Young people and students should have a participation and leadership role when making decisions about education, but only one in three countries involves them in the creation and implementation of their policies, a UNESCO report revealed this Friday.
Published on the occasion of International Education Day to be celebrated this Saturday, the study, titled ‘Leading with Youth’, highlights that although minors are not well represented in formal politics, they are a politically active group whose voices must be taken into account, especially on issues that most directly affect them, such as the educational field.
“We have a collective responsibility to empower them through education, so that they, in turn, can empower their communities. And that means guaranteeing equitable access to quality education for all, and not just for the lucky few,” stressed the director general of UNESCO, Khaled al Anani, in a message for the International Day.
In line with the conclusions of the study, Al Anani stressed that, “since educational systems are more robust when they are designed with the participation of those they serve, UNESCO calls for including young people in the development of educational policies.”
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“Their opinions are important, not as passive beneficiaries, but as true partners. Starting this year, we are taking advantage of UNESCO’s youth and student networks to shape the future of education,” said the former Egyptian minister, who took charge of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization last November.
To prepare the study, UNESCO carried out, on the one hand, a survey with 93 representative governments of the international community, whose main conclusion was that only one in three countries maintain some type of formal requirement for youth or students, with official organizations involved, regarding educational decisions.
Formal consultation mechanisms are, furthermore, much more present in richer countries than in middle- or low-income countries, since the latter have more lax consultation processes or none at all.
But meaningful participation requires both “political will” and the conditions necessary to make it effective, which requires a place “at the decision-making tables, representative and inclusive participation, institutional support and resources, and the valuing of their opinions.”
And participation does not always translate into real “influence,” since “few countries,” according to the text, responded in the study about whether their consultations with youth really changed the final decisions later.
The report includes a second survey of 101 student or youth organizations (from all over the world, although the authors warn of a bias of overrepresentation of the European region) on their degree of involvement and satisfaction in their exchanges with governments.
Of them, less than one in three said they felt “frequently involved” in decision-making and only one in five saw themselves as “valued or in a collaborative relationship.”
Their voices and visibility are often limited, according to the study, and even when they are invited to the table, “they often perceive a genuine unwillingness to listen to them.”
The satisfaction and sense of legitimacy of young people, the study highlights, grows when they are given formal responsibilities, but more participation – the text also warns – does not always equal inclusive participation, since even “well-intentioned mechanisms run the risk of excluding marginalized voices.”
With information from EFE
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