MALAYSIA RANKED 45th IN EFA SURVEY 2009

KUALA LUMPUR, Dec 19 (Bernama) -- Malaysia's position in the Education For
All Development Index (EDI) has improved from 56th plced to 45th out of the 129
countries involved in the Global Monitoring Report 2009 (GMR 2009) survey.
compared to the 56th place recorded in the GMR 2008.

Education Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said this proved Malaysia, a
staunch supporter of Unesco's Education For All (EFA) agenda, had successfully
leaped from the middle level in the GMR 2008 (0.945) to the high level in the
EDI GMR 2009 (0.965).

The 0.02 increase in the EDI score was based on the improvement of the
scores in four evaluated-objectives, namely primary net enrolment rate, adult
literacy rate, Gender EFA Index and Survival Rate to Grade Five, he said in a
statement here Friday.

The primary net enrolment rate had increased from 0.954 to 0.999, adult
literacy rate from 0.904 to 0.915, Gender EFA Index from 0.938 to 0.952 and
survival rate to Grade Five from 0.984 to 0.993.

The GMR annual report is Unesco's mechanism to monitor education
development in member countries in its bid to achieve the EFA agenda by
2015.

The United States, Australia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam are not
included in the GMR 2009 survey, which ranked Kazakhstan as first, followed by
Japan, Germany, Norway and the United Kingdom.

The report on the GMR 2009 was tabled at the High Level Group Meeting on
EFA in Oslo, Norway on Dec 17.

Malaysia was represented by Hishammuddin at the meeting which was held from
Dec 16 to 18.

Hishammuddin, who is also a member of Unesco's Executive Board, attended
the meeting at the invitation of Unesco Director-General Koichiro
Matsuura.

Compared to other Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) countries,
Malaysia ranked 5th out of the 33 OIC countries that participated in the
GMR 2009 survey.

Of the the 20 Commonwealth countries that participated in the survey,
Malaysia was among the top five and among the ASEAN + 3 countries, Malaysia was
ranked 4th, behind Japan, South Korea and Brunei.
--BERNAMA