Salamanca World Conference on Special Needs Education (1994 Salamanca, Spain), and urges the international community to continue working on achieving the goals set (Dakar Framework for Action, Para 4.). Inclusive education should therefore remain as a principle in addressing the learning needs of various disadvantaged, marginalised and excluded groups.
The Salamanca Statement called upon the international community, in particular the partners of the Education for All movement, to endorse the approach of inclusive schooling. It is now the time, as Dakar Framework notes, 'to deliver on these commitments'.
To the disappointment of many disability advocates and education practitioners, the Dakar Framework did not mention disabled learners as one of the excluded groups of a particular concern. Neither did it provide a clear holistic and inclusive approach for the future developments. However, the 'Notes on the Dakar Framework for Action' describe the broad vision of Education for All which needs to be adopted in order to achieve the goals, with a special emphasis on those learners who are the most vulnerable to marginalisation and exclusion:
"The key challenge is to ensure that the broad vision of Education for All as an inclusive concept is reflected in national government and funding agency policies. Education for All … must take account of the need of the poor and the most disadvantaged, including working children, remote rural dwellers and nomads, and ethnic and linguistic minorities, children, young people and adults affected by conflict, HIV/AIDS, hunger and poor health; and those with special learning needs…"
"…[Early childhood care and education programmes] should… help to identify and enrich the care and education of children with special needs…"
"… The inclusion of children with special needs, from disadvantaged ethnic minorities and migrant populations, from remote and isolated communities and from urban slums, and others excluded from education, must be an integral part of strategies to achieve UPE [Universal Primary Education] by 2015."
"… In order to attract and retain children from marginalized and excluded groups, education systems should respond flexibly… Education systems must be inclusive, actively seeking out children who are not enrolled, and responding flexibly to the circumstances and needs of all learners…"
(Education for All: Meeting our Collective Commitments. Notes on the Dakar Framework for Action, Para 19, 30, 32, 33)
UNESCO's commitment to deliver on the Dakar commitments was reiterated by the Director-General of UNESCO, Mr Koichiro Matsuura, who made the following statement in responding to the 159th Session of the UNESCO Executive Board on 18 May 2000:
"With regard to special needs in education and special education, UNESCO is in fact the only [international] organization giving attention to theoretical and practical developments in this area. The special session devoted to the question in Dakar (jointly organized by Finland, USAID, Sweden and UNESCO) showed that taking account of special needs was essential to achieving the goal of education for all, in order to offer equal opportunities to the persons most vulnerable to marginalization and exclusion. UNESCO will pursue its commitment in this direction by adopting inclusive approaches through all its programmes and mobilizing adequate resources."
The adoption of inclusive approaches is imperative to UNESCO. Inclusion, as a crosscutting issue, needs to be the fundamental philosophy throughout UNESCO's programme so that the goal of 'Education for All' can be achieved. Currently, a position paper on inclusive education and Education for All is being prepared in UNESCO. This paper attempts to outline a coherent conceptual and contextual framework for pursuing inclusive education as one of the possible strategies to achieve Education for All. Bringing together fragmented and compartmentalised pieces of education into a vision that has a common nominator of 'inclusion' is equally difficult in international organisations than it is in any education system. Therefore, the first step of the formulation of a common vision has to be followed by the next step towards 'adopting inclusive approaches through all its programmes and mobilizing adequate resources'. This requires support and co-operation from the international community as well as from people who are working towards inclusion in education.
Inclusion does not happen in a vacuum, nor does it happen after issuing an administrative order. Of course, attitudes are the greatest barrier, or the greatest asset, to the development of inclusion in education. They influence our perceptions of challenges, strategies to be chosen and goals to the achieved. If Education for All is to be achieved, it has to start with the change in attitudes to make Education for All mean ALL, not just "all, BUT".
Inclusion is profoundly a process that engages the whole community in a process of change. Inclusion in education has to be seen within the context of the society - it is hard to see it happening if the society is overtly discriminatory, segregative or xenophobic. However, education has also a role to play in the development of a more just society. As the International Commission on Education for the Twenty-first Century (1996) articulates it:
"Education cannot, on its own, solve the problems… It can, however, be expected to help to foster the desire to live together…"
The Dakar Framework for Action - Education For All:
Meeting Our Collective Commitments.
http://www2.unesco.org/wef/en-conf/dakframeng.shtm
International Commission on Education for the Twenty-first Century (1996) Learning: The Treasure within. Paris: UNESCO.
World Education Forum Web-site:
http://www2.unesco.org/wef/
Key issues : Education for All
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30/05/2001