Minister of Basic Education and others v Basic Education for All and others

This case involves the interpretation of the scope of the constitutional right in South Africa to basic education and in particular whether the provision of school textbooks to all basic education learners for the whole academic year is an essential component of this right.

 
International Instruments - Quality Education
This document lists the international instruments that refer to quality education with their relevant provisions.

 
Human Rights Council Side Event: Privatisation and its Impact on the Right to Education - The Impact on Teachers' Working Conditions

On 12 June 2014, during the June Session of the Human Rights Council, the Portuguese Mission, together with Privatisation in Education Research Initiative (PERI) and the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (GI-ESCR), convened a side-event on privatisation and its impact on the right to education at Palais des Nations in Geneva. In this podcast, Mireille de Koning, from the Education International explains the impact of privatisation on teachers' working conditions.
Key resource
Learning Outcomes Assessments: A Human Rights Perspective

There has been renewed and amplified interest in learning outcomes as a tool for improving quality of education – an issue of central focus in the Post-2015 discussions. There are numerous learning outcomes assessment tools and methodologies.  However, missing from the debates is a human rights perspective. This briefing document, Learning Outcomes Assessments: A Human Rights Perspective, seeks to highlight the key human rights principles that should inform education policies on learning outcomes to ensure that these tools are used to promote quality education that develops the child’s personalities, talents, and abilities to live a full and satisfying life within society.  It also provides recommendations to policy-makers to ensure that education policies on learning outcomes adhere to human rights standards.

 
Time to act: a costed plan to deliver quality education to every last refugee child

In 2018, the international community will meet to adopt a new Global Compact on Refugees; a product of the New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants. The Compact promises that ‘all refugee children will be in school and learning within a few months of arrival’ and commits to ‘prioritise budgetary provision to facilitate this, including support for host countries as required’. The opportunity to advance this agenda is now. However, commitments without actionable plans do not deliver results.  

The report ‘Time to act: a costed plan to deliver quality education to every last refugee child’ sets out a realistic, global plan to ensure refugee children get to go to school. Save the children challenges governments and international agencies to deliver on the promises they have made with practical action.
Education: the catalyst for an equitable & transformative G7 - Recommendations from the Civil Society Education Working Group
Contribution of the right to education to the prevention of atrocity crimes and mass or grave violations of human rights
In this present report, the Special Rapporteur considers ways in which the right to education contributes to the prevention of atrocity crimes and mass or grave human rights violations. Stressing that education has a key role to play at all stages of prevention, the Special Rapporteur underlines the particularly forceful preventive potential of the right to education in the very early stages, before warning signs are apparent. That role is to be linked with the aims of education and the right to inclusive and equitable quality education, as established in international instruments.
 
Peace, acceptance of the “other”, respect for cultural diversity, the participation of all in the development of society and an education that is adequate and adapted to the specific needs of people in their own context are objectives of education that have been widely recognized by States and in human rights mechanisms at the international and regional levels. However, education is not afforded the importance or the funding it deserves and needs in order to play those roles.
 
The Special Rapporteur, highlighting circumstances under which schools can become tools for division and lay the groundwork for future violent conflicts, focuses on a number of steps regarding the organization of school systems, pedagogy and the values and skills to be transmitted to learners that are crucial in terms of prevention. She proposes an education framework (known in English as the “ABCDE framework”) that encompasses the interrelated features of education needed in order for the preventive potential of the right to education to be fully deployed. Namely, education should promote acceptance of self and others; a sense of belonging to society; critical thinking; diversity; and the capacity of learners to feel empathy for others. The right to inclusive and equitable quality education must be taken seriously and be prioritized if States and other stakeholders are serious in their commitment to prevent violent conflicts, atrocity crimes and mass or grave human rights violations
Promoting Rights in Schools: Providing Quality Public Education

Aimed at actively engaging parents, children, teachers, unions, communities and local civil society organisations in collectively monitoring and improving the quality of public education PRS offers a set of practical tools that can be used as a basis for mobilisation, advocacy and campaigning. The pack provides four key resources:

1) A charter of 10 rights which, when fulfilled, will enable all children to complete a good quality education;

2) A participatory methodology for: using the charter; collecting, analysing and using data; and consolidating information into ‘citizens reports’ that could be used for the development of Action Plans or to encourage discussions and reviews at local, district and national levels;

3) A series of education- and rights-based indicators organised in a survey format to enable users to capture information in a systematic manner;

4) A compilation of key international human rights references providing the foundations and legitimacy of the charter and reports

PRS builds on education and human rights frameworks to describe an ideal school that offers quality education. Its methodology supports links between programme work at the school level and advocacy and policy efforts in national and international forums. The process is as important as the outcome: it is only through engaging all stakeholders in the process - from developing the charter to collecting and analysing the data and debating the findings - that we will promote greater awareness of what needs to change and how.

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Should Schools Reopen? The Human Rights Risk - An Advisory Note for the Independent SAGE

A human rights analysis of schools reopening in England on 1 June 2020 after their closure due to the Covid-19. An Advisory Note to Independent SAGE.
Report of the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education on Normative Action for Quality Education

This report examines national and international norms and standards, as well as policies regarding quality in education. The Special Rapporteur underscores the need to promote the adoption of norms at the national level establishing the right to quality education, consistent with the international legal human rights framework and relevant initiatives at the national, regional and international levels. In conclusion, the Special Rapporteur provides recommendations aimed at promoting quality education.

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