A/HRC/20/21 the most important and urgent challenges for the future. 5 In sub-Saharan Africa, an analysis of 21 countries found that 22-24 year-olds with five years of education had a 40 per cent chance of being illiterate.6 Testing conducted by the Southern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality (SACMEQ) showed that in some countries, less than 10 per cent of students reached the standards expected in the curriculum.7 14. Similarly, regional gatherings are resulting in further commitments to promote quality in education. A regional workshop of the second Forum of the Asia Pacific Parliamentarians for Education (FASPPED), organized in Teheran in 2011, proposed guidelines for strengthening various aspects of quality in education.8 The Doha Declaration on quality of education in the Arab World9 provides a regional platform for improving the quality of education in the Arab region. The need to increase access to education, improve its quality and relevance and ensure equity is the underlying thrust of the Second Decade of Education for Africa (2006-2015) and the Framework for Action. The “need for all children to have equity of access to quality education, regardless of geographical location, resources, gender, ethnicity and ability, in order to equip them to interact effectively in a global community” is also underlined by the Commonwealth of Education Ministers.10 The Memorandum on quality education, signed at the 54th session of the Conference of Ministers of Education of French-speaking countries (CONFEMEN), examined quality in all its dimensions, along with the appraisal of the Programme for the Analysis of Education Systems (PASEC).11 15. At the country level, concerns with quality education come to the fore in the wake of international assessments of students‟ performance.12 The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a triennial survey to evaluate education systems worldwide, which tests 15-year-old students‟ performance in reading, mathematical and scientific literacy, and benchmarks a country‟s performance against that of other participating countries, is well known. Other international assessments have a similar focus, except for PASEC, mentioned above, which provides a broader conceptual and comparative evaluation framework. III. A holistic conceptual framework for quality education 16. Concerns regarding quality in education often focus on low levels of learning achievements, assessed in terms of knowledge, skills and competencies, and have 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 “Arab Regional Agenda for Improving Education Quality (ARAIEQ),” Concept note, UNESCO Beirut, July 2011. “Beyond the conceptual maze: The notion of quality in education,” UNESCO ERF Thematic paper, No. 2, July 2011, p. 3. “Standards for quality in education: Experiences from different countries and lessons learnt,” Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ), 2011, p. 28 “Quality education, a key instrument in the recognition of sustainable development goals,” Report of the Regional Workshop on the Role of Education in Meeting Challenges of the Contemporary World, UNESCO-FASPPED, Teheran, 19 June 2011. Doha Declaration, Ministerial Colloquium on Quality of Education, Doha, 21-22 September 2010, organized in partnership by ALECSO, Qatar Foundation and the World Bank. Kuala Lumpur Communiqué, 17th Conference of Commonwealth Education Ministers, Kuala Lumpur, 2009. Actes de la 54e session ministérielle de CONFEMEN, Dakar, Novembre 2010, pp. 55-67. For instance, the national thrust to raise quality in education in response to the 2001 PISA results in Germany; see “Standards for quality in education” (see footnote 7 above). 5