Broadening the approach to Education for All

The EFA Goals are clear: free education of good quality should be available to all. Yet, we know that some children will still be less likely to attend available schools and that many working children will be among them. This report goes beyond pointing out what is needed to be able to offer free quality education, a task that has been done better by others, notably in the EFA Global Monitoring Report. This report adds to the existing EFA literature by outlining some thoughts on core policy challenges and possible solutions within other sectors than the education sector, particularly social protection and labor. The aim is not to identify a silver bullet that could solve the EFA challenge in any setting: locally relevant solutions must be worked out locally. The report will, however, give an indication of how this can be done through some examples of knowledge-based ideas and successes for inspiration.
The ideas presented are based on the framework for, and some of the statements made at the workshop “Child Labor and the EFA initiative: The challenge of including the hard-to-reach children”. The workshop participants included both education and social protection specialists; academics, bureaucrats, practitioners and advocacy groups. It should be noted that the selection of issues treated and the framework for this issue paper are solely the responsibility of the authors and will not necessarily be a selection of material fully agreed upon by all workshop participants.