The state of the right to education worldwide: free or fee: 2006 global report

Why isn't there a single global strategy for education?

By: Tomasevski K
Published by: Right to Education , 2006
Via: Eldis

After the turn of the millennium, there has been an increasing global consensus on the need to make primary education free. However, this report argues that while the right to free and compulsory primary education for all the world’s children education forms the backbone of international human rights law, it does not shape global educational strategies. Instead, it contends, the international community have produced clashing global approaches to education that routinely hinder instead of helping governments of developing countries which are battling to provide free primary education.

The study presents an analysis of the laws, policies and practices in each of 170 individual countries, (including a small number of wealthy, post-industrialising countries). For each country it assesses whether the right to education is recognised or denied, why this is so, and the impacts on the right to education. It assesses the extent to which alternatives to the human rights approach have served to impede the universalisation of primary education.

The report contends that, through debt repayments and structural adjustment criteria imposed by international donors and development agencies such as the World Bank, which discourage taxation and public expenditures, governments are pressurised not to provide free education but to transfer its cost to families and communities. These frequently prohibitive costs are imposed in the form of both legal and illegal fees, together with the costs of text books and uniforms.