A/HRC/12/33 page 7 order to achieve the full realization of educational rights, education in all its forms and at all levels should be available to all within the State: primary education should be compulsory and available free to all (art. 13 (2) (a)); secondary education in its different forms should be made generally available and accessible to all by every appropriate means (art. 13 (2) (b)); higher education should be made equally accessible to all, on the basis of capacity, by every appropriate means (art. 13 (2) (c)); fundamental education should be encouraged or intensified as far as possible for persons who have not received or completed primary education (art. 13 (2) (d)); and the development of a system of schools at all levels should be actively pursued (art. 13 (2) (e)). Article 28 of the Convention contains a provision which is normatively similar to article 13 (2) of the International Covenant. 17. The principle of the progressive realization of economic, social and cultural rights, within the limits of available resources,8 is in some instances invoked by some States in an attempt to legitimize the de facto denial of education to indigenous peoples and other marginalized sectors of national society. 18. The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights addresses the principle of progressive realization of rights, including the right to education, in its general comment No. 3 (1990). The Committee emphasizes that a State party in which any significant number of individuals is deprived of “the most basic forms of education” is failing to discharge its obligation under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The Committee concluded that, in order for a State to be able to attribute its failure to meet at least its minimum core obligation to a lack of available resources, it must demonstrate that every effort has been made to use all resources that are at its disposition in an effort to satisfy, as a matter of priority, those minimum obligations. 19. Governments are obliged, collectively and individually, to make quality education available to all, accessible without any form of discrimination, acceptable in the light of international human rights standards and adaptable to the circumstances and in the best interest of the child. 20. States are obliged to ensure that functioning educational institutions and programmes are available to indigenous peoples in sufficient quantity within the jurisdiction of the State concerned. What they require to function depends upon numerous factors, including the developmental, social and cultural context within which they operate. 21. States are obliged to ensure that all indigenous school-age children have access to free education, including through indigenous neighbourhood or community-based schools providing education in their own languages, in a manner appropriate to their cultural methods of teaching and learning. In order to guarantee cultural safety and culturally appropriate education for indigenous students, curricula must be based on, or sufficiently reflect, indigenous peoples’ cultural values and beliefs. Fiscal allocations sufficiently matching the State’s human rights obligations are also required to ensure the realization of the right to education of indigenous peoples, including specific State-funded programmes for the education and recruitment of indigenous teachers. 8 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, art. 2 (1).