Measuring implementation of rte beeckman 2004 by Portal

Measuring the implementation of the right to education: educational versus human rights indicators KATRIEN BEECKMAN Consultant, Education & Human Rights, Geneva

International human rights law lays an immediate obligation upon States to monitor national realisation of human rights.1 Monitoring is designed to give a detailed overview of the existing situation, i.e. of the extent to which human rights are, or are not, being enjoyed by all individuals within a State’s territory or under its jurisdiction. The principal value of such an overview is to provide the basis for the elaboration of clearly stated and carefully targeted policies which establish priorities re ecting human rights provisions.2 Indicators and benchmarks 3 can be of speci c utility for monitoring progress in the implementation of economic, social and cultural rights to which the right to education partially belongs.4 Whereas numerous indicators measuring educational performance have been developed in the educational eld, indicators re ecting the implementation of the child’s right to education are still to be searched for. The latter should reveal the human rights weaknesses of national education systems so as to allow for a correction of public policy and practice that meets human rights obligations. Notwithstanding, monitoring the implementation of the right to education can only be done to a certain extent by relying on indicators. Some qualitative educational components, human rights principles and values may simply not (or not adequately) be expressible in purely numerical terms. Hence, other sources of information will be indispensable for effective monitoring (e.g. legislative provisions, judicial decisions of national tribunals, national educational plans, strategies and budget, surveys and case studies, causal explanations for educational problems and results of an indicator). 5 Although the usefulness of educational indicators should not be automatically discarded in a human rights context, their limits must be acknowledged and addressed. Measuring the human right to education calls for the development of rights-based indicators, capable of re ecting the norms, principles and values underpinning human rights in general, and the right to education particularly. The present article starts by looking at why educational indicators fall short of measuring educational performance from a human rights perspective.

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It then goes on to analyse the prerequisites which indicators should meet in order to serve the purpose of adequately monitoring the implementation of the right to education. Without going as far as developing a clear set of monitoring indicators, the article proposes a new tool for visualising the implementation of the child’s right to education. The tool highlights the extent of exclusion or non-enjoyment by a country’s education-eligible children. As such, it can constitute a new starting point for redressing discrimination or for “increasing equity”, as the UNDP 2003 Human Development Report has phrased its crosscutting challenge in reaching the 8 Millennium Development Goals.

Why educational indicators are insuf cient to monitor the implementation of the right to education First of all, educational indicators generally prioritise the quantitative aspects of education, such as access and participation, to the detriment of qualitative dimensions.6 The right to education, in contrast, stresses both dimensions equally (Beeckman, 2003).7 Take the availability of the educational infrastructure 8 as an example. Only purely quantitative indicators, such as the teacher/pupil or book/pupil ratios, are commonly used for its measurement. As such, they can not adequately re ect whether the available infrastructure is equally functional, i.e. its qualitative aspect, as is demanded by international human rights law. What if available books are outdated or almost falling apart? What if a classroom’s windows are too small to let through suf cient light so as to enable pupils to read their materials and maintain good morale? 9 Also, even when educational indicators address qualitative educational dimensions, they have not succeeded in doing so satisfactorily. Learning achievement, often resorted to as an indicator for evaluating educational quality, is a case in point. As performance in languages and mathematics is generally used as a reference, the cognitive – easily quanti able – aspect of learning is still heavily emphasised. Other as important but less quanti able learning dimensions do not enter into the assessment picture. Human rights law, in contrast, spells out clear qualitative State obligations related to the right to education – the execution of which is also to be monitored. The obligation to make education acceptable is a good example (Tomasevski, 1999). It compels States, among others, to comply with the fundamental educational goals set out in international human rights treaties such as transmitting values of understanding, peace, tolerance, equality of sexes and friendship (Art. 29.1 (d) CRC). Measuring the realisation of this particular obligation could be done, for instance, by looking at whether a country’s teaching and learning process is open, inter-active and participatory. Nevertheless, this still ignores whether the actual result of instruction is different from the learners’ attitude and behaviour

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at the outset. The challenge ahead is to thus to measure effective behavioural change, i.e. the extent to which pupils internalise and nally apply human rights inspired universal values and attitudes.10 Secondly, indicators taken separately only reveal part of a country’s educational picture. A seemingly positive result might consequently still hide signi cant problems in other areas. Drawing hasty conclusions from the information provided by one single indicator might thus be dangerous. A case in point is the proportion of governmental expenditure on education, an indicator often used to assess a State’s willingness to implement the child’s right to education as well as its available resources. A decline will not necessarily lead to a worsening educational situation.11 Enrolment rates can still boost, for instance, if the private educational sector is incorporating an increasing number of pupils. Another example is the gross enrolment rate (GER). As a purely quantitative indicator, it is not able to reveal the importance of repetition which is measured by the repetition rate – a qualitative indicator re ecting educational ef ciency and quality. Consequently, a high GER can dissimulate high repetition rates. Michaelowa remedies this problem by combining into a new single indicator, both a quantitative indicator – the GER in the 5th or 6th year of primary education – and a qualitative one – the percentage of pupils having attained a minimum of required knowledge in the 5th or 6th year of primary education. When the GER is put on the vertical axe, and the percentage of minimum required knowledge on the horizontal one, the points of intersection provide a new indicator, she calls the “basic knowledge indicator” (le taux de connaissances de base). It re ects the probability of a child in a given country to obtain a basic education (Michaelowa, 2000, 151). The need to read quantitative indicators in conjunction with qualitative ones becomes imperative if the realisation of the right to education is to be assessed. Stressing both dimensions equally, this right cannot be implemented adequately if one dimension is prioritised to the expense of the other. Unfortunately, it is still widespread practice to de ne accomplishments in education in terms of increased numbers of children enrolled in school. Third, if indicators can constitute a basis for policy formulation, help governments to measure levels of educational achievement and monitor progress in the implementation of the right to education, the information they provide does not suf ce to do so ef ciently. Indicators stop short at explaining the reasons behind the gures, knowledge of which is indispensable if educational or human rights problems are to be successfully tackled. The human rights fundamental principle of non-discrimination, for example, compels governments not only to strive towards formal equality, but also towards equality in substantive terms. Effectively combating educational disparities requires the underlying root causes of de facto discrimination to be addressed and redressed. Indicators equally stop short at revealing the factors in uencing

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success, knowledge of which is also indispensable if a country wants to effectively improve its education system. For example, factors in uencing learning achievement, and hence educational quality, cannot be identi ed through a quantitative indicator. Additional substantive research relying on other evaluation mechanisms, such as school and household surveys or questionnaires, case and eld studies, or project reports prepared for ministries or donors, will here be indispensable. Finally, educational indicators only provide information on children in the education system, hence, excluding those who are out of it.12 If a country’s primary school enrolment rate stands at 60 per cent, educational data gathered (e.g. public expenditure on education as a percentage of GNP, book/pupil ratio, learning achievement, repetition rates, . . .) inevitably only pertains to a maximum of 60 per cent of the total instruction-eligible population, since the other 40 per cent is not in school. Vulnerable or disadvantaged categories of children, such as children with disabilities, children living in remote rural areas, children of (illegal) immigrants, child labourers or HIV-AIDS infected children, can be totally ignored and left out of a country’s educational picture.13 Invisible or “non-existent”, they will fall out of the scope of educational strategies devised on the basis of statistics and targeted at improving the existing instruction system. Human rights, in contrast, are all-inclusive. So, if the right of every child to education is to be achieved, it is indispensable to have appropriate information on those who are excluded. They rst of all need to be identi ed. Secondly, the reasons for the speci c vulnerability of each category must be ascertained. Third, appropriate general, as well as category-speci c, educational and other (e.g. poverty eradication) strategies must be devised, implemented and monitored. From a human rights perspective, it is simply unacceptable to focus on those already in – and favour improvement of educational quality – at the expense of those out.

Prerequisites for human rights indicators Re ecting a clear conceptual framework Developing indicators for monitoring the implementation of the right to education is not an easy task. It is furthermore impossible if one does not start from a clearly de ned conceptual framework. 14 In contrast to previous approaches, the framework developed by the Special Rapporteur on the right to education is easily understandable for non-lawyers and hence, suitable for practical purposes, such as implementation and monitoring (Beeckman, 2003, 81–85).15 Katarina Tomasevski conceptualises the child’s right to receive primary education starting from the concomitant governmental obligations structured into

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a 4–A scheme. The 4 A’s – Availability, Accessibility, Acceptability and Adaptability – denote as such the four essential features that education should exhibit (Tomasevski, 1999).16 The analysis starts from the question as to what an education system would look like, and what its content would be, if the right to education were fully implemented. By doing so, it helps States to better understand their concomitant obligations, as well as the concrete steps which ought to be undertaken in order to execute them properly. Additionally, rather than focusing on each treaty and its provisions separately – which can be rather painstaking and confusing – the approach groups all the treaty obligations into one homogenous and logical framework. Re ecting the principles of non-discrimination and interdependence The fundamental human rights principle of non-discrimination compels us to identify those suffering discrimination and disadvantage in an educational context. This requires educational and other statistical data to be disaggregated (CESCR, General comment No. 1). In a second stage, speci c strategies addressing categories of vulnerable children should be adopted.17 Furthermore, since vulnerable and marginalised children are not to be treated as if they were one homogeneous group, data must be disaggregated as far as possible (e.g. by race, colour, sex, and along any relevant lines, such as urban/rural, wealthy/ poor, non-disabled/disabled, majority/minority, public/private schooling). 18 In fact, vulnerable groups of children often suffer from multiple grounds of discrimination. A disabled girl living in an African rural area, for instance, is likely to be triply disadvantaged. In order to measure overall de facto inequality and the harm this causes to the most vulnerable within a society, all relevant grounds of disparities should be taken into account simultaneously. As such, in a society characterised by sex, urban/rural, wealthy/poor and non-disabled/ disabled disparities, one should measure the disparity in educational prospects between on the one hand, the wealthy, male, not-disabled, urban learner whose parents are highly educated, and on the other hand, the poor, disabled, rural girl whose parents are illiterate or minimally educated. 19 So far, the capacity to produce disaggregated educational statistics has been underdeveloped in many countries (Tomasevski, 2002). 20 Thus, producing human rights relevant disaggregated statistics, adequately re ecting its standards, principles and values, still represents a huge challenge ahead. Furthermore, measuring the implementation of the right to education requires looking beyond the purely educational realm. A priori external problems to education can have a signi cant impact on children’s enjoyment of the right, and should hence become part of the human rights assessment picture (Beeckman, 2003, 162 et. seq.).21 Also, following the principles of indivisibility and interdependence of human rights, the successful implementation of the

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right to education depends on the simultaneous co-realisation of other human rights, such as the right to food, the right to health or the right to physical integrity. Assessing the realisation of one right can thus not be uncoupled from progress achieved in the others. Moreover, the right to education is to be regarded as a key right in unlocking other human rights, such as the right to work, the right to an adequate standard of living or the right to participate in political and public life. Indicators measuring those rights can thus, to a certain extent, be used to measure the impact of educational strategies and programmes from a human rights perspective. Re ecting progressive implementation Economic, social and cultural rights can generally not be realised in a short period of time because of resource constraints. The (partial) nature of the right to education as such a right allows States to realise it progressively.22 Consequently, in order for indicators to be relevant in this context, they should do more than re ect static situations or indicate needs and problems at a certain moment. Monitoring progressive implementation calls for the examination of a period of implementation or the comparison of an ulterior result with the previous situation from which the State departed. As such, it is essential to dispose of time-series of data showing the evolution in the execution of human rights obligations. Even with regard to the principle of nondiscrimination which imposes immediate eradication of de facto inequality, progress is to be measured. Take for instance gender discrimination. The percentage of variation between two sexes between year x and year y or (((% M – F) year y) – ((% M – F) year x)) / ((% M – F) year x)), enables us to see whether disparities have been effectively reduced between year x and year y (Lange, 2000, 161). Past experience has shown that gathering cross-temporal educational data is rather dif cult. The Education for All 2000 Assessment, for instance, did not succeed in properly observing trends and evolutions since the nineties. The delay with which statistics become available (3 years) has also revealed to be a key obstacle to eliminating gender disparity in education by the year 2005, one of the 8 Millennium Development Goals (Tomasevski, 2003). Re ecting both result and process Implementing human rights goes beyond realising the rights-stipulated results in the treaties, such as providing free primary public instruction. It also requires the implementation process to observe human rights standards, principles and values. If free primary education does not respect the child’s dignity, it is not congruent with human rights law. The same holds when children are

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denied participation in the learning process or any possibility to express their views. Instruction aiming at instilling feelings of racial hatred towards immigrants or intolerance towards homosexuals is equally not compatible with human rights requirements even if it is of excellent quality. Human rights law also demands that public and private education in their content and process incorporate and actively apply the universal fundamental aims clearly listed in the treaties. 23 Since educational indicators mainly focus on outcome, human rights-based process indicators are still to be developed. Respect of the child’s dignity could be tested, for example, by assessing the prevalence of corporal punishment, bullying or violence in schools. The application of the principle of participation on a macro-level of decision-making, could be measured for instance, by looking at the degree of local-based planning or effectively installed decentralisation in a country. Within school settings, it could be tested by examining children’s possibility of having a say in management or disciplinary matters as indicated by school of cial rules and practice.

Surface indicator visualising the implementation of the child’s right to education It is a worthwhile exercise to search for a maximum of indicators capable of monitoring the implementation of the right to education. Nevertheless, it is unrealistic to ask countries to produce all of them.24 Hence, key or core indicators broadly re ecting national implementation will ultimately have to be selected. 25 First, if Tomasevski’s 4 A scheme is taken as the conceptual framework, core indicators should be selected according to their ability to re ect and in uence concomitant State obligations to make education available, accessible, acceptable and adaptable. They should also incorporate human rights principles and values, as well as the extent to which the treaties’ fundamental educational goals are pursued and attained in a country. As such, they should comprise indicators capable of assessing behavioural change. For each A, two or three core indicators for example could be chosen. Let us illustrate this with regard to availability and accessibility.26 Availability could be measured by 1. the absorption capacity of the (public and private) education system, 2. the competence and salaries of teachers and 3. the equitable distribution of the available infrastructure along relevant lines such as public/private, urban/rural, etc. Accessibility could be measured, for example, by 1. the availability of free public education and 2. the gender parity index with regard to enrolment and drop out. Secondly, the score for each A will be transposed on a 4 axe gure

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Availability

Accessibility

Acceptability

Adaptability

Figure 1

corresponding to the 4 A obligations (cf. gure 1). Third, linking each A score to its two neighbouring axes shows a surface, we call the “actual implementation surface” (inside . . .). If a country had fully realised the right to education, the maximum implementation surface – representing 100 per cent scores for each A – would be attained ( ___ ). Now, putting the actual implementation surface on the maximum implementation surface gives the “right to education’s implementation coef cient” which indicates the extent to which a country has effectively implemented the right to education. In fact, two gures can be made, one representing each of the 4–A scores independently of the others as described above ( gure 1), and another one emphasising educational exclusion within the country ( gure 2). The latter is obtained after scaling the results of 3 A’s – accessibility, acceptability and adaptability – according to the country’s educational absorption capacity (representing availability). Let us illustrate this with a ctive example where the absorption capacity of a country’s education system is 60 per cent. This means that only 6 out of 10 school-eligible children will be able to effectively nd a place in an educational establishment. The other A scores are 40 (accessibility), 80 (acceptability) and 60 (adaptability). In reality, their score and poten-

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Availability

Accessibility

Acceptability

Adaptability

Figure 2

tial maximum are inevitably conditioned by the Availability score. As such, the 80 for Acceptability applies only to the 60 per cent of school-attending children. The new actual implementation surface will then be obtained after calculating again the score for each A in function of the potential maximum of 60 per cent on each axis. For example, the 80 per cent score for acceptability, calculated in terms of the 60 per cent score of availability, gives a nal score of 48 per cent on the acceptability axis and the 40 per cent accessibility score becomes 24 per cent. The second gure illustrates the relativity of high scores on A’s taken separately, since they only pertain to the children within the system. As such, it gives a clearer picture of the scope of non-enjoyment of the right to education in a country, which is all too often invisible and consequently neglected. If human rights are to be truly inclusive, every child should effectively enjoy the right to education to which he or she is theoretically entitled. As entitlements for each and every individual, human rights demand us to go beyond statistical averages and stop taking satisfaction with progress in averages if the poor are marginalised or left behind. They urge us to engage in action speci cally in favour of the vulnerable and disadvantaged. But, human rights clearly

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demand the adoption of both quantitative and qualitative strategies. Increasing coverage or quantity at the cost of forsaking quality is also unacceptable. The visualisation tool proposed in this article nally shows the interrelatedness of the 4 A’s. It consequently underlines the need to adopt integrated educational policies which simultaneously carry out the 4 A obligations, if the child’s right to education is to be correctly implemented to the bene t of every child (Beeckman, 2003, 237–240).

Notes 1 Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, General comment No. 3, The nature of States parties’ obligations (1990), para. 11. 2 Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, General comment No. 1, Reporting by States parties (1989), paras. 1 & 3. 3 The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights advocates the use of speci c benchmarks set by a State itself as an extremely valuable indication of progress, in contrast to global benchmarks which are “in many areas only of limited use”. Ibid., para. 6. A case in point is setting speci c goals with respect to the reduction of school drop out rates. 4 It is usually furthermore categorised as a cultural right. Coomans, F., “Economic, Social and Cultural Rights”, SIM Special 1995 (16), 3–4.. The right to education contains both a social and a freedom dimension, the latter of which calls for immediate implementation. Coomans, F., “Clarifying the core elements of the right to education”, SIM Special 1995 (18), 9–26. Toma· evski (1999) has acknowledged both dimensions and ranked them within her 4–A schematic approach (cf. infra). Coomans had previously only applied the social dimension to the availability and accessibility features. Coomans, SIM Special 1995 (16), 26. 5 Bottani warns against the establishment of links of causality between indicators, “Le traitement statistique réduit en effet les systèmes d’enseignement à des structures simples, dont l’évolution serait prévisible, les comportements reproductibles, et les changements réversibles. Or, les systèmes d’enseignement évoluent d’une manière relativement indéterminée. Leurs comportements ne sont pas mécaniques. De ce fait, le cadre d’organisation des indicateurs ne peut pas être construit sur des relations de causalité. L’analyse causale est une question d’interprétation.” (Bottani, 2000, 115). 6 The Education for All (EFA) 2000 Assessment, for instance, relied on 18 core indicators for measuring basic education. They were grouped around the six target dimensions identi ed in the 1990 Jomtien Declaration: early childhood development, primary education, adult literacy, improvement of learning achievement, life skills and education for a better life. Only 3 out of the 18 indicators were purely qualitative in nature (i.e. indicator 15 measuring learning achievement and indicators 16 (acquisition of life skills) and 17 (education for a better life) which were to be selected at the national level). A general low country response to these qualitative indicators revealed the dif culty in measuring nonquantitative aspects of education. 7 The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights already af rmed in its rst General comment that measuring the effective realisation of human rights in general requires both quantitative and qualitative data (para. 7). See also, Toma · evski, 2003. 8 It is covered by the Availability obligation of Tomasevski’s 4 A scheme (1999) which

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ranges governmental obligations into 4 A’s: the obligation to make education Available, Accessible, Acceptable and Adaptable. This prima facie quantitative obligation comprises a qualitative dimension: States should ensure that functional primary schools are available to all school-aged children (Beeckman, 2003, 106–120). 9 So, the function to be ful lled by a material infrastructural component should equally be taken into consideration in addition to its quantitative availability. The Network for Educational Statistics and Information Systems, focusing on the African region, has started working in this direction. Its questionnaire asks for detailed information on the type of windows (shutters, stone railings, etc.) or the materials of construction for roofs (sheet metal, straw, tiles, etc.). A roof in straw or tiles offers more comfort than one in sheet metal, classrooms with stone railings will be less dark than those with shutters, which often need to be kept closed if disturbing incoming dust is to be avoided. <nesis.easynet.fr.> 10 In the Education for All 2000 Assessment, education in life skills and education for a better life in the informal sector (media, NGO awareness raising activities, street theatre, etc.) were to measured in terms of behavioural change by nationally proposed indicators. In the event, countries clung to quantitative indicators without actually trying to assess the impact of awareness raising activities on the mentality and daily behaviour of the population. They referred to the quantitative availability of libraries, awareness-raising campaigns, workshops, papers, theatre plays or TV-programmes with an instructional character and the estimated people addressed. 11 A related problem resides in the fact that the majority of educational data gathered by States most often only pertain to the public sector. Hence, it will not (adequately) represent private and non-formal educational activities. External sources of funding (often nancing private catholic education for example) are not comprised in the State’s accountancy. The seriousness of this problem was clear in the Education for All 2000 Assessment. Its attempt to show a comprehensive view of the provision of basic education (which comprises public and private formal education, non-formal education and informal education) was unsuccessful as data mainly pertained to public formal education and left uncovered the other components of “basic education”. 12 The enrolment rate can nevertheless give an indication of the scope of child labour, but does not reveal the reasons for its existence (e.g. a de cient education system). 13 Tomasevski (2003) underlines that governm ent reports processed under the Convention on the Rights of the Child have revealed no less than 32 categories of children that are particularly likely to be excluded from education: abandoned children; asylumseeking children; beggars; child labourers; child mothers; child prostitutes; children born out of wedlock; delinquent children; disabled children; displaced children; domestic servants; drug-using children; girls; HIV-infected children; homeless children; imprisoned children; indigenous children; married children; mentally ill children; migrant children; minority children; nomadic children; orphans; pregnant girls; refugee children; sanspapiers (children without identity papers); sexually exploited children; stateless children; street children; traf cked children; war-affected children and working children. 14 Of course, this rst of all implies that the object of the right, in casu “education”, is properly de ned and commonly used as such. The dif culty to generate (immediately) internationally comparable data due to a lack of a standardised international de nition of “basic education” in terms of a speci c age, constituted a clear impediment in the EFA 2000 Assessment. Indeed, the content and scope of “basic education” differs for each country according to the national age up to which education is compulsory. Unfortunately, no precise de nition was given in the 1990 Jomtien World Declaration on Education for All nor in its follow-up statement one decade later, the 2000 Dakar Framework of Action.

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15 Previously elaborated general typologies, equally applicable on the right to education, were very legal and more theoretical (cf. obligations to respect, protect and ful l; obligations of conduct versus result; core versus supplemental obligations). They did not stem from the substance of the right as such, but rather from the ideological opposition between “civil and political” versus “economic, social and cultural” rights, in which the latter were alleged (by the West) to be inferior. These frameworks easily confuse non-lawyers, as well as people looking at the world with different cultural glasses. Hence in the author’s opinion, they do not constitute an optimal framework for selecting indicators monitoring the right to education’s implementation. 16 (Tomasevski, 1999). Although speci c mention is made to “schools”, the 4–A approach can in fact pertain to all educational institutions and the education system in general; it should not be con ned so as to exclude non-formal and informal education. 17 Successful tackling of discriminatory school access for girls, for instance, is unlikely to be achieved through general strategies covering both boys and girls. Stromquist (1997, 26) furthermore af rms “educational authorities should not claim credit for increases in schooling of girls unless they can demonstrate that these increases are accompanied by decreases in the gender gap and are the result of speci c government policies rather than the outcome of the inevitable expansion of schooling.” 18 With a view to identifying vulnerable categories of people, the EFA 2000 Assessment also asked countries to place particular focus on disparities. Disaggregation along gender lines, geographical/administrative units, urban/rural areas, public/private education was explicitly requested. According to its speci c context, each country could take the disaggregation of data even further (e.g. nomads/sedentary in pastoral countries, con ictaffected/unaffected in war-torn countries). 19 An interesting issue for further statistical research would be to look at how the Gini coef cient, measuring the extent of the wealth gap between the poor and the rich or, in other words, the degree of inequality in the distribution of income in a given society, can be transposed in an educational context and show the distribution of educational opportunities and prospects. The educational Gini coef cient would then re ect to what extent the child’s right to basic education is being equitably implemented in that society. 20 She reported that recording of race, ethnicity or religion, which frequently constitute grounds of educational discrimination is still rare, even in countries with highly developed statistical services. 21 In an African context, cases in point are early marriage – often encouraged by lower marital ages for girls – or female genital mutilation. 22 Nevertheless, within available resources, an immediate obligation rests upon States to take steps, including devising appropriate programmes or strategies, towards the full realisation of the right in question. National laws that are incongruent with international human rights law, for instance, ought to be repealed or amended immediately after rati cation. In addition, the principle of progressive realisation implies an obligation to move as expeditiously and effectively as possible towards the goal of full realisation of economic, social and cultural rights. Speed and ef ciency become thus important criteria to evaluate State performance. CESCR, General Comment No. 2 (1990), International technical assistance measures (article 22), E/1990/23. 23 E.g. articles 29.1 CRC and 13.1 ICESCR. States consequently assume an obligation to supervise the observance of certain minimum standards by private educational establishments. 24 Cf. supra, the dif culties encountered in the EFA Assessment process to gather new educational indicators. The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has

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underlined that whenever the process of monitoring and gathering information is potentially too time-consuming and costly, States may request for international assistance and cooperation in order to enable them to ful l their human rights obligations. General comment No. 1, para. 3. 25 Several selection criteria are generally resorted to. They pertain to the utility of the information provided by the indicator, the validity or reliability of the data collected, their objectivity and accuracy, their comparability, and nally their capacity to be disaggregated with a view to detecting de facto inequalities (Bottani, 2000, 115). 26 The indicators provided are only to be taken as illustrations. Statistical research is required in order to select optimal core indicators adequately re ecting each A.

References Beeckman, K., The Child’s Right to Basic Education in Africa, (Geneva: The Graduate Institute of International Studies, 2003). Bottani, N. “Les indicateurs du droit de l’éducation. Evaluation systémique et mise en œuvre d’un droit culturel dans les stratégies de développement”, in Friboulet, Liechti & Meyer-Bisch (eds.), Les indicateurs du droit à l’éducation. La mesure d’un droit culturel, facteur du développement, (Berne: UNESCO/Université de Fribourg, 2000), 115–133. Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, General comment No. 1, Reporting by States parties, E/1989/22. Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, General comment No. 2, International technical assistance measures (article 22 of the Covenant), E/1990/23. Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, General comment No. 3, The nature of States parties’ obligations (article 2.1 of the Covenant), E/1991/23. Coomans, F., “Economic, Social and Cultural Rights”, SIM Special 1995 (16), 1–51. Coomans, F., “Clarifying the core elements of the right to education”, SIM Special 1995 (18), 9–26. Lange, M.-F., “Le droit à l’éducation des lles en Afrique: les limites des indicateurs,” in Friboulet, Liechti & Meyer-Bisch (eds.), Les indicateurs du droit à l’éducation. La mesure d’un droit culturel, facteur du développement, (Berne: UNESCO/Université de Fribourg, 2000), 165–179. Michaelowa, K., “Les indicateurs du droit à l’éducation: l’état de la recherche”, in Friboulet, Liechti & Meyer-Bisch (eds.), Les indicateurs du droit à l’éducation. La mesure d’un droit culturel, facteur du développement, (Berne: UNESCO/Université de Fribourg, 2000), 135–161. Stro mquist, N., Increasing girls’ and women’s participation in basic education , Fundamentals of Educational Planning 56, (Paris: IIEP/UNESCO, 1997). Toma · evski, K., The right to education, Preliminary report of the Special Rapporteur submitted in accordance with Commission on Human Rights resolution 1998/33, E/CN.4/1999/49. Toma · evski, K., The right to education, Progress report of the Special Rapporteur on the right to education, submitted in accordance with Commission on Human Rights resolution 1999/25. E/CN.4/2000/6. Toma · evski, K., The right to education, Annual report of the Special Rapporteur on the right to education, submitted in accordance with Commission on Human Rights resolution 2000/9. E/CN.4/2001/52.

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Toma路 evski, K., The right to education, Annual report of the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education, submitted in accordance with Commission on Human Rights resolution 2001/29. E/CN.4/2002/60. Toma路 evski, K., The right to education. Report of the Special Rapporteur submitted pursuant to Commission on Human Rights resolution 2002/23, E/CN.4/2003/9. UNDP, Human Development Report 2003, (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).