May 24, 2003	Saturday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 21,1424

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ISLAMABAD, May 23: The Islamabad Declaration on Education for All (EFA) on Friday urged the governments of South Asia to allocate progressively a minimum of 4 per cent of the GDP to education.

The declaration adopted after three-day ministerial conference of South Asia on EFA Forum also urged the international agencies and donor community to honour the commitment made in World Education Forum in Dakar for adequate external financing of EFA goals, better coordinated and more transparent aid to education and ensuring urgent, more extensive and broader debt relief or debt cancellation for basic education.

The ministerial meeting will be held at Dacca (Bangladesh) on the theme “decentralisation” in 2005.

The declaration also impressed upon the G-8 countries to expedite the finalisation of the procedures for Plus-5 countries and the consequent release of funds against the Fast Track Initiative (FTI) along flexibility to take into account the country-specific reforms to accelerate progress towards achieving the EFA and Millennium Development Goals in the region.

The declaration noted with concern that South Asia faced many formidable challenges like high level of poverty, illiteracy, inequality and inadequate quality of education.

The declaration committed to give attention to quality and access and to make efforts to scale up programmes on quality which have demonstrated promise in outcomes. It also recognized that all key stakeholders in education i.e. learners, parents, teachers, community, civil society organizations and government were the most accurate assessors of education quality.

The declaration promised to make efforts in ensuring access to ICTs as a cost-effective quality learning tool for all students and teachers as we transform towards knowledge-based societies.

It also recognized and appreciated the role of the NGOs in promoting gender equality at all levels and extended full support including resources to their work.

The declaration also committed to enhance allocations for formal, non-formal education, adult literacy and early childhood care and education (ECCE) and recognized the urgency for enhanced and predictable resource mobilisation and allocation to education to meet financing gaps and targets in a timely manner.

It suggested tapping of domestic resources through public- private partnerships for creating an enabling environment in which civil society organizations will undertake access and quality initiatives for EFA, make available adequate financial resources to implement and sustain EFA programmes by 2015, undertake to provide reliable and consistent databases through involvement of all stakeholders and monitor regularly progress towards EFA goals and targets including periodic assessments.