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Writer's pictureJohn B. Parisutham
Jun 28, 20134 min read

Panel discussion report 35: Children’s right to Education

“Children’s Right to Education”, the topic for our panel discussion, was presented on 24th June, 2013 as a requirement for Introduction to Civil Society course. The discussion was remarkable and it gave a clear view of how different sectors of civil society play a major role to make sure the quality education for the children.

Overview of points discussed:

The discussion was divided into two parts where the first part was about the roles and responsibilities of different sectors which includes family, civil society, government and UNICEF. The other part of the discussion involved the contradictory issues where the challenges and disputes from different sectors came up and at the end, each sector specified the strategies to overcome those challenges. The first panelist mainly focused on the roles played by the families with the collaboration of the governments and CSO’s towards children’s education. The second panelist was talking about the roles played by the civil society whereby he emphasized on the responsibilities and accountabilities of CSO’s not only in developed societies but also in backward and underdeveloped societies for the children’s educational rights. The role of UNICEF and government for children’s right to education had been discussed by the last two panelists as they talked about the importance of UNICEF and Government in the societies to ensure the children’s right to education. It had been also discussed that the government needs to take full responsibilities to engage with the CSO’s and the organizations like UNICEF to guarantee the children’s right to education. Moreover, the issues were developed simultaneously whereas government was blamed to be a form of barrier for the children’s right to education, but eventually all of the panelists were agreed upon to work together for the children’s right to education to make a better society.

The process:

The first step for the panel discussion was to select the topic and we were facing difficulties with it as many topics were suggested to decide on. However, at last each member of our group came to an agreement to talk about children’s right to education. We have chosen this topic because education is essential for every children and they are the treasure of the society.  Thus, it is very crucial to have a better educational system for the children in order for the development of a society. The task was well distributed among the members and every member was fully concerned about his own individual work. For example, I was in charge to represent the Civil Society for children’s right to education and I prepared my part of my own and presented it to the rest of the members at rehearsal time. As far as I noticed, all my partners for panel discussion eagerly and actively took part in all discussions and helped each other to know more about the issue. We raised questions whenever there were mistakes and made them accurate. We tried to fully utilize our skills efficiently to complete the task. We were also maintaining a very good team sprit by showing mutual respect, openness and willingness to cooperate with each other and all of the members followed the decisions made by the agreement of the majority. Therefore, I would say that the team was mentally very strong and all of them believed in one goal and that was to accomplish the task successfully.

Implementation:

I am really satisfied on our panel discussion since everything worked well as we planned. We tried to make the panel discussion more interactive and we have excellently done it. The flow of the presentation is very important in a panel discussion and we have fully maintained it through-out our discussion. The content was developed from one speaker to another speaker while the issue was well interconnected and eventually some important solutions came up at the end of the discussion. The only thing I identified which need to be developed was the interaction between the panelists and the audience because in our discussion, sometimes the panelist was looking at others panelist while giving their speech which need to be focused more to the audience.

Reflection on panel discussion:

On my speech, I tried to attract the audience at the beginning by talking about the child community as well as defining the children’s right for education from Civil Society perspective.  In relation with that, I mentioned about the roles played by Civil Society Organizations. While talking at the second time, I was trying to bring out the challenges faced by different Civil Society Organizations in opposite to the government which later on brings the interesting contradictory session from UNICEF and Government. I believe that I could maintain the flow of my speech in the discussion. I presented my analysis one by one along with the statistical evidence which gave a deep understanding about my views. At the end, I tried my best to overcome my weaknesses and made them into my strengths. There were two questions from the audience and we answered them properly. The first question was about monitoring the children by the illiterate parents and three of our panelist answered it clearly. The second question was related to the work of UNICEF in changing the educational system. This question was handled by one of our panelists and also the moderator himself. Overall, I think that the questions were handled properly by the panelists by giving the accurate answer for each question.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, I have learned a lot of things from the discussion and it helped me to extend my views of how the quality education play a major role on the early development of the children. Moreover, children’s right to education is worthy for a society since it provides a basic foundation for the future development of a child. We can get a better world if and only if all different sectors work together to ensure the children’s rights to education.

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