Achieving the 6 Goals of Education for All: A Global Educational Roadmap

In 1990, representatives from 155 countries gathered in Jomtien, Thailand, for a landmark event that would reshape global education policy for decades. The World Conference on Education for All brought together governments, international agencies, and civil society organizations united around one powerful idea: that every person – child, youth, or adult – has a fundamental right to education. The result was the Education for All (EFA) movement, a global roadmap built around concrete goals to address the most critical gaps in education worldwide. A decade later, at the World Education Forum in Dakar (2000), 164 governments reaffirmed these commitments and agreed on six measurable goals to be achieved by 2015. This post walks through four of those foundational goals – what they set out to do, why they mattered, and how much progress was actually made.

The origin of the EFA goals 🔗

The EFA movement did not emerge in a vacuum. By the late 1980s, there was widespread concern about deteriorating education systems, especially in developing countries, and the millions of children and adults who remained functionally illiterate and poorly prepared for life. The World Declaration on Education for All adopted at Jomtien reaffirmed the international community’s commitment to the right to education and broadened the scope of “basic education” to include early childhood development, primary schooling, and non-formal learning for youth and adults.

When progress stalled through the 1990s, the Dakar Forum in 2000 reset the agenda. UNESCO, as the lead coordinating agency, worked alongside UNICEF, UNDP, UNFPA, and the World Bank to monitor and push forward the six EFA goals. These goals were not abstract aspirations – they were mapped to specific, measurable outcomes with a target year of 2015.

Goal 1: Expanding early childhood care and education 🔗

The first EFA goal focused on expanding and improving comprehensive Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE), with a deliberate emphasis on the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children. This included children living in poverty, those with disabilities, and those in remote or conflict-affected areas.

Why early childhood education matters 🔗

The science behind this goal is compelling. According to UNESCO, the connections between cerebral neurons form most rapidly during the first years of life, meaning that a child’s emotional, social, and physical development is profoundly shaped by early interactions and environments. Neglect, poor nutrition, or lack of stimulation in these formative years can have lasting consequences on learning capacity. Investing in ECCE is therefore not just about school readiness – it is about giving every child a fair start in life.

Who was being left behind 🔗

The first goal specifically called for expansion in underserved rural areas where the needs for childcare and pre-school are often greatest. Children with disabilities were also recognized as part of the “most vulnerable and disadvantaged” – a group that had historically been excluded from early education programmes. UNESCO’s inclusive education guidelines note that children with disabilities form the largest group of out-of-school children, and that including them improves the overall quality and child-centredness of education for everyone.

Progress and shortfalls 🔗

By 2015, the results were mixed. The 2015 EFA Global Monitoring Report found that 47% of countries reached Goal 1, while 20% were still very far from achieving it. Early childhood education expanded mainly in urban areas, leaving rural and marginalized communities behind. The challenge was not just access – it was quality. Expanding enrollment numbers meant little if the programmes lacked trained caregivers, appropriate curricula, or adequate resources.

Goal 2: Universal access to primary education 🔗

The second EFA goal was among the most ambitious: ensuring that all children – particularly girls, children in difficult circumstances, and those from ethnic minorities – have access to and complete free, compulsory primary education of good quality. The original Jomtien declaration had set this target for the year 2000, but slow progress led to the deadline being extended to 2015 at Dakar.

The barriers to universal enrollment 🔗

Getting every child into school requires addressing multiple layers of exclusion. Geographic isolation keeps children in remote areas from accessing schools. Poverty forces many families to prioritize labor over learning. And for girls in many parts of the world, cultural norms, early marriage, and safety concerns remain serious obstacles. The Dakar Framework called for governments to actively seek out those hardest to reach and find alternative or equivalent pathways to keep them in education – not simply to open school doors and wait.

What made a difference 🔗

One of the most effective policy tools turned out to be straightforward: eliminating school fees. A major reason for the rise in primary school enrollments in sub-Saharan Africa – notably Ethiopia and Tanzania – as well as in South and West Asia was the abolition of school fees. School feeding programs also played a role; Ghana’s Free Compulsory Universal Basic Education programme combined fee removal with a National School Feeding Programme, dramatically increasing attendance. Between 1990 and 2008, the net enrollment rate at the primary level in low-income countries rose from under 60% to over 80%.

The learning crisis beneath the numbers 🔗

Yet enrollment alone told an incomplete story. As the World Bank noted in its 20-year review of Jomtien, learning gains lagged far behind rising enrollment rates. Children were going to school, but too many were not learning the basics. By 2015, only half of all countries had ensured that every child received a primary education, and only one-third of countries had achieved all measurable EFA goals. The focus on getting children into classrooms had, in many cases, come at the expense of asking what they were learning once inside.

Goal 3: Providing basic skills for youth and adults 🔗

The third EFA goal addressed a frequently overlooked population: youth and adults who had already fallen outside the formal education system. The aim was to ensure their learning needs were met through equitable access to appropriate learning and life skills programmes – with effectiveness measured not just by attendance but by real behavioral changes in areas like health, employment, and productivity.

What “life skills” actually means 🔗

Life skills education goes beyond academic subjects. It encompasses financial literacy, health education, vocational training, critical thinking, and communication – the capabilities that allow people to navigate daily life, secure decent work, and make informed decisions. The original Jomtien declaration described this as “expansion of provisions of basic education and training in other essential skills required by youth and adults,” with outcomes assessed in terms of their impact on health, employment, and productivity.

The neglect of Goal 3 🔗

Ironically, this goal was one of the most consistently underfunded and overlooked in the entire EFA agenda. A UNESCO EFA report noted that Goal 3 had been “conspicuous by its absence not just from the agendas of high-level development summits, but also from the campaigns of non-governmental organizations.” The overwhelming focus on enrolling children in primary school meant that youth and adult learning needs were often treated as secondary concerns, with minimal resource allocation.

Promising models 🔗

Despite the neglect at the policy level, some countries developed effective models. The 2015 EFA GMR highlighted that in India, the National Institute of Open Schooling offered open basic education programmes for those aged 14 and above, alongside vocational courses and life enrichment programs – with over 2.2 million cumulative beneficiaries by 2011. Bangladesh’s BRAC programme brought out-of-school youth into education pathways, with more than 97% of BRAC primary school graduates continuing to formal secondary school. These examples showed what was possible with targeted, community-level approaches.

Goal 4: Reducing adult illiteracy, with focus on women 🔗

The fourth EFA goal set a bold target: achieve a 50% reduction in adult illiteracy rates by 2015, with particular emphasis on closing the gap between male and female literacy. This goal recognized that illiteracy among adults – especially women – is both a symptom and a cause of poverty, poor health, and social exclusion.

The scale of the problem 🔗

At the time of the Dakar Forum, illiteracy was not a marginal issue. An estimated 759 million people over the age of 15 were illiterate, roughly one in every five adults globally. Two-thirds of those adults were women. Illiteracy rates were particularly severe in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia – regions where poverty, conflict, and gender discrimination had historically shut women and girls out of education. The EFA and MDG goals jointly called for a 50% improvement in adult literacy rates from 2000 levels by 2015.

Why female literacy is a priority 🔗

The emphasis on female literacy was deliberate and evidence-based. Literate women are better equipped to monitor their children’s health, access healthcare, participate in economic life, and support their children’s own education – effectively breaking intergenerational cycles of disadvantage. The Dakar Framework noted that increased levels of education had already enabled men and women to make more informed choices about family size, with measurable impact on demographic growth rates. Literacy, in this sense, is not just a personal skill – it is a catalyst for broader social change.

A goal largely unmet 🔗

The 2015 EFA Global Monitoring Report delivered a sobering verdict on Goal 4. Only 25% of countries reached the adult illiteracy reduction target; 32% remained very far from it. While the global percentage of illiterate adults did decline from 18% in 2000 to 14% in 2015, this improvement was largely driven by more educated young people reaching adulthood – not by direct interventions targeting existing adult illiterates. Women continued to make up almost two-thirds of the illiterate adult population, and half of sub-Saharan African women still lacked basic literacy skills by the end of the EFA period.

The EFA legacy and what came after 🔗

The EFA goals, for all their ambition, produced a complicated legacy. They mobilized unprecedented global attention and resources for education. The EFA movement, launched by UNESCO, UNICEF, the World Bank, UNDP, and UNFPA, established education as a top priority on the global development agenda, mobilizing governments and civil society in ways that had not been seen before. Tens of millions of children entered school who would otherwise not have. In low-income countries, primary enrollment rates climbed steadily.

But the 2015 review confirmed what many had suspected for years: only one-third of the world community had achieved the EFA goals, and significant inequalities in access and learning quality persisted. The EFA agenda formally concluded in 2015 and was succeeded by the Incheon Declaration and Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4) – which carries forward the EFA spirit with a more integrated vision of inclusive, equitable, and quality education for all, now with a horizon of 2030.

The four goals explored here – expanding early childhood education, achieving universal primary access, building life skills for youth and adults, and halving adult illiteracy – remain as relevant today as they were in 1990. The ambition was right. The gaps in implementation offer hard but valuable lessons for the global education agenda going forward.

What do you think? Given that Goal 3 on life skills for youth and adults was described as receiving “quiet neglect” even by UNESCO itself, what structural changes in global education funding and policy would be needed to make this goal a genuine priority? And with women still making up the majority of the world’s illiterate adults, how should governments redesign adult literacy programmes to be more inclusive and effective for women in rural and conflict-affected areas?

References

1. https://www.un.org/en/development/devagenda/education.shtml
2. https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/content/documents/1681Dakar%20Framework%20for%20Action.pdf
3. https://www.humanium.org/en/world-declaration-on-education-for-all/
4. https://www.unesco.at/en/education/education-2030/agenda-2030/education-for-all
5. https://bangkok.unesco.org/content/ecce-about
6. https://www.fao.org/fileadmin/templates/ERP/2013/link_Virtual_pub/pub_48.pdf
7. https://uis.unesco.org/sites/default/files/documents/towards-inclusive-education-for-children-with-disabilities-a-guideline-2009-en.pdf
8. https://reliefweb.int/report/world/education-all-global-monitoring-report-2015-education-all-2000-2015-achievements-and
9. https://oldwebsite.iosworld.org/download/Education_For_All.pdf
10. https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/education/what-s-new-jomtien-20-years-later
11. https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/689216/only-a-third-of-countries-have-achieved-all-measurable-goals
12. https://www.fmreview.org/rhoades/
13. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000232565
14. https://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/natlinfo/indicators/methodology_sheets/education/adult_literacy.pdf
15. https://world-education-blog.org/2014/08/22/the-jomtien-conference-in-1990-was-a-game-changer-for-education/