This article examines the concept of educational quality in the context of major global and regional policies proposed by international financial agencies such as the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank, world-wide agreements such as those envisioned by Education for All and the Millennium Development goals, and global civil society as the World Social Forum and the World Education Forum. Content analysis of the discourse of these distinct and influential groups reveals that quality is defined and measured exclusively in cognitive terms and reduced to two basic skills: math and reading. Quality, therefore, is dissociated from processes of social change to which education should be a key contributor. Major global policies such as Education for All and the Millennium Development Goals do not consider the importance of inserting gender awareness in the provision of an education of high quality and their objectives see gender only as it relates to equal access to school by girls and boys. It is argued that leaving the treatment of gender out of the curriculum and failing to retrain teachers to recognize gender issues in the everyday practices of the school and classroom contributes to the persistence of values and practices that reaffirm arbitrary and asymmetric distinctions between women and men. The author proposes that from a feminist perspective quality must go well beyond access to include equal treatment of girls and boys in the classroom; a curriculum content that depolarizes gender identities' knowledge that affects people's lives such as sex education, domestic violence, and citizenship; and school practices to develop assertive and confident personalities in girls as well as in boys.
Quality; Gender; Global educational policies; EFA; MDGs
