CHILDRENS' RIGHTS

WOMEN

PUBLICATIONS
 

UNESCO Institute for Education Conference:

Education International will participate in the Fifth International Conference on Adult Education (CONFINTEA V) to be held in the Free and Hanseatic city of Hamburg, Germany, from 14 to 18 July 1997. Organized by the UNESCO Institute for Education (UIE -see last paragraph), the Conference on "Adult Learning: A Key for the 21st Century" aims to forge world-wide commitments to adult and continuing education. Major topics will be the right to literacy, empowerment of women, education and employment, the impact of new technologies, and education for specific groups such as the elderly, migrants and ethnic minorities.

A first regional preparatory meeting, held in Jomtien last September for Asia and Pacific countries, reaffirmed the goals of the 1990 Education for All (EFA) Conference: "to meet the basic learning needs of all our people by expanding learning opportunities for children, youth, and adults, making primary education universal, and working for a fully literate society." That region accounts for more than half of the world's population and two thirds of its illiterates. Other regional consultations were scheduled in Dakar (for Africa) last October, Cairo (for Arab states) and Barcelona (for Europe and North America) in the course of December 1996, and Brasilia (for Latin America and the Caribbean) 22-24 January 1997.

Formal or non-formal? Education International took part in the Collective Consultation of NGOs on Literacy and Education for All held 12-15 November at the UIE premises in Hamburg. EI's contribution focused on the definition, the roles of and relations between formal and non- formal education re-evaluated in the light of the concept of life-long learning put forward by the Delors Report.

Our representatives made the point that non-formal education, which is bound to play a very important role in future societies, should be seen as a supplement or a complement to (formal) free public education, never as an alternative. EI reaffirmed the need to acquire learning skills, to learn how to learn, early on in schools in order to open up new possibilities further on for a combination of formal and non-formal adult education in various areas such as labor, culture, schooling of drop-outs, literacy campaigns. Where parallel (formal and informal) education systems or initiatives may exist, EI believes a dialogue between educators of both sectors could lead to diversified services in adult education, increasing the opportunities of life-long learning for all.

XXIst century: a century to create. Due to changing employment patterns and technology, adult education is now taking on greater emergency, with, for example, some 30 percent of Canadian adults engaged in some form of it and over half of adults in Japan, and 30 million individuals involved in a literacy program in India. However, one billion adults - two-thirds of them are women - still do not have access to education.

Attended by UN agencies (UNICEF, WHO, ILO, UNDP, the World Bank), by invited non- governmental organizations (NGOs -among which EI and ICFTU), by universities, OECD and business, the governmental conference CONFINTEA '97 will promote exchange of experience among participants, recommend future policy priorities, and reinforce and expand the international network for co-operation in adult education; next July's Conference will adopt a Declaration and an Agenda for the Future in order to ensure proper follow-up.

Created in 1951, the UNESCO Institute for Education (UIE, Hamburg) is one of the three educational institutes of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) -with the International Institute for Education Planning (IIEP, Paris) and the International Bureau of Education (IBE, Geneva). The UIE is a non-profit international research, training, information, documentation and publishing center focusing mainly on adult and continuing education, literacy and non-formal basic education in the perspective of lifelong learning. Its Director is Mr Paul Bélanger.

For more information: UIE CONFINTEA '97, Feldbrunnenstraße 58, D-20148 Hamburg, Germany

Internet: http://www.education.unesco.org/educnews/confintea
Telephone: +49 40 44 80 41-0
Fax: +49 40 410 77 23
E-mail: uie@unesco.org
 

EDUCATION

Meeting at Education International Headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, 20-21 November 1996, the EI standing sectoral committee on secondary education adopted its work programme for 1996-1998 within the three themes proposed by the Executive Board (see previous Monitor). On the first theme,financing of education, six topics will be further researched and later discussed: taxation; allocation of funds within education; decentralisation and the role of various actors in funding and decision-making; the degree of parents' contribution in tuition and decision-making; public financing of secondary education; capacity building within unions for the purpose of discussions and negotiations.

On the second theme (education reform), comments focused on difficulties regarding the involvement of teachers and teacher unions in broad discussions about educational reforms. Finally, concerning the impact of the social environment on quality schooling, violence was identified as a serious problem, as well as the fact that teachers are often held responsible for consequences at the school level of various social ills. Dealing with such issues on a worldwide basis is a real challenge for all sectoral committees. Participants will prepare papers on these topics for their next annual meeting, 24 and 25 April 1997. Louis Weber (SNES France) was elected Chairman of this new edition of the secondary education committee.

The Sectoral committee for vocational education and training was scheduled for a meeting 11 and 12 December 1996; read the report in our next issue.

CHILDREN'S RIGHTS

Children's rights are the foundation on which better societies can be built, and a detailed blueprint exists in the Convention on the Rights of the Child adopted by the United Nations on 20 November 1989. The 1997 EI Calendar features some of the rights and freedoms of children set forth in this document. UNICEF's The State of the World's Children 1997 report* explores some of the implications of this ground-breaking treaty - now on the verge of becoming the first universal law - with a particular focus on the moving subject of child labour. Because the problem is complex, the solution must be comprehensive, states the 50-year-old organisation (see Monitor Vol 3 No 2). The United Nations Children's Fund calls for the immediate end to hazardous child labour and proposes strategies to eliminate and prevent it. "The single most effective way to protect children, the UNICEF report argues, is to extend and improve education so that it will attract them and inspire their lives."

* The English version of the 100-page report is published by Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-262871-2. Indicative price: £6.95 US$12.95. Also available in French La situation des enfants dans le monde 1997, GermanZur Situation der Kinder in der Welt 1997 and Spanish El Estado Mundial de la Infancia 1997 at UNICEF offices and usual bookstores.

Child Labour: Targeting the intolerable

Some 250 million children between the ages of 5 and 14 are working in developing countries, nearly double previous estimates, revealed the International Labour Office (ILO) in a report* issued in November 1996. Some 61 percent of child workers, or nearly 153 million, are found in Asia; 32 percent, or 80 million, are in Africa and 7 percent, or 17.5 million, live in Latin America. There is evidence that child labour also exists in many industrialized countries, including Italy, Portugal, the United Kingdom and the United States of America. The ILO is calling for a new Convention that would add specificity to eradicate the worst forms of labour, including prostitution, slavery, servitude, forced labour and serfdom. More information from the ILO on Internet: http://www.unicc.org/ilo

* Child Labour: Targeting the intolerable. ILO, Geneva, 1996. ISBN 92-2-110328-5. Also available in French Le travail des enfants: l'intolérable point de mire and Spanish El trabajo Infantil: Lo intolerable en el punto de mira.

WOMEN

EI is carrying on with the publication of documents based on the Platform for Action adopted by the 1995 Beijing Fourth World Conference on Women (see Monitor Vol 3 Nos 1 & 3). The material available (on Health, Education, the Girl Child, etc.) is intended for the training of trade union leaders and the training of women to hold leadership positions within teacher organisations. The Harare Congress noted that presently women do not enjoy equal opportunity within the education system, in teachers' organisations and in society as a whole. To receive copies of these documents for your 8 March 1997 activities or any other occasion, contact the EI Coordinator for equality issues.

PUBLICATIONS

Education International has released the proceedings from the EI/HKPTU Conference held in Hong Kong 13-15 July 1996 (see Monitor Vol 3 Nos 4 & 6). Civic Education towards the 21st Century consists of more than 150 pages, from EI President Mary Hatwood Futrell's keynote address, to speeches by invited speakers, presentations in the workshops, and Deputy General Secretary Sheena Hanley's closing remarks. The themes discussed cover the universality of rights, national identity, global citizenship, academic freedom; experiences of education to citizenship in various countries are also reported. Sent to participants in November, this publication (in English only) is available from the EI Secretariat (free on request for member organisations, BEF 200 for others). Please note that the next EI Magazine dossier will be devoted to civic education.
 

The fourth annual compilation of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) education indicators is this year published in two companion volumes. Education at a Glance - Indicators* presents 43 indicators as tables and graphs, with notes to help interpret them, while Education at a Glance - Analysis** discusses some of the key themes and the lessons -as seen by OECD- the results carry for education systems. The publications document international differences and similarities in 29 countries in terms of the way money is spent on education, the way that education itself is organised and what it produces in terms of student outcomes, referring to two new surveys on mathematics achievements (TIMSS, see previous Monitor) and on adult literacy (see Monitor Vol 3 No 2). The OECD provides indicators of educational outcomes not just in terms of test results but also according to what happens to young people after they leave school. More Internet information on OECD: http://www.oecd.org -- and on TIMSS results:http://wwwcsteep.bc.edu/timsswebpage

• 396 pages, OECD, Paris 1996. FF260; US$50; DM76 ISBN 92-64-1536-X (96 96 11 1)
• * 76 pages, OECD, Paris 1996. FF50; US$10; DM76 ISBN 92-64-15357-8 (96 96 10 1)

An EI barometer of teachers' human rights in the making
 

Just before the New Year's recess, EI was informed that 34 teachers were murdered last year alone in Columbia. Through the Monitor, communiqués and urgent action appeals, affiliates have been receiving, since the creation of EI, information on numerous violations of our colleagues' human rights. In order to get a broader, more meaningful picture, EI will publish as of December 1997 a comprehensive annual survey or barometer listing infringements on the rights and freedoms of its members. The new EI Coordinator for Human and Trade Union Rights, Rosslyn Noonan, will monitor the global situation which, year in year out, calls for more powerful actions from the education community.