ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the concept and strategy that accurately summed up the organisation's general ideals and purposes. It captures UNESCO's symbolic nature, and governments embraced it with a sincere, if cautious, enthusiasm. The programming priority that fundamental education enjoyed quickly gave universal education an institutionally entrenched position in an increasingly rigid program. Although the UNESCO Constitution has endorsed equality of educational opportunity as a basic human right, caution is evident in securing an appropriate balance between universal primary schooling and other means of achieving universal education. In general, the Commission's work focused on regional surveys of literacy, estimates of literacy levels, and consideration of how literacy teaching was organised in many parts of the world. The fostering of economic and social development could not wait for the attainment of satisfactory levels of elementary schooling. The attempt to consolidate UNESCO's technical competence in literacy education is strengthened.
