The right to education means that an individual has the possibility to receive education, to provide it for his children and to be free in the choice of that education. Violations of and disregard for the right to education take the form of insufficient schooling for children, a high proportion of school drop-outs and constantly declining rates of literacy. These practices are sometimes tantamount to a pure and simple negation of the right. The quality and standard of education is at present being seriously affected as a result of the shorter working hours, smaller numbers and diminishing skills of teachers.
The right to education is increasingly difficult or even impossible to realize in many countries, especially in the third world. Like all economic rights, it requires a financial and material base which is not available to the greater part of the population.
In 2021, more than two-thirds of 10-year-olds are unable to read and understand a simple text. There are 244 million children out of school; millions more are falling prey to recruitment, enslavement, vital organs extraction, obliged displacements, drowning in the sea in migration journeys, homelessness, sexual violence, maiming etc. In violent areas, educational centers are victims of armed attacks. 160 million plus are victims of forced labour; half of them - or 80 million– are just 5 to 11 years old, and their number has been rising due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Without mitigation measures, their number could rise to nearly 170 million by the year 2022.
800 million girls are forced to be mothers. In addition to being sold in refugee camps, up to 50% of refugee girls in secondary school may not return, when their classrooms reopen after COVID-19, whilst 222 million girls were not able to be reached by remote learning during the pandemic. The data has been provided by Education Cannot Wait (ECW), the UN global fund for education in emergencies and protracted crises, which also focuses on the staggering gender-based violations, early child-marriage and unwanted pregnancies. The latter include particularly girls impacted by war and displacement in places like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Mali, Nigeria, Pakistan, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Ukraine and Yemen. The banning of secondary girls’ education in Afghanistan is especially intolerable. In the past year, girls were estimated to be more than twice as likely to be out of school, and nearly twice as likely to be going to bed hungry compared to boys.
In the hundred least advanced countries, the education budget has been decreasing over past years. In many African countries the principle of free primary and even secondary education had in the past enabled many poor people to receive at least basic teaching. Now that this principle has been abandoned, education, which has become as expensive. as health and housing, is out of the reach of the most deprived segments of the population. Sub-Saharan Africa remains the region with the most children out of school, 98 million, and it is also the only region where this number is increasing. The Central and Southern Asia region has the second highest out-of-school population, with 85 million.
The effective enjoyment by every individual of the right to education should be a constant concern of national and international institutions, whether private or public. In seeking such enjoyment, it should be borne in mind that the individual is not only the beneficiary but also the architect. Education must not be an instrument for the destruction of the culture of peoples or the social fabric. Literacy must be functional so that the individual is able to make use of it in carrying out his work, particularly in labouring and agricultural environments. Consequently, literacy courses must not be a simple teaching of the letters of an alphabet but must also be applicable to the recipient's vocational life.