Partnerships for providing better access to basic education

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Partnerships for providing better access to basic
education

• Richard Maclure
• Faculty of Education
• University of Ottawa
• rmaclure_at_uottawa.ca

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Part 1 BASIC EDUCATION HEALTH EVIDENCE OF
THE CONNECTION. Source L. H. Summers (1994).
Investing in All the People Educating Women in
Developing Countries. EDI Seminar Paper No. 45,
The World Bank, pp. 9 13.
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Part 2 TRENDS IN BASIC EDUCATION CURRENT
DISCOURSE

• Dakar Framework for Action
• MDGs
• Partnerships
• State/Civil society relations
• Paris Declaration The role of international
  donors
• Child rights approaches to education

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Dakar Framework for Action

• A re-affirmation of Jomtien EFA (1990)
• early childhood education
• free primary education
• appropriate learning and life-skills programmes
• significant advances in adult literacy
• eliminating gender disparities by 2005,
  achieving gender equality in education by 2015
• good quality education measurable learning
  outcomes.

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Commitments to the Dakar goals

• governments to prepare national action plans
• involvement of civil society
• no country to be thwarted by lack of resources /
  global mobilisation of resources
• annual monitoring report.

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The Millennium Development Goals

• Goal 2 Achieve universal primary education
• ensure that all boys and girls complete a full
  course of primary education
• Goal 3 Promote gender equality and empower women
• eliminate gender disparity in primary and
  secondary education preferably by 2005, and at
  all levels by 2015

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Partnerships

• A. State / Civil society relations
• Reasons underlying CSO participation in basic
  education
• limited government capacity to expand sustain
  basic education
• trends towards decentralization, democratization,
  community participation in social services

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• improved economies of scale
• better quality and performance outcomes
• international support for civil society capacity
  building state/CSO collaboration

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B. The Paris Declaration The role of
international donors

• Key indicators of donor agency partnership
• ownership
• alignment
• harmonization
• managing for results
• transparency accountability

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Child rights approaches to education

• curricular reforms
• structural reforms e.g., healthy schools,
  violence-free schools, feeding/nutrition
  programs, etc.
• constructivist, child-centred pedagogies (e.g.,
  child-to-child strategies)

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Part 2 FALLACIES, LIMITATIONS,
CONTRADICTIONS

• EFA or MDGs ? dilemmas arising from shifting
  competing agendas of different international
  protocols
• International national target setting flaws
  fallacies

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Contradictions

• Education for . . . .
• development of human resources vs. uncertain
  use of human resources
• social equity mobility vs. social selection
  reproduction
• progressive change vs. reinforcement of the
  status quo

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• success vs. the fostering of failure
• critical thinking vs. rote memorization
  indoctrination
• peace safety vs. sites of violence

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Diverse participant agendas

• healthy individual cognitive social growth
• employment family security
• human resource (capital) development economic
  growth
• citizenship and socio-political democatization

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Diverse nature effects of participation

• Civil society participation democratic action
  or elitist co-optation?
• Private sector participation revitalization of
  education OR rollback of the state
  marketization of a public good?
• Participation as democratization or
  de-politicization?

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Part 3 Ways Forward

• Increased attention support for local schools
  and out-of-school education linked to local
  needs / job creation / community health
• Greater curricular pedagogical emphasis on
  schools as havens of safety and as forums for
  health education

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• Greater attention to childrens participation and
  child-centred pedagogy as foundations of
  appropriate good quality education
• Increased attention to the viability of children
  as participants in educational policy-making,
  planning, delivery, and evaluation
• Acknowledgment of the limits of education,
  corresponding attention to context to capacity
  building, transparency in governance, economic
  investment, job creation

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• Unflagging attention to the nexus between gender
  equity in education and increased community
  health
• Emphasis on inter-disciplinary evaluation
  applied research that engages the partnership
  among health education researchers, in
  conjunction with health education policy-makers
  practitioners.