hidden-exclusion-coverSave the Children published a report entitled Ending the Hidden Exclusion: Learning and equity in education post-2015. Below, excerpt of a post on the Education for All blog which discusses aspects of the report. Additional thoughts and questions are offered at the bottom of this post for further discussion with the UKFIET Community of Practice.

From the EFA Blog:

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and much policy thinking in recent decades have rightly focused on an obvious and invidious exclusion – the large number of primary school age children who are still out of school.

But now we need to focus much more on a “hidden exclusion”: children who are in school but learning little or nothing.

Read the whole post ->

For the academic community a focus on the “hidden exclusion” raises a number of interesting questions.  Many of these are focused on the ‘how’ question – assuming there were a focus on narrowing gaps in educational attainment, how much do we understand about how to make this happen?  Some specific questions include:

  1. Is the notion of “effective enrolment” – as used by Nicholas Spaull at the University of Stellenbosch – a good way of capturing the degree of hidden exclusion in different countries?  What are some alternative options?
  2. If the post-2015 development framework did develop a “gap narrowing” target, what are the key policies which would be needed to achieve it in the future?  Do we know enough about how best to narrow gaps in educational outcomes, while also improving the overall levels of learning?
  3. For example, how important is the development of more targeted funding systems, with money being allocated according to need? This might be especially important given that the costs of providing a high quality education may be higher for some of the most marginalised children.

Where do you stand on the questions posed?