This Factsheet was prepared by the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR) and the Egyptian Center for Economic and Social Rights (ECESR) in light of Egypt’s appearance before the Human Rights Council’s Universal Periodic Review in 2014.
In its last Universal Periodic Review in 2010, Egypt accepted six recommendations related to eradicating illiteracy, particularly in rural areas, and one on enhancing the quality of its education system. Despite some overall improvements since then, stark disparities in educational achievement remain. Decreasing public investment in education disadvantages students who cannot afford to attend private schools and exacerbates the problem of unequal access to education.
With the adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), countries have promised to achieve universal completion of primary and secondary education by 2030. This paper, jointly released by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) and the Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report, illustrates the magnitude of this challenge. Globally, 263 million children, adolescents and youth between the ages of 6 and 17 are currently out of school, according to a new set of UIS indicators. A key obstacle to achieving the target is persistent disparities in education participation linked to sex, location and wealth, especially at the secondary level. Selected policy responses to promote enrolment in secondary education are reviewed.
In this policy brief, the Global Campaign for Education, outlines ten clear recommendations for the Education Financing Commission, which will launch its report on 18th Spetember, 2016. The recommendations are:
- Ensure harmony with existing education efforts (the right to education and Education 2030) as wells as existing mechanisms, such as the Global Partnership for Education
- Support free education
- Support public education
- Ensure long term, predictable, and sustainable financing
- Ensure inclusive and democratic country-led processes
- Emphasise the diverse aims of education and look beyond standardised testing to a wide range of indicators
- Ensure governments allocate at least 20% of their budgets to education
- Ensure governments increase budget size
- Budgets should prioritise equity
- Budgets should be transparent and subject to scrutiny
The aim of this briefing is to propose a human rights-centered policy agenda to tackle economic inequality and the social inequalities it reinforces. It sets out to illustrate how human rights can provide both a normative framework and a set of accountability mechanisms to accelerate success in meeting this most cross-cutting of sustainable development goals.
This briefing paper focuses on the distinct contributions that NHRIs can make to the sustainable development agenda. It outlines the importance of the SDGs for human rights and highlights a number of specific opportunities for NHRIs to effectively fulfil their role in the context of the new global development agenda, sharing examples of development-related work from a number of institutions in all regions.
As an integral part of UNESCO’s Constitutional mission for ensuring “full and equal opportunities for education for all”, the realisation of the Right to Education is one of the biggest developmental challenges, as millions of children and adults remain deprived of basic education in today’s learning societies.
This document is a short leaflet on the right to education.
The eradication of poverty and the provision of equitable and inclusive quality education for all are two intricately linked Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As this year’s High Level Political Forum focuses on prosperity and poverty reduction, this paper, jointly released by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) and the Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report, shows why education is so central to the achievement of the SDGs and presents the latest estimates on out-of-school children, adolescents and youth to demonstrate how much is at stake.
Several civil society several reports have raised major concerns on BIA, including on their quality, the fees charged, their discriminatory impacts and labour conditions. Bridge has rejected the findings of these independent reports. However recent media coverage has raised similar questions.
In the past two months two major news articles have been published on Bridge International Academies:
- No education crisis wasted: On Bridge’s “business model” in Africa, in Africa is a Country, by Maria Hengeveld, published 13 July 2017, initially published in Dutch news magazine De Correspondent.
- Can a tech start-up successfully educate children in the developing world?, New York Times, by Peg Tyre, published 27 June 2017.
These articles stand out for the investigative rigour of the publications they appear in, the depth and detail of their analysis, and the fact that they are based on original research. They allow for civil society claims to be verified against independent journalist investigations. The GI-ESCR has prepared a brief summarising 10 key findings from these articles. These findings not only corroborate the concerns raised by civil society, but also reveal evidence of new challenges. The GI-ESCR shares this information as part of its work to encourage transparency and accountability in the delivery of education in the context of the fast growth of private actor involvement.