EENET asia Newsletters : inaugural issue JUNE 2005 Contents

EENET asia: An Introduction

Sheldon Shaeffer

EENET (Enabling Education Network) – Asia is a very timely initiative for South, Southeast and Central Asia, and the organisers must be commended for their efforts. Such a network, and this newsletter which will help hold it together, can only serve to inspire and support closer collaboration and the exchange of very essential information among those policy makers, programmers, and practitioners alike who are concerned with Inclusive Education.

It is quite clear that Education for All (EFA) cannot be achieved unless education systems put in place education programmes both formal and non-formal in approach which are genuinely inclusive of all learners. What has to be done to make this possible?

First, ministries of education must rise above their satisfaction with 90% or 95% or even 98% net enrolment rates and commit themselves to eliminating the net non-enrolment rate of 2% or 5% or 10% which, in some countries, can still mean millions of children not in school. They must do this by identifying those groups of children who are not enrolled or perhaps enrolled, but not learning --whether because of poverty, gender, disability, remoteness, linguistic or cultural difference, or HIV/AIDS status. They must answer several questions about these children: Who are they? Where do they live? Why are they not in school?And they must then work to decide what policies can be put in place to make it easier for these groups to get into school and stay there - whether it be general policies promoting more child-friendly schools or more specific actions such as subsidies for girls, individualised programmes for children with disabilities, initial literacy in mother tongue for linguistic minorities, or laws that forbid discrimination against children affected by HIV/AIDS. A similar analysis, of course, should be done in relation to youth and adult illiterates. This means, ultimately , adopting a rights-based approach to education development which, among other things,insists that all people have a right to a quality education.

Secondly, and similarly, individual schools and communities must actively seek out those children not in school and then find a way to get them into school and keep them there. Experience shows that various mechanisms can make this happen in institutions of local government, parent-teacher associations, even students themselves in exercises of community mapping. But such an effort is not always a welcome one. Many teachers and many parents do not want their schools filled with children who may be more difficult to teach because of poverty, disability, language difference, or HIV/AIDS status. They are happy to teach those who knock on the school door and want to get in but are not terribly eager to increase the size of their class or complicate their work by having to teach a classroom characterised by diversity. The goal is to get parents to feel responsible for the education not only of their own children but also of those of their neighbours and teachers to be both willing and able to see diversity in a classroom as an opportunity rather than a problem.

Those excluded from education are often simply not seen; if seen, they are not counted; if counted, they are not served. Inclusive education really means making the invisible, visible, and ensuring that all learners fulfill their right to an education of good quality. It is my hope that ASIA EENET will make a major contribution in achieving this goal.

Sheldon Shaeffer is the Director at UNESCO’s PROAP, Bangkok. He can be contacted at s.shaeffer@unescobkk.org

EENET asia Newsletters : inaugural issue JUNE 2005 Contents