Education For All ‘Is Unfinished Business’: UNESCO

Photo credit: UN Photo/ Michael Cooper

by UNSDN: http://unsdn.org/?p=13244

The second of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals which is education for all might appear to be “unfinished business” after the goals are reviewed for post-2015, the assistant director general for education at UNESCO, Qian Tang, has said.

Western-educated Chinese education expert Qian Tang pointed out that fourteen years after the year 2000, there are still 57 million children out of school, almost 800 million adults cannot read and write, and 250 million children either in or out of school who cannot read and write in a correct way.

While education remains to be a pillar for all other development goals and a pillar for all basic development goals in this world as pointed by the assistant director of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) at the conference organized by the Mission of Norway to the EU.

Illiteracy was also highlighted as being another reason for concern. 15 years ago, there were 800 million adults that could not read and write, while today there were 775 million, the UNESCO official explained.

It was also discussed that girls continue to have unequal access to primary, secondary and tertiary education in many developing countries, especially in some Arab States, South and West Asia and Africa.

On the positive side, he said that the MDGs had played a role to motivate and mobilize the countries, and all stakeholders, to put more efforts on education. He also advised not to limit future efforts on access to education, but to also focus on the quality of education.

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