Human Rights and Universal Child Primary Education

Fait Muedini

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137523242
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Public Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book focuses on all issues related to the human right of child primary education. It addresses issues of access to education, the benefits of schooling, primary education and human rights law, the role of states and NGOs towards improving enrolment rates, as well as policy recommendations.

CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Child primary education is a crucial right for children. Throughout the world, youth have stressed the importance of learning. For example, a child named Komla, in 2008 stated, “I work in the fields with my parents . . . [b]ut today I am going to school. I want to learn to read and to count in order to be a good businessman. (UNICEF, 2008c). These comments were made after state officials announced that Togo had decided to follow recommendations by the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, and would begin implementing free education for its children. Unfortunately, many children in Togo were previously not able to attend school prior to this announcement because of their families’ “lack of funds to pay for school fees, which amounted to roughly 4 U.S. dollars per child per year” (2008c). In addition to being unable to pay for school, parents in Togo have also needed their children to work in order to bring in extra income for the family, and thus, could not afford the opportunity costs associated with having their kids attend primary school. Unfortunately, this position is quite frequent among parents, and in particular parents with daughters, who often see little economic benefit of sending them to school (whether it is due to a belief that employment will be difficult to come by, or that they project marrying their daughter, and thus, feel as if they will not receive the economic rewards of this investment in education). For many, any benefit may not be worth it compared to the high opportunity costs that are associated with educating a child (Herz & Sperling, 2004). However, with the move to free education, the hope is that all children in Togo, and elsewhere, will be able to attend school (UNICEF, 2008), as the ability to take the economic burden off parents will hopefully result in much higher enrollment rates.

Such stories about the challenges to accessing primary education are not limited to Togo, but rather take place in many parts of the world. One of the more recent and highly publicized cases regarding the right to primary education has been the story of Malala Yousafzai, a teenager who faced the repressive Taliban in Pakistan, and was shot twice in the face over her demands that girls be given the right to go to school. After her recovery, Malala has since spoke throughout the world on the rights of education for girls, and for all children. She has stood up to the Taliban, who have attempted to restrict rights for women. Concerning child primary education, while the limitations to educational access are often due to economic factors (as mentioned in the case of Togo), political reasons, or otherwise, the results are the same: children are out of school, and in turn, will have much more difficult lives when it comes to income, employment, health, and the safety and longevity of their families.

These two examples clearly illustrate the importance of education for children. Although they may be young, many children clearly understand how critical education is to their lives, not necessarily in terms of future career prospects, but rather for the fundamental development of the self. In fact, to many kids, this is often the one wish they have: they want the ability to attend school. In many interviews, when asked what they would like, children are often recorded as saying that they would like to finish school in order to enter the profession of their choice, while others merely speak about their desire to learn. And yet, the sad truth is that education is still not a reality for millions of the world’s children. According to the most recent figures, 57 million children are currently not attending primary school (United Nations, 2013). In addition, “250 million children primary school-aged children lack basic skills . . . ” (Anderson & Crone, 2014). But yet, despite the dire numbers regarding children who are not enrolled in school, free child primary education has received a great deal of attention in the international community in the past years, and arguably even more so in 2015, the year the United Nations (UN) has pegged as a marker year for the “World Millennium Development Goals,” which include improving health conditions related to pregnancy, reducing poverty, fighting diseases such as HIV/AIDS, addressing gender equality, promoting universal primary education, and reducing child mortality rates.

What I set out to do in this book is to examine the various issues surrounding universal child primary education in human rights and international politics. Namely, I aim to break down the state of child primary education, the challenges that exist in providing such a right, and the positive developments in this goal of ensuring that all children have free schooling, all the while discussing the roadblocks to reaching this objective. In this work I hope to provide support for the importance of free child primary education, while discussing the factors that are preventing free education from taking place as well as addressing the limitations to the schooling that currently exists. In the first chapter, I shall discuss the benefits to free primary education in the world system. I will talk about the effects that child education has on the individual when it comes to their health, their home life, as well as their work life. Namely, I shall examine all of positive effects that result from a child being educated. I will also discuss how education can help families as a whole. As we shall see, education has numerous benefits, both for the state as well as for the individual. For example, education is said to increase overall income greatly. In addition, health improves drastically due to better decision-making as a result of information learned from schooling. Individuals who have attended school also live much longer on average, compared to those who did not receive a formal education.

After going over the wide range of benefits that primary education offers to individuals and to society, I will then examine what support exists for the human rights of child education in international law. As I shall argue, the human rights corpus protects the right of free primary education for all children and has done so for close to 100 years. I shall look at early statements by the International Labor Organization (ILO) regarding the education of children as it relates to working conditions. Next, I will look at the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and how this document cemented the rights of the child in the context of universal education. Then, I shall examine additional international legal documents such as the International Covenant on Social, Economic, and Cultural Rights, and the Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, as well as the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which itself has been one of the most concentrated legal documents with regard to the protection of children’s human rights. But along with examining the legal protections of the right to education as stated in international human rights law, I will also discuss the role of international actors in their work toward universal education. Here, the majority of the discussion will center on the role of the UN in terms of promoting universal education, as well as the World Bank initiatives such as the World Millennium Development Goals. It is in this chapter that I shall also introduce any criticisms levied toward these organizations’ approaches toward universal education.

Following the chapter on what rights exist toward education in international human rights law, as well as analyzing the actions and strategies of international organizations such as the UN and the World Bank, I shall then go on to discuss why, in spite of all of these protections, millions of children are not able to attend primary school. And as we shall come to see, there are many reasons for this: there exist factors at the individual level and the state level, as well as actions (and also lack of action) at the international level among states that have hindered full enrollment rates for primary schooling. For example, as I will discuss later in the book, one of the primary reasons why children are not in school is because they are often unable to afford the costs that are frequently associated with education. The introduction of school fees, as well as opportunity costs for sending children to school often limit their ability to be in the classroom or to stay in school for long periods of time. Here, I have also run my own quantitative analysis looking at the effects of free schooling on primary school enrollment rates across countries based on existing data. I also examine how free schooling affects female enrollment rates. But in addition to analyzing the role of fees (or the lack thereof in relation to primary school), I will also discuss the shortage of teachers and how this can also inhibit learning; high teacher to student ratios make effective learning difficult to attain. Moreover, an insufficient number of schools, as well as the inadequate conditions of existing schools have also introduced additional challenges to efficient learning. Furthermore, the lack of necessary resources such as textbooks, along with limited national and international resources toward education have led to the gap between the goal of universal education for everyone and what we are seeing today in primary schools throughout the world.

But despite these disparities and roadblocks to universal and high-quality schooling, a number of states have implemented free child primary education. I will in fact look at a number of case studies of countries that have decided to implement free schooling. I consider how these different states first made the decision to offer free schooling, as well as the initial reaction to the then new policy. Next, I will examine what some of the challenges have been to insuring that this new policy was working. Here, I will point out some of the difficulties that states, local administrators, and teachers faced with the new program. As we shall see, although the national government provided free schooling, the influx in students often led to cramped classrooms and insufficient numbers of books, as well as a limited number of qualified teachers. I will then review the positive effects of the program, as well as what the state would need to do to ensure that such free child primary education programs are most efficient.

After looking at specific case studies of countries that have provided free schooling—and the effects of this policy—in the next chapter, I shall examine the work of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) as they relate to human rights, and specifically, how they have been effective in their advocacy toward primary education. Along with state and international actors, NGOs are also at the forefront of the primary education movement. Here, I discuss the rise of NGOs in global affairs in recent decades, as well as address how they have been successful in advocating for human rights. NGOs—through information sharing, network politics, and lobbying at domestic and international levels—have been able to alter policies toward human rights. I will then move to a more specific discussion of how NGOs work on issues of primary education. I cite a number of examples of NGO activity throughout the world. In this chapter, I speak about how NGOs have been able to raise awareness about education, how they mobilize groups within countries, and how they have worked with international actors at the UN on ways to improve education enrollment and quality, as well as coordinated their efforts with national governments.

Lastly, I will conclude the book with a summary of the main points of the book, as well as recommendations on what needs to be done within the international community in order to reach the goal of universal primary education. Here, I will lay out the necessary responsibilities of different actors: I will look at what states need to do to implement free child education policy, as well as discuss the role of the international organizations (IOs) moving forward with regard to primary education. Furthermore, I will address how NGOs should continue to work on these issues of education, as well as what parents and local civil society can continue to offer regarding the rights of education. Furthermore, I will also speak about the importance of cooperation among these different groups. I will cite examples of how cooperation between local and international actors has helped enhance education rights, all the while noting where cooperation efforts have failed and the policy outcomes that have arisen as a result of what has at times been a disconnect between the different actors. Here I will specifically emphasize why state and NGO relationships often sour.

The goal of this book is to lay out the complexities that surround universal education, to explain in detail the reasons why millions children are still not in school, what is being done about it, and ways in which we as an international community can continue work on these objectives. As an international community, there is little that is more important and deserves more attention than the right to education, since education often overlaps with many other human rights. This work aims to shed some additional light on ways in which the world can continue to advocate for the right of all children to be given access to learn, while providing a comprehensive discussion on the various facets of child primary education.

CHAPTER 2

The Importance of Education: What Are the Benefits of Providing Free Child Primary Schooling?

One of the first questions that arises when discussing free child primary education often concerns just how important schooling is to children, families, and society as a whole. And while it is well understood and quite obvious that education is essential for the development of the individual, what we find is that by offering primary education to children, a host of benefits resound throughout the community, often for years (and decades) following the schooling itself. In fact, it seems that almost every aspect of one’s life, particularly as it relates to socioeconomic rights, is in some way or another connected to the right to education. Thus, I shall discuss just how important education is to personal health, the welfare of children and family, and income and employment opportunities, among other things.

I want to focus on the range of benefits that providing free and universal schooling can offer to children, their families, and their communities. In this chapter, I will argue not only that free child primary education is not merely a “moral” and an “ethical” obligation set forth by international human rights toward the rights of the child but also that providing free education actually serves various economic, health, and other interests. As we shall see, numerous studies by scholars, policymakers, and human rights activists show just how beneficial schooling is to the individual, to the family, and to the domestic community, as well as to the international community as a whole. In fact, the evidence is quite clear as to how great the benefit of education is to those who have the ability to attend school.

Education is arguably the most important policy option with regard to domestic and international development. The National Institute of Medical Statistics in India (2012) explains that “[e]ducation is not only one of the most important socioeconomic factors that is known to significantly influence individual behavior and attitudes, but educational attainment is a fundamental indicator of a country’s level of human capital development” (25). Others have argued in a similar fashion, saying that

Education is first and foremost the vehicle through which societies reproduce themselves, both the inputs and the outputs in an education system may more rightly be thought of as a set of ideas about how a society is structured and should be structured in the future. This means that the concept of providing every child with a good-quality education is not simply a function of having enough schools, textbooks, and teachers. It is very much a result of a social context in which education is seen as a right for all and in which all people have the opportunity to improve their economic and social welfare and participate in public life. (Birdsall, Levine, & Ibrahim, 2005b: 23–24)

And with this opportunity, numerous positive outcomes in the fields of health, politics, and human rights can (and often do) arise. This can be especially the case for those economically disadvantaged; their having access to education can allow them the ability to be more active in making political choices, and help in their calls for greater government representation as related to their rights (Birdsall et al., 2005). Bill Felice (2010), for example, argues that education “should create an informed citizenry able to hold leaders accountable to the norms of basic civil and political rights. An educated citizenry is essential for a democracy to flourish” (63). In addition, education also contributes to increasing human rights and lessens poverty, as well as offers other improvements such as a reduction in crime (McMahon, 1999: 6).

When one is examining ways for economic development in a society, it becomes clear that education is one of the key factors for the economic prosperity and growth of a country. Primary education has numerous benefits to citizens and their communities, both in terms of private economic and social benefits that education provides, and overall benefits within the society itself. In fact, it is difficult to discuss economic growth without understanding that much of this is related to individual benefits to education (Stevens & Weale, 2003). And looking that the different studies on this question of education and state growth, we do indeed find a positive relationship between education and individual growth rates (and often, in turn, the state). In terms of a society’s overall growth, Ann Golan explains the significance of education for a state by saying,

Investment in human capital is a key element in achieving long-term sustainable economic growth. Macroeconomic studies have shown that education is positively correlated with overall economic growth, with one year additional schooling of the labor force possibly leading to as much as a 9 percent increase in GDP for the first three years of schooling and to 4 percent a year for the next three years. (Golan, foreword, in Summers, 1994)

Others have made similar arguments, saying that “a trained and educated workforce in LDCs (less developed countries) should lead to an increase in the overall purchasing power of the working class and emerging middle class in these countries. Such an increase should in theory lead to an increase of imports of products from the developed countries and other LDCs, thus stimulating production in the rich and poor countries and increasing world trade” (Felice, 2010: 63). Others have found that education does indeed have a direct positive relationship with economic growth. For example, Stevens and Weale (2003), looking at data from the l800s to the early twentieth century for the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Brazil, Japan, and Korea, concluded that higher percentages of students enrolled in primary education years later, led to greater GDP per capita (2). Looking at this compared to other analyses, their result output “suggests that a 1% increase in the enrolment rate raises GDP by 0.35%” (5). They also found that “[f]or a less-well educated population an increase from 2 to 3 years achieved by an increase in the enrollment rate of 50% or 0.41 log units would raise GDP by 15.4%” (5). According to a cross-national study by Dollar and Gatti (1999), looking at female education, a 1 percent increase in female secondary education will result in 0.3 percent increase in yearly per capita income (in Herz & Sperling, 2004). Other studies that consider South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa have found that ensuring greater equality in education between the genders can also lead to GDP growth of just under 1 percent (Klasen, 1999, in Herz & Sperling, 2004). Roudi-Fahimi and Moghadam (2003), citing a 2002 United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) report, explain that education has also shown to significantly increase levels of development in developing states. For example, in this study of 19 developing states, UNESCO researchers found that “a country’s long-term economic growth increases by 3.7 percent for every year the adult population’s average level of schooling [increased]” (Roudi-Fahimi & Moghadam, 2003: 1–2). And according to the United Nations Global Education First Initiative (2012), “[g]etting all children into basic education, while raising learning standards, could boost growth by 2% annually in low-income countries” (11).

In fact, according to some, the returns on education are equal to or greater than noneducational programs for developing nations. Tilak (1988), citing Psacharopoulos’ (1981) studies on education returns, explains that “returns to education are higher than returns to investment in physical capital on the one hand, and on the more important side, returns to education are hig...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  Introduction
• 2  The Importance of Education: What Are the Benefits of Providing Free Child Primary Schooling?
• 3  Child Education in International Human Rights Law
• 4  What Are the Reasons Why Children Are Not Attending Primary School?
• 5  State Challenges to Ensuring Free Primary Schooling: Case Studies
• 6  Non-State Actors: The Role of NGOs in the Fight for Free Universal Education
• 7  Conclusion and Recommendations
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index