Review of Agneta Lind, Literacy for All: Making a Difference and John Oxenham, Effective Literacy Programmes: Options for Policy-Makers

The 1990 World Conference on Education for All (EFA) in Jomtien (Thailand) spurred a collective global movement to meet the basic learning needs of each person, with a special focus on developing countries. Ten years later, with the stated goals not met, and indeed far from it, the international community renewed its commitments in Dakar, Senegal. At the World Education Forum in 2000, national and organizational representatives resolved to improve educational opportunities and services and set six objectives for 2015, including a 50 percent increase in adult literacy. Despite this pledge and others (e.g., launch of the UN Literacy Decade in 2003), progress toward literacy for all, and for adults in particular, has been frustratingly slow. Agneta Lind, with ,em>Literacy for All: Making a Difference, and John Oxenham, with Effective Literacy Programmes: Options for Policy-Makers describe and promote the significance of developing literacy skills in adults and call for an intensification of efforts to do so. Lind and Oxenham, each with extensive international experience in literacy program implementation and research, are very well equipped to write these two complementary volumes in UNESCO's Fundamentals of Educational Planning series.