NN39, October 2007
Best Practice in Education and Training: Hype or Hope?
What Policies For School Fees In Basic Education?
By Mark Bray, UNESCO International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP)
KeywordsBasic education, School fees, Best practice
Summary
The 1948 United Nations Declaration of Human Rights states that education shall be free, at least in the elementary stages. Yet in many countries even public schools charge fees. The fact that this is still happening six decades after the Declaration is an indication that matters are not simple. Best practice may be difficult to find.
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UNESCO is committed to the principle that no child should be denied access to schooling by the household costs associated with schooling. The ancestry of this principle includes the 1948 United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, Article 26 which states that everyone has the right to education, and that education ?shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages?.
When the Declaration of Human Rights states that education shall be free, it is self-evidently referring to the public sector rather than to private schools. Yet in many countries even public schools charge fees. The fact that this is still happening six decades after the Declaration is an indication that matters are not simple. Best practice may be difficult to find.
One fundamental starting point is that schooling can never be free in the sense of not being paid for somehow. In most states, fee-free education in government schools is principally paid for through taxation revenues. However, few poor countries have strong systems of taxation; and aid flows can bridge only part of the gap.
Further, the fact that some people could be excluded from schooling by school fees may not be an argument for making education free of charge to everybody. Some analysts consider it not only legitimate but even desirable to encourage payments by middle-income and rich families. Not only do the payments provide much-needed revenue; it is argued that they also encourage the families to take more interest in the nature of schooling than would be the case if it was provided free of charge.
Allied to this point, in many cases fees are levied not by the central authorities but by the school and community authorities. In these cases, the fees may be a valuable manifestation of local involvement with education systems.
Nevertheless, it remains the case that fees can be a significant barrier to participation by poor households; and in some settings it makes more sense to abolish fees for all children than to devote resources to screening mechanisms to identify who can and cannot afford to pay fees at particular levels.
Thus, policies on fees are likely to remain controversial. Some advocates would simply assert that best practice is a situation in which no fees are charged to any child in a public school. Other analysts would recommend more nuanced approaches based on the availability of taxation revenues, the ability of different families to pay, and the perceived benefits of greater interest in schooling that may result when families are asked to pay at least token amounts.
UNESCO?s International Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP) has long been concerned about these issues. They remain a major focus for both research and capacity building in the Institute?s Eighth Medium-Term Plan, which was approved in mid-2007 and will cover the years 2008 to 2013.
Readers who would like to know more are invited in the first instance to consult the website www.unesco.org/iiep.
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