Literacy at top of high-level meeting agenda in Beijing

This fifth meeting of the EFA High Level Group, which has met annually since the Dakar Forum, will pay special attention to the goal of halving adult illiteracy by 2015. According to the recently released Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2006**, some 771 million people over the age of 15 nearly two-thirds of them women - have no basic literacy skills. Three-quarters of these people live in 12 countries: India, China, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Egypt, Brazil, Islamic Republic of Iran, Morocco, Democratic of the Congo.

The meeting will also stimulate fresh commitments towards the missed 2005 target of gender parity for primary and secondary education, and for promoting and expanding education for rural people. Other sessions will look at ways of strengthening partnerships between EFA stakeholders, mobilising more resources and improving the effectiveness of aid.