Education News

Uttar Pradesh Children’s charter The global campaign for education (GCE) action week formally launched in Uttar Pradesh on April 19, 2004 in partnership with committed non-government organisations including Action Aid, Oxfam, Unicef, Plan India, Care UP, Catholic Relief Services, North India and the Beti Foundation, though ignored by the media, made a huge impact upon the academic community in India’s most populous and educationally backward state. GCE action week campaigns were simultaneously conducted in 182 countries which are signatories to the Dakar Declaration which commits the global community to achieving several education goals within a defined time frame. The goals include enrollment of every child in school by 2003, bridging the gender gap by 2005 when girls will constitute half of school enrollments and 100 percent literacy by 2015. Global Campaign for Education Week (19-25 April) serves as a reminder to member countries of their pledge. The theme of this year’s GCE week of action was ‘missing children’ from education. Over the years GCE has morphed into the world’s biggest lobby for education, endorsed by United Nations organisations — Unesco, ILO and Unicef. The campaign stresses that free and compulsory elementary education is a state responsibility and aims to mobilise $8 billion (Rs.36,000 crore) worldwide for basic education. This amount, campaigners say, is equal to a mere four days of the world’s annual military spending, 20 percent of what Europeans spend on ice-cream annually and 16 percent of American spending on tobacco every year. The formal launch of the campaign was preceded by an extensive 20-day mapping exercise conducted in 15 Uttar Pradesh districts. Among the major reasons identified for low school enrollments were early girl marriages, unsafe school environ-ments, far flung schools, uninteresting curricula, unfriendly teachers who impose fees and fines upon students, and lack of basic amenities like toilets and drinking water. The distinctive aspect of the campaign was that direct interaction between children and government officials and policy makers was facilitated, with children encouraged to voice their problems and offer solutions. “It is not poverty that causes illiteracy but the other way round. Education gives people the skills to work their way out of poverty. Schooling in India has remained a dream for so many children not because of poverty and illiteracy but because of lack of political will. GCE Education Week is a reminder that 100 million children around the world are out of the education system. According to UN figures, a quarter of those children are in India,” says R.K. Rai, a GCE activist. At a special programme in Lucknow conducted by GCE activists for interaction with the media, 80 children from 15 districts of UP offered first hand accounts of the difficulties of acquiring school education in India’s most populous state. Twelve-year-old Hussian who lives just 15 km beyond Lucknow told astonished media persons that he has never seen a blackboard. And though he claims a special affinity for cricket, Hussian has never heard of Sachin Tendulkar. For ten-year-old Soni from Barabanki, the care of…