More than 35 participants from Africa, Europe and the Middle East have converged in Fribourg, Switzerland, to assess developments in education across the French-speaking world.
The biannual meeting of the Francophone Teachers’ Union Committee (CSFEF) brings together EI affiliates in French-speaking countries. This year’s meeting, held from 20 to 21 September, was convened by the Romands Teachers’ Union (Syndicat des Enseignants Romands, SER) as an opportunity to consider their prospects in a context framed by the fallout of the economic crisis and severe austerity measures around the world.
In a declaration to be presented to heads of French-speaking states when they meet in Montreux, Switzerland, in October, the participants will demand that quality public education is essential to meeting countries’ social and economic needs. They will call on the leaders’ meeting at the XIII Francophone Summit to “rally the International Francophone Organisation on the question of public education to make it the spearhead of innovation in education and linguistic diversity.”
Noting that education and training are the responsibility of states, these cannot then be regarded as commodities. The CSFEF delegates have urged government leaders to:
- set the level of national budgets earmarked for education in each country to at least 6% GDP; - reach the minimum target, in OECD countries, of 0.7% GDP for public development aid in order to invest the additional $16 billion dollars needed to finance Education for All targets set by UNESCO; - support the introduction of a financial transactions tax.
The CSFEF delegates also emphasised the importance of recruitment, training, working conditions and decent pay of education staff, and further urged states to “respect their international commitments in terms of social dialogue, freedom of association and trade union rights.“ They went on to call for states to develop a consultative framework for negotiations on education and the situation of education workers, respecting ILO Conventions 87 and 98 and the ILO/UNESCO recommendations on the working conditions of education personnel.
To see the full declaration go to: http://www.csfef.org.