Not all education targets met in time

Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) said.

Though there has been good progress, if countries stick to the current trajectory, key targets for 2015 will not be met, Abdul Hakeem, coordinator for Unesco's Asia-Pacific programme said yesterday while presenting the agency's annual report.

"Governments are failing to tackle inequality in their current approaches to education. We will look at reforms in the existing governance and seek to identify if and how they are reducing inequality in education. Aid to education is stagnating and donors are not meeting their commitments," he said.

The release of Education for All (EFA) Global Monitoring Report under the concept of "Overcoming Inequality: Why Governance Matters" coincided yesterday with the 4th World Teachers' Day in Thailand and the 12th Unesco-APEID International Conference, which runs until March 26 at Impact Arena Muang Thong Thani.

More than 1,000 teachers, administrators, planners, policy makers, UN officials, non-governmental organisations, development agencies' representatives and international experts gathered to discuss education development issues.

The EFA goals, set by 164 governments in 1990, focus on six areas - early childhood care and education; universal primary education; life skills and lifelong learning; literacy; gender; and quality education.

The EFA report also pointed out that member countries needed to improve their efficiency and increase financial resources if the goals are to be achieved. Governments must be committed to reducing disparities, sustaining political leadership to achieve education targets, tackling inequity through clear policy objectives and improving coordination within the government and beyond. Member states also need to raise standards and put equity at the centre of their financing strategies.

Thailand had the highest allocation of funds for education, at 25 per cent of the national budget, in 2005, and Malaysia in 2004, compared to the mere 15 per cent allocated by the Philippines in 2005 and 14 per cent in Laos in 2006.

Another recommendation was that governments strengthen the link between education planning and poverty-reduction schemes, since poverty is a key obstacle to education.

Around 75 million children at primary-school age worldwide are still not in school. Of them, 28 million in the Asia-Pacific region were not in school in 2006, an increase from 15 million in 1999.

Other findings show that East Asia and the Pacific continues to suffer from the problem of illiteracy, with an estimated 113 million adults being illiterate, 3 million of whom are in Thailand alone. In the Kingdom, the literacy rate for youths, aged between 15 and 24, stood at 98 per cent between 2000 and 2006.