1, 2, 3, and 4 questions for…
Marcela Gajardo
Co-director of the Partnership for Educational Revitalization in the Americas (PREAL), member of the Global EFA Advisory Board.
In March, UNESCO launched the 2011 Education for All Global Monitoring Report, which this year examines the damaging consequences of armed conflict on the EFA goals. The document sets forth a plan to protect the right to education during conflicts, to strengthen education provision for children, young people and adults affected by these situations, and to rebuild teaching systems in countries emerging from armed struggles.
The report is prepared each year by an independent team and published by UNESCO; it constitutes an authoritative reference that informs, raises awareness and upholds the commitment to Education for All.
We interviewed strong>Marcela Gajardo, who is not only the co-director of the Partnership for Educational Revitalization in the Americas (PREAL), but also a member of the Global EFA Advisory Board.
1. The 2011 report warns that the world is not on track to achieve the six Education for All goals agreed by 160 countries in Dakar in 2000, by the deadline of 2015. Armed conflicts are one of the reasons for this setback. What commitments must be made in order to get back on track?
As is shown in the 2011 report, education is not the main cause of armed conflicts but it can contribute to avoiding or mitigating such conflicts – through the reduction of inequity gaps; the promotion of healthy coexistence and elimination of prejudice and discrimination; the reduction of violence in schools, and use of dialogue and tolerance.
The global situation is dramatic. The report lists 48 armed conflicts in 35 countries between 1999 and 2008. Most are low or middle-low income countries where education systems, and particularly schools, have been affected.
Few of these countries are in Latin America. Since the 1990s this region, particularly Central America, has been successful in ending civil wars – and education, most of all universalizing access to schools, became a central issue in the reconstruction of social peace, espoused in peace agreements in several countries.
With this decision, as in other countries in the region, commitments were made based on the adoption of national agreements to set the foundations of long term recovery as a political priority, to formulate state policies immune to the successive governments, to spread out or decentralize school and education management, and to invest heavily in rebuilding the school system so as to guarantee equal opportunities in access to education for all children of school age. Today, these long term commitments and the agreements made are applied in ten year plans or long distance public policies that strive to improve education quality and to offer equal opportunities to achieve learning outcomes, for all concerned.
A key part of this general framework involves strengthening national commitments so that education can have an impact in the areas that tip the balance between peace and war. The report rightly mentions such areas as the achievement of universality in high quality education that is more equitable with regard to the inclusion of marginalized groups and the removal or segregation based on ethnicity, gender, or family income. Education that leverages the opportunity for peace in order to strengthen and modernize national education systems and establish adequate and solid financing systems. Education, as the report states, that makes a contribution to the permanent elimination of the human costs and material damage caused by armed conflict.
2. Children who are displaced – whether as a result of conflict or of natural disasters – face serious difficulties in continuing with their education. Can any recommendations or successful case studies show how learning may be possible in these difficult situations?
The 2011 report, like its forerunners, provides many examples of countries that – having been victims of armed conflicts, often for extended periods – have succeeded in maintaining the functionality of spaces for schooling and learning for affected children. Most of these examples come from countries outside of Latin America, which is the region with which I am most familiar.
However, as I said before, Latin America has not been unscathed by these situations and the report itself cites the cases of certain Central American countries and of Colombia, particularly in terms of displaced people.
Displacement has a serious effect on people as it reduces their education opportunities and possibilities. The report mentions a number of examples of successful initiatives for learning and teaching in difficult contexts, including the case of Guatemala, cases of the strengthening of inter-cultural and bilingual education, and the creation of school education programmes jointly managed with parents – such as PRONADE in Guatemala, which replicates a model that originated in El Salvador and which also sought to use peace agreements to make education more approachable and accessible for all children and families affected by the post-civil war situation.
Colombia, with its history of displacements caused by drug trafficking and associated conflicts, and Mexico – which has seen mass displacements of people searching for better life and work opportunities – also offer case studies of success in providing education for migrant children and families, showing that learning is possible in difficult situations.
Finally, and at a more general level, the report states that such goals are attainable if long term and medium term plans take into account mechanisms such as curriculum reforms, the adoption of decentralised school management models, and the construction and strengthening of healthy schools. This refers to making schools places divorced from violence, which may become home to a spirit of resistance against the conflicts at hand and violence in general.
This has become a particularly meaningful mechanism in Latin America during recent years. In countries such as Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, and Chile, efforts to build a culture of peace in schools have begun to take shape, slowly but increasingly, in public policies of coexistence and improvements in the school environment. This emerges in particular as a necessary condition in order to achieve successful learning outcomes and healthy schools.
3. According to the report, the education systems of many countries have been harmed because combatants consider schools, pupils, and teachers to be “legitimate” targets for attacks, as armed groups recruit children to fight or to work in drug trafficking. In this light, can anything be done to address these situations, and get children back into school?
The report is very specific in this regard, and clearly shows that schools are not able to solve such situations alone. All technical and financial support is necessary in order to address such situations and get children back into school.
The examples offered throughout the document speak eloquently and fall into line with a single general thrust: today in the schools of the world, children must learn how to live together in diversity, how to mingle, how to share and respect differences. According to the report, the schools and classrooms of tomorrow must be where people learn the most important capacity in today’s multicultural societies: how to live together in peace, how to create mutual trust, and beginning – from the very first years of schooling – to build citizenship.
In order to attract these children back, schools must change profoundly. Changes are needed in school organization and in the way in which knowledge is passed on. From a financial perspective, resources must be applied in line with needs, offering more to those who have less, and an effective education service must be provided.
Only measures such as these will allow children and communities to recover their confidence in schools, rebuilding the credibility of the contribution that education can make in the resolution of conflict situations, tipping the balance in favour of peace and not war.
4. The 2012 Education for All Report, which is under preparation and shall be released next year, will centre on technical and vocational education. What is the importance of this field in our region? What challenges are our countries facing in this issue?
Latin America, taken as a whole, has advanced more rapidly than other regions of the world towards compliance with the goals of Education for All and the Millennium Goals, two of which coincide with the EFA goals.
Here, most of the region’s countries are involved in a process to universalize coverage for the years of basic education, and have made progress in reducing gender divides. Today practically all children have access to school, but many do not manage to stay in school for the whole duration, and drop out of school to join the workforce earlier, without the minimum skills and knowledge necessary in order to perform professionally or make informed decisions on subjects that will affect their entry into the labour world and their careers.
Technical and vocational education is strategic for our region, given the levels of school attainment in some countries, as well as the growing importance ascribed to reform at middle levels and technical and vocational education, and the significance of both in employment. Networks of analysts, researchers, and decision makers have spent more than a decade considering and designing policies to improve the quality, equity, and efficacy of the levels of secondary education and the modalities of technical and vocational education.
The challenge for countries in the region is enormous, as it requires both profound organizational reforms and integrated policies, the development of which must involve ministries not only of education but also of labour. Lessons must be taken from best practices in the field of public-private partnerships, particularly those that may improve relationships between companies and education.
In brief, improving the quality of secondary, technical, and vocational education will require national efforts to improve the quality of processes and results, defining the competencies that are expected to be passed on to beneficiaries and the institution of indicators to measure results. This includes recovering, generating and disseminating education strategies based on mechanisms for building inter-institutional and cross sector consensuses; creating suitable work training while improving the relevance of course content, with strategies that reconcile political, educational, and economic interests with basic learning needs. Finally, but every bit as importantly, investigation must be made into research in each country, in the region as a whole, and in other parts of the world, identifying areas of doubt that demand the production of new knowledge and the search for responses that are more suitable for improving the quality of learning outcomes.
We interviewed strong>Marcela Gajardo, who is not only the co-director of the Partnership for Educational Revitalization in the Americas (PREAL), but also a member of the Global EFA Advisory Board.
1. The 2011 report warns that the world is not on track to achieve the six Education for All goals agreed by 160 countries in Dakar in 2000, by the deadline of 2015. Armed conflicts are one of the reasons for this setback. What commitments must be made in order to get back on track?
As is shown in the 2011 report, education is not the main cause of armed conflicts but it can contribute to avoiding or mitigating such conflicts – through the reduction of inequity gaps; the promotion of healthy coexistence and elimination of prejudice and discrimination; the reduction of violence in schools, and use of dialogue and tolerance.
The global situation is dramatic. The report lists 48 armed conflicts in 35 countries between 1999 and 2008. Most are low or middle-low income countries where education systems, and particularly schools, have been affected.
Few of these countries are in Latin America. Since the 1990s this region, particularly Central America, has been successful in ending civil wars – and education, most of all universalizing access to schools, became a central issue in the reconstruction of social peace, espoused in peace agreements in several countries.
With this decision, as in other countries in the region, commitments were made based on the adoption of national agreements to set the foundations of long term recovery as a political priority, to formulate state policies immune to the successive governments, to spread out or decentralize school and education management, and to invest heavily in rebuilding the school system so as to guarantee equal opportunities in access to education for all children of school age. Today, these long term commitments and the agreements made are applied in ten year plans or long distance public policies that strive to improve education quality and to offer equal opportunities to achieve learning outcomes, for all concerned.
A key part of this general framework involves strengthening national commitments so that education can have an impact in the areas that tip the balance between peace and war. The report rightly mentions such areas as the achievement of universality in high quality education that is more equitable with regard to the inclusion of marginalized groups and the removal or segregation based on ethnicity, gender, or family income. Education that leverages the opportunity for peace in order to strengthen and modernize national education systems and establish adequate and solid financing systems. Education, as the report states, that makes a contribution to the permanent elimination of the human costs and material damage caused by armed conflict.
2. Children who are displaced – whether as a result of conflict or of natural disasters – face serious difficulties in continuing with their education. Can any recommendations or successful case studies show how learning may be possible in these difficult situations?
The 2011 report, like its forerunners, provides many examples of countries that – having been victims of armed conflicts, often for extended periods – have succeeded in maintaining the functionality of spaces for schooling and learning for affected children. Most of these examples come from countries outside of Latin America, which is the region with which I am most familiar.
However, as I said before, Latin America has not been unscathed by these situations and the report itself cites the cases of certain Central American countries and of Colombia, particularly in terms of displaced people.
Displacement has a serious effect on people as it reduces their education opportunities and possibilities. The report mentions a number of examples of successful initiatives for learning and teaching in difficult contexts, including the case of Guatemala, cases of the strengthening of inter-cultural and bilingual education, and the creation of school education programmes jointly managed with parents – such as PRONADE in Guatemala, which replicates a model that originated in El Salvador and which also sought to use peace agreements to make education more approachable and accessible for all children and families affected by the post-civil war situation.
Colombia, with its history of displacements caused by drug trafficking and associated conflicts, and Mexico – which has seen mass displacements of people searching for better life and work opportunities – also offer case studies of success in providing education for migrant children and families, showing that learning is possible in difficult situations.
Finally, and at a more general level, the report states that such goals are attainable if long term and medium term plans take into account mechanisms such as curriculum reforms, the adoption of decentralised school management models, and the construction and strengthening of healthy schools. This refers to making schools places divorced from violence, which may become home to a spirit of resistance against the conflicts at hand and violence in general.
This has become a particularly meaningful mechanism in Latin America during recent years. In countries such as Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, and Chile, efforts to build a culture of peace in schools have begun to take shape, slowly but increasingly, in public policies of coexistence and improvements in the school environment. This emerges in particular as a necessary condition in order to achieve successful learning outcomes and healthy schools.
3. According to the report, the education systems of many countries have been harmed because combatants consider schools, pupils, and teachers to be “legitimate” targets for attacks, as armed groups recruit children to fight or to work in drug trafficking. In this light, can anything be done to address these situations, and get children back into school?
The report is very specific in this regard, and clearly shows that schools are not able to solve such situations alone. All technical and financial support is necessary in order to address such situations and get children back into school.
The examples offered throughout the document speak eloquently and fall into line with a single general thrust: today in the schools of the world, children must learn how to live together in diversity, how to mingle, how to share and respect differences. According to the report, the schools and classrooms of tomorrow must be where people learn the most important capacity in today’s multicultural societies: how to live together in peace, how to create mutual trust, and beginning – from the very first years of schooling – to build citizenship.
In order to attract these children back, schools must change profoundly. Changes are needed in school organization and in the way in which knowledge is passed on. From a financial perspective, resources must be applied in line with needs, offering more to those who have less, and an effective education service must be provided.
Only measures such as these will allow children and communities to recover their confidence in schools, rebuilding the credibility of the contribution that education can make in the resolution of conflict situations, tipping the balance in favour of peace and not war.
4. The 2012 Education for All Report, which is under preparation and shall be released next year, will centre on technical and vocational education. What is the importance of this field in our region? What challenges are our countries facing in this issue?
Latin America, taken as a whole, has advanced more rapidly than other regions of the world towards compliance with the goals of Education for All and the Millennium Goals, two of which coincide with the EFA goals.
Here, most of the region’s countries are involved in a process to universalize coverage for the years of basic education, and have made progress in reducing gender divides. Today practically all children have access to school, but many do not manage to stay in school for the whole duration, and drop out of school to join the workforce earlier, without the minimum skills and knowledge necessary in order to perform professionally or make informed decisions on subjects that will affect their entry into the labour world and their careers.
Technical and vocational education is strategic for our region, given the levels of school attainment in some countries, as well as the growing importance ascribed to reform at middle levels and technical and vocational education, and the significance of both in employment. Networks of analysts, researchers, and decision makers have spent more than a decade considering and designing policies to improve the quality, equity, and efficacy of the levels of secondary education and the modalities of technical and vocational education.
The challenge for countries in the region is enormous, as it requires both profound organizational reforms and integrated policies, the development of which must involve ministries not only of education but also of labour. Lessons must be taken from best practices in the field of public-private partnerships, particularly those that may improve relationships between companies and education.
In brief, improving the quality of secondary, technical, and vocational education will require national efforts to improve the quality of processes and results, defining the competencies that are expected to be passed on to beneficiaries and the institution of indicators to measure results. This includes recovering, generating and disseminating education strategies based on mechanisms for building inter-institutional and cross sector consensuses; creating suitable work training while improving the relevance of course content, with strategies that reconcile political, educational, and economic interests with basic learning needs. Finally, but every bit as importantly, investigation must be made into research in each country, in the region as a whole, and in other parts of the world, identifying areas of doubt that demand the production of new knowledge and the search for responses that are more suitable for improving the quality of learning outcomes.
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário