UNESCO CONFERENCE: Muhyiddin (left) attends the opening ceremony of ‘General Policy Debate: Leaders Forum’ in conjunction with 37th United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) General Conference in Paris. — Bernama photo
PARIS: Malaysia fully subscribes to all efforts in helping fellow United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) member states to achieve their Education for All (EFA) objectives.
Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin said since the adoption of the six Education for All (EFA) goals and the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in the year 2000, commendable success had been attained across various fronts.
“In spite of this, we acknowledge that much needs to be done in light of recent data released by Unesco’s Institute for Statistics (UIS) that include 57 million children of primary school-age and 69 million children of lower secondary school-age currently not having access to basic education.
“Some 250 million children are still illiterate and have not acquired basic skills despite having had four years of formal schooling. Over 84 per cent of the world’s adults are now literate, but some 774 million adults remain illiterate of whom two-thirds are women.
“Most of the world’s illiterate originate from the South and West Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa regions, and 3.5 million new secondary education positions will have to be established by 2015 and 1.6 million additional teachers will be required to achieve Universal Primary Education by 2015,” he said at the 37th Session of the Unesco General Conference Leaders’ Forum, here, yesterday.
Against this backdrop, Muhyiddin said Malaysia was confident that support would be forthcoming from this Forum towards remedying the above-mentioned shortcomings.
For this, he said Unesco should further strengthen the role of education as well as contributions from the sciences, culture and communication and information, in shaping the post-2015 development agenda.
“Chief among these include demonstrating leadership throughout the EFA initiatives, finalisation of its roadmap to ensure consistency towards its finalisation by 2015, setting the agenda beyond 2015 and influencing high-level political will across member states,” he said.
Muhyiddin, who is also Education Minister, said Malaysia’s attainment of the EFA goals and MDGs was well ahead of the due date of 2015.
“In recognising this, the United Nations (UN) had on Oct 24 bestowed Malaysia, the UN Malaysia Award for achieving the Millennium Development Goal 2 – Achieving Universal Primary Education, and we are humbly grateful for this.
“The provision of infrastructure to ensure educational access for the rural poor was partly central to this success,” he said.
Muhyiddin said the member states’ challenge ahead was to deliberate on an appropriate post-2015 development framework for education which struck a balance across two fronts; that was being in alignment to the mandates of Unesco against that of priorities and needs among member states.
He also noted that Malaysia strongly supported the call for a clear convergence, within the post-2015 global development agenda, between the six EFA goals, adopted in Dakar in 2000, and the education-related MDGs including the Secretary-General’s Global Education First Initiative (GEFI), created in 2012.
“The consensus reached at the Global Consultation on Education held in Dakar (Senegal) in March for a new education goal, namely ‘equitable, quality education and lifelong learning for all’, especially for girls and women, is much lauded,” he said.
Malaysia believed that the EFA agenda must not only be seen to work; it must work, for its benefits were far many, he said.
“For this, I would like to state and call upon a more vigorous commitment and effort among us sitting here today for its full realisation,” he said.
Several heads of state and some 150 ministers and delegates from all 195 Unesco member states gathered in Paris starting Tuesday for the organisation’s general conference. — Bernama