Hundreds of teachers gathered for the third World Congress of Education International in Kathmandu (Nepal) at the end of July to outline a new strategy for the world teachers' organisation. In this article, Fred van Leeuwen, General Secretary of Education International looks at some of the key challenges faced by the organisation.
Education International is a labour union, a professional association and a human rights organisation, all in one. Today almost ninety percent of all teachers' organisations worldwide belong to Education International. This makes us one of the largest and most representative non-governmental bodies in the international community. Since the creation of EI in 1993, I dare say that we have made a difference. Particularly for teachers and teachers' organisations in low-income countries, in the emerging democracies of Central and Eastern Europe or in countries tormented by violent conflicts, Education International has often been a lifeline. International solidarity may sound like a word out of an ancient vocabulary, something ofthe past, but we know that it works. Solidarity must be kept alive and, nurturedas a goal and as a means to ensure that we are not just globalising our economy but also social justice. as well
Globalisation is changing the role of international trade union organisations. We continue to be an instrument for international solidarity. Increasingly, we are also a tool for international influence concerning political and economic developments at the global and regional levels. There is no denying that developments in the education sector and the conditions of our members are determined - to an important extent - by international economic factors. For example, the decision of the G8 to cancel the debts of the poorest countries means more funds for school in those countries. In the industrial economies, school reforms, curriculum development, educational standards, even terms and conditions of employment of education personnel, are increasingly influenced by international trends. The political margins within which our national governments operate are being reduced. For our affiliates to exert influence on their national or even local governments they need to be engaged in international advocacy as well.
Education for All
Education International's first target is to fight disgraceful illiteracy rates. In 1990 world leaders and UN agencies agreed to work for the achievement of Education for All by the year 2000. They failed! They failed miserably! Today , according to official statistics, 125250 million children between the ages of 6 and 141 are denied access to school. As many again between the ages of 12 and 14 never go to school - a quarter of a million youngsters in all. Most are girls. Many are exploited through child labour. There are still 800 million adult illiterates.
In 1999, Education International started a Global Campaign for Education, together with two large aid agencies, Oxfam International and ActionAid, to achieve basic Education For All. In April 2000, five UN agencies - UNESCO, World Bank, UNICEF, UNDP (United Nations Development Programme) and UNPFA (United Nations Population Fund) - convened the Dakar World Education Forum. 180 governments then officially pledged to achieve Education for All by the year 2015. The aim of our Global Campaign for Education is to make the pressure for Education for All irresistible. The G8 countries have already agreed to write off debts to the poorest countries provided the funds for debt service are re-allocated to education and health. This promise must now be applied. Finance Ministers and central bankers meeting at the IMF in Washington have said they will act. But we want to see the results. The necessary resources - US$7 billion per year is needed to get all primary school-age children into school - exist. It is a question of political will.
Commercialisation of education services
States have to accept their responsibility for the education of their future citizens. Public education is a principle that is fundamental to democracy. Some governments suggest they can find for resources for education from the private sector. This leads me to the second focus of our advocacy work and that is to resist commercialisation of education secrvices.
The purpose of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) is to promote free trade of services. Which services? All services classified with the World Trade Organisation (WTO). United Nations If a country wants to enable trade in certain services it simply needs to registers its wish with the WTO, after which bilateral negotiations can start. So far, some fourty countries have registered interest in opening their education markets. The European Union made that registration on behalf of its fifteen member countries.
The point that I try to make is that commercialisation of education, certainly when it takes place on a large scale, may seriously undermine public education services. This is not acceptable. Some see education as a dream-come-true market. Last year the total amount spent on public education worldwide crossed the thousand billion dollar mark. With that amount over 55 million teachers and education personnelwere paid who are desperately trying to give a fair chance to each of the one billion pupils and students in the many millions of schools around the globe. In the eyes of some, we are doing a lousy job. Eeducation would bemuch better, and much more effective, if it werewe left leave it to market competition. They claim public schools are doing a lousy job. But they really have their greedy eyes on thoseToday this expense of thousand billion dollars allocated from national and local is largely covered by tax revenues. And iIf we want to keep education as a public service for the public good, we will have to exert political pressure - nationally and internationally. - aWe will also have to show that we are prepared to work to enhancedo everything to improve the quality of our services work or - to use a market term - to give the taxpayer a good valueworth for thehis money.
When talking about quality we are also talking about the employment conditions of teachers and their working environment. This should be the third main target of our advocacy work. After a quarter century of our members being battered by 'reform' and 'adjustment' packages of all kinds - in industrialised and developing countries alike - there seems at last to be widespread recognition of the need to do something about conditions for teachers. The knowledge society of the 21st century will be built upon human resources - and the most important human resource in education is the educator. So far, the recognition is mostly just rhetoric. Now we have to get governments to translate their rhetoric into action.
The vast majority of teachers in the South, and in Central and Eastern Europe, still live beneath the poverty line. Compared to professionals in the private sector, the wages, working conditions and career prospects of the teachers of most industrial countries are poor. It is not surprising that the world is rapidly running out of teachers. Governments of some industrial economies have started to resort to rather unconventional measures to overcome these shortages, including reducing school weeks from five to four days, paying fees to private agencies for every qualified teacher they are able to enlist, and allowing unqualified persons to be appointed to teaching positions. Clearly, these are measures taken by desperate politicians who for many years chose to ignore the repeated warnings of the teachers' movement.
We have learnt at Education International that to be successful we must link international advocacy and national action. The slogan "Think globally, Act locally" now becomes "Advocate globally, Act locally". What happens globally affects you. What you do locally, what we all do locally, can have a global impact.
For more information contact Fred van Leeuwen at: EI, 5 Boulevard du Roi Albert II (8), B-1210 Brussels, Belgium; +32-2-2240611 (phone); +32-2-2240606 (fax);
educint@ei-ie.org (email).
