A/HRC/20/33 to education is not enough. Rather, it is important that States establish school systems that are inclusive and representative of society’s ethnic and cultural diversity; ensure training for teachers on racism and racial discrimination; prescribe unbiased schoolbooks, and promote the teaching of classes which include the history and positive contribution of minorities, their cultures, languages and traditions. As the Special Rapporteur on the right to education has correctly stressed, schools are not isolated from the larger community but rather reflect the surrounding setting and may reinforce prejudicial portrayals of victims of discrimination.14 For this reason, it is important that awareness-raising initiatives targeting teachers, students and parents, including for instance anti-racism days, be implemented. It is important to ensure that human rights education is included as an integral part of any national policies or strategies developed to prevent and combat racism. 20. The Special Rapporteur notes with appreciation efforts made by different States to prohibit segregation in schools and improve access to education opportunities for all individuals and groups. He is however concerned about reports, including by his predecessors, indicating that racial discrimination and segregation in schools, poorer educational achievements and a low quality level of education still characterize the experiences of certain groups of individuals, including minorities, Roma, victims of castebased discrimination, people of African descent, migrants, refugees and asylum seekers. The persistence of racial discrimination in the enjoyment of the right to education remains a major obstacle in building an inclusive educational system and thus a tolerant society. 21. Furthermore it is important to stress the critical role of education as a facilitative right whose realization is linked to the effective enjoyment of all other human rights and freedoms. While underlining this fulcrum role of education the Special Rapporteur on the right to education has pointed out that education operates as a multiplier, enhancing the enjoyment of all individual rights and freedoms where the right to education is effectively guaranteed, while depriving people of the enjoyment of many rights and freedoms where the right to education is denied or violated.15 Therefore preventing racial discrimination in the exercise of civil, cultural, economic, social and political rights depends on the extent to which victims of racial discrimination are guaranteed the enjoyment of the right to education. E. Special measures 22. In its general recommendation No. 32 (2009) on the meaning and scope of special measures in the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the Committee for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination concluded that special measures may have preventive as well as corrective functions. The Special Rapporteur shares the view of the Committee regarding the preventive role of special measures and he encourages States to adopt such measures as recommended on several occasions by his predecessor. In this regard he recalls in particular article 1, paragraph 4, of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which provides that special measures taken for the sole purpose of securing adequate advancement of certain racial or ethnic groups or individuals requiring such protection as may be necessary in order to ensure equal enjoyment or exercise of human rights and fundamental freedoms by such groups or individuals shall not be deemed racial discrimination, provided, however, that such measures do not, as a consequence, lead to the 14 15 8 Ibid. E/CN.4/2001/52.