The fourth EI Congress in Porto Alegre stressed that EI and teachers’ unions worldwide are committed to the success of the EFA initiative. In relation to this, each year UNESCO, on behalf of UN agencies, releases a “Global Monitoring Report” assessing the progress made on achieving the goal of EFA.
This year the Global Monitoring Report “Literacy for Life” focuses on literacy, a crucial aspect of the EFA campaign given the fact that worldwide, some 771 million adults are living without basic literacy skills. Simultaneously it provides the wider angle - an update on worldwide developments towards achieving Education For All by 2015. As noted in the final Communiqué of last year’s High-Level Group on Education for All in Beijing: "The 2006 EFA Global Monitoring Report makes clear that additional progress has been made towards the 2015 goals. Twenty million more children are in school in the regions of Sub-Saharan Africa and South and West Asia. Nevertheless…current rates of progress in enrolling more children in school still need to double in South Asia and quadruple in Sub-Saharan Africa in order to reach the 2015 goal of providing all children with a complete education of good quality. As school enrolments expand worldwide, we must acknowledge and address the teacher shortage crises facing nations." To mark this release, EI has produced a special review which summarises and comments upon the main points raised on the particularly relevant issues of: 1. EFA progress: where do we stand? (Chapter 2) 2. Country efforts: increasing the momentum (Chapter 3) 3. International commitments: time to act (Chapter 4) This EI publication represents a genuine endeavour to highlight some key areas of importance and to comment upon them from the union perspective. EI hopes that the result is of value to all of its readers. To download the publication in pdf format, please click on the link below.