The Cutting Edge
The World Conference on Education for All (WCEFA), Jomtien, Thailand, 5-9 March 1990
Lunches of chicken with Ministry of Education counterparts, expertly incinerated (the chicken, that is, not the counterparts) by a UNICEF Representative in an apartment in Aden, can have far-reaching consequences.
Along with working on UCI in the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen in the mid to late 80s, UNICEF Aden also worked closely with the education ministry on rolling out a nationwide literacy programme, with a particular focus on women’s literacy. This somehow came to the attention of Nyi Nyi in far-off New York and in late 1988, I was unceremoniously yanked out of the PDRY to go to New York.
Together with a few other agencies, UNICEF was exploring the possibility of launching a major global initiative on basic education for all and I was to join the team. Manzoor Ahmed was our education chief at that time. These discussions – between UNESCO, UNDP, the World Bank and UNICEF, led to an agreement in February 1989 to collaborate on sponsoring and convening the World Conference on Education for All – Meeting Basic Learning Needs (WCEFA for short).
When in doubt, organize a conference. There was of course an inter-agency commission headed by an executive committee of the four agency’s executive heads, together with a small executive secretariat, formed to organize the conference. The executive secretary of the executive secretariat came from the World Bank, with the other agencies appointing deputy executive secretaries, of which one was this writer. Amazingly, despite all this executive activity, the world conference was, in due course, executed. At times, particularly when UNICEF felt that I was falling short in representing the organization’s points of view in the secretariat, I also expected to be executed.
The EFA initiative was organized pretty rapidly, reaching a crescendo of regional consultations and international steering group meetings between October 1989 and January 1990. UNICEF would have liked the focus to be first and foremost on early child development and learning, together with meeting basic learning needs at the primary level, “increasing relevance, improving quality, promoting equity and enhancing efficiency”. Not unreasonably, given that 1990 was International Literacy Year and also given the proclivities of some of the other partners, secondary education and meeting the learning needs of both youth and adults also figured prominently.
The Jomtien conference was attended by 900 delegates - a smattering of heads of state, national delegations led by education ministers, intergovernmental bodies, NGOs, education institutes and research organisations. In addition, there were 200 observers, while 190 media representatives were accredited. Jack Glattbach and I had the pleasure of corralling the latter – quite an enlightening experience. We did at least produce our own T-shirts.
Jim Grant, building on his GOBI FFF/CSDR/UCI vision, wanted to find a similar focus, a similar golden bullet, for education. For a time, Jim carried around in his pocket a small transistor radio, which he would produce much as he did his well-known ORS packet. However, ultimately, he had to admit that the radio was a highly accessible means to an end, but did not address the multiple learning complexities of education for all. That in no way prevented Jim from forcibly advocating, at the world conference, for a doable educational cutting edge, namely, achieving success in universalizing primary education of quality. It’s worth hearing from him again on this score:
In dealing with a complex, multi-facetted development phenomenon, it may be necessary to forge a cutting edge …. to find the most crucial of what is doable and do it well – achieve success that builds credibility and confidence for further success on a broader front.
Within the framework of a broad vision of basic education and while pressing forward to meet basic learning needs of all segments of the population … success in primary education can be the cutting edge for opening the way for success in a broader and more complex educational effort, including other elements of basic education”.
Jim Grant, WCEFA Jomtien 1990
You can’t keep a good man down.
At the end of the day, the World Declaration on Education for All and the Framework for Action to Meet Basic Learning Needs adopted at the WCEFA provided a vision, goals and guidelines for action that were pretty robust and that still underpin Education for All aspirations and programmes today.
Footnote….. In early 1990, following the General Assembly adoption of the Convention on the Rights of the Child in November 1989, UNICEF was already turning its attention to the organization of the World Summit for Children which would, in due course, take place in September 1990. A recently demobilized WCEFA deputy executive secretary was asked to join the Summit team. But, exhausted by meetings, declarations and cantankerous partners, the aforesaid person insisted on returning to the field. Some months later, he landed a new regional assignment in Amman, Jordan on 2 August, the day that Iraq invaded Kuwait. Ah well…..
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