UNESCO report-Gender and Education for All (EFA) 2000-2015: Achievements and Challenges

• The Gender and EFA 2000-2015: Achievements and Challenges report is produced in partnership with the United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative (UNGEI), a multi-stakeholder partnership in support of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and EFA on girl child education and gender equality.
• The report provides detailed evidence of how much has been achieved in the past 15 years but also where considerable challenges remain.
• It highlights notable progress in gender parity in primary and secondary education, particularly in South and West Asia, while underscoring the persistent barriers to achieving gender equality in education.

Major highlights of the repot

• It shows that fewer than half of countries — of which none are in sub-Saharan Africa — have achieved the goal of gender parity in both primary and secondary education, even though all were supposed to achieve it by 2005.
• The number of countries that have achieved the goal of gender parity in both primary and secondary education has risen from 36 to 62 since 2000.
• 62 million girls are still denied their basic right to education, the number of out-of-school girls has declined by 52 million in the last 15 years.
• Gender gaps in youth literacy are narrowing. However, fewer than seven out of every ten young women in sub-Saharan Africa are expected to be literate by 2015.
• Challenges in achieving gender parity are- school-related gender based violence and child marriages. In 2012, almost one in five women who married was aged 15 to 19.
• To remedy the situation- the report suggested for providing education as a free service, giving alternative secondary education options for out-of-school adolescents and integrating gender issues into all aspects of policy and planning.

In India, gender gaps in primary and lower secondary education have closed due to adoption of multiple strategies that include free textbooks for girls, back-to-school camps and bridging courses, recruitment of female teachers, and national programmes to increase demand for schooling among rural and disadvantaged girls among others.

By: Vishal