Why Education For All remains a pipe dream
By Wachira Kigotho
Kenya is one of 26 countries in sub-Saharan Africa that are unlikely to achieve the Education For All (EFA) target by 2015, according to Dr Beatrice Khamati-Njenga, Head of Education Division at the Commission of the Africa Union.
However, that is an under statement since most of the 48 countries in the sub-region are off-track towards realization of universal primary education or eliminating gender disparity in primary and secondary education, which are key elements of the Millennium Development Goals. The lucky few include Seychelles, Mauritius and Botswana.
Although there has been progress in the last decade towards EFA targets, sub-Saharan Africa continues to account for more than 45 per cent of the 69 million school-age children who are out of school worldwide. According to Global Campaign for Education — a consortium funded by major international non-governmental donor agencies in education — seven countries in sub-Saharan Africa are among the ten worst places in the world to be a school child outside Afghanistan, Haiti and Pakistan. Nigeria leads in this list with 8.6 million children out of school.
“But it would cost less that two per cent of the money made each year from oil in Nigeria to get EFA for those children,” says Kailash Satyarthi of the Global Campaign for Education.
In Mali, which is another hotspot for education, gender disparity is a major challenge, as only seven per cent of pupils are able to read a single word of connected text after two years in school. So far, only 10 per cent of children are enrolled in primary school in Somalia while 4.4 million children are out of school in Democratic Republic of Congo.
But in Malawi, overcrowded classrooms are a major challenge with an average of 70 pupils per teacher. “Even then, drop-out rates exceed 60 per cent by the final year of primary education,” says Satyarthi in a global analysis report on access to education.
In Central Africa Republic, poor rural girls are among the most educationally marginalised children in the world. Statistics indicate girls there each spend an average of fewer than five weeks in school.
“Only 1.3 per cent of the Gross National Product is spent on education in Central Africa Republic, which is the lowest of any developing country,” says United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation.
However, whereas Kenya has been classified by Unesco as having made steady progress in enrolment rates, the country is among 15 countries that have more than half a million school-age children out of school in the world. With an estimated 1.1 million school-age children still out of school, Kenya is ranked seventh, behind, Nigeria, Pakistan, India, Ethiopia, Bangladesh and Niger — in that order.
In this list of shame, eight countries are from sub-Saharan Africa and Kenya ranks fourth among States with the highest number of children out-of- school in the sub-region.
In essence, access to primary education in sub-Saharan Africa has suffered because of poverty and progress made by some countries in terms of increased enrolment rates have been compromised by poor quality and falling standards of education. According to Education International — an umbrella organisation representing 30 million teachers in 171 countries around the world — relatively low and unequal learning achievement in mathematics, science and languages characterise many countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
Cognitive ability
The crux of the matter is that hungry children complete fewer years than children that are adequately nourished due to reduced cognitive ability and prevalence of diseases.
“About a third of school-age children in sub-Saharan Africa suffer from a combination of malnutrition and stunting,” says United Nations Children’s Fund.
In addition, crowded classrooms, too few core textbooks, insufficient instructional time occasioned by teacher absenteeism and acute teacher shortages have all contributed to limited learning achievement in most African countries. Gender parity in sub-Saharan Africa is also still a dream as 54 per cent of school-age children out of school is girls.
For Kenya, the road towards universalising access to primary education has been long and bumpy. Since independence three initiatives aimed at achieving free and universal primary education have been launched. The first one was in 1974, the second in 1979 and the third in 2003, which is in progress.
However, according to Daniel Sifuna, a professor of education at Kenyatta University, those initiatives have been mere political gimmicks as very little planning was done and their implementation exacerbated the problem of teaching and learning facilities.
“Current educational surveys show the existing facilities make a mockery of the free education programme,” says Sifuna.
No doubt free primary education has raised participation from 7.2 million to 9.4 million as of last year, but quality has suffered immensely. If academic achievement is an indicator of quality, it is quite significant that private schools out-perform the public schools in the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education at considerable margins. Amid efforts to stop private school pupils from taking most of the slots offered in national schools, the Ministry of Education has introduced quota system selection criteria that favour pupils from public schools that take advantage of the free primary education.
Retention vs learning
Besides those basic interventions, the emerging scenario is that the gap between those who are improving and those who lag behind is increasing. Hard-hit are pupils in public schools in rural areas and those in low-cost private schools in urban slums.
“Retention and learning are hampered when pupils attend school in dilapidated or overcrowded buildings, in noisy or unsafe environments,” says researchers at the Unesco’s Southern and Eastern African Consortium for Monitoring Education Quality.
In this case about 47 per cent of public school buildings in Kenya are in a major state of disrepair and only 13 per cent are in good condition. But whilst primary education in Kenya and elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa seems to be in crisis, the picture is grimmer when considering pre-primary and secondary education. The danger is that quality segment in those critical sectors of education has become the privilege of a few.
Whereas Dr Khamati-Njenga interprets the failure of universal education in sub-Saharan Africa as a case of inadequate political will, financing and deficiencies in co-ordination in many countries, it has turned out to be a competition for limited resources.
Anthony Somerset, a former senior research fellow at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Nairobi, thinks whereas during the colonial period, education system in Kenya was racially separated, now it is based on household economic status.
Education vs Poverty
“There is risk that in Kenya, a new separation in education may take hold, based on economic rather than racial criteria, with private schools catering for the sons and daughters of the privileged and public schools being for the poor,” says Somerset.
Such competition is fuelled by logic that education is the most basic insurance against poverty.
“At all ages, education empowers people with knowledge, skills and confidence they need to shape a better future,” says Unesco Director-General Irina Bokova.
Subsequently, quality education is the linchpin towards achieving MDGs and sustaining them. However, as Khamati-Njenga correctly pointed out, political leadership in many countries have chosen poverty for their people by not providing education that can boost productivity and job creation.
http://www.standardmedia.co.ke
Kenya is one of 26 countries in sub-Saharan Africa that are unlikely to achieve the Education For All (EFA) target by 2015, according to Dr Beatrice Khamati-Njenga, Head of Education Division at the Commission of the Africa Union.
However, that is an under statement since most of the 48 countries in the sub-region are off-track towards realization of universal primary education or eliminating gender disparity in primary and secondary education, which are key elements of the Millennium Development Goals. The lucky few include Seychelles, Mauritius and Botswana.
Although there has been progress in the last decade towards EFA targets, sub-Saharan Africa continues to account for more than 45 per cent of the 69 million school-age children who are out of school worldwide. According to Global Campaign for Education — a consortium funded by major international non-governmental donor agencies in education — seven countries in sub-Saharan Africa are among the ten worst places in the world to be a school child outside Afghanistan, Haiti and Pakistan. Nigeria leads in this list with 8.6 million children out of school.
“But it would cost less that two per cent of the money made each year from oil in Nigeria to get EFA for those children,” says Kailash Satyarthi of the Global Campaign for Education.
In Mali, which is another hotspot for education, gender disparity is a major challenge, as only seven per cent of pupils are able to read a single word of connected text after two years in school. So far, only 10 per cent of children are enrolled in primary school in Somalia while 4.4 million children are out of school in Democratic Republic of Congo.
But in Malawi, overcrowded classrooms are a major challenge with an average of 70 pupils per teacher. “Even then, drop-out rates exceed 60 per cent by the final year of primary education,” says Satyarthi in a global analysis report on access to education.
In Central Africa Republic, poor rural girls are among the most educationally marginalised children in the world. Statistics indicate girls there each spend an average of fewer than five weeks in school.
“Only 1.3 per cent of the Gross National Product is spent on education in Central Africa Republic, which is the lowest of any developing country,” says United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation.
However, whereas Kenya has been classified by Unesco as having made steady progress in enrolment rates, the country is among 15 countries that have more than half a million school-age children out of school in the world. With an estimated 1.1 million school-age children still out of school, Kenya is ranked seventh, behind, Nigeria, Pakistan, India, Ethiopia, Bangladesh and Niger — in that order.
In this list of shame, eight countries are from sub-Saharan Africa and Kenya ranks fourth among States with the highest number of children out-of- school in the sub-region.
In essence, access to primary education in sub-Saharan Africa has suffered because of poverty and progress made by some countries in terms of increased enrolment rates have been compromised by poor quality and falling standards of education. According to Education International — an umbrella organisation representing 30 million teachers in 171 countries around the world — relatively low and unequal learning achievement in mathematics, science and languages characterise many countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
Cognitive ability
The crux of the matter is that hungry children complete fewer years than children that are adequately nourished due to reduced cognitive ability and prevalence of diseases.
“About a third of school-age children in sub-Saharan Africa suffer from a combination of malnutrition and stunting,” says United Nations Children’s Fund.
In addition, crowded classrooms, too few core textbooks, insufficient instructional time occasioned by teacher absenteeism and acute teacher shortages have all contributed to limited learning achievement in most African countries. Gender parity in sub-Saharan Africa is also still a dream as 54 per cent of school-age children out of school is girls.
For Kenya, the road towards universalising access to primary education has been long and bumpy. Since independence three initiatives aimed at achieving free and universal primary education have been launched. The first one was in 1974, the second in 1979 and the third in 2003, which is in progress.
However, according to Daniel Sifuna, a professor of education at Kenyatta University, those initiatives have been mere political gimmicks as very little planning was done and their implementation exacerbated the problem of teaching and learning facilities.
“Current educational surveys show the existing facilities make a mockery of the free education programme,” says Sifuna.
No doubt free primary education has raised participation from 7.2 million to 9.4 million as of last year, but quality has suffered immensely. If academic achievement is an indicator of quality, it is quite significant that private schools out-perform the public schools in the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education at considerable margins. Amid efforts to stop private school pupils from taking most of the slots offered in national schools, the Ministry of Education has introduced quota system selection criteria that favour pupils from public schools that take advantage of the free primary education.
Retention vs learning
Besides those basic interventions, the emerging scenario is that the gap between those who are improving and those who lag behind is increasing. Hard-hit are pupils in public schools in rural areas and those in low-cost private schools in urban slums.
“Retention and learning are hampered when pupils attend school in dilapidated or overcrowded buildings, in noisy or unsafe environments,” says researchers at the Unesco’s Southern and Eastern African Consortium for Monitoring Education Quality.
In this case about 47 per cent of public school buildings in Kenya are in a major state of disrepair and only 13 per cent are in good condition. But whilst primary education in Kenya and elsewhere in sub-Saharan Africa seems to be in crisis, the picture is grimmer when considering pre-primary and secondary education. The danger is that quality segment in those critical sectors of education has become the privilege of a few.
Whereas Dr Khamati-Njenga interprets the failure of universal education in sub-Saharan Africa as a case of inadequate political will, financing and deficiencies in co-ordination in many countries, it has turned out to be a competition for limited resources.
Anthony Somerset, a former senior research fellow at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Nairobi, thinks whereas during the colonial period, education system in Kenya was racially separated, now it is based on household economic status.
Education vs Poverty
“There is risk that in Kenya, a new separation in education may take hold, based on economic rather than racial criteria, with private schools catering for the sons and daughters of the privileged and public schools being for the poor,” says Somerset.
Such competition is fuelled by logic that education is the most basic insurance against poverty.
“At all ages, education empowers people with knowledge, skills and confidence they need to shape a better future,” says Unesco Director-General Irina Bokova.
Subsequently, quality education is the linchpin towards achieving MDGs and sustaining them. However, as Khamati-Njenga correctly pointed out, political leadership in many countries have chosen poverty for their people by not providing education that can boost productivity and job creation.
http://www.standardmedia.co.ke
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