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Note: It is widely acknowledged that it will be impossible for many countries to meet many of the education-related Millennium Development Goals by the 2015 deadline. A Fast Track Initiative (FTI) has been created to assist countries in various ways as they attempt to meet these targets.
Document excerpts:
- Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) relating to education
- Education For All (EFA) Goals
- Harness new information and communication technologies to help achieve EFA goals
- Applying New Technologies and Cost-Effective Delivery Systems in Basic Education
Please note: infoDev maintains a Quick Guide to CT4D in International Development Agencies: Policies, Strategies and Key Documents that might also be of interest.
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) relating to education
- Goal 2. Achieve universal primary education
Target 3. Ensure that, by 2015, children everywhere, boys and girls alike, will be able to complete a full course of schooling
- Goal 3. Promote gender equality and empower women
Target 4. Eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and to all levels of education no later than 2015
Education For All (EFA) Goals
(from the Dakar Framework for Action)
- Goal 1. Early childhood care and education
... expanding and improving comprehensive early childhood care and education, especially for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children;
- Goal 2. Universal Primary Education
... ensuring that by 2015 all children, particularly girls, children in difficult circumstances and those belonging to ethnic minorities, have access to and complete free and compulsory primary education of good quality;
- Goal 3. Learning needs of all young people and adults
... ensuring that the learning needs of all young people and adults are met through equitable access to appropriate learning and life skills programmes;
... achieving a 50% improvement in levels of adult literacy by 2015, especially for women, and equitable access to basic and continuing education for all adults;
... eliminating gender disparities in primary and secondary education by 2005, and achieving gender equality in education by 2015, with a focus on ensuring girls’ full and equal access to and achievement in basic education of good quality;
- Goal 6. Education equality
... improving all aspects of the quality of education and ensuring excellence of all so that recognized and measurable learning outcomes are achieved by all, especially in literacy, numeracy and essential life skills.
Harness new information and communication technologies to help achieve EFA goals
Notes on the Dakar Framework for Action, Strategy #10
(Part IV Strategies - #10, items 69-72)
¶69: Information and communication technologies (ICT) must be harnessed to support EFA goals at an affordable cost. These technologies have great potential for knowledge dissemination, effective learning and the development of more efficient education services. This potential will not be realized unless the new technologies serve rather than drive the implementation of education strategies. To be effective, especially in developing countries, ICTs should be combined with more traditional technologies such as books and radios, and be more extensively applied to the training of teachers.
¶70: The swiftness of ICT developments, their increasing spread and availability, the nature of their content and their declining prices are having major implications for learning. They may tend to increase disparities, weaken social bonds and threaten cultural cohesion. Governments will therefore need to establish clearer policies in regard to science and technology, and undertake critical assessments of ICT experiences and options. These should include their resource implications in relation to the provision of basic education, emphasizing choices that bridge the 'digital divide', increase access and quality, and reduce inequity.
¶71: There is need to tap the potential of ICT to enhance data collection and analysis, and to strengthen management systems, from central ministries through sub-national levels to the school; to improve access to education by remote and disadvantaged communities; to support initial and continuing professional development of teachers; and to provide opportunities to communicate across classrooms and cultures.
¶72: News media should also be engaged to create and strengthen partnerships with education systems, through the promotion of local newspapers, informed coverage of education issues and continuing education programmes via public service broadcasting.
The best general outline to date of how ICTs can be utilized to help realize education-related MDGs can be found in UNESCO's Applying New Technologies and Cost-Effective Delivery Systems in Basic Education. The conclusions of this paper are worth reproducing in their entirety:
1. There is no alternative to primary school. Technology-based alternatives have not thrived.
2. Computers have been used in primary schools but in a modest way, sometimes mainly for games. Their more significant use is at levels above that of basic education.
3. Radio, not limited to interactive radio instruction, can enrich basic education and do so at costs much more modest than those of television or computers.
4. The scale of the demand for junior-secondary education, and the increased capacity and maturity of students who have completed primary schooling, suggests that there may be an important role for the application of technologies to raise quality and widen access at this level.
5. There are models for out-of-school equivalence at this level, and the potential for developing and making available teaching materials that can be used both in-school and out-of-school.
6. The record of using mass media for public, adult and nonformal education, in areas such as health, citizenship, family planning and agriculture, is patchy, but the technologies available are widely understood, and the social and educational needs so great that there is a case for continuing investment and activity here by governments and non-governmental organizations alike.
7. If the development of new technologies is not to widen gaps between north and south or between the information-rich and the information-poor, national policies are necessary that will explore ways of making cost-effective use for them in vocational education and training, and possibly at the higher levels of formal education.
8. The use of communication technologies for intermediaries – teachers and extension agents – can have a multiplier effect and is likely to have cost advantages over conventional ways of supporting and updating them. They have the potential to reduce the isolation of remote, rural, teachers and so raise the quality of their work.
Some Recommended Resources
to learn more ...
- Applying New Technologies and Cost-Effective Delivery Systems in Basic Education. World Education Forum Education For All 2000 Assessment [Perraton 2001]
- EFA Global Monitoring Report 2005 [UNESCO 2005]
- Information Technologies and Education for the Poor in Africa (ITEPA) Recommendations for a Pro-Poor ICT4D Non-Formal Education Policy. Final Report for Imfundo: Partnership for IT in Education [Wagner 2004]
- Investing in Development: A Practical Plan to Achieving the Millennium Development Goals [UN Millennium Project 2005]
- Long Walk To School: International Education Goals in Historical Perspective [Clemens 2004]
- New functions of higher education and ICT to achieve education for all [Sanyal 2001]
By M. Trucano (ed.).