AT last - good news for the Government which is also good news for teachers. This week’s test results for 11-year-olds, showing that schools are set to meet David Blunkett’s literacy and numeracy targets, deserve applause. And new research demonstrating that standards have not been diluted (page 24) is a welcome bonus.
Once again, girls have outperformed boys - a far cry from the all-too-recent past when they had to struggle against sexism to succeed at school.
But this situation still persists in many developing countries. Girls make up two-thirds of the 130 million rimary age children worldwide who do not attend school.
The TES ‘Education For All’ campaign, launched today on page 30, aims to raise awareness of this problem and encourage the British Government to act.
In April, the World Education conference agreed that girls should have equal access to education by 2005 and that every child should have a primary place by 2015.
These are tough targets, and can only be achieved by reducing the debt burden on developing countries. But the test results show that, given real commitment, even tough targets can be met.
