Abolishing School Fees in Africa is the product of a SFAI workshop, “School Fee Abolition: Building on What We Know and Defining Sustained Support,” held in Kenya in 2006. The book begins with a comparative overview of the processes, challenges, and lessons learned by five countries that had already abolished school fees: Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, and Mozambique. The subsequent chapters delineate the actual experiences of each of the countries in planning and implementing their policies.
This report explores a range of innovative education budget work initiatives from Bangladesh, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi and Uganda, where civil society has monitored and challenged their governments over education expenditure in order to hold themaccountable for commitments to EFA and the MDGs. It examines the significance and impact of civil society budget initiatives by drawing on interviews and focus group discussions with a range of education stakeholders, including education coalitions, government officials, nongovernmental organisations (NGOs), teaching staff and school pupils; and by reviewing research reports and budget manuals developed by civil society organisations (CSOs).
This report is the culmination of five years’ implementation of ActionAid’s multi-country project aimed at empowering girls and enabling them to enjoy their rights to education and participation in a violence-free environment. The uniqueness of this project resides in the connection between research, community intervention and advocacy reinforced by a strong partnership approach.
On ActionAid website are also available the executive summary (French and English) and the success stories (English and Portuguese).
The Right to Education Project, with the support of international and British organisations as well as teachers' unions have submitted a report to the Committee on the Rights of the Child about the UK's support of the growth of private actors in education through its development aid: questioning its responsibilities as regards its human rights extra-territorial obligations.
The report raises concern about the increased use of British aid money to support for-profit schools, in particular so-called ‘low-fee’ private schools, which are fuelling inequality, creating segregation and undermining the right to education.
The report finds that the UK’s policies in support of private education through its development aid are problematic and that the country could be violating its extra-territorial obligations under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in two regards:
- Firstly, the UK’s support for for-profit, fee-charging private schools that do not reach the poorest is questioned in light of the UK’s obligations to fulfil the right to education, including the right to free quality education without discrimination;
- Secondly, the UK’s responsibility is questioned in particular in relation to its own impact assessments that have been conducted on its policies of providing support to private schools and which have concluded that projects supporting private education providers are less likely to target the most marginalised, and that more research needs to be carried out on the impact of private schools in developing countries on, among other elements, the efficiency of “low-fee” private schools.
Parallel Report submitted by the Ghana National Education Campaign Coalition and the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, with the support of the Africa Network Campaign on Education For All, the Privatisation in Education Research Initiative, the Right to Education Project, the Global Campaign for Education and Education International to to the Committee on Elimination of Discrimination Against Women on the occasion of the consideration of the List of Issues related to the Periodic Reports of Ghana. This report highlights the issue of privatisation in education in Ghana.
Published in 2015, this document is the second of a series of thematic mappings on the implementation of the right to education, following a first edition on Girls’ and Women’s Right to Education. It presents concrete measures adopted by countries to ensure the full enjoyment of the right to education for persons with disabilities.
The document is based on national reports submitted for the Eighth Consultation on the monitoring of the implementation of the UNESCO Convention against Discrimination in Education (1960) and the UNESCO Recommendation against Discrimination in Education (1960).
The first part of the document provides a thematic analysis of measures and promising practices that have been reported on by countries. The second part compiles in factsheets progress and challenges in constitutional and legislative frameworks and measures, for the 48 countries that reported on measures taken, out of the 59 reporting countries.
The document is intended to serve as a practical tool for both advocacy and monitoring. By highlighting concrete measures taken by countries, it also offers a basis for regional and international co-operation and shares promising practices from which other countries can learn.
This paper highlights key concluding observations adopted between 2014 and 2016 by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC), the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR), and the UN Committee on the Elimination of all forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) regarding the role of private actors in education in Brazil, Chile, Ghana, Haiti, Kenya, Morocco, Uganda and Zimbabwe. These add to more than 50 other concluding observations previously issued by these committees on the topic.
This country factsheet on Ghana intends to assist practitioners to identify the key national policies relevant to the right to education, analyse their strengths and weaknesses and detect the gaps between policies and practice, in order to use the empirical data collected to define a human rights advocacy strategy.
It provides an overview of: the obligations of the government to realise the right to education; the instruments (policies, budget…) and mechanisms (commissions, courts…) that exist in the country to implement the right to education; recommendations made by various national and international stakeholders (UN Agencies, NGOs…) on the right to education. This factsheet does not give a comprehensive overview of the policies in the country, but only a snapshot of some key aspects affecting the right to education.
This is a summary of the report submitted in October 2015 to the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights by 26 organisations across the world including British organisations, organisations based in developing countries, and international organisations.
Access the original report, here and the update, here.
This is a brief update of the report submitted in October 2015 to the Committee on the Rights of the Child by 26 organisations across the world including British organisations, organisations based in developing countries, and international organisations.