MPSC 2023 Prelims Paper-I · Question 98 of 100

Correct — option (2), Afghanistan. The United Nations observes the International Day of Education on 24 January, a day proclaimed by the General Assembly in 2018 and first marked in 2019, and UNESCO leads the observance. For 2023 the Director-General of UNESCO, Audrey Azoulay, dedicated the day to the girls and women of Afghanistan and renewed the organisation's call for the immediate restoration of their fundamental right to education. UNESCO marked the day with an event at the United Nations headquarters in New York, with contributions from the Secretary-General of the United Nations and the President of the General Assembly as well as the Director-General, and the first panel discussion of that event was devoted to the education of girls and women in Afghanistan. The reason for the dedication was the situation created after the de facto authorities in Kabul barred girls from secondary schools and women from universities: at the time of the observance about eighty per cent of school-aged Afghan girls and young women — some two and a half million — were out of school. The dedication was therefore not a commemorative gesture but a form of pressure, using the annual observance to keep an exclusion that had been imposed by administrative order in the international view. For an examination written in June 2023 this was a well-reported event of the preceding January, and it belongs to the small set of United Nations observances that MPSC returns to regularly. Note that the paper calls it the 'International Education Day', while the United Nations name for it is the International Day of Education; the day intended is not in doubt. Option (2) is the answer.

• (1)Iran — Iran is the strongest of the three wrong options, and a candidate who chooses it is usually reasoning from real news rather than from nothing. Iran had been prominent in the international coverage of women's rights through late 2022 and into 2023, following the protests that began in September 2022, and any question about an international body speaking up for girls and women will draw a candidate towards it. The 2023 International Day of Education was nonetheless dedicated to Afghan girls and women, because the exclusion there was categorical — girls barred from secondary schooling and women from universities by order — and directly concerned education, which is UNESCO's mandate. The discrimination worth carrying is that between a country in the news and a country in the news for the specific subject of the observance. An observance dedicated by an education organisation will be dedicated on educational grounds.
• (3)Israel — Israel has no connection with the 2023 International Day of Education, which UNESCO dedicated to the girls and women of Afghanistan. The option is present as a recognisable country from the international news of the period rather than for any reason connected to education, and it functions in the same way as an unfamiliar name in an appointment question: it occupies a slot that a guessing candidate cannot eliminate. The way to make such options harmless is to fix the observance to the reason it was dedicated. The 2023 dedication was a response to a specific and continuing exclusion of girls and women from schools and universities by the authorities of one country, and once that reason is in mind, only one of the four options can satisfy it. Preparing observances by their theme and occasion rather than by their date alone is what makes this possible.
• (4)Vietnam — Vietnam has no connection with the 2023 International Day of Education and is the weakest option in the set. It is offered as a fourth country with no particular association, which is a common construction: an option set of four countries in which one is the answer, one is a plausible near-miss and two are simply filler. Recognising which options are filler is a real examination skill, because it tells the candidate where the question is actually being decided — here between Afghanistan and Iran, the two countries whose treatment of girls' and women's education had been in the news. Having narrowed the question that far, the candidate can bring the specific fact to bear: it was Afghanistan, where girls were barred from secondary school and women from university, that UNESCO named in dedicating the day.

The International Day of Education, observed on 24 January, was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in 2018 and first marked in 2019, and it is led by UNESCO — the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, founded in 1946 with its headquarters in Paris. The day exists to press the case that education is both a human right in itself and the means by which other rights are secured, and it is tied to Sustainable Development Goal 4 on inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong learning for all. Each year's observance carries a theme, and in some years, as in 2023, a dedication to a particular situation. The Afghan case is the sharpest test of the day's premise anywhere in the world: after August 2021 the de facto authorities progressively closed secondary schooling to girls and, in December 2022, universities to women, so that a majority of Afghan girls of school age were excluded from education by order rather than by poverty, distance or custom. UNESCO's response has been to document the exclusion, keep it on the agenda of the General Assembly and use its own observances to renew the demand that the right be restored. India's engagement with the same goal runs through the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 and Article 21A of the Constitution.

United Nations observances are a small but dependable share of the MPSC current affairs block, and questions on them come in two forms: what date a day falls on, and what a particular year's observance was about. The first is answered by a list of dates, the second only by having followed that year's theme, and it is the second that appears here. A candidate who prepares observances as a table of date against name will answer half of these questions and miss the rest, so the table should carry a third column for the current year's theme or dedication. The wider habit this question rewards is distinguishing between a country that is in the news and a country that is in the news for the subject at hand. Both Afghanistan and Iran were prominent in coverage of women's rights in the period before this paper, and a candidate reasoning loosely could go either way; a candidate who remembers that the subject was education, and that girls had been barred from secondary school and women from university in Afghanistan by order, cannot. Note also that the paper's wording, 'International Education Day', is not the United Nations name for the observance, which is the International Day of Education.

• The International Day of Education is observed on 24 January; it was proclaimed by the United Nations General Assembly in 2018, first marked in 2019, and is led by UNESCO.
• UNESCO's Director-General, Audrey Azoulay, dedicated the 2023 observance to the girls and women of Afghanistan and renewed the call for the immediate restoration of their right to education.
• UNESCO marked the day with an event at United Nations headquarters in New York, with the Secretary-General and the President of the General Assembly taking part, the first panel being devoted to the education of Afghan girls and women.
• At the time of the observance about eighty per cent of school-aged Afghan girls and young women, some two and a half million, were out of school because the de facto authorities had barred them from secondary schools and universities.
• The day is tied to Sustainable Development Goal 4, which commits states to inclusive and equitable quality education and lifelong learning opportunities for all.

• Choosing a country that was prominent in the news for women's rights generally, rather than the country named in an observance about education specifically
• Preparing United Nations observances as a list of dates alone, when the question asks about a particular year's theme or dedication
• Assuming the paper's wording is the official name of an observance, when the United Nations calls this the International Day of Education
• Treating a dedication of this kind as ceremonial, and so failing to connect it to the specific administrative exclusion that prompted it

MPSC sets questions on international days in most years, and the two variants are the date and the year's theme. Dates are stable and can be learnt once; themes change annually and must be followed through the year, which is why the theme questions discriminate more sharply. Expect option sets of countries when the observance carried a dedication, and expect at least one option to be a country that was independently in the news, since that is what converts a general awareness of world affairs into a wrong answer. The topic also connects to the education section of the syllabus, so a question that begins with a United Nations observance can be followed in the same paper by one on the Right to Education Act, on literacy rates in Maharashtra or on the National Education Policy — which is a reason to prepare the observance and the domestic policy together rather than as separate items.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The International Day of Education is observed by the United Nations on which date ?

  • (a)24 January
  • (b)8 September
  • (c)5 September
  • (d)11 October

  Answer(a) 24 January — the day was proclaimed by the General Assembly in 2018, first observed in 2019 and is led by UNESCO. The 8th of September is International Literacy Day, another UNESCO-led observance often confused with it; 5 September is Teachers' Day in India, marking Dr S. Radhakrishnan's birth anniversary; and 11 October is the International Day of the Girl Child.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which United Nations agency leads the observance of the International Day of Education ?

  • (a)UNICEF
  • (b)UNESCO
  • (c)the United Nations Development Programme
  • (d)the International Labour Organization

  Answer(b) UNESCO — the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, founded in 1946 with headquarters in Paris, is the agency whose mandate covers education, and it was its Director-General who dedicated the 2023 observance to the girls and women of Afghanistan. UNICEF works for children's welfare more broadly and does a great deal on schooling, which is why it is the most convincing of the wrong options here.