According to international human rights law,free
primary education shall compulsory and free of charge. Secondary and higher education shall made progressively free of charge.
Free primary education is fundamental in guaranteeing everyone has access to education. However, in many developing countries,
families often cannot afford to send their children to school, leaving millions of children of school-age deprived of education.
Despite international obligations, some states keep on imposing fees to access primary education. In addition, there are often indirect costs associated with education,
such as for school books, uniform or travel, that prevent children from low-income families accessing school.
Financial difficulties states may face cannot relieve them of their obligation to guarantee free primary education. If a state is unable to secure compulsory primary education,
free of charge, when it ratifies the International Covenant on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR, 1966),
Free education has long been identified with “sponsored education”; for example, during the rich dignitaries commonly sponsored the education of young men as patrons.
Thomas Jefferson proposed “establishing free schools to teach reading, writing, and arithmetic, and from these schools those of intellectual ability,
free school education
regardless of background or economic status, would receive a college education paid for by the state.”
In the founded the first free public institution of higher education, the Free Academy of the City of New York (today the , in 1847; it aimed to provide free education to the urban poor, immigrants and their children. Its graduates went on to receive 10 Nobel Prizes, more than any other public university. During the late 19th century, the United States government introduced
it still has the immediate obligation, within two years, to work out and adopt a detailed plan of action for its progressive implementation,
within a reasonable numbers of years, to fixed in the plan (ICESCR, Article 14).
For more information, see (1999) of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
‘Progressive introduction of free education’ means that while states must prioritise the provision of free primary education,
they also have an obligation to take concrete steps towards achieving free secondary and higher education (General Comment 13 of the Committee on Economic,
Social and Cultural Rights, 1999: Para. 14).