As an integral part of UNESCO’s Constitutional mission for ensuring “full and equal opportunities for education for all”, the realisation of the Right to Education is one of the biggest developmental challenges, as millions of children and adults remain deprived of basic education in today’s learning societies.

This document is a short leaflet on the right to education.

The Expert Consultation on the Operational Definition of Basic Education, organised from 17 - 18 December 2007 at UNESCO, brought together eminent experts from different regions and further discussed a preliminary draft of operational definition that was initially proposed during the Experts’ Workshop on “Challenges and Perspectives of Law and Education” organised in Sao Paulo in December 2006.

These Guidelines are intended to assist Member States in the preparation of the Reports on the implementation of the 1960 Convention against Discrimination in Education (“the Convention”) as well as the 1960 Recommendation against Discrimination in Education (“the Recommendation”). The Convention and the Recommendation, adopted by UNESCO’s General Conference in 1960, correspond to UNESCO’s constitutional mandate to “advance the ideal of equality of educational opportunities without regard to race, sex or any distinctions, economic or social”.

Regulation of private schools and role of non-government players in education, particularly private education providers at elementary education-level continue to attract immense interest of researchers, policymakers and educationists from across the world. In countries like India, and more recently Kenya, Ghana and some of the other countries from African subcontinent where private schools are playing a pivotal role in universalizing access to elementary education, the debate on role and regulation of private sector has intensified over the last decade or more. 

This document compiles the national laws on private provision of education for most of the countries in the world.