This indicator examines whether children from a particular marginalised community have equal access to education. Marginalised groups include women and girls, Indigenous peoples and minorities, persons with disabilities, persons with HIV / AIDS, child labourers, persons in detention, migrants, refugees and IDPs, and persons living in poverty.
A multiethnic, multicultural, and linguistically representative teaching workforce is desirable to ensure equal and quality inclusive education for children belonging to diverse origins. In order to ensure equal access and quality outcomes for children of minority, multi-ethnic, migrant, indigenous or different home-language backgrounds, recruitment policies and strategies include employment of teachers from diverse origins.
The participation rate in pre-primary education refers to the percentage of children who participated in at least one year of pre-primary education before primary school enrolment.
Some countries have adopted special legal provisions to guarantee migrant children the right to education, regardless of the legal status of the children or parents. However, some countries adopt differential education policies for citizens and non-citizens. This indicator examines if legal provisions in the national laws or an inclusive policy framework exist to ensure equal access to education for children belonging to migrants, refugees, asylum seekers or any non-citizens.
This indicator assesses whether the State has adopted laws and/or policies that guarantee the right to education of students from rural and remote areas, including the provision of the necessary equipment and support for them to attend school, including ECCE centres/pre-primary schools.
This indicator assesses whether the State has adopted laws and/or policies to guarantee the right to education of girls and women, including the provision of the necessary equipment and support to enable female students to attend school, including ECCE centres, without any discrimination.
The Convention on the Rights of the Child establishes parents and other primary caregivers as children’s first educators. The Committee on the Rights of the Child in its General Comment No. 7 (paras. 15 to 21 and 29) elaborates in detail the parental responsibilities and the assistance States need to provide to the parents in performing their child-rearing responsibilities, especially at the early childhood.
The States have the obligation to make primary education compulsory. The Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women (General Comment No. 36 (paras. 36, 39) recommends that education should be free and compulsory from pre-school to secondary.
Ensuring free education in national legislation and aligning legal frameworks with the legal requirements of the right to education and the commitments to Sustainable Developmental Goal 4 is one of the most important challenges towards the full realisation of the right to education. States have the obligation to make primary education free and compulsory. While free primary education shall be immediately realised, the other levels of education can be made progressively free.
In some countries, the key dimensions of the right to education may not be explicitly enumerated in legal provisions, but they can be addressed through policies that are not legally binding. These policies could have been revised and adopted at different periods depending on the changing context. Additionally, some levels of education, such as early childhood care and education, may not be covered in the legislation, but they could be integrated as part of either education policies or separate policies that focus on the 'care' and 'education' of young children.