The right to learn : Community participation in improving learning

The past decade has witnessed unprecedented progress with millions more children in school. But there is a growing crisis in learning. Millions of children in school are unable to read, write or calculate.

As The Right to Learn shows, a key factor in overcoming the crisis is the engagement and action of parents and local communities to demand improvements in their children’s schools and learning outcomes. Drawing on contributions from five organisations: UWEZO in East Africa, Equal Education in South Africa, Ação Educativa in Brazil, ASER in India and ASER in Pakistan, this report showcases their work. It highlights effective approaches to empower parents and communities to demand change in the face of poor quality schooling and poor learning outcomes.

The report concludes with a set of recommendations. First and foremost, the report calls on UN Member States to advance an ambitious equitable learning goal in the post-2015 development agenda that provides a framework for national level targets and minimum standards for learning against which governments and education providers can be held to account.