The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) called for international support and made proposals to address the challenges of reducing illiteracy. And China is confident to reduce its illiterate population by half by 2015.
Mr. Koichiro Matsuura, Director-General of UNESCO, said on July 31 in Beijing at the UNESCO Regional Conference in Support of Global Literacy that 774 million adults around the world cannot read or write, of whom two-thirds are women.
The latest data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics shows some 72.1 million children are out of school. Fees are the main barrier of the access to primary schools. And in 89 countries fees are still charged to be admitted to primary schools.
In East Asia, South-East Asia and the Pacific sub-region where literacy has reached a high level of 91.7 percent, disparities between countries and the gender gap remain. The literacy rate ranges from 98 percent to under 60 percent. And 70 percent of illiterates in the sub-region are women.
China and Indonesia have been recognized as the countries which have made "significant progress" in raising literacy rates. But still further efforts should be made to help the large illiterate population there. China's adult illiteracy stood at 9.08 percent in 2001 and has been reducing illiterate population by 2 million a year.
Around 25 billion USD is needed to achieve major progress toward the goals set in Dakar Framework for Action of Education for All in 2000 as the global commitment to literacy.
While stressing that "providing literacy to all is a moral and development imperative for governments", Mr. Koichiro called for "increased international support".
"We cannot in all conscience abandon millions of adults and young people to a fate of lifelong illiteracy. This is unacceptable in the 21st century", declared Mr. Koichiro Matsuura.
Dr. Qian Tang, UNESCO Deputy Assistant Director-General for Education, highlighted at the press conference on August 1 proposals as results of the literacy conference, including government’s leading role, planning and implementation of measures in the context of the specific groups, partnership with local institutions, the application of new technologies and the establishment of benchmarks.
Dr. Tang said UNESCO appreciated greatly China’s contribution in the forms of both experience sharing and financial aid. UNESCO’s literacy initiatives value the South-South cooperation and China has set a "good example" on this regard, Tang commented.
China is also one of the five Asia-Pacific countries which have realized gender equality on primary and secondary education. The other four are Australia, Indonesia, Japan and the Republic of Korea, according to UNESCO.
Tang thought China's success was based on three aspects. Firstly, the government plays the leading role. Secondly, training programs are designed to cater for different groups. And thirdly, vocational education and skill training are combined with literacy to promote poverty alleviation.
But he pointed out that it would be more difficult for China to make further progress as the reaming illiterate population was in more remote, poorer areas.
China still has more than 80 million adult illiterate population. Its ambition is to reduce the number by 50 percent by 2015, which means to achieve one of the six goals of the Dakar Framework.
Dr. Tang explained the information he had got from Chinese officials of education on how China could achieve that goal. The realization of the universal nine-year compulsory education prevents the emergence of new illiterates effectively. The illiterate population reduces by 2 million a year through literacy campaigns. And another four to five million illiterates will not be counted due to their old age.
China has joined the United Nations Literacy Decade 2003-2012 which aims to increase literacy, erase gender gap, and improve life quality through literacy efforts. China is also one of the 35 countries as participants of UNESCO’s Literacy Initiative for Empowerment (LIFE) as the implementation framework of the UNLD.
Next year in 2008 a mid-term assessment will be made on the progress of the UNLD. However, Mr. Tang recognized it was still a challenge for UNESCO to develop a set of unified standards for that assessment.
More than 160 representatives from 22 countries attended the two-day meeting hosted by UESCO and the Ministry of Education of China in Beijing to share experience and discuss literacy policies, monitoring and approaches.
It is the second of a series of six regional and sub-regional conferences by UNESCO in support of global literacy. They will extend the work of the White House Conference on Global Literacy in New York in September 2006 hosted by Laura Bush, the First Lady of the US and the Honorary Ambassador for the UNLD.
By People’s Daily Online
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