About 880-million adults globally cannot read or write, and in the least developed countries one out of every two individuals falls into this category.
Two-thirds of illiterate adults are women — exactly the same proportion as 10 years ago. But some global education progress has been made since the 1992 Rio Summit.
These were among the findings presented at a seminar jointly convened in Johannesburg this week by Unesco and the Department of Education as part of the World Summit on Sustainable Development.
John Fien of Griffith University, Australia, presented the findings of a Unesco study entitled Education for Sustainablity: From Rio to Johannesburg — Lessons Learnt from a Decade of Commitment.
The study notes that none of the targets set at the 1990 World Conference on Education held in Thailand have been met in their entirety. Most notably, the fundamental goal of achieving ”universal access to, and completion of, basic education by 2000” remains a distant ideal.
Access to basic education is a major requirement for poverty eradication, the study says: ”indeed, poverty cannot be eradicated without education”. However, 110-million six- to 11-year-olds still do not attend primary school. Millions more attend only briefly — often for a year or less.
They then ”leave without the most essential elements of a basic education or the skills to make their way in an increasingly complex and knowledge-based world,” the study observes. And in doing so they join the nearly 900-million adults — the majority women — who cannot read.
The huge numbers of the world’s population who are still denied an education suffer enormous social and economic disadvantage.
”They are among those with the poorest health, lowest housing standards and poorest employment prospects in the world,” the study says. ”In fact, they have less of nearly everything in life, except children.”
In Peru, for example, women with 10 or more years of education bear an average of 2,5 children, whereas women with no education have an average of 7,4 children.
Access to education remains a massive problem — and disparities in educational quality frequently remain even when access rates are high. But ”people in poor, rural and remote communities, ethnic minorities and indigenous populations have shown little or no progress over the past decade. And the gender gap persists,” the study says.
The study’s findings about lack of progress in the past 10 years come against the backdrop provided by Chapter 36 of Agenda 21 — the document of agreements reached at the 1992 Rio Summit. At the heart of Chapter 36 is a ringing declaration of the centrality of education:
”Education is critical for achieving environmental and ethical awareness, values and attitudes, skills and behaviour consistent with sustainable development and for effective public participation in decision-making. Both formal and non-formal education are indispensable to changing people’s attitudes so that they have the capacity to assess and address their sustainable development concerns.”
Despite worrying and huge areas of paralysis in education progress worldwide, the study also notes some successes.
The number of children enrolled in school rose from nearly 600-million in 1990 to 681-million in 1998 — nearly twice the average increase in the preceding decade. Eastern Asia and the Pacific, as well as Latin America and the Caribbean, are now close to achieving universal primary education; and China and India have made substantial progress towards achieving this.
The number of children in pre-school education rose by nearly five percent in the past decade. The importance of early childhood development is now recognised, and the idea that education begins at birth has taken root in many societies.
More people are now entering secondary education, and the rate of completion for upper secondary education is rising steeply with each successive age group.
The number of literate adults grew significantly over the past decade, from 2,7-billion in 1990 to 3,3-billion in 1998. The overall global literacy rate is now 85% for men and 74% for women. More than 50% of the world’s population has now attended primary school.
A few countries have made progress in reducing inequalities of educational opportunity as reflected by gender, disability, ethnicity, urban versus rural location and working children.
The study suggests five key lessons learnt about education for sustainable development in the path from Rio 1992 to Johannesburg 2002:
Education for sustainable development is an emerging but dynamic concept encompassing a new vision of education that seeks to empower people of all ages to assume responsibility for creating a sustainable future.
Basic education provides the foundation for all future education and is a contribution to sustainable development in its own right.
There is a need to refocus many existing education policies, programmes and practices so that they build the concepts, skills, motivation and commitment needed for sustainable development.
Education is the key to rural transformation and is essential to ensuring the economic, cultural and ecological vitality of rural areas and communities.
Lifelong learning, including adult and community education, appropriate technical and vocational education, higher education and teacher education are all vital ingredients of capacity-building for a sustainable future.