Education for All Goals: Dakar Framework for Action, Education for All: Meeting Our Collective Commitments - UNESCO, 2012

The Education for All (EFA) movement is a global commitment to provide quality basic education for all children, youth and adults. At the World Education Forum (Dakar, 2000), 164 governments pledged to achieve EFA and identified six goals to be met by 2015. Governments, development agencies, civil society and the private sector are working together to reach the EFA goals.

The Dakar Framework for Action mandated UNESCO to coordinate these partners, in cooperation with the four other convenors of the Dakar Forum (UNDP, UNFPA, UNICEF and the World Bank). As the leading agency, UNESCO focuses its activities on five key areas: policy dialogue, monitoring, advocacy, mobilisation of funding, and capacity development. 

In order to sustain the political commitment to EFA and accelerate progress towards the 2015 targets, UNESCO has established several coordination mechanisms managed by UNESCO’s EFA Global Partnerships team.

Six internationally agreed education goals aim to meet the learning needs of all children, youth and adults by 2015.
 
Goal 1: Expanding and improving comprehensive early childhood care and education, especially for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children

Goal 2: Ensuring that by 2015 all children, particularly girls, children in difficult circumstances and those belonging to ethnic minorities, have access to, and complete, free and compulsory primary education of good quality.

Goal 3: Ensuring that the learning needs of all young people and adults are met through equitable access to appropriate learning and life-skills programmes

Goal 4: Achieving a 50 per cent improvement in levels of adult literacy by 2015, especially for women, and equitable access to basic and continuing education for all adults.

Goal 5: Eliminating gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2005, and achieving gender equality in education by 2015, with a focus on ensuring girls’ full and equal access to and achievement in basic education of good quality.

Goal 6: Improving all aspects of the quality of education and ensuring excellence of all so that recognized and measurable learning outcomes are achieved by all, especially in literacy, numeracy and essential life skills.


UNESCO’s mission is to promote education as a fundamental right, to improve the quality of education and to facilitate policy dialogue, knowledge sharing and capacity building.

UNESCO coordinates the global drive towards Education for All and leads the United Nations Literacy Decade (UNLD), the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD) and the UNAIDS Global Initiative on Education and AIDS.

The EFA Global Partnerships Team is responsible for coordinating global actions aimed at achieving the EFA goals. Among top coordination priorities are the following:

Promoting partnership –Education for All can only be achieved through broad partnerships between governments, bilateral agencies, civil society groups and the private sector. UNESCO facilitates dialogue among these partners to ensure strong linkages and coordinated action. The Working Group and High Level Group on Education for All are mechanisms that enable stakeholders to assess progress and develop strategies for meeting the leading challenges facing countries.

Mobilizing resources – National and domestic resources are insufficient to reach EFA. UNESCO plays a coordinating role through high-level advocacy to keep education on the top of policy agendas, such as the G8. It also promotes and supports South-South cooperation, public-private partnerships and other mechanisms to mobilize more resources for education.

Ensuring effective use of aid – UNESCO speaks out for basic education in international efforts to coordinate effective aid delivery (see OECD-DAC), promotes aid effectiveness at the national level among different partners, collects data for planning and monitoring and negotiates EFA priorities with donors and national authorities.

Communication and advocacy – ensuring strong visibility for the entire EFA agenda at the international, regional and country level in order to sustain political momentum and commitment. This includes working closely with the media, facilitating knowledge-sharing between countries and encouraging better information exchange between agencies.

Monitoring progress – Every year UNESCO publishes the EFA Global Monitoring Report, an independent publication that tracks progress towards the EFA goals and trends in international aid to education, and analyses major challenges that must be met to reach EFA. Each edition focuses on a specific theme (e.g. early childhood, gender, literacy, quality and governance). The UNESCO Institute for Statistics provides internationally comparable data on a wide range of educational indicators.

Capacity-building - The development of capacity at the national level to plan and manage education systems is crucial for advancing towards the EFA goals. This work is being carried out by a specialised division of UNESCO’s Education Sector, IIEP and many Field Offices.

Key documents: Dakar Framework for Action, Education for All: Meeting Our Collective Commitments

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