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'RTE welcomes the Tashkent Declaration’s call for an enhanced legal framework and increased public expenditure for ECCE' was written by RTE following the adoption of the ‘Tashkent Declaration and Commitments to Action for Transforming Early Childhood Care and Education at the UNESCO World Conference on Early Childhood Care and Education. 

This statement summarises the most significant aspects of the Tashkent Declaration and our perspectives on the importance of this document for the protection of young children's ECCE rights.

 

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The purpose of these Guidelines and Toolkit is to describe the different operational tools developed to help education stakeholders systematically collect and analyse the efforts put in place to ensure the right to education. These efforts should be central to every educational planning or programming document. The resulting analysis should also bring to light different and challenging policy gaps in education. The final goal is to mobilize all information and analyses gathered to nurture a constructive dialogue among key national stakeholders and to strengthen the right to education at national and local levels.

These Guidelines and Toolkit were originally conceived to support States in the planning process; thus, they are mostly directed at educational planners, managers, and decision- makers at the national level. However, the tools are flexible enough to be utilized by other relevant entities or partners at the national level (independent human rights institutions, ombudspersons, non-governmental organizations, etc.) and sub-national level, or organizations (United Nations agencies, development partners, civil society, etc.).

These Methodological Guidelines and Toolkit can and should be used to complement the UNESCO (2021) Guidelines to Strengthen the Right to Education in National Frameworks. The latter covers the right to education comprehensively and provides tools to examine and analyse the compatibility of national education legal and policy frameworks with international right to education standard-setting instruments. These Methodological Guidelines and their tools provide a new, different approach: addressing the right to education within a State’s planning and programming documents while supporting educational stakeholders in understanding and analysing the compatibility of their planning (ESPs and TEPs) or programming documents with the international obligations and commitments synthesized by the Abidjan Principles.The Abidjan Principles are not legally binding. Yet they have been mobilized throughout this project as a tool to show planners, decision-makers, and other relevant stakeholders the essential elements to acknowledge when creating or reviewing an educational planning or programming document to fulfil the right to education.

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The new 2023 GEM Report on Technology in education: A tool on whose terms? addresses the use of technology in education around the world through the lenses of relevance, equity, scalability and sustainability.

It argues that education systems should always ensure that learners’ interests are placed at the center and that digital technologies are used to support an education based on human interaction rather than aiming at substituting it. The report looks at ways in which technology can help reach disadvantaged learners but also ensure more knowledge reaches more learners in more engaging and cheaper formats. It focuses on how quality can be improved, both in teaching and learning basic skills, and in developing the digital skills needed in daily life. It recognizes the role of technology in system management with special reference to assessment data and other education management information.

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RTE's background paper for the Global Education Monitoring Report 2017/8: Accountability in education: Meeting our commitments.

The purpose of the paper is to show how a human rights-based approach offers insights and practical solutions to address the accountability deficits found in both education policy decision-making and implementation, and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Specifically, the paper argues that a human rights-based approach to accountability can bolster public policy accountability by defining the responsibilities of authorities, ensuring they are answerable for actions regarding those responsibilities, and how they can be subject to forms of enforceable sanctions or remedial action for failures to carry out those responsibilities.

The second half of the paper explores the prevalence of the right to education in national laws and the conditions necessary for the right to education to be successfully adjudicated at the national level. It provides an overview of how countries have incorporated the right to education in their domestic legal orders, as well as a list of countries where the right to education is justiciable. This is complemented by a series of case studies that draw out the requirements for successful adjudication at the national level.

This paper examines court cases from countries around the world to identify the conditions that enable the right to education to be realised through adjudication.

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This documented was submitted to the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to education in February 2023, in response to a call for contributions for a report she is developing for the UN Human Rights Council.

UNESCO together with UNICEF, the World Bank, UNFPA, UNDP, UN Women and UNHCR organised the World Education Forum 2015 in Incheon, Republic of Korea, from 19 – 22 May 2015, hosted by the Republic of Korea. Over 1,600 participants from 160 countries, including over 120 Ministers, heads and members of delegations, heads of agencies and officials of multilateral and bilateral organisations, and representatives of civil society, the teaching profession, youth and the private sector, adopted the Incheon Declaration for Education 2030, which sets out a new vision for education for the next fifteen years.

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This joint statement signed by RTE and 18 CSOs responds to a report published in September 2023 by the International Development Committee (IDC) of the UK House of Commons, entitled ‘Investment for development - The UK’s Strategy towards Development Finance Initiatives. The report’ raises major concerns about the UK’s investments as part of development aid which the signatory organisations working on education share and reiterate. In this joint statement we respond to this report and express our concern about the British International Investment’s (BII) activities and impacts in key sectors responsible for delivering human rights, including education and health.

School meals play a critical role in children’s lives. They are an essential intervention in development and humanitarian contexts, proven to have long-lasting impacts across multiple Sustainable Development Goals and sectors, including food security, nutrition and health, education, water and sanitation, child protection, gender equality, and prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse. They are at the juncture of the right to food, the right to health and the right to education. They also offer enormous potential for the catalysation of food systems, with nutritious, locally-grown and appropriate foods, creation of jobs and contributions towards livelihoods, among other benefits. Civil society organisations have an essential role to play in supporting school meals programmes globally through collective advocacy, technical assistance, capacity sharing and fostering partnerships. 

This joint statement contains our calls to action for equitable access to healthy and nutritious, sustainably sourced school meals.

 

Non-state actors’ role extends beyond provision of schooling to interventions at various education levels and influence spheres. Alongside its review of progress towards SDG 4, including emerging evidence on the COVID-19 pandemic’s impact, the 2021/2 Global Education Monitoring Report urges governments to see all institutions, students and teachers as part of a single system. Standards, information, incentives and accountability should help governments protect, respect and fulfil the right to education of all, without turning their eyes away from privilege or exploitation. Publicly funded education does not have to be publicly provided but disparity in education processes, student outcomes and teacher working conditions must be addressed. Efficiency and innovation, rather than being commercial secrets, should be diffused and practised by all. To that end, transparency and integrity in the public education policy process need to be maintained to block vested interests.

The report’s rallying call – Who chooses? Who loses? – Invites policymakers to question relationships with non-state actors in terms of fundamental choices: between equity and freedom of choice; between encouraging initiative and setting standards; between groups of varying means and needs; between immediate commitments under SDG 4 and those to be progressively realized (e.g. post-secondary education); and between education and other social sectors.

 

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In a world facing social fragmentation, harmful inequities, and environmental deterioration, we need quality, transformative, inclusive public education now more than ever. As our political systems struggle to resist autocracy and to foster democracy, free public education can help create a well-informed public with the capacity to address these global challenges.

The public supports public education, and public education works.

Please sign the statement as an organisation or as an individual and join us in the process of advocating for States to realise the full potential of public education. Our future depends on it!

 

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