International Conference on Education

Workshop 1A. 8 September 2004

Quality Education and Gender Equality

The video "School Project for Girls of FAWE" (Rwanda) served as background document to initiate the discussions of this workshop.

The themes tackled were about the central question of the Conference, namely quality education, and highlighted in particular the three following points: access to education, presence of pupils in the classroom and quality learning. It was mentioned that parity was an element of educational policies that should be taken into consideration in order to achieve the targeted objectives of quality.

Good practices in education that were identified were as follows:
- A framework for a "culture of equality" to foment equity between men and women.
- Capacity building and teacher training on the themes of human rights and gender equality.
- Removal of all the costs linked to education.
- Creation of plans to fight against poverty, which represents the main threat against educative systems.

The main strategies that emerged from this session were:
- Eradication of poverty and social and economical inequalities that hampers the building of a minimal infrastructure required by education.
- Identification of causes of classroom desertion.
- Awareness of societies to accept birth of girls and the necessity for them to have access to education.
- Preparation of material dealing with gender issues.

The opportunity to achieve the goals of the millennium within this year and the suppression of disparities between men and women in education will make it possible to transform educational policies and manage to carry on real