National law and policies on fee or free – East Timor

It matters if the state provides education for free or charges fees. Every state in the world has signed up to at least one international treaty obliging it to making primary education free and compulsory, and secondary education progressively so. But education cannot be compulsory if it is not also free and this contradiction is too often ignored. Furthermore, what does actually free mean in a world with numerous overt and hidden costs, to learners, parents, local communities? In a 2006 survey by Katarina Tomasevski education was not found to be genuinely free in the vast majority of countries in the world. The quote below on your country (if information was available) is from this very important survey.

The national laws and policies are the applications of the constitution, yet may be more advanced than this, as they are more often reviewed or made anew. Laws are made by the government, the parliamentarians, and the bureaucrats, often in consultation with civil society. However, this also leaves them open to vulnerability and retrogression as they can become instruments of short-term politics and priorities. Laws and policies are open for change and influence through the routes of the democratic process and civil society campaigns. And their violations should if possible be challenged through courts or judicial review.

The state is the central actor in any claim to the right to education, it is the prime duty-bearer, the prime implementer, it is the guarantor, the signature vis-à-vis the international norms and standards, binding it to respect, protect and fulfil the right to education. The sate must therefore be judged or challenged on its central text on the right to education, be it the constitution, the laws or the policies.

Please visit this report for footnotes on the above extract, for further information and for in-depth regional analysis on the status of school fees.

Source: K Tomasevski Free or Fee: 2006 Global Report (Copenhagen, 2006)