Education International Research
The GEM report estimates that in many low- and middle-income countries, rural students have half the chance — and often much less — of completing upper secondary school when compared with their urban peers.138 Some countries are adopting teacher incentive policies to enhance educational equity and improve education quality for the disadvantaged. In Uganda, teachers report that hardtoreach allowances aim to attract quality teachers to remote areas. However, privatisation and publicprivate partnerships are exacerbating the disadvantage already felt by rural students. In Liberia, the failed Partnership Schools for Liberia (PSL) PPP policy experiment showed that nonstate school operators such as Bridge International Academies preferred to run schools in areas with internet access and better transport connections. Class numbers were reduced, and the operator was able to push excess students and underperforming teachers off onto other government schools.139
LGBTI people do not receive adequate protection in schools Discrimination, bullying, harassment and attacks against persons who identify as lesbian, gay, transgender, or intersex (LGBTI) continue to persist in direct contravention of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Internationally, there are still at least 69 countries with laws criminalising samesex relations.140 Educators denounce these hatemongering laws141 and decry the lack of legal provisions in place to protect LGBTI students. In some countries, legal protections for LGBTI students are worsening rather than improving. In the US, educators report having witnessed civil and human rights violations, and they say that protections for LGBTI people have been rescinded rather than protected since the adoption of the SDGs. In 2017, the Department of Education scaled back investigations into systemic discrimination such as sexual and genderbased abuse and weakened protections for transgender students that enabled them to use bathrooms corresponding with their gender identity.
Many marginalised groups remain excluded from quality education Numerous other groups remain marginalised and excluded from access to quality education opportunities. These groups vary from country to country, but they include students in conflict and post-conflict contexts, students who face discrimination based on race, refugees, internally displaced persons and immigrants, and Roma and Traveller communities, inter alia.
Conclusions Equity forms the core of the 2030 Agenda. Despite the visibility shed on the importance of leaving no one behind within the SDG agenda, much work remains to be done. Too many students are still excluded from education — in order to achieve truly inclusive education, governments must build strong public education systems that provide the resources, infrastructure and support necessary to offer equitable education opportunities to all students.
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138 UNESCO. 2019. Migration, Displacement and Education. Building Bridges not Walls. Global Education Monitoring Report. p. 171. Retrieved from: https:// en.unesco.org/gem-report/report/2019/migration 139 Romero, M., Sandefur, J. and Sandholtz, W. A. (2017). Can Outsourcing Improve Liberia’s Schools? Preliminary Results from Year One of a Three-Year Randomized Evaluation of Partnership Schools for Liberia. CGD Working Paper 462. Washington, DC: Center for Global Development. Retrieved from: https://www.cgdev. org/publication/partnership-schools-for-liberia 140 Human Rights Watch. LGBTI rights. Retrieved from: http://internap.hrw.org/features/features/lgbt_laws/ 141 See 2015 EI resolution on LGBTI rights: https://ei-ie.org/en/detail/14752/resolution-on-lgbti-rights
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