By Socio-educational Forum (Foro Socio Educativo – FSE) and Latin American Campaign for the Right to Education (CLADE)

The Global Action Week for Education (GAWE) embraces the 2018 theme Accountability for SDG4 and the slogan “Keep your promises for education!”. We call on governments to demonstrate political will by producing national education monitoring reports annually as an accountability tool for their citizens. The Latin American Campaign for the Right to Education (CLADE) has embarked on a series of mobilization and advocacy actions in the region.

CLADE: Mobilised for GAWE 2018

CLADE intends to support and encourage public debates on the setbacks and advances in the fulfilment of the right to education in each country, involving the media, education communities and other social sectors. Activities, messages and key demands of GAWE 2018 will be disseminated through the regional blog www.same2018.org and social media channels. CLADE urges its national member forums to demand from the national authorities the organization of public debates on the implementation of the human right to education and the development of regular official monitoring reports, which would also report on the compliance with this right, with an active and significant participation of civil society.

GAWE 2018 will serve as a step in the preparation for the next High Level Political Forum (HLPF), which will take place in July 2018 in New York, where the following countries will present their national voluntary reports: Colombia, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Mexico and Paraguay.

CLADE will also be producing a state of the region report on the compliance with the Sustainable Development Goal on Education (SDG 4) for Latin America and the Caribbean. This report will be presented at the Regional Meeting of Ministers of Education in Sucre, Bolivia, in July 2018.

The organisation will aim to popularise the #MakeitPublic campaign by continuously monitoring the fulfilment of commitments made in national education plans and towards SDG 4 in the region, with emphasis on the commitments on inclusive education and education financing: the States of the region signed the obligation to invest at least 4-6% of GDP and 15-20% of their total public budget in education. These monitoring fronts are driven, respectively, through the Regional Observatory of Inclusive Education (OREI), and the Monitoring System for the Financing of the Human Right to Education in Latin America and the Caribbean.

GAWE in the Dominican Republic: For the fulfilment of educational goals, transparency and accountability of the state to the citizens

At the same time and in the context of the GAWE celebrations in the Dominican Republic, the Socio-educational Forum (Foro Socio Educativo – FSE), member of CLADE and GCE in this country, has planned several activities focusing on SDG4 and the mobilisation of civil society around the #MakeitPublic campaign, calling government to continue producing the national education monitoring reports annually and improve its qualiy.

They range from the distribution of stickers, posters, guides for educational centers and brochures at the pavilion of the Ministry of Education of the Dominican Republic (MINERD) during the National Fair of the Book; to organising interviews with officials of MINERD, decentralized institutes and other organizations on the implementation of SDG 4 in the Dominican Republic; to the meeting of a panel with experts on the theme “Four years of the signing of the National Pact for Educational Reform. Have we made progress in the implementation?”, with a view to evaluating the progress, limitations and challenges on the implementation of these commitments and the coordination of the linked social actors.

A new bulletin of the Observatory of the Budget in Education (an initiative promoted by the FSE) will be also released. With the title “The gender focus in education in the Dominican Republic, legal framework and reality in schools. The budget execution of the MINERD of 2017”, the document will be presented to education officials and members of the education community of the Municipality of Tamayo, Bahoruco, on May 3, 2018.

Beyond the GAWE, the FSE has been acting permanently in monitoring the results of different education policies and programs in the country, as well as in monitoring the quality of national educational spending. These actions are driven in line with the National Development Strategy 2030 and the Goals of the Education Agenda 2030.

Thus, the Dominican Republic joins the celebration of the GAWE 2018 under the national slogan “2030 Educational Goals: Transparency and Accountability to Citizenship. Keep your Promises!”.