Gestión del agua

The EFA’s monitoring activities are done through various establishments at regional level, made up of six regional monitoring frameworks established for all the 155 countries.

Among the six regional monitoring frameworks pertaining to the current research are: The Sub-Saharan Block made up of 45 countries in the Southern parts of Africa to meet in Johannesburg, South Africa and to discuss their progress and challenges, and their combined plan forward (World Education Forum, 2001:2). This Block is selected to examine the EFA’s implementation and monitoring activities. The choice of this region is to enable a view from the developing Block that includes Botswana, as well as a developing region other than Brazil. The World Education Forum (2001:72) and also Packer and Aggio (2009:82-83) reported that the monitoring activities of the EFA include, namely co-ordinating and mobilising all EFA partners at national, regional and international levels to complement the national governments’ efforts by UNESCO.

Among these mobilisation and coordinating activities are:

Multi-lateral and bi-lateral funding agencies, non-governmental organisations, broad-based civil society organisations, as well as the private sector. EFA funding agencies include the World Bank, the United Nations International Children Emergency Fund, the United Nations

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Development Programme, the United Nations Foreign Policy Agency, and UNESCO (EFA, 2011:3).

The member countries stated the following as regards their commitment of financial support towards achieving EFA’s goals:

‘The heart of EFA lies at the country level but no country committed will be thwarted in their achievement of goals due to lack of resources’ (World Education Forum, 2001:3).

Areas of focus by EFA are the hitherto neglected sectors of care in early childhood education, education in the time of crises, adult literacy, the education of girls and women, and the care of the HIV/AIDS-infected. The EFA’s timeframe for achieving its objectives was 2002, and not later than 2015. The EFA’s activities included boarding facilities for learners in remote areas (EFA, 2007:3-4). Uganda, for example, has launched the ‘Miith Akolda’ curriculum to disarm and rehabilitate children with armed groups, as well as abolishing school fees in primary schools (EFA, 2008:3-4).

Universal primary education has increased by 40% within the Sub-Saharan Block since 2005, and post-primary enrolment has also increased from 24% in 2000 to 32% in 2005, especially in Ethiopia and Mozambique (UNESCO, 2011:14). The EDI ranking (from the set up target of: 1) of the regional Block falls between the ratios of .9.00 (the highest) in Namibia, and .5.20 (the lowest) in Niger in 2008. The illiteracy rate of 15-24 year-olds within this region was between 20.00% in 2005-2008 in Cape Verde and 34.60% during the same period in Nigeria. The net enrolment in 2008 was 2% (the lowest) in Burkina Faso and Rwanda and 91% (the highest) in Mauritius. The EDI rank in the pre-primary provision of this region was between 160 and 204. The net intake in primary school within the regional Block in 2008 was 16% in Eritrea and 83% in Mauritius (EFA, 2011:264-265, 78-281 & 300-301). Countries such as Mozambique and Ghana were making special efforts in pre-primary education within this region. The following statements by EFA support these findings:

‘. . . The Escolinhas pre-school programme in Mozambique is open to vulnerable children

aged 3-5 . . . focus on cognitive stimulation, using games, art and music to develop basic numeracy and reading skills’ (EFA, 2011:39).

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‘In 2007 Ghana adopted a national early childhood development policy. . . of free compulsory pre-primary education . . . Teacher training programmes for kindergarten have

been expanded . . .’ (EFA, 2011:39).

Investigations on the Sub-Saharan Block conducted by the World Education Forum (2001:3) and EFA (2007:3) revealed, among others, the EFA’s provision of financial aid towards basic education to countries, especially to those within the Sub-Saharan Block. In other areas, 98 developed countries have committed US$25 billion in aid a year, and 42% of this aid, about US$1.5 billion, goes to developing countries towards basic education annually. Donations through various UN agencies (i.e., United Nations International Children Emergency Fund, the United Nations Development Programme, and UNESCO), the World Bank, and bilateral donors go mainly to the Sub-Saharan Block (EFA, 2007:3).

Though donations have increased, UNESCO’s (2011:108) findings revealed that donors are not on track to meet their aid commitments, which fell short of the pledges made in 2005. Aid for basic education stagnated in 2008. This 4% fall translates into a 6% decline in aid per child in the region (EFA, 2011:109). Financing trends are thus volatile, making planning difficult. The pupil-teacher ratios are still high, and range between 33:1 in Uganda and 60:1 (60 learners to 1 teacher) in Chad in 2005 (EFA, 2008:4). Nevertheless, UNESCO (2011:20- 21) reported a multi-lingual instruction improvement in countries such as Zambia and Burkina Faso.

In the section below the researcher will discuss strategies used to assess the EFA’s goals. 2.6.2 An assessment of the policy objectives of Education for All under the Sub-Saharan Block

A Global Monitoring Report was issued in 2002 to document the EFA’s progress and challenges (EFA, 2007:22). Furthermore, EFA has made its first four goals quantifiable goals, and launched the EDI as its measuring instrument on the progress of member countries in all the six goals. Packer and Aggio (2009:49) indicated that EFA established indicators for measuring education quality. The indicators are, namely the percentage of young people (15-24 years) with basic literacy skills; school life expectancy (expected number of years of formal schooling from primary to tertiary level); pupil-teacher ratios in primary education;

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trained primary school teachers (as percentage of the total number of teachers); and public expenditure on primary education (as percentage of each country’s Gross National Product). Within the Sub-Saharan Block no country has yet achieved all the EFA goals, except the Seychelles, which has an EDI index of .95, which is close to 1. Some countries, including Botswana, are however, in the middle position, with indices between .80 and .91 (UNESCO, 2011:14). Gender parity has been achieved in countries such as Mauritius (1.00) and the Seychelles (1.02) (EFA, 2011:301). Burkina Faso has abolished school fees for girls, in order to promote gender parity, with an increase from .71 in 1999 to .94 in 2008 (UNESCO, 2011:14; EFA, 2011:299). Gender disparity, as regards accessibility to basic education at both primary and secondary level, still exists to the disadvantage of girls. In Botswana, however, this disadvantage is in respect of boys accessing secondary education (Packer & Aggio, 2009:49 & 83).

Information technology has increased by 20% within the school systems, so has the access to international forms of electronic media, as well as national networks of communication systems (EFA, 2007:1, 4-5, 9 & 25). Twenty countries in Africa are connected to the internet, and over 550,000 schools possess information and communication technology. Implementation activities now include curriculum outlook and adaptation. Assessment is moving towards criterion-referenced testing in convergence with the current global trend (EFA, 2007:1- 4; Bishop, 2007:6).

Implementation strategies as regards the Inclusive Education Policy of EFA within the Sub- Saharan Block are examined in the section below.

2.6.3 The implementation of inclusive education within the Sub-Saharan Block of