The Right to Learn: Community participation in improving learning

The past decade has witnessed unprecedented progress with millions more children in school. But alongside this progress there is a new growing crisis – a learning crisis – with millions of children unable to read, write or calculate. The world must now assess the considerable work that remains to be done to ensure all children are both in school and learning. As The Right to Learn shows, a key factor in overcoming the crisis is the engagement and action of parents and local communities to demand improvements in their children’s schools and learning outcomes. Drawing on contributions from five organisations: UWEZO in East Africa, Equal Education in South Africa, Ação Educativa in Brazil, ASER in India and ASER in Pakistan, this report showcases their work. It highlights effective approaches to empower parents and communities to demand change in the face of poor quality schooling and poor learning outcomes.