Jomtien Conference (1990) and India’s Commitment to Universal Education

In March 1990, a single conference in a small coastal town in Thailand changed the direction of education policy for millions of children across the developing world – including India. The World Conference on Education for All, held in Jomtien from 5 to 9 March 1990, brought together governments, international agencies, and civil society with one urgent question: why were so many children still without access to basic education? What followed was not just a declaration – it was a shift in how the world, and India specifically, thought about who education was actually for.

The Jomtien conference: a turning point in global education goals 🔗

By 1990, despite decades of educational investment globally, the gaps were staggering. The World Declaration on Education for All noted that more than 100 million children – at least 60 million of them girls – had no access to primary schooling. Adult illiteracy remained widespread, and quality of learning in existing schools was deeply uneven.

The Jomtien conference was co-sponsored by UNESCO, UNICEF, the World Bank, UNDP, and UNFPA and attended by delegates from 155 governments, 33 intergovernmental bodies, and 125 non-governmental organizations. It was one of the largest gatherings on education the world had seen. Participants recognized that education was more than just access to primary schooling – it encompassed the basic learning needs of all children, youth, and adults, including literacy, numeracy, and the values and knowledge needed to live with dignity.

The declaration set out concrete targets to be achieved by the year 2000, including universal access to and completion of primary education, a significant reduction in adult illiteracy rates – with particular emphasis on closing the gender gap – and expansion of early childhood care and development programmes. The declaration affirmed that every person – child, youth, and adult – shall be able to benefit from educational opportunities designed to meet their basic learning needs.

Crucially, the Jomtien framework called out something that had long been overlooked: least developed and low-income countries have special needs which require priority in international support for basic education. This was a direct call for wealthy nations and international institutions to fund and support primary education in developing nations – not just talk about it.

International assistance and India’s educational reforms 🔗

India’s response to Jomtien was shaped not just by political will, but by a significant influx of international financial and technical support. Before 1990, foreign-funded education projects in India were modest – a few non-formal education centres backed by UNICEF and ILO, and state-level programmes like the Andhra Pradesh Primary Education Programme (APPEP) funded by the UK’s Overseas Development Administration (later renamed DFID). Since 1990, the Government of India began accepting funding for elementary education in the form of loans, with the World Bank being the largest creditor.

This was a significant departure. India, which had historically relied on internal financing for education, now opened its doors to external support specifically directed at basic education. The scale of this shift was remarkable: the programme grew to consist of seven World Bank-funded projects totaling $1.3 billion, along with additional support from the European Commission, DFID, the Royal Government of the Netherlands, and UNICEF.

The role of the World Bank 🔗

The World Bank was the dominant external partner, providing not just loans but also technical assistance, capacity building, and policy guidance. Its involvement began with a pilot project in Uttar Pradesh – the Uttar Pradesh Basic Education Project (UPBEP) – in 1993, which served as the foundation for the broader national programme. The World Bank’s involvement extended beyond funding to include technical assistance, capacity building, and knowledge sharing, with multiple projects supporting different phases of implementation across 18 states and approximately 270 districts.

UNICEF and DFID’s contributions 🔗

While the World Bank handled the bulk of financial lending, other agencies brought distinct expertise. UNICEF played a critical role in child-centred education, helping shape curriculum and teaching methods. DFID, the UK’s development department, provided substantial financial assistance and contributed expertise in teacher training and programme evaluation. SIDA (Sweden’s development agency) contributed particularly to teacher training and curriculum development. Together, these partnerships meant India had both the resources and the technical knowledge to act at scale.

Shift in priorities: from higher education to elementary education 🔗

The Jomtien Conference prompted a fundamental rethinking of where India’s educational priorities should lie. Before the 1990s, India’s post-independence focus had largely been on institution-building at the higher education level – establishing IITs, IIMs, and universities to fuel industrialisation. Elementary education was treated as secondary, even though quality was deeply compromised. The dropout rate for the five-year primary cycle stood at 40 percent, and as recently as 1992, one-third of all children aged 6-14 were still out of school – two-thirds of them girls.

The global momentum from Jomtien, combined with India’s own commitments at the conference, accelerated a domestic policy shift. India made a commitment to provide adequate funds to achieve “Education for All” by 2000 at the World Summit on Education at Jomtien in 1990, and again in 1992, the resolve was repeated at the Nine Country Summit on Education at New Delhi. The National Policy on Education 1986 was modified in 1992 by the P. V. Narasimha Rao government, sharpening its focus on universalising elementary and vocational education, and the modified NPE 1992 reflected India’s response to the growing global emphasis on Education for All following the Jomtien Declaration.

The District Primary Education Programme (DPEP) 🔗

The most concrete expression of India’s post-Jomtien commitment was the District Primary Education Programme (DPEP), conceived in 1993 and formally launched in November 1994. Since the World Conference on Education for All held in Jomtien in 1990, several new programs and projects were initiated to achieve the major goals of EFA, with DPEP as the centrally sponsored scheme implemented in partnership with state governments and supported primarily by the World Bank.

DPEP was not just another centrally directed scheme. Its design was deliberately decentralised – for the first time, the district became the unit of educational planning rather than the state. About 80 percent of DPEP funds were spent through local self-government bodies called Panchayats, with each village, school, cluster, block or district empowered to look at its own needs and design innovative solutions.

Districts were prioritised based on low female literacy rates (below 30%), overall low literacy, and significant disparities among scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. The programme’s impact was substantial: over 160,000 new primary schools were established, more than 200,000 additional classrooms were constructed, and over 177,000 new teachers were appointed under DPEP. The Gross Enrollment Ratio in DPEP districts rose from approximately 95% in 1994 to over 100% by 2002.

From DPEP to Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan 🔗

DPEP was always intended as a phase-based programme, building institutional capacity at the district level before transitioning to a broader national mission. It directly laid the groundwork for Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), launched in 2001, which carried the universalisation agenda further – and eventually for the Right to Education Act (RTE) 2009, which made free and compulsory elementary education a legal right for every child between 6 and 14 years of age. The trajectory from Jomtien to RTE 2009 is not accidental; it reflects a sustained, if gradual, commitment that began with India signing on to the EFA goals in 1990.

What the Jomtien shift means in context 🔗

The significance of the Jomtien Conference for India is best understood through what it changed – not just in policy documents, but in practice. India had long acknowledged the importance of universal elementary education in constitutional provisions and commission reports. Since the early 1990s, there has been a sustained approach from parties of all political hues in their support for universal elementary education, with states trying to outdo each other in moving this agenda forward. That political consensus, rare in Indian policy history, was directly energised by the international commitment made at Jomtien.

The Jomtien framework also changed how India accepted and used international funding for education. Before 1990, external aid to Indian education was seen as marginal and peripheral. After 1990, the expected flow of external resources for basic education constituted about 84 percent of the total outlay for new projects in the sector – a scale of international dependency that would have been unthinkable in earlier decades. This brought both resources and conditionalities, pushing India to adopt decentralised planning, community participation, gender equity targets, and outcome monitoring as standard features of its education programmes.

The conference also widened the idea of what “basic education” meant. It was not simply about getting children into school buildings. The EFA agenda was always about learning for all – ensuring that children acquired literacy, numeracy, and the tools for lifelong development, not just nominal enrolment. This distinction between access and learning quality would continue to shape Indian education debates well into the 2000s and beyond, ultimately informing the National Education Policy 2020’s emphasis on foundational literacy and numeracy.

What do you think? India’s post-Jomtien shift drew heavily on international funding, which came with its own conditionalities – was this external influence a necessary catalyst for reform, or did it risk shaping India’s education agenda more to global priorities than local needs? And three decades after Jomtien, with foundational learning still a challenge for many Indian children, what does “education for all” still owe to the promise made in 1990?

References

1. https://unesdoc.unesco.org/ark:/48223/pf0000127583
2. https://hrlibrary.umn.edu/instree/educonference1990.html
3. https://world-education-blog.org/2014/08/22/the-jomtien-conference-in-1990-was-a-game-changer-for-education/
4. https://www.ohchr.org/en/resources/educators/human-rights-education-training/9-world-declaration-education-all-1990
5. http://www.doccentre.net/docsweb/Education/DPEP.html
6. https://documents1.worldbank.org/curated/en/560521468752427812/txt/252670IN.txt
7. https://govtcareerhub.com/source-based_reports/district-primary-education-program-dpep-india/
8. https://educationforallinindia.com/going-to-scale-with-education-reform-indias-dpep/
9. https://www.centralsquarefoundation.org/articles/the-long-arc-of-education-reform-in-india
10. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/2158244015579517
11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Policy_on_Education
12. https://www.academia.edu/31772266/Access_to_Elementary_Education_in_India_Politics_Policies_and_Progress
13. https://blogs.worldbank.org/en/education/what-s-new-jomtien-20-years-later