Regardless of nationality, ethnicity, or religion, children have certain inalienable rights, according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). These rights include "the right to receive free primary education regardless of gender, background or mental and physical abilities; the right to develop one's personality, talents, and abilities to their fullest potential; [and] the right to receive quality education in a safe, healthy, and protective environment, even during emergency situations."
The 2007 UNICEF report All Children, Everywhere: A Strategy for Basic Education and Gender Equalityargues that though these rights have been incorporated in a range of international conventions and regional treaties, millions of children around the world still do not have access to high-quality education.All Children, Everywhere states that in 2007, 101 million youth were not enrolled in school at all. Who are these kids? Studies show poor, rural, disabled, and female children face the most challenges in gaining equal access to education.
Excluded Student Populations
"The majority of people without an education live in the world's poorest countries. People are excluded from education because they simply cannot afford the cost of going to school— whether the cost of school fees, uniforms or books. Many children are excluded from school as they're working to support their family, or staying at home and caring for sick members of the family," reports the Global Campaign for Education (GCE) on its Web site.
GCE also reports on its Web site that, of children not in school, nearly one-third have a disability; 60 percent are girls; and nearly 250 million are at home working to help their families. Often, impoverished parents who desire to send their children to school must choose which children they can afford to educate.
GCE collected stories from youth who are unable to attend school for economic reasons. Sofia, a 13-year-old Tanzanian girl who is one of seven children, wishes she could go to school. "I would really like to go to school one day and be like the other girls in their school uniforms. I know if I go to school, one day I will be able to help my family as I will get a good job that pays well. I used to spend my days herding cattle and goats for my father but most of them died because of the drought. Right now my father is very sick and they have taken him to a distant hospital for treatment—I wish I could do something to help him," the young girl says, feeling the weight of the world on her shoulders.
In Ethiopia, when 12-year-old Mahder's father died, his family could no longer afford to send him to school. "I went to school for a month and then the money ran out and I had to stop going. When my friends went to school, I would cry all day. I didn't do much apart from look at old school books and help mum. I felt frustrated and angry," he says.
Many children desire to learn, but they have no available opportunity to do so.
Shifting Cultural Norms
Cultural issues also play a role in parents' decisions to send children to school. Some parents worry that their children's religion, culture, customs, and traditions will be ignored in the classroom. This point is illustrated inElimu Na Msichana (The Education of Girls), a comic created for the World Comics outreach and art education project. In the comic, a Maasai woman and her husband discuss sending their daughter to school. The father protests because he worries the girl will be unduly influenced by foreign culture. In the end, the mother successfully convinces her husband that their Maasai customs will be respected, and the daughter is allowed to attend school with her friends. Koku Katunzi created the cartoon with World Comics on behalf of HakiElimu, a Tanzanian education advocacy organization.
HakiElimu distributes information through a variety of reports, pamphlets, cartoon booklets, calendars, and other media to educate parents across the country about the benefits education can offer their children, especially their daughters. The organization's vision is that "every person in Tanzania is able to enjoy his or her right to basic quality education in schools that respect a person's dignity, foster creativity, emphasize critical learning, and advance the notions of equity, human rights and democracy."
Getting Girls to Grade School and Beyond
The United Nations Girls' Education Initiative (UNGEI) set the ambitious goal of achieving educational equity by 2015. "All children [will] complete primary schooling, with girls and boys having equal access to free, quality education," the organization proclaims. UNGEI is overseen by UNICEF, with a Global Advisory Committee comprised of partners from different organizations. In July 2009, UNGEI appointed Her Majesty Queen Rania Al Abdullah as its honorary global chair.
UNGEI officials understand that the agency cannot succeed while working against national or local governments, community leaders, parents, school staff, or other stakeholders; therefore, the agency develops partnerships to open the lines of communication and encourage collaboration among stakeholders to create viable solutions that will increase access for excluded student populations.
UNGEI works with school systems to eliminate "barriers to learning" such as school fees and helps students acquire the necessary funding for education costs. UNGEI also seeks to provide children with access to safe schools even during emergency situations.
Though progress is incremental, UNGEI has had success in its international efforts. In 2004, the UNGEI Partnership Forum was launched in Uganda. This group has developed several district-level partnerships to reach out to out-of-school children and recruit female role models in local communities who can encourage young women. In Nepal, the UNGEI program helps low-income girls in rural areas attend school by reaching out to community members, hiring female teachers, encouraging pedagogical practices that support female students, and offering female students separate hours and facilities when necessary.
The 2008 World Bank report Girls' Education in the 21st Century: Gender Equality, Empowerment, and Economic Growth, notes that though efforts to close the education gender gap have proven somewhat successful over the last 15 years, there is certainly more to be done. In some countries, girls who succeed in completing primary school may not be able to attend secondary school because of costs, family responsibilities, early marriage, pregnancy, or other reasons. So, the work continues. Through effective outreach, advocacy, fund-raising, and other targeted efforts, opportunities for female students are increasing.
"Making girls' education a high priority and implementing a range of interventions—including scholarships, stipends, conditional cash transfers, female teacher recruitment, and gender-targeted provision of materials—have proved effective in increasing enrollment of girls in school," the report states.
It's important to note that promoting greater educational access for girls around the world should not mean diminishing efforts to improve boys' education. "Achieving gender equality [requires] investing in the education of both girls and boys, while maintaining a balance between them," Girls' Education in the 21st Century states.
Creating Bright Futures
In Kenya, Fatuma Roba, a UNICEF Voices of Youth digital diarist, interviewed young people in the Kibera slum in Nairobi, where she lives, about their thoughts on education. A young girl Roba spoke with explained that even when students succeed in primary school, they often cannot go on to the next level.
"I know the problem with many of the slum's children. They do perform well but their parents do not have the money to take them to secondary [school]. If I was elected the minister of education I would look for those pupils who have performed well and pay for them so they will have a bright future," she says.
As a global community of educators, what commitments can we make to bring all children into the classroom? How can educators work collaboratively with decision makers to open school doors to the millions of youth who have been shut out? Millions of children like Sofia and Mahder are waiting for the answers.
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Resources
Global Campaign for Education:<LINK URL="http://www.campaignforeducation.org">www.campaignforeducation.org</LINK>
HakiElimu:<LINK URL="http://www.hakielimu.org">www.hakielimu.org</LINK>
United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF):<LINK URL="http://www.unicef.org">www.unicef.org</LINK>
United Nations Girls' Education Initiative:<LINK URL="http://www.ungei.org">www.ungei.org</LINK>
World Comics: <LINK URL="http://www.worldcomics.fi">www.worldcomics.fi</LINK>
