This publication begins with the need to dismantle prevalent misconceptions because they hinder the advancement of education as a human right. Those conceptual obstacles which are particularly widespread are tackled, and their dark sides highlighted. This publication strives to provide food-for-thought because there are reasons for denying that education is a human right and these have to be brought into the open and countered effectively.

This article aims at connecting economics, education and gender in the MDGs, inviting world leaders to reaffirm education as a human right and as a major driver of economic and social development. 

According to international law, States have the principal responsibility ‘to ensure the direct provision of the right to education in most circumstances.  Although private education is allowed under international law, there are specific conditions and limitations under which private education must operate.  While empirical data about the effectiveness of public and private schools is needed to inform the debate on how to achieve quality education, there also needs to be criteria to assess the measures for determining ‘effectiveness’ and to define what models of private education are acceptable.

This paper identifies a set of criteria for assessing the conditions and limitations of private education drawing from human rights standards applicable to African States.  It explore criteria that examine the central role of the State, universal free primary education, progressively available secondary and higher education, the aims of education, non-discrimination, and regulation of private education providers.  An examination of these standards will provide an initial set of criteria for assessing the role of private education in Africa and a basis for further research.

 

This background paper, commissioned by the Education Commission to inform the report The Learning Generation: Investing in education for a changing worldaims to clarify the relevant provisions in human rights law that refer to the involvement of non-State actors in education in mixed education systems. Making reference to international human rights law, it analyses three cases studies (Pakistan, Chile, and community schools) selected to represent the wide variety of roles played by non-State providers in different geographical areas.

This document compiles the national laws on private provision of education for most of the countries in the world.

This Concept Paper outlines the broader issues which have been addressed in order to establish a set of right to education indicators based on the 4-A framework as developed by Katarina Tomaševski, the first UN Special Rapporteur on the right to education. It explains the choices made when developing these indicators and discusses human rights indicators with a focus on the right to education.

On 7 July 2014, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) held a General Discussion on the Right to Education for Girls and Women, the aim of which is to commence the Committee’s process of elaborating a “General Recommendation on girls’/women’s right to education.”

Thirteen organizations from around the world, included the Right to Education Initiative, presented a written submission to CEDAW on ‘Privatization and its Impact on the Right to Education of Women and Girls,’ highlighting evidence from a range of countries showing that more boys are enrolled in schools than girls, a problem that is exacerbated by the increasing privatization of education.  Privatization in many cases deepens gender discrimination in education because already marginalized and vulnerable groups, including women and girls, are more disadvantaged by private provision and are the least able to pay for services.

Key resource

This paper was prepared for the 2013 UKFIET International Conference on Education and Development for a discussion on using a rights based approach to setting post 2015 education goals. Education is a human right enshrined in a number of international human rights treaties and integrated at the national level through national constitutions, legislation, and policies. The human rights legal framework enunciates international standards that States must adhere to. Both MDGs and EFAs lack a robust accountability mechanism and are not explicitly linked to international human rights standards. This needs to change, as parallel frameworks should be complementary and mutually reinforcing. However, the Right to Education Initiative has observed a number of potential threats to education rights, such as privatisation, a reductionist approach to learning outcomes, watered down perceptions of equality, austerity measures, lack of accountability on legal guarantees, among others, at these early stages of consultation in the lead up to developing new education goals and targets. This paper explores the implications of some of these threats and how this may impact efforts to improve accountability. 

 
Key resource

This paper is the Right to Education Initiative’s contribution to the on-going discussions to refine the formulation of the post-2015 education goal and targets and to identify related indicators to measure progress towards them. This paper argues that there is a need to introduce a human rights perspective to the post-2015 agenda and furthermore that right to education indicators can give a fuller account of the progress made by States towards achieving the post-2015 goals. Before proposing specific indicators to measure the post-2015 education goal and targets (VI), the paper underlines the importance of linking the post-2015 education agenda to the right to education (II), and demonstrates how the post-2015 education goal and targets are linked to the content of the right to education (III) and extant State obligations (IV). This paper then reflects on the added value and limitations of applying right to education indicators (V).

This background paper is an introduction to the framework used by the Right to Education Initiative to develop rights-based indicators for education. It has been developed for a consultative workshop on indicators for the right to education held in 2010 and offers a series of starting points for discussion.

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