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View all search resultsBali to host int'l meeting on illiteracy
Indonesia's Bali Island is set to host next week the seventh E-9 Ministerial Review Meeting on Education for All (EFA), which will focus on the improvement of education and training for teachers in countries where illiteracy is a national problem
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I
ndonesia's Bali Island is set to host next week the seventh E-9 Ministerial Review Meeting on Education for All (EFA), which will focus on the improvement of education and training for teachers in countries where illiteracy is a national problem.
The program is run by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and is aimed at decreasing the world's illiterate population.
The nine countries scheduled to attend the meeting include Bangladesh, Brazil, China, India, Mexico, Egypt, Nigeria, Pakistan and Indonesia.
A 1993 report by UNESCO said these nine countries were home to 70 percent of the world's illiterate population and 40 percent of global school dropouts.
UNESCO said it aimed to cut 50 percent of the world's illiterate population by 2015 through the EFA program, with a particular focus on the nine countries.
The EFA program is focused on six themes including early childhood education, compulsory education, gender equity, life skill education, quality of education and illiteracy.
Director general for higher education at Indonesia's Education Ministry, Fasli Jalal, said on Wednesday, "Failures in tackling education problems in these nine countries will result in a failure to reach the EFA target".
Fasli said the condition of education in the nine countries had been improving since the first EFA summit in New Delhi in 1993.
China was the country that had shown most improvement because it had managed to cut its illiterate population by 80 percent and had provided nine-year's worth of compulsory education for its citizens.
Fasli said Indonesia was in second place in terms of improvement. He said the country's illiteracy rate had declined to less than 10 percent of its 240 million population.
Illiteracy rates of most other countries stood at around 40 percent, he said.
"Besides that, we have no problem with gender equity in education.
"We have left the six-year compulsory education (phase) and we are now entering the nine-year compulsory education (phase), which is equal to China," he said.
But Indonesia still had problems with its quality of education and Fasli said lessons around life skills were not properly provided.
The biennial meeting would also be attended by delegates from other countries concerned with education, including donor countries and observers.
The meeting is scheduled to hear reports on the progress of EFA achievements in the nine countries, as well as globally, and should serve as a forum for sharing experiences and benchmarking best practice among participants.
Fasli said Indonesia had adopted the results of the previous EFA meetings in its amendment of the Constitution, as well as the 2005 Law on Teachers and Lecturers and the National Education Ministry's strategic plans.
