Education for all: rising to the challenge.

• Author: Bokova, Irina

imagine a school that changes location every forty-five days--a school that comes to the child, instead of the other way around. This is happening on the steppes of Mongolia where the government provides mobile tent schools for nomadic herder communities.

Further north, in the extreme conditions of Siberia, or further south, on the hot, dusty plains of Kenya, other nomadic children are enjoying more educational opportunities than their parents ever did. These tailor-made approaches are the answer to reaching children who continue to miss out on learning, ten years after the international community committed to achieve Education for All by 2015. The six goals adopted in Dakar at the World Education Forum, two of which are also Millennium Development Goals, cover the whole educational spectrum, from early childhood, primary and secondary education, through to vocational programmes for youth and literacy programmes for adults.

For millions of children and youth, these goals are making a genuine difference. In one decade, an additional forty-two million children have entered primary school, with girls benefiting in ever greater numbers. South and West Asia more than halved its number of out-of-school children and sub-Saharan Africa reduced the figure by 28 per cent.

This has happened because governments have made education a national priority. They have abolished school fees, recruited teachers, built classrooms in rural areas, supplied midday meals--often the only one a child will get in a day--or provided subsidies to children from the poorest families. They have levelled the playing field for girls by introducing scholarships, running community campaigns, deploying female teachers in rural areas, and installing separate sanitation facilities in schools. Countries such as India have also reinforced their legislation to ensure that education is a basic, free, and compulsory right.

These advances are proof that the goals are realistic and achievable. They are initiatives we must encourage, share and replicate. But it will take much bolder action to meet the 2015 targets.

Some seventy-two million children who should be in primary school are not. Another seventy-one million adolescents of lower secondary school age are missing out--a figure that translates into low skills, youth unemployment, and social exclusion. Illiteracy affects a staggering 759 million adults--16 per cent of the world population. Without access to learning opportunities...