Responder al comentario

I agree that the principle of non-discrimination is a strong and fundamental element of international human rights law. Much progress has been achieved around the world thanks to the application of this principle (and in many areas, not only education).
 
However, if taken to the letter, it does not offer protection from other forms of discrimination based, for example, on health status, age or income. Yet, people living with HIV/AIDS (both students and teachers) are still often excluded from education and even when they are not, they are otherwise stigmatised or discriminated against in terms of attitudes by fellow students, colleagues, or parents. Age is equally, although more subtly, discriminatory when educational systems do not allow adults to enrol in schools on the assumption that these are places only for children or when curricula and delivery systems are not adapted to the needs of adults. Discrimination on the basis of income or economic status is one of the most widespread forms of exclusion if one thinks about the impact that direct and indirect fees/costs have on access to education for the poorest or most deprived groups of any society.
 
Lists are always limiting and not exhaustive, and one can understand that, but in order to “fully expose” discrimination, we need to name and identify as many manifestations of discrimination as possible. Here is where interpretations by courts and judicial/administrative bodies can really help make a difference (and they already have in many cases). On free education and accessibility, for example, the Colombian Constitutional Court in 2003 held that lack of income and transportation costs need to be taken into account when assigning children to schools [see http://www.right-to-education.org/node/685]. As for adult education, the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights emphasised in General Comment 13 that the right to fundamental education is not limited by age [see http://www.right-to-education.org/sites/r2e.gn.apc.org/files/Adult%20literacy%20flyer.pdf]. For HIV/AIDS, the Kerala High Court is a case in point: in 2006 it issued a notice to the district education officers and the Parent Teachers Association ordering a school to re-enrol five HIV-positive children who had been expelled.
 
One way of better using the existing framework, therefore, could be to encourage advocacy groups, education coalitions, the media, civil society and governmental actors to publicise and popularise case-law, administrative decisions, and authoritative interpretations by human rights bodies in order to offer and share concrete illustrations of this principle and inspiration for similar actions elsewhere.