EFA Global Monitoring Report 2008

On 29 November 2007, UNESCO released the 2008 edition of the annual Education for All Global Monitoring Report, with the title Education for All by 2015: Will we make it? The report, now in its sixth edition, monitors progress towards the six Education for All goals adopted at the World Education Forum in Dakar, Senegal in 2000:

1. Expand and improve early childhood care and education.
2. Provide free and compulsory universal primary education by 2015.
3. Equitable access to learning and life-skills programs.
4. Achieve a 50% improvement in adult literacy rates.
5. Eliminate gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2005 and at all levels by 2015.
6. Improve all aspects of the quality of education.

Some highlights of the 2008 report are:

• Between 1999 and 2005, primary school enrollment rose from 647 million to 688 million worldwide. The rate of increase was particularly high in Sub-Saharan Africa and in South and West Asia. As a result, the global number of children out of school fell from 96 million in 1999 to 72 million in 2005.
• Projections based on current trends show that more than 50 countries will not achieve universal primary education by 2015.
• One third of all countries missed the goal of gender parity in primary education by 2005. Two thirds of all countries missed the goal of gender parity in secondary education. According to projections, more than 90 countries will not reach gender parity in primary and secondary education by 2015.
• Fourteen countries abolished primary school fees since 2000 but the cost of schooling remains an obstacle for millions of children.
• The emphasis by the international community on primary education has come at the expense of early childhood education and literacy programs for youth and adults.
• One in five adults lacks basic literacy skills. Women account for two thirds of all illiterate adults worldwide. Three quarters of all countries for which projections were calculated will miss the goal of halving adult illiteracy rates by 2015.

The EFA Global Monitoring Report offers a great amount of data and statistical analysis. An annex contains more than 140 pages of statistical tables with national, regional and global data up to the year 2005.

References

• UNESCO. 2007. Education for all by 2015: Will we make it? - EFA global monitoring report 2008. Paris: UNESCO. (Download in PDF format, 11.8 MB)

Related articles

• EFA Global Monitoring Report 2009
• Global Education Digest 2007 by UNESCO
• UN Millennium Development Goals Report 2007

External links

• Announcement of the EFA Global Monitoring Report 2008 by UNESCO
• Regional overviews of progress towards the EFA goals
• Education for All website by UNESCO

Friedrich Huebler, 3 December 2007 (edited 8 December 2008), Creative Commons License
Permanent URL: http://huebler.blogspot.com/2007/12/efa-global-monitoring-report-2008.html