56 EDUCATION RIGHTS • ensuring the right of access to public educational institutions and programmes on a non-discriminatory basis • ensuring that education conforms to the objectives set out in ICESCR Article 13(1) • providing primary education for all • adopting and implementing a national educational strategy which includes provision for secondary, higher and fundamental education • ensuring free choice of education without interference from the state or third parties, subject to conformity with minimum educational standards.17 Free and compulsory primary education – availability Thus, the minimum core obligations include the duty to ensure that primary education is free and compulsory.18 Where this has not been achieved, the state must develop plans and a reasonable time-frame.19 The (former) UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education, Katerina Tomasevski, in her 2004 report found that even primary education is still not free in 91 countries.20 ‘Free of charge’ means that fees should not be charged; indirect charges may also be incompatible with this obligation.21 States also have an obligation to take concrete steps towards achieving free secondary and higher education.22 The Special Rapporteur has reported that this standard is under threat, as education is increasingly traded as a service.23 Ensuring that primary education is free and compulsory also has a significant gender aspect, as this obligation on the state removes delicate decision-making on the education of children from the private to the public sphere. It is for the state to take measures to encourage attendance.24 Non-discrimination – accessibility Minimum obligations include the obligation to ensure that access to education is non-discriminatory. A widespread form of direct discrimination in access to education is against non-citizens. This can have disastrous effects on the education of refugees, children of asylum seekers, and children of migrant workers. International law is very clear on this point. The CRC extends protection to all children, making no distinction between citizens and non-citizens.25 More specifically, both the Refugee Convention, and the Migrant Workers Convention state that children of refugees and children of migrant workers should have equal access to education.26 Likewise, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights has upheld the right of all to education, irrespective of citizenship.27 Human rights law requires not only that discrimination be prohibited, but that it be actively eliminated.28 This requires a focus on direct obstacles to access and the disaggregation of enrolment and other data according to all internationally