Education for All and
Children with Disabilities: International Policy
and Practice
by Phyllis Magrab, PhD, Director, Georgetown University
Center for Child and Human Development
Published in Educating Children for Democracy, Issue
Number 6, Winter/Spring 2004 Issue Addressed
The right to education is a basic human right and
the foundation for a more just society. Half a century
ago the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948)
asserted education to be this basic human right,
a right that was reaffirmed in the Convention on
the Rights of the Child (1989). Importantly, the
Convention also recognized that there are particular
problems to overcome in order to truly ensure educational
opportunities for all children. For this reason,
the Convention has been followed up in recent years
by a movement that has sought to turn the educational
rights of the child into a reality. This movement,
Education for All (EFA), was launched at the World
Conference on Education for All in Jomtien, Thailand
in 1990 by the major international and bilateral
organizations and was attended by almost all of the
nations of the world. In the year 2000, a decade
later, 176 countries gathered in Dakar, Senegal at
the World Forum on Education for All to review the
progress made towards this goal. While, in general,
countries have worked to address the educational
rights of children and 10 million more children attend
school each year, the tendency of countries to focus
on the "easy to reach" and neglect
those excluded from basic education for social, economic,
or geographic reasons was notable in the review of
progress. For example, 98% of children with disabilities
in developing countries do NOT attend
schools. As a result, the forum declared that Education
for All
must take into account the needs of the poor and
the disadvantaged, which includes, among others,
those with special learning needs and assure that
Education for All really means ALL.
Operationalizing EFA
To achieve the major Dakar goal of assuring quality
primary education for all by the year 2015 and other
more specific goals, a broad international strategy
has been put in place. The heart of this strategy
is at the country level and embedded in national
EFA plans for action (The Dakar Framework for Action,
2000). Each national EFA plan must specify reforms
addressing the EFA goals, establish a sustainable
financial framework, and be time-bound and action
oriented.
Importantly, the Dakar Framework is a collective
commitment; countries must be supported by regional
and international agencies and institutions to reach
EFA goals. To coordinate the commitment of these
efforts a structure has been put in place that links
national education development plans to regional
frameworks for action and to an international structure
of multilateral agencies, bilateral donors, lending
institutions, and NGO networks. This international
structure is coordinated by a Secretariat at UNESCO,
an EFA Working Group, and a High Level Group, all
playing a role in assuring:
- Planning,
- Communication and Advocacy,
- Financing,
- Monitoring and Evaluation, and
- International and Regional Mechanisms.
An additional resource
to countries is the Flagship programs that are a
structured set of activities
carried out by voluntary partners to eliminate
specific obstacles to achieving Dakar goals through targeted
and coordinated actions. These programs assist
countries with their national educational plans and provide
a focus for a particular aspect of EFA in terms
of advocacy, information exchange, advice, and monitoring
of progress. Currently there are flagship programs
related to girls' education, school
health, HIV-AIDS, literacy, emergency situations,
early
education, quality education, and, most recently,
inclusion
and disability.
The Flagship on Education for
All and the Rights of Persons with Disabilities:
Towards Inclusion
This Flagship on Education for All and the
Rights of Persons with Disabilities: Towards
Inclusion was
established in the year 2002 to act as a catalyst
to ensure that the right to education and the
goals of the Dakar Framework are realized for
individuals
with disabilities. This flagship is based on
the principle that the right to education is
universal
and must extend to all children, youth, and
adults with disabilities as articulated in
a number of internationally
approved declarations, including the World
Declaration for Education for All (1990), the
Standard Rules
on the Equalization of Opportunities for Persons
with Disability (1993), the UNESCO
Salamanca Statement and Framework for Action (1994),
and the Dakar Framework
for Action (2000).
The Flagship on Education
for All and the Rights of Persons with Disabilities:
Towards Inclusion has been formed by an alliance of diverse organizations,
including global disability organizations,
international
development agencies, intergovernmental agencies,
and experts in the fields of special and inclusive
education from developed and developing nations.
The flagship seeks to unite all partners in
its effort to reach out to children, young
people and adults
with disabilities, and to promote solutions
that can translate universal rights into inclusive
realities.
The Flagship Secretariat is housed in UNESCO.
The Goal of the Flagship has been agreed to
as follows: Recognizing the universal right
to education, the
Flagship seeks to unite all EFA partners in
providing access to and promoting completion
of quality education
for every child, youth, and adult with a disability.
In order to reach this goal, the flagship will:
- Have the full participation of persons with disabilities
and families in the design of all Flagship
activities.
- Promote the full participation of persons with
disabilities and families in the development of
policies
and practices related to the education of persons with disabilities
at the national, regional, and global levels.
- Seek
to ensure that all governmental entities, donors,
and NGOs endorse the universal right
of education for all children, youth, and adults
with
a disability.
- Act as a catalyst to fully incorporate the Flagship
Goal into national plans of action and
regional policies.
- Work in partnership with all other EFA Flagships
to fully endorse and incorporate the
right of educating every person with a disability
into their efforts.
- Mobilize resources
in support of the Flagship Goal through obtaining
commitment of new resources
from national and international entities and leveraging
existing EFA resources.
- Seek to ensure that
the EFA Monitoring Process includes specific
quantitative and qualitative statistics
and indicators related to persons with
disabilities and documentation of resources allocated
to the implementation of EFA for these individuals.
- Identify and disseminate
effective practices and stimulate research and
studies related to
the Flagship Goal to include such areas as:
- Quality teacher
education,
- School organization including
adequate and accessible facilities,
- Curriculum
and pedagogy, and
- Assistive devices
and appropriate materials.
- Promote the right
of every child and youth with a disability
to express his/her view pertaining
to his/her education and life skills as defined by Article
23.1 of the Convention on the Rights
of the Child.
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