By Ally Krupar

RESULTS Educational Fund and Open Knowledge International are pleased to present the 2016 data from the Right to Education Index (RTEI). In 2016, 15 civil society partners completed the RTEI Questionnaire. Their findings were peer reviewed by two national independent researchers and provided to government officials for their feedback and comments. The resulting data is now available at RTEI.org

RTEI 2016 Findings

In 2016, RTEI found that Australia, Canada, and the UK had the most robust framework for the right to education across the five themes represented in RTEI; Governance, Availability, Accessibility, Acceptability, and Adaptability. 

Australia’s, Canada’s, and the UK’s scores were highest on Availability, reflecting the infrastructure and resources of schools, including textbooks, sanitation, classrooms, and pupil-per-trained teacher ratios. On the Index’s other end, Chile, the DRC, and Zimbabwe struggled to satisfy indicators monitored in RTEI 2016. These countries had low Acceptability or Adaptability scores, signifying weaker education systems and difficulty addressing progressively realized rights, such as the rights of children with disabilities. For all RTEI 2016 participating countries, the lowest scoring theme was Adaptability, focused on education for children with disabilities, out-of-school children, and out-of-school educational opportunities. Outside of Adaptability indicators, the Classrooms subtheme had the lowest average score of all Availability subthemes across all countries because of the lack of infrastructure data available in RTEI 2016 and high pupil-per-classroom ratios in several countries. 

RTEI 2016 also included an analysis of education financing given increase attention to equitable resource allocation and access worldwide. 

What is new this year on RTEI.org?

• On the RTEI homepage, you can now view results from 15 countries participating in RTEI 2016. The darker shades of red signify higher Index scores.

• Click on each country to find out more about national data and scores. Once you select a country, you will see a pop-up box with the national Index score and an arrow directing you to the full national results

• You can now explore RTEI data by country and by year and search for keywords using our updated search function. 

• Download RTEI 2016 data to explore specific indicators, subtheme, and theme scores.

• Exploring RTEI by Theme will show 2015 and 2016 data options and a pop-up about each country’s results.

• Stay in touch on the RTEI by following the RSS feed on the blog.