June 23, 2002

UNICEF’s report highlights the importance of spending on the basic education of children

The case for investing in basic high-quality education — particularly in the education of girls — has been well established. Education does more than produce clerks or clerics: it enhances life and expands opportunities for all. The benefits can be seen across the board. Farmers who can read and have learned something about finding and sorting information will be better able to keep pace with developments in agriculture: a study of 13 low-income countries indicated that a farmer with four years of schooling produced an average of nine per cent more food than one who had none. Education has been shown to act as a ‘vaccine’ against the twin dangers of hazardous child labour and HlV/AIDS.

Girls given the opportunity to go to school, moreover, tend not just to improve their own life chances and potential but those of their future children and families - and of society as a whole. Girls’ education has been proven to reduce child mortality, improve child health and nutrition, improve women’s health, and also to reduce population growth, given that educated women tend to marry later and have fewer children. Societies that invest in educating girls and boys equally reap huge development dividends. “Investment in the education of girls,” says the World Bank, “may well be the highest-return investment available in the developing world.”

More than just an investment, education is also a fundamental right set out by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights as well as the Convention on the Rights of the Child. What’s more, UNICEF firmly believes that improving girls’ education is the best and quickest way of tackling poverty and of creating more just societies. It coordinates the UN Girls’ Education Initiative, launched by the UN Secretary-General at both the World Education Forum in Dakar in April 2000 and the Millennium Summit in September 2000.

The existing African Girls’ Education Initiative has proved over the last five years that targeted programmes make a real difference. Among the strategies that are working: recruiting more women and training teachers to be sensitive to gender and child rights; rooting out gender bias from textbooks and educational materials; ensuring that parents and the local community are involved; increasing pre-school provision and care; ensuring that schools are located where girls can reach them safely; providing separate latrines for girls and boys; and eliminating tuition fees and other costs that deter the poor from sending their children to school.

The knowledge is there: After the last decade of research and experience it is clear what works and what does not. What is required are individuals who will fight for the funding necessary to extend the opportunities for learning to all children. The international community took a significant step forward at the World Education Forum by reaffirming the goal of Education for All while also setting new goals and higher standards — in expanded and improved care and education in early childhood, especially for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged. It also set as its year 2015 target not only universal access to primary schooling as before but also the completion of high-quality primary education by all children, including girls, ethnic minorities and those in difficult circumstances. Dakar reaffirmed the centrality of girls’ education in any serious development strategy and stressed that the deadline for eliminating the gender gap in primary and secondary enrolment, unlike most of the other international development targets, has been set for 2005 rather than 2015. Four short years are left for the world to deliver equal rights for girls to learning, literacy and the empowerment of education.

Adolescence

The third opportunity for making wise investments comes during a child’s adolescence. The adolescent years are a period of very rapid development for young people in every way — physical, emotional, psychological, social, and spiritual. This is in fact the most rapid phase of human development apart from the period just before and after birth. Yet it is also a time of great danger. It is these older children who are most vulnerable to some of the major threats to child rights — to HIV/AIDS, sexual exploitation, exploitative child labour, being caught up in conflict or used as soldiers. Adolescents are forced to enter these arenas of risk often without the information, skills and access to support services that they need.

Adolescence is also a critical gateway to improving the women’s situation. The well-being of adolescent girls is pivotal in breaking down the cycles of gender discrimination that relegate far too many girls to the same disadvantaged position as their mothers. It is in these years, for example, that the gender gap in education yawns widest: While six per cent more boys than girls in developing countries enrol in primary school, the gap opens up to 16 per cent in the secondary years — and in South Asia reaches an alarming 36 per cent. It is teenage girls who are most likely to be threatened by sexual abuse, trafficking or exploitative forms of child labour; just as it is they who are compelled by cultural insistence or overt command towards early marriage and childbearing.

Specific provision for the needs of young people often falls by the way-side given the competing demands and priorities of adults, who can exert political pressure. But, again, governments that have ratified the Convention on the Rights of the Child must accept that adolescents have inalienable rights that are patently ignored at present. Adolescents have the right to relevant and reliable information from a variety of sources, including parents, teachers, the media and peer educators. They have the right to be taught the life skills they need for the teenage years when they are exploring their own identity and independence — skills in negotiation, conflict resolution, critical thinking, decision-making, communication and earning a livelihood. Adolescents depend for their well-being on a safe and supportive environment that includes adults who care about them. They also have the right to participate in decisions that affect family life.

Securing and guaranteeing these rights would not only help young people, it would help human society as a whole. Adolescents make up a very large proportion of the population in developing countries, yet, as a group, they are too often ignored. They tend to be treated as a potentially delinquent, problem group instead of being valued for their energy and resourcefulness. We depend on young people’s vibrancy and idealism for our capacity to change, to shake ourselves out of the corroded habits and patterns of cynicism that stand in the way of a better, more decent worlds.

Excerpted with permission from
The state of the world’s children 2002: leadership
UNICEF, 3 UN Plaza, New York, NY 10017
Tel: 010212-326-7513
Email: pubdoc@unicef.org
ISBN 92-806-3667-7
103pp. US$12.95

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