What to do when education for all is denied

On 26 June 2003, the highest court in the State of New York decided that children are entitled to meaningful high school education and ordered the state authorities to alter inadequate and discriminatory funding for public education. That landmark ruling reminds us that resort to court remains necessary where the responsible authorities do not provide good public education for all. If education has not been secured in the richest part of the world, what are our chances of doing so in the poorest?

This question underscores the importance of law. Children cannot have a right to education unless governments have corresponding obligations, including financial. The global record thus far highlights what happens in the absence of law: every decade a pledge was made to ensure education for all, and each betrayed pledge was replaced by another. Law makes all the difference by defining human rights obligations which pertain to states, individually and collectively. Thereby, individuals whose rights have been denied or violated - including children - acquire access to courts or human rights commissions to vindicate their rights. Because of the difference law would make, it faces resistance by the provider of the largest amount of international funding for education, the World Bank, and the government of the United States. Both scrupulously avoid mentioning that education is a human right so as to avoid being held accountable for its denials and violations.

Cost of education

The recent book ‘Education Denied: Costs and Remedies’ explores this issue and draws attention to the recurrent theme in global debates about education: the cost of providing it. Because a quality education costs money, powerful interests have been reluctant to affirm that education is a human right and remain silent about the cost of denying education. The generally accepted yardstick is public allocation for education corresponding to 6% of GNP. Individual countries have transformed that into a constitutional guarantee, thus exempting education - especially primary schooling - from political processes which may otherwise divert public funding towards national security. Only 45 countries in the world have no legal guarantee of free primary education while 145 have it. Nevertheless, many cannot progressively translate that guarantee into practice, often because requirements of debt servicing pressurise them into transferring the cost of primary schooling onto communities and families.

Rights-based education

The book advocates two changes necessary to move towards rights-based education. First, human rights should be elevated from the margins to the core of education strategies at all levels, from global to local. If design of debt relief and/or poverty reduction included a guaranteed 6% of GNP for education, ‘education for all’ would receive a considerable boost. The impact of education on poverty eradication could be built into strategies through associating the right to education with other human rights. Their continued denial, especially for girls and women, undermines the attractiveness and effectiveness of schooling. If girls cannot become employed or self-employed, own land and open a bank account, education alone will not be their pathway out of poverty.

Second, the universal right to education has been affirmed in international human rights law during the past decades. Its acceptance is demonstrated by the 191 states that are party to the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child (with only the United States of America missing), which guarantees free and compulsory education for all children and affirms that ‘all’ rights of each child should be protected ‘in’ education and promoted ‘through’ education. This makes it easier to make universal the corresponding human rights obligations, guided by the premise on which the right to education is based: education is a public good and institutionalised schooling a public service. Thus, ensuring free and compulsory education to prevent seven to eleven year olds from child labour, child marriage or child soldiering is a public responsibility.

There is vast evidence of the adverse impact on children of the failure to secure their education. The import of human rights is calling this failure a human rights violation and insisting that it be remedied. Often, this is not done simply because the knowledge that education is a human right is lacking where it is needed most.

Katarina Tomasevski
Roerholmsgade 23
DK-1352 Copenhagen K
Denmark

T: +41 22 917 7854
F: + 41 22 917 7801

kt@right-to-education.org

See also:

‘Education Denied: Costs and Remedies’, Zed Books, by K. Tomasevski, April 2003
www.right-to-education.org

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