Compulsory education means guarantee of universal access, not coercion: IDEC

The 30th International Democratic Education Conference (IDEC) 2023 in Nepal has called on the United Nations’ Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC) to clarify that “compulsory education” means a guarantee of universal access to education, and does not mean forcing a child to attend school.

The Resolution was collaboratively drafted by international democratic education advocates led by Richard Fransham (Canada), Sifaan Zavahir (Sri Lanka), Henning Graner (Germany) and Je’anna Clements (South Africa) with input from a number of other participants from around the world.

It was adopted at the IDEC general meeting on October 19, and was sent to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child in commemoration of the anniversary of the

United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of the Child, which is on November 20.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948 was the first international recognition of education as a right, and it expressed the importance of this right in Article 26 as “elementary education shall be compulsory”.

While it has become common practice to translate and paraphrase this as ‘compulsory school attendance for children’, this is not in line with the original intent of the wording, says IDEC.

The minutes of the meetings of the UDHR drafting committee chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt record extensive discussions about this word and clearly show that nobody on the drafting committee at any point intended the word ‘compulsory’ to be interpreted as coercion of the child.

(see full report on website)