Education For All (EFA)

Education For All refers to the global commitment to ensure that by 2015 all children would complete primary education of good quality (Universal Primary Completion), and that gender disparity would be eliminated in primary and secondary education preferably by 2005 and no later than 2015. This commitment was made at the World Education Forum in Dakar, Senegal in April 2000 and reaffirmed in the Millennium declaration in New York in September 2000. The Government of Pakistan is attaching top priority to EFA. The country has ten year Perspective Development Plan (2001-11) to visualize the long term macro-economic and sectoral growth strategies, Poverty Reduction and Human Development is the priority area of the Plan. Sector-wide development approach covering all the sectors of education has been adopted under the Perspective Plan. In order to address the EFA implications linkage plan focusing on development of other sectors of Education has also been prepared.

Nearly 80% of the ESR covers different goals of Education for All by 2015, reducing illiteracy by 50 percent with a focus on reducing the gender gap by 2015, life skills and learning opportunities for youth and adults; and early childhood education. The targeted groups for EFA goals belong to disadvantaged communities with minimal opportunities. These groups are highly vulnerable, without access to learning facilities, or public sector facilities, which are functioning at sub-optimal levels.