11.6. The eradication of illiteracy is one of the prerequisites of human development. All countries should consolidate the progress made in the 1990s towards providing universal access to primary education, as agreed upon at the World Conference on Education for All, held at Jomtien, Thailand, in 1990, notably in ensuring universal access to primary education. All countries should further strive to ensure the complete access to primary school or an equivalent level of education by both girls and boys as quickly as possible, and in any case before the year 2015. Attention should also be given to the quality and type of education, including recognition of traditional values. Countries that will have achieved the goal of universal primary education are urged to extend education and training to, and facilitate access to and completion of education at, secondary and higher school levels.

11.7. Investments in education and job training should be given high priority in development budgets at all levels, and should take into account the range and level of future workforce skill requirements.

11.8. Countries should take affirmative steps to keep girls and adolescents in school by building more community schools, training teachers to be more gender sensitive, providing scholarships and other appropriate incentives and by sensitizing parents to the value of educating girls, with a view to closing the gender gap in primary and secondary school education by the year 2005. Countries should also supplement those efforts by making full use of non- formal education opportunities. Pregnant adolescents should be enabled to continue their schooling.

11.9. To be most effective, education about population issues must begin in primary school and continue through all levels of formal and non-formal education, taking into account the rights and responsibilities of parents and the needs of children and adolescents. Where such programmes already exist, curricula should be reviewed, updated and broadened with a view to ensuring adequate coverage of important concerns such as gender sensitivity, reproductive choices and responsibilities, and sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV/AIDS. To ensure acceptance of population education programmes by the community, population education projects should emphasize consultation with parents and community leaders.

11.10. Efforts in the training of population specialists at the university level should be strengthened and the incorporation of contents relating to demographic variables and their interrelationships with development planning in the social and economic disciplines, as well as those relating to health and the environment, should be encouraged.

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