Issues of Equity and Excellence

Equity and Excellence

Equity and excellence is strongly associated with poverty and social disadvantage. Meanwhile, many affluent parents pay to send their children to private schools, which is not only expensive but saps the state funded sector of many able pupils and aspiration parents, both of which could act as peer role models for other students and parents.

UNICEF is profoundly committed to securing safe, rights-based, quality education for each and every child, irrespective of his or her circumstances.

For UNICEF, quality education is education that works for every child and enables all children to achieve their full potential. With this in mind, we have worked to create a rights-based, comprehensive educational model that embraces a multi-dimensional concept of quality and addresses the total needs of the child as a learner. Child Friendly Schools are now the major means through which UNICEF advocates for and promotes quality with equity in education (http://www.unicef.org/education/bege_61667.html).

Quality of education and child-friendly schooling

On any given day, more than 1 billion of the world’s children go to school. Whether they sit in buildings, in tents or under trees, ideally they are learning, developing and enriching their lives.

For too many children, though, school is not always a positive experience. Some endure difficult conditions, like missing or inadequate teaching materials or makeshift sanitation facilities. Others lack competent teachers and appropriate curricula. Still others may be forced to contend with discrimination, harassment and even violence. These conditions are not conducive to learning or development, and no child should have to experience them.

Access to education that is of poor quality is tantamount to no education at all. There is little point in providing the opportunity for a child to enroll in school if the quality of the education is so poor that the child will not become literate or numerate, or will fail to acquire critical life skills (http://www.unicef.org/education/bege_61667.html).

UNICEF works in 190 countries and territories to help children survive and thrive, from early childhood through adolescence. The world’s largest provider of vaccines for developing countries, UNICEF supports child health and nutrition, good water and sanitation, quality basic education for all boys and girls, and the protection of children from violence, exploitation, and AIDS. UNICEF is funded entirely by the voluntary contributions of individuals, businesses, foundations and governments.

Two weeks ago a UNICEF and World Health Organization report showed conclusively that poor people in rural areas are overwhelmingly those without these most basic necessities for life. In Maslow’s hierarchy of needs food, water and shelter is the most important necessity that one requires for survival.

UNICEF appealed for the inclusion of nutrition security as an essential element in every national development plan – as critical as clean water and indispensable as education as one of their goals by 2015. It was recorded that 20 million children under the age of five, around the world suffer from severe acute malnutrition. In the report UNICEF identified some of the effects of malnutrition beginning with pregnancy and stunting growth and development. Since children are our future, we must advocate for them, because they are not able to speak for themselves. UNICEF really works hard to help families that are in need and the funding for education for our youth. Organizations like this one is very great for many states and we as teachers should be total involved and should get the parents involved as well.

　

References

http://www.unicef.org/education/bege_61667.html

http://accordcoalition.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Lib-Dem-89_- Equity_and_Excellence.pdf