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Resolution 2097 (2016)
Access to school and education for all children
1. Europe has seen significant progress
in the last two decades as regards access to school and education. Such
progress, however, is of varying degrees according to the different
European regions and groups of population concerned. Barriers to
access to school still exist in the Council of Europe member States,
which in practice deprive children of the opportunity to take their
place in society.
2. The Parliamentary Assembly calls for these barriers to be
lifted. It also underscores that the goal is not only to give all
children the opportunity to attend school, but also to ensure that
they can access quality education that will contribute to the development
of their personal capacities and help them reach their full potential.
3. Moreover, access to school and quality education is not only
an issue of individual justice and of equal opportunities, it is
also in the interest of our societies to make the best use of each
person’s talents and to avoid social costs linked to unemployment
and dependency, which may be much higher than investment in education.
4. The Assembly therefore calls on member States to enhance their
education systems in order to ensure access to quality education
for all and regular class attendance until the end of the study
programme. Member States should, in particular:
4.1. identify priority education
zones, and devise measures for urban and rural environments;
4.2. identify groups at risk of exclusion and draw up action
plans for vulnerable groups, providing measures to support education
of children who are at risk of dropping out of school, and bring
back to school those who left it before having finished the school
programme;
4.3. promote networking, exchanges and mutual learning on inclusive
education between schools, and the development of relations between
schools and the wider community;
4.4. strengthen co-operation between public authorities and
families and put in place the necessary measures to protect children
and ensure that they get access to school and attend classes regularly
if families fail to do so;
4.5. improve access to pre-primary education for all children,
with a special focus on children from disadvantaged families, children
of migrants and asylum seekers, and those attending schools in rural areas;
4.6. support programmes that help children from minority and
migrant communities to acquire adequate knowledge of the language
of schooling;
4.7. invest in programmes that support parental engagement
in their children’s early literacy activities with the potential
to promote literacy in the early primary grades; these programmes
should be tailored to the cultural, ethnic and socio-economic contexts;
4.8. encourage parental involvement in school activities, particularly
in schools with a higher proportion of students whose parents have
low levels of education or a low level of proficiency in the language
of their children’s schooling (for example migrant families);
4.9. promote academic resilience and academic success (including
success “against all odds” for children from disadvantaged families),
for instance by setting up programmes fostering a positive school climate
and motivation to learn for socially disadvantaged students;
4.10. promote the inclusion in high-profile schools of students
from disadvantaged families and migrant backgrounds in order to
provide an equal opportunity to achieve;
4.11. enhance, through targeted training, the ability of school
heads to implement a policy of inclusiveness, to stimulate a democratic
atmosphere in school and to further develop co-decision procedures
on school matters;
4.12. step up, through targeted training of school heads and
teachers, measures to prevent violence among pupils, in school and
outside of it, offline and online, in order to minimise possible
conflicts among and with new students;
4.13. include in curricula more teaching on human rights, democracy,
social justice, multicultural society, tolerance, peaceful conflict
resolution and mutual respect in order to advance, in the most efficient
and smoothest manner, the inclusion and socialisation of new students;
4.14. enhance teachers' initial professional education and in-service
training to enable them to implement the above-mentioned values
and to foster a co-operative atmosphere in the classroom, by acting
as role models;
4.15. support teachers’ continuing professional development
and, in particular, implement teacher education programmes to raise
teachers’ awareness of the role played by language in children’s cognitive
and social development and teachers’ ability to manage linguistically
diverse classrooms;
4.16. foster access to pedagogical professions for students
from minority and migrant families;
4.17. ensure gender equality at all levels of the education
system, with a special focus on women and girls from disadvantaged
groups, such as Roma, migrants and refugees, and women and girls
with disabilities;
4.18. ensure access by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and
intersex children to quality education by promoting respect and
inclusion of LGBTI persons and the dissemination of objective information about
issues concerning sexual orientation and gender identity, and by
introducing measures to address homophobic and transphobic bullying;
4.19. provide adequate financial support for programmes promoting
social inclusion and access to education for all, bearing in mind
not only the cost of investing in education, but also the long-term
costs of not doing so.
5. The Assembly calls on member States to support action worldwide
to promote access to school and education for all and, in particular,
to implement the Incheon Declaration entitled “Education 2030: towards inclusive
and equitable quality education and lifelong learning for all”,
adopted at the World Education Forum held from 19 to 22 May 2015
in Incheon (Republic of Korea), and its Framework for Action adopted
at the UNESCO High-level meeting on 4 November 2015. Concerted efforts
with UNESCO, UNICEF and the European Commission should assist governments
and national parliaments to fulfil their duty to offer every child
an appropriate education, prepare children for future challenges
and give them the chance to live in dignity.
6. Finally, the Assembly notes that education expenses are an
investment for a better future for individuals, their surroundings
and humanity worldwide. It therefore calls on governments of member
States to consider adhering to the international benchmarks of 4%
to 6% of gross domestic product (GDP) and/or 15% to 20% of total
public expenditure for domestic investment in education. Furthermore,
Europe should also reiterate its commitment to the international
target of providing 0.7% of gross national income (GNI) as official
development assistance (ODA) at United Nations level.