A clear and well-thought out focus is crucial to ensure that you will be able to carry out your research with adequate rigour and incisiveness, as well as to increase the effectiveness of youradvocacy efforts.

This preliminary step will help you determine which aspect(s) of the right to education you shouldmonitor. The nature of your work may automatically shape the scope of your monitoring work. For example, if your organisation’s mission is to serve the local community and to work with local schools, then your geographic scope may already be determined.

It is also likely that your initial motivation to monitor the right to education comes from the fact that you have already identified a specific problem in education that you want to address. If this is the case this step may still be useful in helping you to critically assess your chosen thematic focus and to determine whether it requires further refining.

Nevertheless, if you consider that the thematic focus of your monitoring project is both well thought through and sufficiently narrow, you may skip this section of the Guide and move directly to Step 2.

Various criteria should be taken into account when determining the thematic focus of yourmonitoring work, including:

Your organisation's remit

Your organisation’s remit may determine the type of monitoring project you undertake. For instance, your organisation may have a pre-determined geographic scope or area of focus, such as promoting women’s rights or the rights of persons with disabilities. In these instances it makes sense to focus your monitoring project on the obstacles that these specific groups face in fully enjoying their right to education.

Issues from the field

You may become aware of education issues from your work in the field or through media reports. For instance, if your organisation brings cases to court and you notice that there is a recurrent problem in the education system, you may decide to carry out a monitoring project to better understand the issue.

The gravity and / or scope of the problem

If you are considering more than one potential thematic focus, you may want to prioritise those problems that affect more people (eg this project that found thatover half of children who finish fifth grade cannot do basic subtraction) and / or that are grave in terms of the violation (egcases of segregation where children from ethnic minority groups are placed into ‘special schools’ with lower quality education).

Your target audience

A key consideration in the focus and scope of your monitoring project is your target audience(s), who you are trying to influence with your monitoring report. Sometimes, the target audience may be theduty-bearer responsible for realising the right to education (eg the Ministry of Education). Other times, the primary target audience of your monitoring exercise may be an institution or mechanism that could influence the duty-bearers. For instance, you may write a monitoring report for a key meeting of the Education Parliamentary Committee, with the expectation that this Committee will have the leverage to influence the government’s policy, or you may write ashadow report for aUN treaty body (see Step 6.2) when a State appears before that mechanism. In this case, the thematic focus of that mechanism will likely inform the thematic focus of your monitoring exercise, as explainedhere.

The allotted time for the monitoring exercise

If your monitoring project is meant to be submitted in an event or meeting with a fixed date (eg a UN conference or the inauguration of a new government) you may need to narrow the parameters of the monitoring project, in order to ensure you will have sufficient time to carry it out.

Skills of those carrying out the monitoring exercise

The aims of the monitoring project should be achievable by the people conducting the research. It is vitally important that you honestly assess the capacities of those involved and that you are able to enlist the expertise and skills of others if needed. For instance, it might be difficult to focus your monitoring on the financing of the education system, if you are not able to enlist – either in your own organisation or amongst other partners – people with some experience and skills on budget analysis. See Step 1.4 for further information on collaborating with others.

Advocacy opportunities

The leverage your organisation has to influence policy changes on a specific issue related to the right to education will often be the key criterion in determining whether you should focus your monitoring work on that issue. This is because, as we saw in Why monitor the right to education?, one of the key goals of monitoring the right to education is to influence policy-makers to fully commit to theprogressive realisation of that right. In some cases, you may choose to focus on a specific issue because there is a unique window of opportunity to influence the government on that issue. Other times, you may decide not to focus on an issue because, after analysing the political environment in the country, you reach the conclusion that the political obstacles areinsurmountable. If your organisation works at the regional or global level, you may decide to focus your monitoring efforts on a State that is up for review by a UN treaty body or other human rights mechanism.

For further information on advocacy strategies, see Step 6.2.

Typically monitoring projects on the right to education focus on one or more of the following categories: level of education, geographic focus, a specific marginalised group, a specific type of education, or a specific context. The table below presents some of the categories you may wish to focus on: 

You can further narrow down your thematic focus by concentrating on a category within a category. For instance, you may focus on unequal access to a specific level of education of a specific marginalised group, as Amnesty International has done in thisreport .

Another strategy is to focus onmultiple forms of discrimination, for instance girls from an ethnic minority, living in poverty.

Lastly, as you undertake your monitoring project, you may find that you narrow down your focus because the outcome data you gather (Step 2.2)exposes where the most serious deprivations and inequalities occur.

Monitoring the right to education is often a complex endeavour, requiring a variety of skills and expertise. Therefore, you may wish to consider collaborating with others. In addition to providing financial or technical assistance, they can increase the credibility of your work, and help to harmonise theadvocacy message across the particular region or area that you work in.

To assess whether you and / or your organisation should collaborate with other people or organisations, you should consider the following:

Identify resources needed

Make a list of the various types of resources you will need to carry out the monitoring project. Resources may include specific expertise or skills and access to data andstakeholders you want to interview. You should also take into account that the resources that are needed may change as the project evolves. 

Resources needed to carry out monitoring projects on the right to education may include:​​​

• Skills in quantitative and qualitative research.
• Field research and documentation skills.
• Knowledge of human rights standards and how to apply them.
• Familiarity witheducation policies and processes.
• Experience in writing for advocacy purposes.
• Access to policy-makers or civil servants who can provide data.
• Access to stakeholders in the field (school principals, teachers’ unions, etc).

Check your own resources

Assess whether you have all the necessary resources identified in the step above to carry out the monitoring project and the financial resources to cover areas that you are missing. Your organisation might be strong in some aspects of the monitoring process but fall short in others. For instance, you may have skills on quantitative and qualitative education research but not have sufficient knowledge of human rights standards to be able to apply them in concrete situations. You may have both of these resources but lack contacts in the area where you are planning to carry out fieldwork and therefore need a local partner who can facilitate access to schools, teachers, children, etc. 

Collaborate with others

If after the previous steps you realise that you do not have all of the resources needed to effectively carry out your monitoring project, you should considercollaborating with other organisations and individuals. Depending on the gap in your resources, you may decide to work, for instance, with community organisations, research institutes or human rights advocacy groups.

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This step starts with a brief explanation of the importance ofoutcome indicators inmonitoring the right to education.

It then goes on to explain how to use theIndicators Selection Tool  to select the most appropriate outcome indicators to measure the extent to which there are deprivations or inequalities in the enjoyment of the right to education relevant to the problem that you are seeking to solve.

Before starting this step, ensure that your project’s monitoring objectives are clearly defined and the scope sufficiently narrow, otherwise you will end up with a very long list of indicators. See Step 1.1 for further guidance.

The role of outcome indicators in monitoring the right to education

In order to gather evidence of violations of the right to education, you will first need to know the level of enjoyment of the right to education relevant to the focus of your monitoring project. For example, if your work is focused on the impact of armed conflict on girls’ access to education, you will need evidence that attendance rates have been adversely affected. Attendance and other metrics of right to education enjoyment are measured using outcome indicators.

Outcome indicators are important because they provide a snapshot of the level of enjoyment of the right to education. They can also be used to assess the impact of a State’s policy efforts and help evaluate whether States – as the primaryduty-bearer of the right to education – are complying with their human rights obligations.

Outcome indicators can help assess whether a State is complying with itsminimum core obligations, as data can reveal the extent to which the population is deprived of the most basic elements of the right to education.

Outcome indicators can also be used to measure theprogressive realisation of the right to education according tomaximum available resources, as data collected at intervals enables you to measure human rights progression orretrogression over time according to the level of a country’s development.

Furthermore,disaggregated data for outcome indicators can reveal inequalities in the enjoyment of the right to education by gender, ethnicity, socio-economic status or geographic location (eg urban / rural) which may be the result of the discriminatory effects of governmentpolicies.

It is important to remember that even if the data for the outcome indicators you have selected are suggestive of deprivations and inequalities, this does not necessarily mean that they are unavoidable and thus violations (see A monitoring framework). Sometimes, despite the State’s best efforts, the situation on the ground cannot be easily changed or improved. For example, economic reasons may temporary prevent students from poor families from attending upper-secondary education in countries with limited resources, such as in post-conflict contexts. The State may do its best to progressively implement the right to education but may not have the resources to offer grants at this level of education. It may also be the case that the impact of policies is not immediate, for instance when a State adopts measures to ensure the right to education of marginalised groups, it may take years to see an effect on the ground, and even longer for the data to reflect an improvement.

Establish your shortlist of outcome indicators using the Indicators Selection Tool

To select appropriate outcome indicators for your monitoring purposes, using theIndicators Selection Tool:

1. Go to the Types of Indicators criteria and selectOutcome Indicators. This will give you a list of the seventeen outcome indicators.
2. You can then narrow down the indicators list by selecting the criteria relevant to the focus of your monitoring work. For instance, if the thematic focus of your monitoring initiative includes access to primary education, you would filter down the selection of outcome indicators by choosingPrimary under the category Levels and Types of Education andAccess to Education within Areas of Focus. If your monitoring theme focuses on the right to education for migrants, you would filter down the choice of outcome indicators by choosing the sub-categoryMigrants, Refugees and IDPS within the criteria Marginalised Groups. If your project focuses on the right to education during armed conflict, selectArmed Conflict (Including Child Soldiers)  under the criteria Contexts.

It is important to remember that human rights monitoring is an iterative process. It is difficult to know the entire list of indicators that will be useful, until you have collected the relevant data. You should therefore be open to the possibility of adding further indicators at a later date.

Adapt your indicators

A key criterion for selecting an indicator is the extent to which it reflects an aspect of the right to education. However, in some instances there may not be data available for the indicator proposed by theTool  and you may wish to substitute this indicator for another that still captures the essence of the applicable human rights standard. For instance,primary completion rates are often used to measure the extent to which the right to free and compulsory primary education is enjoyed, however if there is no data available for your country or time-frame you can use theout-of-school rate for children of primary school age and failing that, theprimary net enrolment rate (which is in fact more a measure of access to education but nevertheless still tells you something about the enjoyment of the right to free and compulsory primary education). The Tool will provide you with all alternative indicators relevant to the criteria you choose.

One aspect of the right to education that you may need to find additional or alternative indicators for is thequality of education. This is because according to human rights law, theaims of education are to develop the child’s personality, talents and mental and physical abilities and his or her human dignity, self-esteem and self-confidence. Learning assessments and test results, therefore, do not fully measure outcomes in education quality. There is no consensus on reliable indicators regarding the development of a child’s personality that can be universally applied to all countries, contexts and marginalised groups such as persons with disabilities. Therefore, the Tool only provides outcome indicators for basic intellectual skills, such as literacy and numeracy.

When monitoring the quality of education, outcome indicators are rarely sufficient. You should also look atstructural andprocess indicators as they can better capture dynamic concepts. This is because structural and process indicators, unlike outcome indicators, tend to bequalitative rather than quantitative. A good research project should use both types of data. Examples of process and structural indicators include:Are there any established mechanisms that enable parents, children and / or community leaders to contribute to defining school curricula? andDo curriculum guidelines provided by the Ministry of Education include promoting respect for other nations, racial, ethnic or religious groups and indigenous people?

To monitor the right to education using structural and process indicators, see Step 3.

Effective human rightsmonitoring is based on reliable and credible data, and accurate analysis of this data using international human rights standards. Data collected with an unclear or biased methodology risks being dismissed, undermining the credibility of your findings, and therefore your capacity to engage in advocacy. It could even damage your reputation as an organisation.

This step is intended to give you general guidance on education outcome data.

Data sources

National governments and international development agencies regularly collect and publish education statistics obtained at intervals from various countries, as well asdisaggregated data.

There arethree types of data:

Adapted from UNESCO (2004) Guide To The Analysis And Use Of Household Survey And Census Education Data and Education Policy and Data Center (2004) About EPDC Administrative Data.

Where to find data in international databases

Data obtained from international data sets may be easier to obtain and this data has the advantage that its indicators allow forcross-country comparisons.

In theIndicators Selection Tool, if there is data available for the indicator in international databases, we have provided a link to it. If you do not find any links to databases for some of the indicators you have selected in Step 2.1, it is probably because no international data is available for that indicator. However, you may be able to find data from national sources, such as the Ministry of Education, the National Statistics Office and UNDP Human Development Reports.

The main international databases are:

The importance of disaggregated data

Under international law, States are required to collect disaggregated data based on various grounds ofdiscrimination. From a human rights perspective, collecting and analysing disaggregated data is crucial because inequalities across various segments of a population on various education outcome indicators often indicate that thechances people have to enjoy their basic rights to education are heavily shaped by the circumstances in which they are born and not by factors over which they have control. In many countries,being a girl, living in poverty, being disabled, belonging to an ethnic minority or living in rural areas radically reduces the chances of obtaining a quality education. Even more so when you fall into multiple groups and experiencemultiple forms of inequality.

For eachoutcome indicator (and relevantprocess indicators) in theIndicators Selection Tool, we have provided a list of possible levels of disaggregation.

Data published at the national level is particularly helpful for obtaining disaggregated data. International data sets usually do not have data disaggregated by ethnic groups or by regions / districts. For the latter, you may sometimes find data in national databases, or else be able to access data from the local government (eg the district education office). National data sets may also contain more up-to-date data than international sources.

Many States and other institutions often fail to disaggregate data by all relevant marginalised groups, making it difficult to ascertain whether outcomes differ across groups.

When disaggregated data by ethnic group is not available, it may be possible to use disaggregation by region or municipality, comparing right to education indicators data of those regions in which an ethnic minority makes up more than half of the population with those regions where they make up less than half of the population. If you are working on a marginalised group for which disaggregated data is not easily available (eg immigrants or refugees), you may need to collect your own data (see below). 

Rely primarily on existing data

In order to ascertain whether there are inequalities and deprivations in the enjoyment of the right to education, you are going to need data. In order to make your monitoring project more practicable, you should, whenever possible, select the outcome indicators for which there is existing data. A list of indicators for which you have no established data or where you lack the ability to obtain the data is not very useful. Beyond making the monitoring project more feasible, there are otheradvantages to using existing data.

When relying on existing data you should bear in mind that those who originally collected the data may have had reasons to distort that data. For instance, if resource allocation from the government to public schools is tied to enrolment, schools may report higher enrolment figures in order to obtain greater resources, producing distortions in the estimates of student enrolments and the number of teachers or classrooms. Likewise, private schools may under-report income and expenditure in order to derive greater benefits or lower their tax liability.

Therefore, whenever possible you should use a standard data source that is internationally accepted (such as those suggested for each indicator in theIndicator Selection Tool) and whenever doubts have been raised about the veracity of the data, you shouldassess the reliability of that data.

It may also be worth considering alternative sources of data, such as academic data sets or monitoring projects conducted by civil society organisations (CSOs).

If you cannot find any data, you may want to consider collecting your own.

Collect new data

For some indicators there may not be data available. It may be that no data has ever been collected for this indicator. For instance, for the indicatorspercentage of children with disabilities enrolled in mainstream schools andpercentage of children with disabilities enrolled in special schools it is likely that reliable data does not exist. It may also be the case that data is only partially available. For instance, often, statistics on enrolment rates will be available for the country but will not be disaggregated by region or by income. Or it may be that you have data but it is not of sufficient quality, eg it is too old. In such cases, you should consider whether you can collect your own data. For an example of CSOs collecting their own data, seehere.

If you decide to collect your own data, you should assess whether you have the necessary expertise to ensure that the data you collect is reliable and credible. If not, you should think about seeking professional help (see Step 1.4).

In this step you will learn how to assess the data collected in the previous step against benchmarks. This analysis can reveal whether your country is complying with key aspects of its human rights obligations regarding education.

Importance of benchmarks

The data you have collected for youroutcome indicators will generally not tell you much about the level of enjoyment of the right to education. For instance, if you found that the secondary completion rate is 89%, you will be able to say that there is an 11% shortfall from the ideal, but you would not be able to tell if an 89% secondary completion rate is very high or very low in relation to the country’s development level, or whether the country has made progress in ensuring this aspect of the right to education.

Therefore, it is often necessary to compare outcome data with various types of reference points, targets or benchmarks against which it can be judged.

Types of benchmarks

For the purposes ofhuman rights monitoring, we recommend using one of the following types of benchmarks against which to compare human rights indicators:

A commitment either by a State or by a specific government administration

​If a State, government or institution makes a commitment that binds them (measured using structural indicators), then it is possible to hold that body to account. A State may make legal commitments, such as ratifying ahuman rights treaty, enshrining the right to education in its constitution or enacting education legislation. A legal commitment is the highest form of commitment a State can make and therefore benchmarks associated with laws are particularly powerful when used to pressurise the government. There are also softer forms of commitment, for instance the adoption of education policies (which may include nationally determined benchmarks) and political commitment to development goals such as theEducation 2030 Incheon Declaration and Framework for Action andSustainable Development Goal 4 on Education, to which governments can be held accountable (although these development agenda are not fully aligned with human rights standards). In both cases, the commitment itself should also be scrutinised, as it could be flawed from a human rights perspective.

Nationally determined benchmarks

The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which monitors implementation of the International Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, recommends inGeneral Comment 1 that States set goals and benchmarks for each convention right because they provide an “extremely valuable indication of progress”. To find nationally determined benchmarks, it may be useful to look atState party reports.

A past value of the same outcome indicator

​By comparing data for the same indicator over time, it is possible to discern whether the level of enjoyment of the right to education has increased or decreased. Although decreasing levels of enjoyment are not evidence of a de facto violation of the right to education, it may be indicative of the State failing toprogressively realise the right to education, or the State takingretrogressive measures, an issue which could be elucidated when analysing education laws and policies (see Step 3).

Countries from the same region or with the same level of economic development

Cross-country comparisons can reveal whether the level of enjoyment of the right of education is lower than expected given the country’s level of development (as measured byGDP per capita) which is typically similar to other countries in the same region. For instance, you may have found that your country has significantly lower levels of an outcome indicator than other countries in the same region, even though your country has the same or higher levels of economic development. Such findings would beindicative of a problem in the progressive realisation of the right to education according to maximum available resources.

Disaggregated national data (male / female, indigenous / non-indigenous, etc)

In order to identify inequalities in access to and quality of education, you can comparedisaggregated data within and between groups, for example enrolment rates of boys compared to girls, or ethnic minorities against the general population. Ensuring non-discrimination and equal treatment is aminimum core obligation of the right to education; therefore a gap in a given indicator between two or more groups is evidence of a potential violation of the right to education, which would require further investigation through the analysis of laws and policies (see Step 3).

What can be measured with benchmarks?

The following table provides an illustrative list of simple methods for comparing data collected for outcome indicators with relevant benchmarks in order to assess the various dimensions of State obligations pertaining to the right to education. 

This step will help you to interpret the data you gathered in Step 2.2 and to decide whether that data reveals any potential shortfalls when compared with relevant benchmarks, as identified in Step 2.3.

Using the previous steps, you should have identified the most problematic dimensions of the enjoyment of the right to education that you aremonitoring. This is reflected in thoseoutcome indicators for which your country has the largest shortfall when benchmarked.

Now you can analyse those problematic dimensions in light of the relevant human rights obligations. For instance:

• Obligations of immediate effect andminimum core obligations require immediate action and must be prioritised by the State. If data for your chosen outcome indicator falls short of the benchmark, which for immediate and minimum core obligations tends to be implied in the content of the right itself, then there is a plausible reason to believe that the State is not complying with its obligations. For example, the obligation to guarantee free and compulsory primary education implicitly sets a benchmark of 100% forprimary education completion rate. Any shortfall is indicative of the State not meeting its immediate and minimum core obligation to guarantee free and compulsory primary education for all.
• The right to non-discrimination and equality is both an immediate and minimum core obligation. As such, data for outcome indicators that reveals significant inequalities between and across groups (eg girls vis-à-vis boys, ethnic minority group vis-à-vis majority group, rural vis-à-vis urban, etc)may be indicative of discriminatory policies (of action or inaction) against the marginalised group.
• Benchmarked outcome data may reveal that the State is failing toprogressively realise, according tomaximum available resources, various aspects of the right to education. For example, a lowsecondary completion rate compared to relevant benchmarks may indicate that the State is not taking all necessary steps and devoting its maximum available resources to the progressive realisation of universal free secondary education.
• Poor performance, as determined by benchmarking, on standardised tests (eg low value ofmean performance on the reading scale or highpercentage of students at the lowest level of mathematics proficiency) may raise concerns about thequality of education.

​To help you analyse the specific shortfalls in the enjoyment of the right to education that you have identified, we have included some information for each indicator in theIndicators Selection Tool that can help you interpret shortfalls in light of the relevant human rights standards (also provided). If you need further guidance on that issue, we suggest you review those standards. 

Lack of enjoyment: not necessarily a violation of the right to education

It should be stressed that evidence of deprivations or inequalities in the enjoyment of the right to education does not provide in and of itself conclusive evidence that a State has violated this right. This is because deprivations or inequalities may sometimes exist,despite a State’s genuine and ongoing efforts to eradicate them.

However, in most cases inequalities in the enjoyment of the right to education (reflected in inequalities in outcome indicators between various groups of a population) are created and / or exacerbated bydirect and / or indirect forms of discrimination. Therefore, finding evidence for such inequalities is often a first step in proving discrimination, which needs to be corroborated later in the monitoring process (see Step 3).

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This step explains how to use theIndicators Selection Tool  in order to select the most appropriatestructural andprocess indicators to assess whether the deprivations and inequalities you identified in Step 2 were avoidable and thus a result of State action or inaction.

States are permitted to realise the right to education through a variety of different means. This step focuses on the analysis of the most common of these –laws and policies.

Laws incorporate the right to education, as guaranteed by international law, into the domestic legal order. This creates a legal obligation for allduty-bearers to act in accordance or refrain from acting in a way that affects the enjoyment of the right to education as guaranteed by these laws.Most countries have enshrined the right to education in their constitutions, meaning that the right to education enjoys the highest form of legal protection.

Policies are more flexible than laws, and set out a government’s major objectives, defining the government’s priorities and strategies to implement the laws and achieve its education goals. Policies must be aligned with laws.

In this step you will learn how to assess the commitment of the State to the right to education, using structural indicators and the State’s efforts to transform its commitments into greater enjoyment, using process indicators.

Because the laws and policies (and other measures) that States implement address specific problems and contexts, the structural and process indicators that could potentially be applied tomonitor the right to education are numerous.

Your choice of which laws and policies to examine, and which structural and process indicators to select, will largely depend on whichfactors are preventing people from fully enjoying the right to education in your specific context.

The role of structural and process indicators in monitoring the right to education

In Step 2, you usedoutcome indicators to determine whether there is evidence of deprivations and inequalities in the enjoyment of the right to education. However, evidence of unequal enjoyment is rarely enough to show a violation of the right to education.

Structural and process indicators will help you link deprivations and inequalities with States’ efforts to comply with their obligations. By doing this you can demonstrate that these deprivations are attributable to the primary duty-bearer, thereby strengthening your case that a violation has occurred. Although structural and process indicators are distinct, used in tandem they measure policy efforts.

Structural indicators measure the commitment of the State to the right to education and can be used to assess the extent to which a State’s domestic law complies with international human rights law. Every country in the world is a State party to at least one human rights treaty guaranteeing the right to education, meaning that all countries have international legal obligations regarding the right to education. Structural indicators can tell you when a State fails to comply with these obligations and is thereby in violation of human rights law, including when a State adopts or fails to repeal legislation or policies incompatible with the content of the right to education and its associated obligations (see What to Monitor?). In some cases, a State may have favourable results regarding structural indicators, for example, they have ratified every relevant human rights treaty. However, it is important to remember that structural indicators measure commitment and not actual efforts.

Process indicators measure a State’s efforts to transform its commitments into greater enjoyment of the right to education. They can be used to assess the quality, appropriateness, effectiveness and efficiency of education laws and policies and theirimplementation, as well aseducation inputs. If the State has not adopted appropriate laws and policies to implement the right to education, the State is in breach of its obligations under international human rights law.

Establish your shortlist of structural and process indicators using the Indicators Selection Tool

In order to select structural and process indicators relevant to your monitoring exercise, you should use theIndicators Selection Tool.

As a first step, you should selectStructural Indicators and / orProcess Indicators under the Types of Indicators filter.

Depending on the focus of your monitoring exercise, you may also want to click one or more options under the other criteria.

If you are unsure which laws and policies to examine, you should consider the following: 

• The topic of your monitoring project

In many cases the topic of your monitoring project will help narrow down your set of indicators. For instance, if the topic of your monitoring initiative is the quality of teaching, you should selectStructural and Process Indicators and Teachers under Quality of Education, which is under Areas of Focus. This will include indicators on teachers’ training, qualifications, knowledge and experience, the availability of learning materials, the state of school facilities, etc. If the topic you are focusing on is the availability of education to persons in detention, you should selectStructural and Process Indicators and Persons in Detention within Marginalised Groups.

• Data on outcome indicators

Interpreting the data you gathered on outcome indicators may also help you select structural and process indicators. For instance, if you have found that there is a lack of access to education (reflected in, for instance, significantly low enrolment rates), you may wish to focus your analysis on education laws and policies that specifically address that issue, such as laws and policies on the availability of schools,school infrastructure, and teachers or ensuring free education. However, if you found that access to education is not a generalised problem (eg the national average for enrolment rates is quite high, even when compared with relevant benchmarks), but there is a persistent problem in access to education amongst some specific group (eg persons living in poverty, girls, persons with disabilities or an ethnic group) or region, then you would probably want to identify and critically analyse the policy efforts that typically contribute to that group in the population falling behind in the levels of access to education. The specific policy issues you focus on will vary depending on which group you are focusing on. For concrete examples of interpreting outcome education data, seehere.

• Factors preventing people from fully enjoying the right to education in a specific context

Analysing the specific factors that are preventing people from fully enjoying the right to education will help you determine which laws and policies to examine and which structural and process indicators to use, as illustratedhere.

Adapt your indicators

You may find that the indicators offered by theIndicators Selection Tool do not fully address the factors you want to examine. While Right to Education Project's ('RTE') indicators are intended to be comprehensive, they are not exhaustive. This is because there are amultitude of possible laws and policies that governments can legitimately implement to address a specific problem, indeed this is desirable as laws and policies should take into account the particular context and / or group in question. This means that that there are a corresponding number of possible structural and process indicators that may be applicable.

If you find that the structural and process indicators RTE offers are too generic or do not address the specific problem you are monitoring, you can add your own indicators. You should however bear in mind that the added value of right to education indicators is that they are based on and reflect international human rights law, and that they are used to measure the extent to which States fulfil their legal obligations. Therefore, if you use indicators that are not in the Tool, you should make sure that they measure a principle enshrined in international law.

You should also ensure that the indicators you add arespecific and measurable. This means that when different people use the same indicator to measure the same thing, they should end up with the same data.

For instance, if the focus of your monitoring exercise is on school infrastructure, you may add more specific indicators than those listed in the Tool. Thus, instead of just using the indicatorpercentage of schools with buildings in a state of disrepair, you may want to have a number of more specific indicators, such as percentage of schools with classrooms with leaky or collapsing roofs, percentage of schools with classrooms with broken windows, or percentage of schools with broken toilets.

In order to adapt or formulate new structural indicators you should consider whether the State that is the focus of your project has ratified an international human rights treaty that is relevant to the problem you are monitoring. For instance, if you are monitoring the right to education of children with disabilities, you may want to check theratification status of your country to theConvention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, as well as more general treaties such as theInternational Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and theConvention on the Rights of the Child. In addition you should also check that the State has not made anyreservations or declarations that limit the domestic applicability of the right to education.

You will also need to formulate structural indicators that measure commitment taken at the national and subnational level. For example, if you are monitoring the availability of primary education and have identified a problem in the recruitment of teachers, you should look for local, regional and national laws and policies that may impact on the recruitment of teachers.

If you create and adapt indicators that prove to be useful for monitoring the right to education in the field, please do let us know (contact information availble, here).

This step will give you general guidance on collecting data forstructural andprocess indicators.

Data sources

Since there are a variety of laws and policies that a State could adopt to fulfil its obligations regarding the right to education, the data sources related to process indicators are varied.

In addition to the data sources for outcome indicators, other sources that regularly produce data on structural and process indicators at the national level include:

Disaggregated data

As with data for outcome indicators, it is necessary to collect disaggregated data for process indicators, in order to compare whethereducation inputs are equitably distributed between different groups. For example, for the indicatoris there a special funding system to ensure access to education for students from marginalised groups? looking at whether the special funding system is accessible to all marginalised groups tells you about State efforts to address accessibility problems.

Because process indicators measure State efforts, it is not always possible to achieve the same the levels of disaggregation as for outcome indicators, which measure the level of enjoyment of the right to education. For outcome indicators, it is possible to show unequal enjoyment of the right to education by breaking down the data by marginalised group. However, this is not the case for process indicators. Process indicators such aspupil / teacher ratio andpercentage of trained teachers cannot be broken down by marginalised group; instead the levels of disaggregation will be related to the distribution and prioritisation of education inputs. For example, for pupil / teacher ratio, you should compare data for public and private schools, urban and rural areas, by region and by level of education. In this case, disaggregating data by urban and rural and by region, may tell you, by proxy, whether certain marginalised groups benefit less from State efforts. This is because certain regions may be dominated by particular minority groups, and people living in rural areas tend to be less well off than their urban counterparts. 

Disaggregated data for process indicators may also enable you to identify cases in which a marginalised group is disproportionally subject to a violation of the right to education, as illustrated in areport by the ACLU and Human Rights Watch, which found that in the United States, students with disabilities make up 19 per cent of those who receive corporal punishment, yet just 14 per cent of the nationwide student population.

TheIndicators Selection Tool  includes notes on interpretation for each process indicator, as well as how data for each process indicator can be disaggregated.

Where to find data

In theIndicators Selection Tool we have included a link to available data for some quantitative process indicators.

For qualitative process indicators and structural indicators, legal and policy documents can be found on Ministry of Education websites, in Parliamentary records and in a range ofaggregate databases.

Challenges in accessing offical data

You may encounter obstacles in accessing the data that you need to analyse laws and policies. The following table lays out some of the typical challenges that you may face and some suggestions on how to address them. 

Source: CAFOD, Christian Aid and Trocaire (2007) Monitoring Government Policies: A toolkit for civil rights organisations in Africa: p.22.

Collect new data

Beyond raising the issue with the government, when there is no data available for your process indicators, you may need to collect your own data. This may be particularly necessary with regard to theacceptability and adaptability of education, as it is crucial to learn about the perceived experience of those using the education system (ie children and parents). This type of information is typically unavailable andprimary data may need to be collected.

Methods for collecting your own data

Issues to take into account with gathering your own data

1. Principles of data collection

Data collection requires considerable time, resources and expertise. Since the success of youradvocacy strategy will depend on gathering reliable, credible evidence, there is little use in gathering evidence and presenting findings that can be dismissed as fabricated, unreliable or biased. To reduce the likelihood that your research is discredited, you should make sure that you observe thekey principles of data collection.

It may not always be feasible to observe the key principles of data collection, for instance when monitoring the right to education in emergency situations. In these instances, it may still be worth collecting data as important information may be revealed. However you should be transparent about your data collection methods and be aware of its limited reliability.

2. Geographic scope

Unless you have the necessary time, resources and technical expertise to conduct a nationally representative survey, it is advisable to limit the geographic scope and / or the thematic focus of your data gathering, to make the data collection effort more feasible.

An effective strategy to determine which geographic area(s) to focus on is taking one region in the country in which in Step 2.4 you found the worst levels of right enjoyment and compare them with a region in which you found the best education outcomes. For an example, seehere. 

As with the interpretation of data gathered for outcome indicators, it is necessary to compare the information you have gathered for yourstructural andprocess indicators with various types of benchmarks.

Types of benchmarks

For the purposes ofhuman rights monitoring you will need to be able to identify whether there are shortfalls in the information for the structural or process indicators you have selected. We recommended you use one of the following types of benchmarks:

International human rights standards

Compare laws adopted at the national level (ie structural indicators) with relevant provisions of international human rights law. This will enable you to assess whether those laws are in compliance with international human rights standards. For instance, if the laws on education do not require compulsory and free primary education, this would fall short of theinternational standard that primary education shall be compulsory and available free to all.

Laws and policies

Compare the data you compiled on particular policy issues against the commitments undertaken by the government innational laws orpolicy documents. Policy documents may reveal the rationale behind a government policy or intervention. You could then contrast that rationale with the manner in which that policy is carried out, as illustratedhere.

Disaggregated data

Disaggregated data for process indicators can help you determine whether State efforts havediscriminatory effects. For instance if the distribution and prioritisation of education inputs by the State favours certain regions, groups of people (the general population, people living in urban areas, relatively well-off families, etc), types of school or levels of education, then a case can be made that the State is allocating its resources in a way that exacerbates inequalities within society. For example, regions dominated by the majority group may have a higherpupil / textbook ratio compared to regions that are home to high numbers of minorities. This indicates that the State prioritises the distribution of education inputs to the majority group.

Cross-country comparisons

Bycomparing the data you compiled on any given process indicator with data from the same indicator from other countries you can identify whether the government’s effort to realise the right to education are comparable with neighbouring countries and / or countries with a similar level of development (as measured byGDP per capita). For instance, if your country has a much lower percentage of textbooks per pupil, or a higher pupil-teacher ratio than most of the countries in the region, it would suggest that the government has failed to ensure the availability of these essential education inputs in sufficient quantity. Similar to Step 2.3, cross-country comparisons over time can also be useful for assessing whether progress has been better or worse than that of other similar countries.

A past value of the same process indicator

Comparing present year data with a past value of the same indicator can reveal whether the State has made progress or hasregressed in providing for theeducation input necessary for the full enjoyment of the right to education. A decreasing commitment to provide for education inputs may be indicative of a problem in theprogressive realisation of the right to education according tomaximum available resources. For instance, if you find that thepupil / textbook ratio has increased over the years (ie the average number of pupils per textbook in schools is higher than in the past), this may indicate that the government is failing to provide equal access to quality education, since textbooks are one of the major teaching and learning resources used in schools and in many countries many low income families cannot afford to buy their own textbooks.

This step will help you identify some of the key problems in the State’slaws and policies that may be having a detrimental effect on the full realisation of the right to education, through the analysis of the data you gathered in Step 3.2.

Firstly, this step will help you identify whether the data for your selectedstructural indicators reveals that there is a problem with the State’s commitment to the right to education.

Secondly, this step will provide you with guidance on how to interpret, in light of relevant human rights standards, the shortfalls you may have found in theprocess indicators when benchmarked (see Step 3.3).

Finally, this step will help you identify specific problems in the policies and implementation patterns that the government is undertaking to realise the right to education.

3.4a Interpret data for structural indicators

After you have identified deprivations and inequalities in the enjoyment of the right to education, the first thing you should look at is the commitment of the State to the right to education, using structural indicators. This is because a lack of commitment could be the reason why enjoyment is unacceptably low. For example, it may be the case that a contributing factor for low levels of enjoyment of primary education is that no laws or policies exist to address the obstacles that prevent access for marginalised groups.

You should also review relevant constitutional provisions, legislation and policies in order to identify gaps in the protection the right to education, as well as inconsistency with international human rights law, as illustratedhere.

Legal analysis is particularly helpful in identifying cases wherediscrimination is entrenched in law, for instance when the law specifies that schooling will be provided exclusively in the language of the majority, not allowing linguistic minorities the opportunity to learn in their own language which is shown to have a detrimental impact on the development of the child.

Moreover, legal analysis in areas such as the family code (egminimum age for marriage) and labour laws (eg discriminatory practices in salaries or working conditions for women) could help identify laws that, although not specific to education, may actually have a detrimental effect on girls’ access to school.

A useful source for identifying gaps in existing legislation and policies regarding the right to education is thefinal observations and recommendations made by UN human rights mechanisms, as shown inthese illustrations.

3.4b Interpret data for process indicators

In Step 3.3, you will have identified those process indicators for which your country has the largest shortfall relative to a suitable benchmark.

At this stage, you can analyse those shortfalls in light of the relevant human rights standards and make a preliminary determination as to whether a violation of the right to education has occurred. As mentioned in What to Monitor?, this requires an analysis of whether the State has breached its legal obligations when applied to the normative content of the right to education.

The normative content of the right to education is derived from human rights instruments. However, right to education provisions tend to be broad, for example: “Primary education shall be compulsory and available free to all”. This provision does not elucidate the form of education, its quality, or whether local authorities can charge for textbooks, school meals, transportation, etc.

There are a number of ways courts, quasi-judicial bodies and other stakeholders have conceptualised and determined the normative content and scope of the right to education. The most common and widely used (including by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights) is the4As framework, developed by Katarina Tomaševski.

The following table illustrates how to link your findings from the previous two steps with the normative content of the right to education in order to determine whether a violation has occurred:

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This step will help you assess whether the policy failures you identified in Step 3 are a result of inadequate financing. This will further strengthen your case that the deprivation or inequality you have identified is avoidable.

Firstly, the connection between education financing and the right to education will be explained. You will then be introduced to the three most important expenditure and resource allocation ratios that measure States’ efforts with regard to the fulfilment of the right to education. Lastly, you be guided on how to interpret the data you gather for these ratios when compared to relevant benchmarks.

The role of education and resource allocation ratios in monitoring the right to education

States are subject to different types of obligations regarding the right to education, one of which is totake appropriate financial measures.

Given that all human rights impose positive obligations, it is unthinkable that the obligations the right to education entails can be met without financial resources. However, as explained in What to monitor?, international human rights law acknowledges that the full realisation of the right to education is not immediately achievable due to resource constraints and instead imposes an obligation toprogressively realise certain aspects of the right to education according tomaximum available resources, although it should be stressed that some aspects of the right to education impose obligations of immediate effect.

Obligations of immediate effect are unqualified and not limited by other considerations. Vis-à-vis the right to education obligations of immediate effect include:

• Mobilise as many resources as possible, including maximising domestic revenue through the collection of tax.

• Prioritise economic, social and cultural rights in the use and allocation of their resources.

• Efficiently spend funds, including ensuring funds are not wasted through overpaying for goods and services.

• Ensure that expenditure is effectively spent, that is, expenditures must have the effect of enhancing peoples’ enjoyment of the right to education.

• Fully spend funds allocated to the right to education.

• Ensure that funds allocated to education are not be diverted to other areas, especially programmes that are not related to economic, social and cultural rights.

The obligation to dedicate the maximum available resources to the realisation of progressive elements of the right to education is itself subject to the obligation “to strive to ensure the widest possible enjoyment of the right to education under the prevailing conditions”.

The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) also makes it clear that resource constraints, even in times of economic recession, do not eliminate the obligations to monitor enjoyment levels of the right to education, and to devise strategies and programmes to realise the right to education (Paragraph 11). The CESCR also specifies that there is a special duty to protect the most vulnerable members of society through the adoption of relatively low-cost targeted programmes (Paragraph 12).

Expenditure and resource allocation ratios can be used to conduct a basic analysis of expenditure patterns. Ratios can help to assess the adequacy and distribution of resources allocated to education. More specifically, ratios can help you identify when a government:

• Devotes insufficient resources to the education sector, hampering the realisation of minimum essential levels or the progressive realisation of the right to education, as illustratedhere.
• Prioritises aspects of the right to education that are subject to progressive realisation rather than obligations of immediate effect or minimum core obligations, for example disproportionate spending on tertiary versus primary education, as illustratedhere.
• Fails to raise sufficient revenues to be able to adequately fund the education inputs necessary to fully realise the right to education.

Using the Indicators Selection Tool

To access the finance indicators, selectEducation Financing under the selection criteria Governance and Policy Processes.

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If data is available for the indicator you have selected, you will be directed to the relevant source.

Expenditure and allocation ratios

 1.  Education expenditure ratio

This ratio refers to the percentage ofGDP spent on public education. This is the most basic expenditure ratio related to the right to education. It provides a snapshot of the extent of State commitment to the provision of education, reflecting the level of resources the State is willing to invest in education relative to its level of development.

A low education expenditure ratio means that resources may be insufficient to effectively address the various obstacles inhibiting access to quality education.

  2.  Education allocation ratio

This ratio refers to the percentage of public expenditure allocated to education. It reflects the relative priority given to education amongst competing budgetary needs.

According to international law, national sovereignty implies that governments have a wide margin of discretion in selecting the appropriate measures necessary for realising economic, social and cultural rights. This includes spending priorities. Nevertheless, there are limits to that discretion. Therefore, the extent to which a low education allocation ratio is problematic from a human rights perspective depends on the circumstances. If a State has not fulfilled its minimum core obligations regarding the right to education, for example, a significant number of individuals deprived of the most basic forms of education or a wide disparity in the primary completion rates of boys and girls, then a low education allocation ratio would not be justified.

Thus, this ratio can help expose and challenge cases in which a government might make false arguments about lack of sufficient resources to discharge its duty of progressive realisation when, in fact, the problem is not resource constraints but rather the preference of that government to use available resources for other less essential areas, as illustrated here.

  3.  Primary education priority ratio

This ratio, which refers to the percentage of the total education expenditure allocated to primary education, reflects priorities within a given educational system. The interpretation of this ratio will depend once again on the circumstances. Countries that have already achieved high enrolment rates and standards of primary education may be justified in prioritising secondary or higher education, for example. However, in countries where a significant proportion of the population is illiterate or where many children are deprived of the most basic forms of education, a low primary education priority ratio could be interpreted as a violation of the State’s minimum core obligations to provide free and compulsory primary education.

As for Steps 2.3 and 3.3 benchmarks can help you assess the adequacy of the ratio levels. 

Types of benchmarks

Specifically, ratio levels can be compared with the following types of benchmarks:

State formal commitments

Compare ratio levels with guarantees and commitments made in documents such asconstitutions, laws, policies and national plans. For instance, if a country’s national laws state that acertain percentage of the national budget should be allocated to education or stipulate a specific percentage for some level of education (eg primary education) you can compare the actual budget allocation with that set in law and make the case that the budget allocation is inadequate according the country’s own laws.

International benchmarks

TheEducation 2030 Incheon Declaration and Framework for Action sets spending targets for educaton at at least 4% to 6% of gross domestic product and / or at least 15% to 20% of total public expenditure. 

Beyond looking at expenditure ratios, there are multiple other factors related to the management of financial resources that bear upon the realisation of the right to education according tomaximum available resources, including:

Discriminatory distribution of education resources

The prohibition ofdiscrimination is an immediate obligation under human rights law. This means States cannot invoke a lack of resources as a reason for non-compliance. It is therefore necessary to analyse whether resources are being distributed in a discriminatory manner amongst different groups.

One form of discrimination would be if funding for education is disproportionally allocated to districts where most people are from the majority ethnic or religious group. This could be assessed by comparing the education budget allocated per child in districts where most people are from the majority ethnic or religious group to that where most people are from minority ethnic or religious groups.

Another form of discrimination includes unfair distribution patterns of public education programmes that benefit people other than those who need assistance most. Paragraph 12 of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultral Rights (CESCR) General Comment 13 states: “In times of severe resources constraints whether caused by a process of adjustment, of economic recession, or by other factors the vulnerable members of society can and indeed must be protected by the adoption of relatively low-cost targeted programmes.” A failure to meet this immediate obligation can be assessed by contrasting the benefits of a programme with levels of deprivation that the programme is supposed to address, as illustratedhere.

Discrimination resulting in inequities in the quality of the provision of education is a related problem. The CESCR recognises that “sharp disparities in spending policies that result in differing qualities of education for persons residing in different geographic locations may constitute discrimination under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights” (CESCR General Comment 13, Para 35). One way to measure this is to compare data,disaggregated by region or municipality, on the quality of an essential education service (eg quality of teachers or conditions of school facilities) with demographic data from the same regions or municipalities disaggregated by ethnic group or poverty level. This could show, for instance, that less qualified teachers – a primary factor in the quality of education – are teaching in the areas largely populated by an ethnic minority or persons living in poverty, as illustratedhere. 

Gap between approved budget and its execution

Inertia of the budgetary process may undermine a government’s decision to adopt a policy that prioritises marginalised groups

In many countries budgets are to a great extent determined by inertia – utilising past budget allocations to determine budgets for the forthcoming year. This inertia in the budgetary process mayundermine the intentions of a government to shift its policy priorities in order to comply with its human rights obligation.

The first step in assessing whether the education budget is largely determined by inertia is to compare the current budget with those of previous years. If the education budget (and the composition of the budget, such as the percentage allocated to the various levels of education and amount dedicated to infrastructure) is static buteducation policy has changed significantly, this may indicate that insufficient resources have been allocated to fully implement the new policy.

You may want to interview government officials (from the Treasury or the Ministry of Education) and ask whether, over those years, education priorities have changed. If they have, you should ask them how is it that if priorities have changed, these changes are not reflected in the budget. You may also want to ask whether the Ministry of Education requested extra funds from the Ministry of Finance to adequately cover new education priorities and policies. If they offer no reasonable response, you could reasonably infer that the budget is determined to a great extent by inertia. Alternatively, you may prefer a more direct approach and ask to what extent past budget allocations are used to determine budgets for the upcoming year.

Timely flow of resources

Another aspect that should be assessed is the extent to which resources reach schools in a timely manner. A failure to do so may undermine the government’s efforts to comply with its obligations regarding the right to education. For instance, if schools, local authorities or education ministries receive the funds necessary to buy essential resources (eg textbooks) towards the end of the school year, this may affect children’s right to education. For an example, seehere. 

Corruption in the education sector

In many countriescorruption in the education sector is rampant, siphoning scarce public resources into private pockets and undermining the government’s ability to provide quality education for all. Frequent forms of corruption in education include the illegal charging of ‘enrolment fees’, selling educational material and school supplies that should be distributed freely, accepting bribes to influence the selection of grant recipients, selling school diplomas or exam scores, and the use of school facilities by administrators or other people for private purposes.

Various aspects of corruption can be assessed. These include:

• The extent to which there is corruption in the education sector (in comparison with other sectors).
• The areas of the education sector in which corruption is more widespread (egprocurement of textbooks, demand of illegal fees, chronic absenteeism of teachers, etc).
• The marginalised groups that bear the brunt of the corruption practices in the education sector.
• The governance weaknesses (both within the education sector and overall in the country) that are driving corrupt practices (eg inadequate salaries for teachers, inadequate accountability mechanisms, people’s lack of awareness about the services they are entitled to, etc).

Various methods and tools can be used to assess corruption in the education sector, including:

• Household surveys that measure people’s actual experience with corruption in the education sector (and other relevant sectors) are particularly helpful in assessing the impact of corruption on everyday lives. Experience-based surveys also help to identify the extent to which disadvantaged groups bear the brunt of corrupt social services and whether corruption impacts on access to education and related services.
• Interviews with various education stakeholders, including parents, teachers, head teachers, representatives of school governance bodies (eg Parent Teacher Associations) and local government officials, can help to uncover problems in the use of public resources for education and in the accountability mechanisms regarding those resources. For examples of relevant questions, seehere. For examples of monitoring exercises using this method, seehere.
• Another method for assessing financial management is to track public expenditures. Data on budget allocations on education provides a rough indication of the relative importance a government attributes to this area, but offers little insight into how much actually reaches schools. To analyse this and other issues related to budget utilisation, Public Expenditure Tracking Surveys (PETS) devised by the World Bank could help you to track the flow of resources from the central government (eg Ministry of Finance) through the various levels of state administration down to schools the front-line service facilities, focusing on en route leakages and corruption. For information on conducting PETS, seehere. For an example of the effectiveness of this method, seehere.

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In a lot of countries, many of the lasting problems in the delivery of education – unequal access to schools, poor quality, chronic teacher absenteeism, endemic corruption – are related to weak accountability mechanisms.

Rights imply duties, and obligations - to be effective - require accountability mechanisms. Human rights law can be used to hold governments – the primaryduty-bearer of human rights – accountable for avoidable deprivations and inequalities of education outcomes.

As part of your monitoring effort, you may want to assess the key accountability mechanisms that affect the full realisation of the right to education, including:

Inspection system within the education sector

Under international law, States are obliged to “establish and maintain a transparent and effective system which monitors whether or not education is, in fact, directed to the educational objectives set out in article 13 (1)” (Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) General Comment 13: Para.49). In addition all education provided by private actors must conform to State-approved minimum standards and the State must maintain a transparent and effective system to monitor such minimum standards (CESCR General Comment 13: Para.54). For these reasons, most countries have oversight mechanisms within the education sector, enabling the Ministry of Education to assess theavailability, accessibility, acceptability and adaptability of its services, as well as its impact on the population. In evaluating the extent to which this type of system is effective in holding schools, teachers and school principals accountable for their performance, you may look at the following issues:

• Is there a school inspection system?
• Is the school inspection system adequately staffed?
• Do inspectors have adequate training and qualifications?
• Do inspectors receive human rights training?
• Do inspectors spend enough time in each school in order to provide effective evaluation?
• How often do supervisors visit each school?
• Do inspection guidelines meet theaims of education?
• Are private schools subject to inspection by the State?
• Is there a body that monitors private education?
• Has the State set or approved minimum educational standards applicable to private educational institutions?
• Do the findings of monitoring and evaluation have an impact on policy reform and programme implementation?

Complaint mechanisms

Most countries have complaint mechanisms that allow individuals to file complaints if they feel that their right to education has been violated. These complaint mechanisms, typically a human rights commission, an ombudsman or a Parliamentary Committee, provide an institutionalised process through which duty-bearers can be held accountable in relation to their duties, andright-holders can demand a remedy for human rights violations.

To assess the extent to which existing complaint mechanisms in your country serve as an effective means for accountability regarding violations of the right to education, you may want to analyse the following issues, using theIndicators Selection Tool:

• Thenumber of administrative complaints on the right to education would indicate the extent to which the complaint mechanisms are being used.
• The percentage of right to education complaints resolved within a given time frame may indicate whether the procedure is efficient and timely.
• A comparison of the number of complaints received by the oversight institution(s), the number investigated, the number substantiated by investigation and the number of sanctions for staff and / or redress for the citizens involved. Theproportion of received complaints on the right to education that have been investigated by an administrative body would demonstrate the extent to which the institution has effective enforcement powers.
• The extent to which the public has readily accessible information about the existence and procedures related to complaint mechanisms.
• You could also assess the extent to which the oversight institutions responsible for handling complaints meet certainminimum conditions to be able to hold the government and civil servants accountable for violations of the right to education.

Judicial accountability

In countries where the right to education has been recognised in the constitution or in legislation and isjusticiable, courts can play a key role in holding governments to account. (If the right to education is not formally recognised and redress is not possible, then this is evidence of a lack of accountability.)

The number of legal cases that have been brought under these provisions is one indicator of their effectiveness, as is thenumber of court cases on educational rights. However, it is important to bear in mind that these numbers are not always due to the effectiveness of courts at holding governments to account. They could be due to: better investigative techniques, increased confidence in the judicial system that has led more people to report abuses, an increase in cases that have been brought against certain political opponents, or other factors. At the same time, a major factor influencing judicial accountability is the degree ofjudicial independence. Therefore, beyond looking at the number of cases brought to courts under provisions related to the right to education, it is also necessary to examine theproportion of court cases on the right to education that have been adjudicated against the State. You may also want to look at how and if court judgements are effectively enforced.

Access to information is essential to enable people to exercise their human rights. Without relevant, timely and accurate information,right-holders cannot know which services they are entitled to, what the costs are (if any), which complaint mechanisms exist to seek redress when their right to education is violated, etc. For instance, without clear and easily accessible information about a school scholarship programme, parents may not know whether their children are eligible for a programme that may be their only means to afford to send their children to school.

Transparency is also the backbone of accountability. The efforts of civil society organisations and the media to hold governments accountable for the provision of quality education can be significantly undermined without regular access to government documents, data and records. For instance,lack of access to adequate budget data makes it harder to hold a government accountable for policies that are supposed to address inequalities in education.

In order to evaluate whether the education policy / programmes you are monitoring are adequately transparent, you may examine the following indicators, amongst others:

• Public availability of information on education produced by the State:Is the education data gathered by the State publicly available?Does the State body responsible for monitoring the education system produce regular and publicly available reports on the state of education?
• Service provision:Are there transparent procedures for the hiring process of teachers and for contracts / tenders for education services?
• Criteria for targeted programmes:Are the criteria used to select the schools or children that benefit from targeted programmes publicly available?
• Budgetary information:Is there public access to key public financial documents related to education?
• Legislation on access to information: Is there a freedom of information law? Are the provisions of this law adequate to comply with thehuman rights principle of transparency?

Public participation in the design, implementation and monitoring of education policies is a fundamental human right. Underlying this principle is the basic idea thatrights-holders should be active agents, rather than passive recipients. Public participation also helps to strengthen theacceptability and adaptability of education, allowing the government to know more about the concerns, needs and preferences of different groups.

As part of your monitoring effort, you may assess the extent to which the public is encouraged toparticipate at all stages of the education policy cycle.

TheIndicators Selection Tool includes a number of indicators designed to analyse the extent to which a wide range of education policies adopted by the government are adequately participatory. These include:

• Are there any established mechanisms that enable parents, children and / or community leaders to work with the school staff in carrying out school self-assessments and developing school improvement plans?
• Are there any established mechanisms that enable parents, children and / or community leaders to contribute to defining school curricula and other parts of the learning process, and to making decisions on the school environment?
• Are there established mechanisms to enable parents, children and community leaders to contribute to the formulation and / or implementation of strategies to identify out-of-school children, to encourage school attendance and to reduce drop-out rates?
• Are there established mechanisms to enable parents, children and community leaders belonging to minorities to contribute to ensuring that education takes their needs into account?
• Are measures taken to enhance parents’ understanding of the importance of their children’s early education?
• Are there effective mechanisms to ensure that civil society organisations are consulted when national educational policies and legislations are agreed upon and multilateral or bilateral agreements that have an effect on the right to education are negotiated?
• Do civil society organisations face obstacles set by the State when monitoring the right to education?

Furthermore, in order to evaluate whether the various participatory mechanisms set up by the government regarding these education policy / programmes are adequately participative, you may examine the following:

• Inclusiveness: To what extent were the mechanisms set up by the government for participation in the formulation of the policy / plan inclusive, allowing different groups of the population - especially traditionally excluded or marginalised groups – to actively participate in the various stages of the policy cycle?

• Informed participation: Did the government provide the necessary information to the public -through means that they can actually access - about key aspects of the education policy / programme (eg the scope of the problem it’s trying to address, its objectives and time-bound goals, intended beneficiaries, the resources available, etc) to enable informed participation?

• Impact of participation: To what extent were the inputs from variousstakeholders taken into account? What was actually incorporated into the policy / plan and subsequently implemented?

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The final stage of the monitoring process involves the preparation of a report, which should present your findings, conclusions and recommendations.

Structure

The content and structure of the report will depend on your advocacy objectives and the audience you are trying to reach. However, certain elements are crucial,including:

 1. Introduction 

The introduction should make a concise presentation of your organisation and the goal(s) of the report. You should explain what motivated you to undertake this monitoring exercise, the subject of the report, the time period it was conducted over, the sample used, and who carried it out. The introduction should familiarise the reader with the study´s primary conclusions. If it is well written, the introduction will attract readers´ attention and encourage them to read the rest of the report.

 2. Methods

This section should include details about the research methods you used. For instance, you could provide information about the main data sources you used and whether you relied primarily on official data sources or conducted your own data gathering, in which case you should specify the methods you used. If you conducted interviews with children, parents, teachers or otherstakeholders, you should provide details about the number of people interviewed, the types of questions asked, etc. You should also acknowledge methodological limitations, for example if data was unavailable.

 3. Findings

This section constitutes the main body of the report. Findings should be presented in a clear and succinct manner. You should present the evidence you gathered related to unequal enjoyment of the right to education (reflected in the data you gathered onoutcome indicators) as well as on the shortcomings you found in education policies, whether these policies were affected by resource constraints, and the processes through which these policies were formulated and implemented. This section should include an analysis of all the evidence you have gathered, explaining the ways in which that evidence reflects problems in terms of the right to education. See below for effective ways of communicating your findings.

 4. Conclusions 

See below.

 5. Recommendations

See below.

 6. Appendices and glossary

If you use technical terms in the report, you may want to include a glossary. Likewise, an acronyms list.

Adapt the report to your audience

Sometimes you may need to adapt the structure of the report for specific purposes. For instance, the structure of ashadow report to aUN treaty body would usually follow the structure of the corresponding government report, which in turn will typically be structured around each of the articles of the treaty in question.

Guidelines / tips

When drafting the report, you should follow some basic guidelines:

Ensure accuracy and credibility

The effectiveness of your whole monitoring exercise hinges on the quality of the evidence on which it is based. That is why it is socrucial to ensure that the evidence is accurate and your analysis rigorous and methodologically sound. Bear in mind that the institutions you criticise in your report (the Ministry of Education, the government, etc) may try to discredit your findings. So any inaccuracy in the data or unfounded conclusions could seriously undermine your credibility and the credibility of your report.

Consider the tone and language of the report

Make sure that evidence is presented in a clear and concise manner and that thelanguage and tone are not off-putting.

Ground your analysis in human rights standards

All monitoring exercises on the right to education should be grounded on the normative framework of international human rights law to which governments around the world have voluntarily committed themselves. Therefore, the report should make explicit reference to thehuman rights standards relevant to the findings of the report.

Make your report advocacy-oriented

When writing the report, think through how to present the findings in a way thatmaximises its advocacy potential. Your report should effectively communicate the data you have collected, make clear conclusions that articulate the main messages you are trying to communicate and make concrete and action-oriented recommendations.

How to communicate your collected data effectively

The way you convey the evidence you gathered during the monitoring process is crucial for effective advocacy. Even the most robust findings may fail to reach policy-makers if they are not well presented.

Most likely during the monitoring process, you will have gathered a large amount of data. You should refrain from including all that data in the report, as large amounts of information is overwhelming for the reader and dilutes your key message(s).

In your report, you should include data that supports your main findings. You will also need to determine the level of technical specificity. Once you have decided which data to include, you should then think through how to convey that data. Generally speaking, while tables allow for the efficient presentation of a large amount of data in an organised manner, graphs and info graphics are often a more compelling way of communicating information to various stakeholders.

Make recommendations

Without specific, concrete and actionable recommendations, there is little chance that your monitoring initiative will have concrete effects on policies and practices related to the right to education.

The recommendations should be based on an analysis of the shortfalls you found throughout the monitoring process with regards to the State’s obligations on the right to education.

When making recommendations based on your findings and conclusions, you should take into account that according to international human rights law, States enjoy a wide margin of discretion in selecting the means for implementing their obligations pertaining to the right to education. Therefore, it is necessary to draw a balance between making concrete recommendations (that could be actually implemented by the State) and not making them too specific, so that the State can determine which specific measures to adopt in order to fulfil its obligations regarding the right to education.

In most cases, you would address most of your recommendations to the State, which bears primary responsibility for the protection and fulfilment of the right to education. However, you may also make recommendations to other duty-bearers that have responsibility for an aspect of education policy (eg local governments), other State actors that can have an influence on education policies and practices (eg the judiciary) or other actors with influence (eg international financial institutions).

You may want to formulate both immediate recommendations that are easy to implement, as well as longer-term recommendations that address more systemic problems. For guidance, you can use thistool developed by CAFOD.

The main purpose of monitoring is to hold States accountable for their actions related to the right to education. Therefore, writing a human rights report should not be the end-goal of the monitoring exercise, but rather the springboard for effectiveadvocacy.

As a rule, the overall goal of your advocacy activities related to a monitoring exercise is to influence policy-makers to adopt the recommendations you set out in your report. Governments often have a whole set of political, economic and other interests that influence the extent to which they may be willing to adopt the necessary policies to implement the right to education. Therefore, typically, it will not be sufficient to apprise decision-makers of your findings and make your recommendations for them to adopt them. Rather, you need to think about what leverage you have and how you can put pressure on relevant decision-makers to adopt your recommendations regarding the right to education.

Types of advocacy strategies

There are many strategies that you could use to advance your advocacy goals. These include:

Report to human rights mechanisms

There are various human rights mechanisms at the national,regional and international level that monitor the implementation of the right to education and could be used to report violations of the right to education or gaps in implementation. For information on how to report to international human rights mechanisms related to the right to education (UN treaty bodies, the Human Rights Council, UN Special Rapporteurs, UNESCO Committee on Conventions and Recommendations) as well as to regional and national human rights mechanisms, seehere.

Create partnerships

To strengthen your leverage in your advocacy efforts, you may want to join forces with other individuals and organisations that share your concerns regarding the right to education and want to promote similar recommendations. There arevarious types of partners that you may consider teaming up with for your advocacy efforts. In selecting them you should take into account how they can complement the skills, resources, contacts and experience of your own group; the political context around the issues you are trying to promote; and the objectives you are trying to achieve.

Use the courts

There are judicial and quasi-judicial mechanisms to litigate on the right to education at national, regional and national level. To explore issues surrounding the decision to take this course of action in a case related to the right to education, seehere.

Work withparliamentarians

Parliamentarians can be particularly useful allies for promoting your advocacy goals. Typically, parliamentarians have little time for research and may appreciate receiving well-researched information from civil society organisations. This could help them to develop appropriate policies and to hold governments to account for implementing them. You may consider holding meetings with relevant parliamentary committees (eg the education or the human rights committees, etc) to present your findings as well as working with individual parliamentarians who support your advocacy messages, so that they use their leverage to put pressure on policy-makers.

Work with the media

Using the media effectively to convey your findings and recommendations is a key ingredient to any advocacy effort. Working with the media can help you reach out to many people in order to:

• Raise awareness of the issue you have identified and how it affects people.

• Show them that there is a way of dealing with the issue.

• Enlist them to put pressure on the government to adopt your recommendations.

Somegeneral rules may help you to work effectively with the media. There are various types of media, including TV, radio, newspapers, Internet, etc. When selecting which to use, you should consider the relativeadvantages and disadvantages of each of these forms.

Bear in mind that you may need to adapt the content of your monitoring report for implementing each of these strategies. For instance, if you are submitting ashadow report to aUN human rights treaty body you will need to focus on those aspects of your monitoring initiative and recommendations related to the mandate of the treaty body and explicitly link your concerns with thehuman rights standards related to the corresponding convention. If, on the other hand, you plan to start a public campaign or to reach out to the media, you will need to summarise your findings in a succinct and attractive manner, so as to draw the attention of the public and journalists. In short, you should consider thevarious ways in which to spread your advocacy message.

Criteria for selecting advocacy strategies

To select the most appropriate strategies to promote your advocacy efforts, you should take into account anumber of factors:

Who you are

The identity, public standing, skills, experience and resources of your group will influence which strategies you adopt. For instance, if you are a local NGO with very limited resources, you probably will not be able to undertake a large nation-wide advocacy campaign, unless you collaborate closely with other groups that have greater resources and experience working at that level.

Who are the stakeholders?

There are probably many different individuals, organisations, departments and institutions that have a stake (either directly or indirectly) in the change you hope to bring about. Amongst all these stakeholders, there are likely to be some who approve of the change you want, others who oppose it and some who do not have strong feelings either way. To determine which strategies to adopt, you will need to take into account who your potential allies and opponents are, what their interests and motivations are regarding the issues you are promoting, and what power they have.

Timing of your advocacy efforts

The adoption of some strategies may be tied to particular events taking place at a specific time. For instance, if a UN treaty body will be discussing your country’s compliance with a human rights treaty that is relevant to the issues you are raising you may decide to produce a shadow report based on the monitoring report you have produced.

GOOD LUCK!

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