Online Course on Developing Life Skills
ONLINE COURSE ON
DEVELOPING LIFE SKILLS
MODULE NO. 4
IMPORTANT REPORTS AND DECLARATIONS
RELATED TO LIFE SKILL EDUCATION
EMMRC Calicut
University of Calicut
CREDITS
Core Team Module Contributor
Prof. (Dr.) Mohamedunni Alias Musthafa Ms. Rejuna CA
Professor, Assistant Professor
Department of Education, Department of Economics
Director IQAC
Government College Kasaragod
Central University of Kerala
1 | Report and Declaration
Online Course on Developing Life Skills
IMPORTANT REPORTS AND DECLARATIONS RELATED
TO LIFE SKILL EDUCATION
OBJECTIVES
After completing this module, learners will able to
• Comprehend important declarations related life skills education
• Analyze life skills education-related reports and recommendations of various agencies
• Appreciate the influence of various reports and declarations in the development of
Life Skill Based Education.
Introduction
Life skills education has started from the very beginning of the existence of human
beings as a social race. In those days, the survival skills and social cohesion skills are
considered as the essential life skills and were taught informally to the young generation.
From time to time the nature of skills changed according to the changing social demands.
Even though life skills education has practiced informally in past, the deliberate attempts to
understand the basic life skills needed for leading a successful personal and social life and the
importance of life skills-based education for equipping the young generation has started
recently. Various international and other agencies made tremendous exploration in this area
and the reports and declarations of such agencies gave direction regarding the implementation
of life skills education. Different domains of life skills such as health, mental well being, and
emotion management and child development are mentioned by these reports. The Ottawa
Charter of 1986, Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989), the World Declaration on
Education in 1990, Delors Commission Report in 1996 and Dakar World Education
Conference reports in 2000 are some of the key programmes in life skills education.
Education programmes based on Life-Skills Based is well appreciated to tackle an array
of issues of child and adolescence development including as expressed in United Nations
General Assembly Special Sessions on various themes. Some of the important reports are
summarised in the coming session.
OTTAWA CHARTER 1986
1st International Conference on Health Promotion was at Ottawa, Canada on
November 1986 . The Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion recognized Life-Skills in terms
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Online Course on Developing Life Skills
of making better health choices. The primary responsibility of the conference was to analyze
the innovative health movement around the world.
The intention of the meeting was to continue to identify action to accomplish the objectives o
f the World Health Organization (WHO).
The reports of the Conference states that “To reach a state of complete physical, mental and
social well-being, an individual or group must be able to identify and to realize aspirations, to
satisfy needs, and to change or cope with the environment. Health is, therefore, seen as a
resource for everyday life, not the objective of living.”
It further reports that ‘‘Health promotion supports personal and social development
through providing information, education for health, and enhancing life skills. By so
doing, it increases the options available to people to exercise more control over their own
health and over their environments, and to make choices conducive to health”.
The Health Promotion Emblem used by WHO since Ottawa Conference is shown below,
The reports of the International Conference on Health Promotion held in Ottawa has strongly
advocated the significance of Life skills education for better health practices and for the all-
round well being of the individual.
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CONVENTION ON THE RIGHTS OF THE CHILD (CRC)
The Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) mention about Life Skills education by
stating that education should be focused on the comprehensive development of the learner.
Article 29 (1) of Convention on the Rights of the Child insists upon a holistic approach
to education which ensures that the educational opportunities made available reflect an
appropriate balance between promoting the physical, mental, spiritual and emotional aspects
of Education, the intellectual, social and practical dimensions, and the childhood and lifelong
aspects. The overall objective of Education is to maximize the child’s ability and opportunity
to participate fully and responsibly in a free society. It should be emphasized that the type of
teaching that is focused primarily on the accumulation of knowledge, prompting competition
and leading to an excessive burden of work on children, may seriously hamper the
harmonious development of the child to the fullest potential of his or her abilities and talents.
Education should be child-friendly, inspiring and motivating the individual child. Schools
should foster a humane atmosphere and allow children to develop according to their evolving
capacities.
Thus Convention on the Rights of the Child recommended that the opportunity to get
education for all-round development based on life skills enhancement is the right of every
child and the state has to undertake necessary action for this.
THE JOMTIEN DECLARATION ON 'EDUCATION FOR ALL', 1990
The World Declaration on Education for All and its companion Framework for Action
to Meet Basic Learning Needs, adopted by the World Conference on Education for All at
Jomtien, Thailand (1990), have proved useful guides for governments , international
organizations , educators and development professionals in designing and carrying out
policies and strategies to improve basic educational services.
Article I of the Declaration states that ‘Every person - child, youth and adult - shall be able to
benefit from educational opportunities designed to meet their basic learning needs. These
needs comprise both essential learning tools and the basic learning content required by
human beings to be able to survive, to develop their full capacities, to live and work in
dignity, to participate fully in development, to improve the quality of their lives, to make
informed decisions, and to continue learning. The scope of basic learning needs and how they
should be met varies with individual countries and cultures, and inevitably, changes with the
passage of time”.
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Online Course on Developing Life Skills
Article I itself recommends for an education that preparing the learners to survive and to lead
a quality life. World Conference on Education for All elaborated this vision further and
included Life-Skills as vital learning tools for endurance, competence development and
eminence of life.
DELORS COMMISSION REPORT 1996
The General Conference of UNESCO convened an international commission in 1991 chaired
by Jacques Delors, to reflect on education and learning for the twenty-first century. The
Delors Commission Report 1996 has proposed an integrated vision of education based on two
main concepts,
• Learning throughout life and
• The four pillars of learning, to know, to do, to be and to live together.
The Delors Commission reports that education has an unavoidable role to play in personal
and social developments of the individuals. It claimed that choices about education were
determined by choices about what kind of society we wished to live in. Along with the short
term objectives of education, the whole personality development of the learner is also should
be considered. The Report was aligned near to the moral and intellectual principles as
supported by UNESCO, and hence its observation and recommendations were more
humanistic and than other education reform studies of the time.
The Report states that “Education is the heart of both personal and community development;
its mission is to enable each of us without exception, to develop all our talents to the full and
to realize our creative potential, including responsibility for our own lives and achievement of
personal aim’’( p.17)
The commission recommended that Education all the way through life is based on
four pillars: Learning to
Ø Know
Ø Do
Ø and
Ø Live Together
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Online Course on Developing Life Skills
Learning to know implies learning how to learn by developing individuals’ ability to think
which include the knowledge and skill development essential to function in the world.
Learning to do describes putting the learned knowledge into practice through the
development of life skills, attitudes, aptitudes and personal qualities often linked to
occupational success.
Learning to live together involves the development of social values and skills such as
interpersonal skills and tolerance
Learning to be involving the holistic development of the individual and to be able to act with
growing autonomy, judgment and personal responsibility.
Thus Delors Commission report strongly recommended for a Life Skill Based Education for
equipping the young generation with twenty-first-century skills and to lead a quality life.
HAMBURG DECLARATION,1997
The fifth International Conference on Adult Education at Hamburg in 1997 adopted the
Hamburg Declaration on Adult Learning. The declaration reaffirmed that only human-
centered development and a participatory society based on the full respect of human rights
will lead to sustainable and equitable development. The well-versed and successful
participation of people in every sphere of life is essential to survive and to meet the
challenges of the future. Adult education denotes the entire body of ongoing learning
processes, formal or otherwise, whereby people regarded as adults by the society to which
they belong develop their abilities, enrich their knowledge, and improve their technical or
professional qualifications or turn them in a new direction to meet their own needs and those
of their society. New demands from society and working life raise expectations requiring
each and every individual to continue renewing knowledge and skills throughout the whole of
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Online Course on Developing Life Skills
his or her life. At the heart of this transformation is a new role for the state and the emergence
of expanded partnerships devoted to adult learning within civil society.
Thus the Hamburg Declaration on Adult Learning suggested lifelong learning for individuals
especially adults and the importance of various life skills-based programs for improving the
personal as well as social skills and to draw out their fullest potential.
THE WORLD YOUTH REPORT, 2003
United Nations World Youth Report provides an overview of the global situation of
young people. Its purpose is to highlight the major challenges and opportunities youth are
presented with today and to review key global youth issues. In the report, ten priority areas
for the youth are analyzed critically and formulated a program of action to the year 2000 and
beyond. The priority areas include youth and education, employment, poverty, health issues,
environment, drugs juvenile delinquency, expanding opportunities for young people and
communities, girls and young women, and participation in decision-making. To address these
issues it has suggested that there should be a real-life related education and related programs
for young people. Report opined that young people can be dynamic agents of social change,
taking an active role in combating these problems, but they must be given the right tools to
work with.
In the report it is stated that ‘‘Promoting the acquisition of life skills by young people
is of particular interest.....resources and energies might be better spent on the development of
life skills, a mixture of cognitive, social, personal and practical knowledge and competencies
that help people plan and manage their lives across the full range of decision-making options
that is, in a “life-wide” sense. (P.35)
The World Youth Report is a comprehensive report which mentioned every problem of the
youth of the twenty-first century and program of action for the remedial measures. While
discussing the solutions of the problems faced by youth, it is recommended that life skills-
based education and other programs with the help of governmental and other agencies can
play an inevitable role for making the young generation adapted to the global environment.
WORLD DEVELOPMENT REPORT 2007
The world development report, 2007: Development and the Next Generation done by
International Bank for Reconstruction and Development is one of the most elaborate and
wide-reaching report which has consulted over 3,000 young people participated in focus
group discussions in 26 developing countries. This Report examines five pivotal phases of
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Online Course on Developing Life Skills
life that can help unleash the development of young people’s potential with the right
government policies: learning, working, staying healthy, forming families, and exercising
citizenship.
T The report has observed that enhancing a young person’s sense of the future is one of the
prime objectives of health interventions that focus on “life skills.” These include the ability to
think critically, to be assertive, and to understand the influence of community, family, and
gender in decision making. The report also emphasise the importance in investing on young
generation for the skill enhancement to get better result in future.
SUMMARY
There are many more reports of different international agencies which mentioning
about the importance of life skills education. But only the significant reports included in this
module. While analyzing reports and declarations of prime international agencies it is clear
that Life skills development is an unavoidable area of global citizenship. The reports for the
children, youth, and adults were suggesting life skills-based education as a solution for the
issues faced by the individual. This indicates that Life Skills-based education is meant for all
irrespective of age, gender, and occupation. To survive and excel in the contemporary world
the essential life skills should be developed and sustained. This can be achieved through Life
skills education through formal educational institutions as well as other programs for
individuals not included in the school community. If proper training and awareness is given
in the early years itself, we can easily develop every essential life skills. The life skills
developing programs will contribute to the personal development of the individual such as
decision making, emotion management, self-esteem, problem-solving, etc and social skills
like an interpersonal relationship, tolerance, communication skills, and conflict management
which altogether make the world a better place to live. The studies and reports made by
different agencies in the area of life skill education are really worth and helped in the
popularisation of the concept. Proper implementation of life skills based education based on
these reports and recommendations will definitely leads to a life based education system.
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