EDUCATION RIGHTS prohibited grounds of discrimination. Eliminating such discrimination requires fulfilling the governmental obligation to encourage attendance,29 notably by adapting education to ensure that it is in the best interests of all children,30 including through promoting the culture, language and religion of minority and indigenous children.31 To achieve this requires that representatives of minorities and indigenous peoples be present in participatory processes of designing, re-designing or re-thinking educational systems.32 Ensuring non-discrimination, and the promotion of equality through education leads to questioning segregation. The UNESCO Convention Against Discrimination in Education prohibits ‘establishing or maintaining separate educational systems or institutions for persons or groups of persons’, with some exceptions, notably for religious or linguistic reasons.33 However, a common recommendation of bodies charged with monitoring state practice in realizing human rights obligations is to pursue integrated education.34 Freedom of education – acceptability An important element of the right to education is the guarantee of pluralism in education,35 encapsulated in the rights of parents to ensure the religious and moral education of their children in conformity with their own convictions,36 and to establish schools outside the public education system (subject to state regulation to ensure that they reach minimum quality assurance standards).37 The denial of these rights – including to minorities and indigenous peoples – is considered by UN bodies as a human rights violation. This right has been successfully defended before both regional38 and national human rights bodies.39 In general, states do not have obligations to fund private schools equally with public schools.40 Bodies monitoring state practice do occasionally require funding of private minority schools where these fill a gap in provision.41 However, states are required to adopt special measures to pursue de facto equality.42 The right to education can act as a multiplier: where it is realized, opportunities for realizing a range of rights are enhanced.43 Special measures in education to this end should always be based on reasonable and objective criteria44 (such as redressing historical marginalization), and should cease once the objective has been attained.45 So, for example, special measures for education of the Roman Catholic minority in Canada, was no longer justified over one hundred years after adopted, as there was nothing to suggest that the Roman Catholic community remained in a disadvantaged position vis-à-vis other religious groups.46 Rights-based contents of education – adaptability Education should promote understanding among all ‘ethnic’ groups, as well as national, racial and religious groups,47 and should be culturally appropriate in both 57