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Poverty and Education
One focus of the International Conference on Population and
Development in Cairo in 1994 was the promotion of educational
opportunities, especially for women, as a means to promote social
and economic development. Universal completion of primary
education was set as a 20-year goal, as was wider access to secondary
and higher education among girls and women.
Following the conference, many governments and NGOs made
additional efforts to expand educational access for poor, particularly
poor women. Programmes have included school fee subsidies,
waivers, and vouchers, promotion of parental and community participation,
and experiments with the expansion of private sector
provision. And education is increasingly linked to programmes in
the health and economic sectors as recognition of their intrinsic
relationship grows.
At the fifth-year review of progress since the ICPD, new education
goals were set: access to universal primary education by 2015,
an increase in primary school enrolments to at least 90 per cent
for both boys and girls by 2010, and a reduction by half of the 1990
illiteracy rate for women and girls by 2005. Renewed efforts at
both the international and national level will be needed to achieve
these goals. Special attention must be paid to the poor.
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