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Législations et politiques nationales sur la scolarité payante ou gratuite – Georgia

Le fait que l'éducation délivrée par l’Etat soit gratuite ou payante n’est pas anodin. Tous les pays du monde ont signé au moins un traité international les obligeant à délivrer une éducation primaire gratuite et obligatoire, suivie progressivement par l’enseignement secondaire. L’éducation ne peut pas être obligatoire si elle n’est pas gratuite, mais cette contradiction est trop souvent ignorée. De plus, que signifie exactement la gratuité dans un monde où les apprenants, les parents et les communautés locales supportent une multitude de coûts officiels ou déguisés ? Une enquête de Katarina Tomasevski en 2006 montrait que dans la grande majorité des pays à travers le globe, l’éducation n’était pas réellement gratuite. Les citations concernant votre pays ci-dessous (selon la disponibilité des données) sont extraites de cette importante étude.

 

Les lois et les politiques nationales sont des applications de la Constitution, qu’elles devancent parfois car elles sont plus souvent révisées et renouvelées. Les lois sont faites par le gouvernement, les parlementaires et l’administration, souvent en consultation avec la société civile. Cela les rend vulnérables et soumises à un risque de régression dans la mesure où elles deviennent souvent des instruments au service de visions politiques et de priorités à court terme. Les lois et les politiques sont ouvertes au changement et à l’influence par le biais du processus démocratique et des campagnes de la société civile. Et leurs violations doivent, si possible, être dénoncées devant les tribunaux ou les autorités judiciaires.

 

 

 

 

L’Etat est l’acteur central de toute réclamation relative au droit à l'éducation, il est le premier responsable de sa délivrance, le premier à le mettre en œuvre, le premier garant, le signataire vis-à-vis des normes et des standards internationaux, et il est lié par l’obligation de respecter, protéger et mettre en œuvre le droit à l'éducation. C’est en conséquence l’Etat qui doit être jugé et questionné sur les textes relatifs au droit à l’éducation, qu’il s’agisse de la Constitution, de lois ou de stratégies politiques.

The government of Georgia claimed in its PRSP, in June 2003, that primary education had already been universalized. This is not confirmed in internationally comparable statistics which place the enrolments in primary school for 2003 at 89%, while school attendance and completion are likely to be even lower. The subsequent transition of governance through the ‘rose revolution’  raised expectations that governmental performance would substantially improve and that government’s self-assessments would come closer to reality.

Also, corruption-free public services constituted an important popular demand at the time of the ‘rose revolution’, including in education. One facet of previous governmental policy made corruption in education inevitable because teachers’ salaries had been set below the official poverty line. In 1995, the average teacher’s salary of $10 per month was insufficient to cover the cost of public transportation to and from work.  The consequences were detrimental and affected all public education.

In particular, informal charges in the form of ‘private tuition’ emerged so as to supplement inadequate teachers’ salaries. The Committee on the Rights of the Child was concerned in 2000 that “low wages have forced teachers to offer private tuition, creating a two-tier system of education”. Other forms of corruption proliferated, such as the sale and purchase of school places, exam results and grades. In its reports under human rights treaties, the government admitted that such “an informal system of payments” has transferred the financial responsibility for education to “Georgian households [which] fund much of the educational institutions”.

Formal legal guarantees of free education continued unchanged but the abyss between them and governmental policy broadened. The government allowed schools to charge tuition and other fees as well as to collect funds from parents as ‘additional expenses’ or ‘voluntary contributions.’ NGOs reported how these charges were levied in practice:

Teachers inform pupils of the necessity for additional payments for the needs of the school. There are always reasons for additional payments: school and class funds, new school inventory, etc. The fees are legal to a certain extent. Parents are requested to pay for additional expenses. Schools also receive voluntary contributions and they have a right to organize fund-raising events. Unfortunately, children very often participate in the collection of the fees.

Although the law mandates the first eight years of schooling to be free, for-fee education was formally introduced: “Fee-paying instruction and other activities are permitted at State- run educational institutions; the profits are at the disposal of the respective institutions'  administrations”. The permission to levy charges was a likely government’s response to its inadequate funding of public schools. The reasons for Georgia’s “chronically under-funded education” were, according to Neil MacFarlane, that “the Georgian state started weak and was further damaged by two de facto secessions and a civil war”. He has added that Georgia was “deeply dependent on western assistance,” much of which was wasted through corruption. As a consequence, formal and informal payments cover almost the entire cost of education. How much and how fast the post-2003 government will be willing and able to change the policy of public funding and thereby improve educational performance is an open question.