This report examines public-private partnerships in education, which are inextricably linked to rapidly expanding privatization. The Special Rapporteur highlights their implications for the right to education and for the principles of social justice and equity. Lastly, he offers a set of recommendations with a view to developing an effective regulatory framework, along with implementation strategies for public-private partnerships in education, in keeping with State obligations for the right to education, as laid down in international human rights conventions, and the need to safeguard education as a public good.
In this report, the Special Rapporteur shows that non-formal education programmes provide flexible, learner-centred means to improve education outcomes. This is particularly relevant for girls and groups in vulnerable situations, including children with disabilities, minorities and rural and impoverished children, who are disproportionately represented among out-ofschool populations. When designed to be available, accessible, acceptable and adaptable, such programmes enable States to fulfil the right to education of learners who are excluded from the formal system. Furthermore, such programmes can promote holistic learning objectives that support cultural and linguistic rights.
Finaly, the Rapporteur calls upon States to recognize non-formal education as a flexible, cost-effective mechanism that can provide quality education and that can help States to meet their obligations in connection with the right to education.
In this report, the Special Rapporteur commends the efforts made by Governments, who were under harsh pressure, to preserve human lives while facing scientific uncertainties.
The health crisis has had numerous implications in all sectors of human life, leading to an economic crisis, as well as to what must be called an education crisis. In this report, the Special Rapporteur analyses the issues she considers to be the most pressing from a human rights perspective. Acting within a human rights framework is indeed crucial to ensure that measures adopted in response to the pandemic do not jeopardize the right to education and do not increase the suffering of the most marginalized.
The Special Rapporteur stresses that while numerous innovative measures have been adopted in all corners of the globe by many governmental as well as non-governmental stakeholders to ensure some continuity of education, they could never have been expected to compensate for the patent global lack of preparedness for a crisis of this magnitude. Past failure to build strong and resilient education systems and to fight entrenched inequalities has opened the door for a dramatic impact on the most vulnerable and marginalized, to which no temporary measure adopted in haste could have fully responded.
The Special Rapporteur makes a number of recommendations in this regard. In particular, a thorough assessment should be conducted to unpack, in each local context, the dynamics at play that led to increased discrimination in the enjoyment of the right to education during the crisis. It should include an analysis of rising inequalities due to the measures adopted to face the pandemic; an investigation into the sustainability of economic and financial models behind education systems, including the consequence of poor funding of public educational institutions; a scrutiny of the role of private actors in education; an evaluation of the adequacy of social protection provided for education workers, including in the private sector; and scrutiny of the lack of cooperation between States’ administrations, educational institutions, teachers, learners, parents and communities.
Furthermore, the Special Rapporteur stresses that the deployment of online distance learning (together with radio and television), should only be seen as a temporary solution aimed at addressing a crisis. The digitalization of education should never replace onsite schooling with teachers, and the massive arrival of private actors through digital technology should be considered as a major danger for education systems and the right to education for all in the long term. A thorough debate needs to take place on the place that should be given to such learning in the future, having in mind not only possible opportunities but also the deleterious effect screens have on children and youth, including their right to health and education.
In the present report, the Special Rapporteur considers ways in which the right to education contributes to the prevention of atrocity crimes and mass or grave human rights violations. Stressing that education has a key role to play at all stages of prevention, the Special Rapporteur underlines the particularly forceful preventive potential of the right to education in the very early stages, before warning signs are apparent. That role is to be linked with the aims of education and the right to inclusive and equitable quality education, as established in international instruments.
The Special Rapporteur, highlighting circumstances under which schools can become tools for division and lay the groundwork for future violent conflicts, focuses on a number of steps regarding the organization of school systems, pedagogy and the values and skills to be transmitted to learners that are crucial in terms of prevention. She proposes an education framework (known in English as the “ABCDE framework”) that encompasses the interrelated features of education needed in order for the preventive potential of the right to education to be fully deployed.
In the present report, the Special Rapporteur examines how the right to education, and the commitments made under the Sustainable Development Goals, provide guidance for governance in national education systems. She considers how the right to education should be mainstreamed into education governance. Governance in this context can be thought to include the laws, policies, institutions, administrative procedures and practices, monitoring and accountability mechanisms, and judicial procedures that are related to education. A rights-based approach should be adopted to ensure not only that nondiscrimination and equitable access for all are mainstreamed, but also that learners who have been the hardest to reach, including members of vulnerable groups, are prioritized, even if such decisions run counter to the traditional emphasis on efficiency.
In the present report, the Special Rapporteur reviews the role of equity and inclusion in strengthening the right to education, in particular in the context of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
The Special Rapporteur concludes by calling for States to take significant, positive actions to tackle discrimination, inequity and exclusion in education to ensure that the Sustainable Development Goals are met.
In this report, the Special Rapporteur sheds light on the vision and concept of lifelong learning and highlights the emergence of the “right to learning”, intertwined with the right to education and training as a social right. He also examines State responsibility, along with that of other social partners, for its realization and underlines the key importance placed on lifelong learning in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The Special Rapporteur also looks at the special role that devolves upon technical and vocational education and training for skills development and analyses the issues in financing lifelong learning.
Finally, the Special Rapporteur offers a set of recommendations with a view to promoting learning as a right and its pursuit from a lifelong learning perspective, in keeping with State obligations as set out in international human rights instruments.
The COVID-19 pandemic has wreaked unprecedented havoc on children, families and communities around the globe, disrupting vital services and putting millions of lives at risk. Since March, attempts to avert the global health crisis have seen nationwide school closures in 194 countries.
This report spotlights one particular vulnerability that is known to be exacerbated by school closures in times of crisis and risks the continued education of vulnerable children: teenage pregnancy. World Vision estimates that as many as one million girls across sub-Saharan Africa may be blocked from returning to school due to pregnancy during COVID-19 school closures.
Read this report, to learn about some of the girls who will be impacte and find additional information on both the problem as well as proposed solutions.
The SMM has been monitoring the ability of children on both sides of the contact line in Donetsk and Luhansk regions to attend classes and enjoy a safe and secure school environment since 2015. In the report, the SMM presents its observations related to damage to educational buildings due to shelling and gunfire; dangers posed by mines and UXO; educational facilities used by the Ukrainian Armed Forces or the armed formations or where positions and equipment are close to educational facilities; hardships faced by children and educational staff; and impediments to the SMM’s access to information on educational facilities. The report covers the SMM’s observations from 1 January 2015 until 31 March 2020.
This report, produced by Mwatana for Human Rights (Mwatana), examines attacks on and impacting schools and education facilities between March 2015 and December 2019 by the warring parties in Yemen. The report does not cover many other attacks and abuses that have killed, wounded and otherwise harmed school- age children during the conflict, which have ranged from airstrikes that have killed or wounded dozens of young children, to recruitment and use of school-age children across Yemen