33. Authorities should remove direct and indirect institutional barriers to education for minorities, and address cultural, gender and linguistic barriers that may have equivalent access-denying effects. 34. In order to ensure effective access to education for members of minority communities, authorities should take immediate and positive steps to remove impediments resulting from poverty and child labour, homelessness, low nutrition levels, poor health and sanitation among the communities, as well as impediments that result from a policy of historical discrimination or injustice in realizing the right to education. 35. Difficulties in school enrolment and retention for displaced persons, members of nomadic or semi-nomadic groups, migrant workers and their children, both girls and boys, should be addressed in a proactive and constructive manner. Lack of documentation should not prevent pupils from enrolling in schools. 36. Enrolment and registration formalities and cost burdens should be eased to facilitate the admission of minority pupils into schools; such inhibiting factors may be a matter of deepened concern in relation to the admission of girl pupils. 37. Resources should be sufficient to guarantee that the education of their children is a financially viable proposition for minority families. 38. The impact of residential patterns on school enrolments should be carefully assessed and addressed to avoid disparate social and educational outcomes. Authorities should pay attention to the location of schools so that minority pupils are not disadvantaged with respect to physical access to school buildings or the quality of educational outcomes. 39. States should carefully monitor and take positive and effective steps to reduce high rates of exclusion and dropouts among minority students and to, de minimis, align them with rates of the majority population, in cooperation with parents, associations and communities. States should take effective steps to bring down any barriers to education, be they cultural, social, economic or of any other nature, that lead to high drop-out rates. 40. States should ensure equal access to education for women and girls from minority groups, upon whom poverty and family responsibilities may have a disproportionate impact, and who may be subject also to aggravated discrimination, including in extreme cases violence, on the basis of culture, gender or caste. 41. Affirmative action in education for members of minorities that have been subject to a policy of historical discrimination or injustices in realizing the right to education should extend to higher education, where the cumulative impact of discrimination at the lower levels of education often results in low levels of representation of members of minority groups in the later stages of education, whether as pupils or education professionals. Compilation of Recommendations of the First Four Sessions 2008 to 2011 9 EDUCATION I • Minorities and the right to education