Walking backwards into the future

Ambassador Jose Abeto Zaide, Philippine Ambassador to Paris and Permanent Delegate to UNESCO Paris, recently attended an information meeting in Paris for UNESCO Permanent Delegations wherein the 2007 edition of the EFA (Education for All) Global Monitoring Report was presented. UNESCO Assistant Director General for Education Peter Smith and the EFA Global Monitoring Report Team Director Nicholas Burnett presided at the said meeting.

Strong foundation: Early childhood care and education

Entitled Strong Foundation: Early Childhood Care and Education, the 2007 Report focuses on the first EFA goal, which calls upon countries to expand and improve Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) in order to benefit disadvantaged children. Because early childhood is both a time of remarkable transformation and extreme vulnerability, the Report emphasizes ECCE as a holistic package encompassing care, health and nutrition in addition to education. Studies demonstrate that programmes supporting young children before they attend primary school provide foundations for subsequent learning and development. They also compensate for disadvantage and exclusion, offering a way out of poverty.

The Report laments, however, that too few developing countries and too few donor agencies have made early childhood a priority. Moreover, while the Report recognizes considerable progress toward EFA particularly in the areas of universal primary education, gender parity and increased international aid, there remains a long way to go in just eight years in order to meet the target year of 2015.

For instance, some 781 million adults still lack minimum literacy skills and two-thirds of them are women. Around 77 million primary school-age children are out of school, with many millions more in school, but not attending on a regular basis. There are also not enough qualified and motivated teachers to reach the EFA goals. Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, needs 4 million teachers. Meantime, domestic spending on education as a share of GNP decreased in 41 of the 106 countries. In addition, external funding requirements for EFA are now estimated at US$ 11 billion a year, over three times the current level.

The Filipino child is becoming more disadvantaged in a globalized world

The report ranks 125 countries based on the EFA Development Index (EDI), which is an aggregate of the composites of total primary net enrollment rate, adult literacy rate, gender-specific EFA index, as well as the survival rate to Grade V.

The evidence does not paint a bright future for the Filipino child, who is increasingly becoming more disadvantaged in a globalized world. The Philippines ranks 75th in EDI, below its Southeast Asian neighbors: Indonesia (58), Malaysia (52), and Vietnam (70), as well as other developing countries like Cuba (27), Chile (34), Costa Rica (41), Uruguay (53), and even Palestine (56). The ranks of the other Asian countries are: China (43), Myanmar (88), Cambodia (101) and Laos (103). There was no available data for Brunei, Singapore and Thailand.

The United Kingdom, Slovenia, Finland, Kazakhstan and France occupy the top five spots. The top 47 countries that have high EDI are deemed to have achieved the EFA goals.

Substantial ECE progress in Southeast Asia - except the Philippines

In terms of adult and youth literacy (age 15 years and over), the latest available data indicate substantial progress in the race to 2015 for most of Southeast Asia, EXCEPT THE PHILIPPINES! A decrease in the absolute number of adult illiterates is predicted for Indonesia (from 15.1M to 8.8M), Malaysia from (1.7M to 1.4M), Singapore (from 232,000 to 151,000), Thailand (from 3.35M to 2.34M), Vietnam (from 4.9M to 4.4M) and even Myanmar (from 3.2M to 2.8M). Going against the grain, THE PHILIPPINES IS PROJECTED TO RAISE THE NUMBER OF ITS ADULT ILLITERATES FROM 3.5M TO 3.93M.

"The Philippine education system – once the benchmark of excellence in the region – walked backward into the future. We could heed expert advice for the need for urgent bold action in, inter alia: crafting national early childhood policies that should be integrated in national development plans, built on partnerships that group multiple players from the government and the private sector, as well as increasing public spending on education, focusing on ECE and literacy," Amb. Zaide stated.

He recommends the following, "The UNESCO National Commission of the Philippines may wish to convene the inter-agency meeting to include policymakers including DepEd, NEDA, Congress and Senate (specifically the appropriations and education committees of both chambers) to discuss the Philippine situation in light of the 2007 EFA report, as well as to propose the basic, structural emergency and long-term solutions that will hopefully avert the uncontrolled deterioration of the Philippine education system."

UNESCO DG: ‘High level political endorsement is essential for ECCE’

Latin America and the Caribbean lead the developing world in the provision of preschool education. However, despite well-documented benefits for child development and well-being, the Report finds that this area remains the "forgotten link" in the education chain in many regions, and that half the world’s countries have no early childhood care and education policy for children under age three.

ECCE, the first of six Education for All goals the world is committed to achieving by 2015, is the theme of this edition of the Report. The study also includes an assessment of progress towards the other five objectives, showing a marked acceleration in primary school enrolments, for both boys and girls, and an increase in aid to education, offset in several countries by a decline in national education spending.

"It is no coincidence that the first Education for All goal focuses on the youngest and most vulnerable children," said UNESCO Director-General Koichïro Matsuura. "Improving their well-being at the earliest age must be an integral and systematic component of education and poverty reduction policies. High-level political endorsement is essential to getting ECCE on the agenda."

"Early childhood programmes make for strong foundations and pay high dividends," says Nicholas Burnett, director of the Report. "Each year in the developing world, over 10 million children die before age five of mostly preventable diseases. Programmes that combine nutrition, immunization, health, hygiene, care and education can change this. They are also a determining contributor to better achievement in school. Despite this, the children who stand most to benefit from such programmes are those least likely to have access to them."

Participation in preschool

Participation in preschool ranges from 62% in Latin America and the Caribbean, as against only 35% in the developing countries of East Asia and the Pacific, 32% in South and West Asia to 16% in the Arab States and 12% in Sub-Saharan Africa. The Report shows that demand for ECCE is expanding rapidly, spurred by higher numbers of women on the labor market and more single-parent households. In 1975, on average, one child in 10 was enrolled in pre-primary institutions, but by 2004 coverage had increased to about one child in three.

The best evidence on the benefits of early learning programmes comes from industrial countries. The US High/Scope Perry Preschool Program conducted in the 1960s targeted low-income African-American children assessed to be at high risk of school failure. Participants and a control group were tracked several times until age 40. Results showed clearly that participation led to increased IQ at age 5, higher rates of graduation from secondary school and higher earnings, with overall benefits exceeding costs at a ratio of 17:1. Research in fields ranging from neurobiology to psychology amply confirms how a child’s physical and psychological development is shaped by experiences during the first years of life.

Financing for early childhood programmes

According to a study cited in the Report, the higher a country’s pre-primary enrolment ratio, the lower its repetition rate and the higher its primary school completion rate. Economic analyses found a benefit/cost ratio of 3:1, with higher benefits if the early childhood programmes are targeted to children most at risk. However, financing for early childhood programmes is a low priority in most countries. Less than 10% of total public education expenditure was allocated to pre-primary education in 65 of the 79 countries with 2004 data available, while over half allocated less than 5%.

In a field characterized in many countries by strong reliance on private funding, the Report warns that public policy must set quality standards and regulations to safeguard against inequalities. The Report states that targeting resources to the most disadvantaged children should be the first step of a broader national ECCE policy for all children.

The Report also emphasizes the importance of quality careers in early childhood programmes. Yet in developing countries, those working with young children typically receive less training than their primary school counterparts. Even in industrialized countries, highly trained educators often work alongside untrained child care workers, many of them part-time or volunteers. Some countries like the UK are moving to close the gap between education and care workers by introducing a national minimum wage in ECCE.

Walking forward into the future

Instead of walking backward, we are hopeful that we can move forward into the future. After surveying 110 universities and NGO-community projects nationwide espousing various applications of "Lifelong Education for Sustainable Development", we have just started the series of Focus Group Discussion (FGD) in Cebu with 21 representatives from these institutions. Cagayan de Oro will be the site for the Mindanao FGD on November 25, while the Luzon-NCR FGD will probably be by early December.

Most of the institutions surveyed have ECE which can connect to our UNESCO proposal to Paris that the Philippines become the UNESCO Lifelong Learning Center for Sustainable Development in Asia Pacific. The Center can ignite the dynamic projects of Cebu Normal University president Ester Velasquez, University of St. La Salle Bacolod dean Marissa Quezon, Carlos Hilado Memorial State College director Lorena Bangudos, Leyte Normal University VP Leonardo Onate and Leyte State University president Pacencia Milan, as well as TESDA Region VII director Engr. Urbano Budtan and Provincial director Lorena Yunque.

The 40-year old Operation Brotherhood Montessori Center, as the LLESD national laboratory for quality teacher training and curriculum for affordable Montessori education will be able to help transform their programs. The Center is meant to help re-engineer the Early Childhood Education projects of DepEd, the professional high school business apprenticeship for TESDA, as well as teacher training for CHED.

(The full Report, summary report and additional information is available on www.efareport.unesco.org. The EFA Global Monitoring Report is an annual publication prepared by an independent team based at UNESCO to monitor progress towards the six Education for All goals adopted in Dakar, Senegal in 2000.)

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