Monday, September 6, 2010

Second Ministerial Meeting of South Asia EFA Forum on Reaching the Unreached with focus on Decentralization

Dhaka, 13-14 December 2009

South Asian Strategies for Reaching the Unreached and Regional Collaboration

Education is a basic right and catalyst for attaining sustainable development. Education becomes an effective instrument of social changes when it functions as an empowering force by equipping human being with values and essential skills of literacy, numeracy, communication, problem solving and productive work. The state assurance of the entitlement of its citizens to education encompasses the access of the poor and marginalized people of all age-groups to quality basic and continuing education. Asserting the strategic importance of reaching the unreached people in achieving national and global target of Education for All, all the governments in South Asia adopted a number of measures in respective countries. But still there are a number of challenges, because of which these groups of people remain unserved or underserved from the EFA mainstream programmes.

A set of comprehensive strategic measures are required to be taken to meet the challenges and achieving EFA goals. Based on the lessons from previous experiences and good practices from within and outside the countries, we, the participants of the Second Ministerial Meeting of South Asia EFA Forum held in Dhaka in December 2009, develop through a consultative process and adopt the following strategic measures:

A. Strategies for Reaching the Unreached

1. Revisiting programme objectives, contents and expected competencies to meet the learning needs of various population groups

· Reviewing programme objectives and identifying gaps

· Redesigning different programme components along with indicators and tools for assessment of learning

· Ensuring quality of learning through sustainable programme package (e.g., long-term literacy programme)

· Re-identifying the learning needs and outcomes/competencies

2. Review and updating of existing policies and legislation to ensure access of the hard to reach/excluded groups of population to quality education

Analysis of effectiveness of existing policies and legislative provisions in reaching the unreached/excluded people in providing basic and continuing education

Identifying areas of improvement in the constitutional/legislative provisions and policies to support increased access of the unreached/excluded people

Making provisions to ensure inclusiveness and accessibility through formulating new policies/laws or updating existing policies/laws

3. Identifying the unreached and underserved population

· Identifying priority geographical areas (such as, districts with low literacy rate, island, coast and hill areas, indigenous populated areas, and urban slums)

· Prioritizing unreached target groups (such as, out-of school children including the dropouts, illiterate adolescents, youth, adults, hard core poor, women, girls, marginal income group, people in need of special education, people live in remote locations, disaster-prone areas and in conflict or post-conflict situation, climate change refugees) in the selected districts/locations

· Conducting survey to estimate accurate number of target people and level of literacy (e.g., literacy assessment survey, mapping)

· Undertaking qualitative research to analyze the context and profile of target people

· Assigning local government bodies to accurately identify the target people and their needs



4. Facilitating multi-stakeholder participation in achieving EFA goals, particularly reaching the unreached through decentralized planning and management

· Mapping of potential organizations/institutions/ government agencies, NGOs, private sector agencies and civil society organizations, analysis of capacities and specifying areas of collaboration, and recognizing their contributions

· Identifying stakeholders and their roles in planning, implementation and monitoring

Identifying the areas of partnership, collaboration and networking among the EFA service providers – GO, NGO, private agencies and academic institutions in implementation of EFA programmes

Working out measures to assess effectiveness of the multi-stakeholder collaboration


5. Decentralization of education management to ensure flexible programme delivery for the unreached/underserved

Developing mechanism through constitutional/legal provisions for local level planning and management

· Gradual decentralization of the education management at the district and sub-district levels to respond to the contextual programmatic needs and through gradual capacity enhancement of the actors at various level

· Institutionalization of the roles of local government bodies as facilitating and monitoring agencies

· Making provision for flexible programme delivery (context and socio-culturally appropriate, with preference to mother-tongue based programmes)


6. Facilitating exchange of experience ensuring learning and replicating good practices in reaching the unreached

Capacity building of EFA providers in documentation of good practices and lessons from ongoing programmes/practices in reaching the unreached

Increased investment and specific allocation for research and documentation of EFA interventions for the excluded groups of people

Institutionalization of the process of regular sharing of experience and lessons among the stakeholders


7. Institutional capacity enhancement and professional development of the EFA providers ensuring quality programme implementation

· Analyzing institutional strength of EFA providers in the context of emerging roles of education for sustainable development and emerging decentralized planning and management of EFA programmes

· Exploring various options of institutional strengthening, including public-private partnership, decentralized planning and management

· Preparing detailed human resource development plan for various EFA providers and making provision for additional human resource, logistics and financial allocation (with emphasis on teacher development)

· Establishing and/or strengthening EFA focused academy with multi-stakeholder participation to provide technical support


8. Resource mobilization and allocation for the unreached groups towards achieving EFA Goals

Assessment of resource requirement, making budgetary provision and allocation based on the identified needs of the target population in various locations or of various groups

Allocating 6% of GNP for education, as committed in the CONFINTEA and other UN Declarations and targeting allocation of 6% of the education budget to adult education with around half of it earmarked funding for literacy initiatives and innovative programmes to reach the unreached (the countries may opt to realocate funds among the programems as per need)

Sharing EFA programmes package to other development departments/partners to mobilize information, education, communication related human, material and/or financial resources from their budgets

Mobilizing Development Partners to allocate resources addressing the needs of the unreached population

Allocation of available resources on priority basis for the unreached population

Revenue measures (e.g., tax exemption) to encourage funding by corporate sector in education


9. Mobilizing media in support of reaching the unreached towards achieving EFA Goals

· Establishing EFA media forum to mobilize opinion in favour of EFA programmes tuned for unreached population

· Organizing media campaign at regular intervals at national and regional levels


B. Strategies for Collaboration and Networking in South Asia

10. Taking measures for establishing effective links between EFA Coordinators with education/EFA desk at SAARC Secretariat to ensure better coordination of education policies/programmes

11. Institutionalization of a system for regular communication among the EFA Coordinators (e.g., developing e-communication network) and gradually developing a ministerial level regional organization on education in South Asia (SAARC Regional Centre for Education like SEAMEO in South-East Asia)

12. Forming South Asia Taskforce for Education with participation of committed EFA stakeholders to facilitate exchange of expertise and experience as well as sharing good practices in the spirit of South-South cooperation

13. Establishing mechanism for dialogue at regular intervals on EFA agenda and monitoring of achievements in EFA goals, setting regional level standards/indicators (EFA Coordinators may meet on annual basis, Ministerial Meeting on biannual basis)

14. Networking of civil society EFA networks to support, follow-up and reporting on regional and national EFA initiatives

15. Promoting collaborative research on various thematic and programmatic aspects to provide input and evidence for policy dialogue and programme planning



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