The announcement at the beginning of the year by the Ministry of Education of Liberia of its intention to outsource the management of all its pre-primary and primary schools to private providers has spurred vivid discussions on education public-private partnerships (ePPPs, understood here as State funding of private schools).
Pakistan’s implementation of the Convention on the Rights of Child, which it ratified in 1990, was recently reviewed by the UN Committee on the Rights of Child.
Public-Private Partnership (PPP) is an umbrella term that refers to the arrangement between a government and one or more private actors to provide a service, in this case, education. This arrangement is normally formalised by a contract that specifies the nature of the service, the length of the provision, the risks and cost that each party will bear, amongst other issues. The services provided by these PPPs vary, including: management, maintenance, infrastructure and support services like transportation, school meals, cleaning, security, etc.
Non-State actors’ involvement in education has increased in many parts of the world over the past three decades, and private education is being promoted and explored by some education stakeholders as a solution to a lack of sufficient public provision of education or underperforming public schools.
This call made by French-speaking civil society organisations, including Right to Education Initiative, aims to alert and sensitize all education stakeholders to the dangers inherent in the process of commodification of education, which creates social injustice and jeopardizes the future of our societies.
À l’occasion de la Semaine de la langue française et de la Francophonie, un réseau d’organisations francophones de la société civile, dont le Right to Education Initiative s’est mobilisé contre la marchandisation de l’éducation, le 15 mars 2016, au siège de l’Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie (OIF). Ceci est le rapport de cette journée de conférence.
The Special Rapporteur examines the right to education in the digital age and, specifically, how to uphold the norms and principles that underlie the right to education while embracing digital technologies, which are revolutionising teaching and learning processes and transforming the landscape of higher education. He considers issues related to marginalisation and exclusion, as well as the quality of education, especially human values in education. Concerns are expressed about the digital divide and about how it affects fundamental principles, such as equality of opportunity.
This guide has been developed to provide practical advice on conducting research in order to support human rights advocacy on privatisation in education, using regional and international mechanisms (focusing on UN treaty bodies). It draws on the experiences of the Right to Education Initiative and the Global Initiative on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in engaging in similar work in various countries over the last few years.
Parallel Report submitted by the National Campaign for Education-Nepal, the Nepal National Teachers Association (NNTA), the Global Initiative for Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and other partners, including the Right to Education Project, on the occasion of the examination of the report of Nepal during the 72nd session of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child.
On 11 April, 2016 the Right to Education Project launched the Right to Education Monitoring Guide (‘Guide’) and Right to Education Indicators Selection Tool (‘Tool’) at the UCL Institute of Education, London.