New education agenda for next 15 years

The recent World Education Forum 2015 in Incheon, Korea, adopted Education 2030, an education agenda for the next 15 years.

Organized by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco), the conference aimed to get the global community of educators to adopt a joint position to continue pursuing education targets set for 2015 by the Education for All (EFA) campaign and education-related Millennium Development Goals (MDG).

The Incheon Declaration’s new vision for education was contained in the proposed Sustainable Development Goal No. 4 that seeks to “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote life-long learning opportunities for all.” Considered holistic, ambitious and aspirational, the education agenda aims to ensure no one is left behind.

UN member states are expected to adopt the new agenda at the Special Summit on Sustainable Development in September.

The Incheon forum showed there was still work to be done under EFA and MDG, despite significant strides in education.

Unesco Director General Irina Bokova said “nothing can be accomplished without education.”

Affirmation

For the Philippines, the new agenda confirmed the need for a 12-year publicly-funded, equitable quality primary and secondary education.

Under the agenda, at least nine of the 12 years would be free and compulsory and should result in relevant learning outcomes.  It suggested at least one year of free and compulsory quality preprimary education.

While some Filipinos oppose the K-12 basic education program, there is unanimous global commitment to it.

Education 2030 also mandates nations to provide meaningful education and training opportunities for out-of-school children and adolescents.

At present, there are about 121 million out-of-school children and adolescents. Some 781 million adults are denied the right to literacy, many of them victims of conflicts and disaster situations.

Only four out of 10 Filipino students who enter Grade 1, finish high school.

The Department of Education and its partners provide flexible learning pathways through nonformal and informal education.  Government-initiated efforts Alternative Learning System and Abot Alam involve various agencies and sectors in achieving zero out-of-school youth.

But the initiatives need funding and champions if no one is to be left behind or if the goal of walang mangmang na Pinoy (no Filipino is illiterate) is to be achieved.

Education 2030 would also ensure quality education by providing teachers the training and support they need. Teachers’ remuneration, training and participation in decision-making would have to be raised as they are important in the delivery of education.

The agenda stressed that literacy and numeracy skills were essential to quality education, which includes analytical, problem-solving and high-level cognitive, interpersonal and social skills.

Quality education, it pointed out, develops skills, values and attitudes to respond to local and global challenges.  Resilience, teamwork, intercultural dialogue and creativity are “must-have”   skills.

Inclusive, responsive

The Incheon Declaration would promote a more inclusive, responsive and resilient education system. It recommended capacity development for comprehensive risk reduction   to ensure that education continued during  conflict, emergency, postconflict and early recovery.

The global agenda encourages life-long learning opportunities in all settings and all levels of education, including technical and vocational training and higher education and research. It stresses the need to harness information and communication technologies.

Education 2030 said the government had the main responsibility of implementing the agenda and upholding the right to participate of all stakeholders.

It proposed a significant increase in education financing and higher public spending in keeping with international and regional benchmarks, allocating at least 4-6 percent of a country’s gross domestic product and/or at least 15-20 percent of total public expenditure to education.

Several countries, however, proposed “contextualization” and adherence to national priorities.

Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and a leading expert on economic development and the fight against poverty, said MDG failed because the global community did not provide funds for education.

He suggested looking for billionaires to fund education, in the same manner that Bill Gates supported health advocacy.

But Rasheda Choudhury, executive director of Campaign for Popular Education in Bangladesh, said, instead of following millionaires with begging bowls,   she would rather follow government money from taxes that should go to development.

Following the adoption of the Incheon Declaration, a Framework for Action is being finalized as part of the joint position for the Special Summit in New York, keeping in mind World Bank president  Dr. Jim Yong-kim’s assertion that “we have no success unless every child is educated.”

Fr. Jerome Arenas Marquez, SVD, is executive director of Arnold Janssen Catholic Mission Foundation Inc., which has 4,000 Alternative Learning System learners in 102 community learning centers in Luzon.  See
www.educationals.org.