The success of the World Education Forum in Korea this month is evidence that education will be central to the post-2015 development agenda. Youth have played a vital role in the development of this agenda. Present at almost every major conference, including at the World Education Forum, we have added a new, fresh and sometimes critical perspective to discussions previously dominated by academics, diplomats and professionals.
John Dewey, an eminent education philosopher, argued a century ago that participation sits at the core of sustainable democracies, not merely representation. Currently, the world has its largest population of youth ever - 1.8 billion young people between the ages of 10 and 24. Article 12 of the Child Rights Convention states that children and young people learn best how to truly participate by being provided the spaces to have a say over what affects them in their daily lives. The best way to guarantee continued involvement of young people, to foster engagement and citizenship skills, is by providing us ownership over the situations in which we find ourselves and the conditions for which we restlessly advocate for other children and young people.
Young people have shown the importance of their participation in global discussions. Devex recently started a global conversation on ‘the power of youth to change their own futures and those of their peers’ using the hashtag #youthwill. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged the world to involve youth in peacebuilding processes during a Security Council debate on extremism in March. The European and North American states ‘recognized’ at last February’s Regional Ministerial Conference on Education Post-2015 in Paris that the participation of children, students and young people in education is crucial to developing skills such as “problem solving, critical thinking, and decision making, and strengthen[s] the behavioral capacities required to effectively engage in society."
Several schooling systems already function based on the principle of participation. An excellent example is the Escuela Nueva network in Colombia - a network that has existed for the past 40 years and encourages students to have ownership over their school. Escuela Nueva students turn out to be more likely to be engaged in their communities and place understanding before memorization.
With Global Citizenship Education (GCED) standing to be included in the post-2015 agenda (under target 4.7), we must focus on what truly fosters the citizenship that many young people still lack: having our voices heard in all decision-making processes that affect us.
Youth in education governance
Organizations projected to play a critical role in realizing the implementation of the post-2015 education agenda, such as the Global Partnership for Education and its civil society constituency, have taken steps to start including young people within their governance structures.
Based on recommendations Ojonwa Deborah Miachi and I presented to the three GPE civil society constituencies last year, we successfully advocated for the addition of a youth seat to the Global Campaign for Education Board. Our recommendations were threefold:
- We recommended the GPE’s civil society constituencies comprehensively map the youth organizations presently working on education in all countries. The goal is to prepare a paper analyzing best practices in youth engagement in developing countries, and a policy brief showing strong examples of youth leadership in the area of education.
- We recommended the creation of a youth advisory council to the GPE’s Board of Directors, ensuring its representativeness of all youth groups, with particular attention given to women and marginalized groups. This council would advise the board on issues pertaining to policy and strategy as well as have permanent observer status to the biannual GPE board meetings.
- We advocated for the structural incorporation of youth working at the grassroots, provincial/state, and national levels in local education groups; for the active facilitation of consultations among a minimum of 250 youth, including the most marginalized, as local education stakeholders, to be given a voice in the new GPE Strategic Plan, and for GPE secretariat budget to enhance possibilities for youth engagement.
We then took these recommendations to the World Assembly of the Global Campaign for Education (GCE) held in South Africa last February. Held every four years, the World Assembly is GCE’s most powerful policy-making institution, assembling NGO and teacher union representatives from 91 countries. The World Assembly agreed to provide youth and youth-led organizations with a reserved board seat in one of its constituencies.
GCE members decided to put their trust in us. Now it is up to us to unite, map youth organizations, and organize ourselves to draw up guidelines for youth engagement with the GCE Secretariat. We will need funding and technical assistance.
I believe we will be able to show that Secretary General Ban Ki-moon, in his synthesis report (article 3) was right to call young people “the torch bearers of the next sustainable agenda”.