PHOTO BLOG: The state of girls’ education around the world

To tie-in with the release of the Gender Summary of the Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2013/4 published by UNESCO to mark International Women’s Day, this photo blog tells the story of the state of education for girls and young women around the world. 

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The Gender Summary of the 2013/4 Education for All Global Monitoring Report highlights the serious gender imbalance in global education that has left over 100 million young women unable to read a single sentence. The summary, launched for International Women’s Day in partnership with the UN Girls’ Education Initiative, calls for equity to be at the heart of new global development goals after 2015 so that every child has an equal chance of learning through quality education.

Half of the 31 million girls out of school are expected never to enroll or have the chance to learn. Despite some progress, in 2011, only 60% of countries had achieved parity in primary education and only 38% of countries had achieved parity in secondary education. Among low income countries, just 20% had achieved gender parity at the primary level, 10% at the lower secondary level and 8% at the upper secondary level.

Sub-Saharan Africa remains the region with the largest number of countries with severe gender disparity in access to primary education, with girls making up 54% of the out-of-school population across the continent. In the Arab States the situation remains unchanged since 1999, with girls making up 60% of the out-of-school population. Despite some progress, girls still make up 57% of the out–of-school population in South and West Asia as well.

On current trends, by 2015 it is projected that only 70% of countries will have achieved parity in primary education, and 56% of countries will have achieved parity in lower secondary education. The new summary reiterates the need for progress in education to be more evenly spread between girls and boys if global education goals are to be achieved.

Afghanistan: rebuilding girls’ education after decades of conflict

Nahida, a school principal in Kabul, is the third participant in our ten-week #TeacherTuesday campaign. In Afghanistan, conflict has raged for decades, cultural opposition to girls’ schooling is deep-seated, and education for girls was banned altogether under the Taliban. Nahida describes how she has struggled for 25 years to defend and improve girls’ education in the face of gender bias and conflict that still affect her work every day.

After graduating from Kabul University in the late 1980s, Nahida became a teacher. But then the Taliban came to power.

Under the Taliban: a secret school for girls
“It was their policy to close all the schools for females. For me, it was difficult to go to school to teach. When I went to my school, the principal was a mullah and he didn’t allow me to enter and asked me after that not to come to school.  But for the boys, school was open.

“When I understood the policy of Taliban was not to allow girls and female teachers to go to school, I started a home school for girls that was very secret and not official because families and their parents asked me to teach their daughters. It was a very strict time. Very difficult. I was afraid.”

Afghan students coats hung on the wall at a school in Kabul

When the Taliban fell, the way was open to restore education for girls. But first everything had to be rebuilt from scratch – there was literally nothing left.

The long process of rebuilding
“When I went to my school it was completely destroyed. The buildings had no windows, no doors. The surrounding wall was destroyed. Schools didn’t have any chairs, tables, blackboard, chalk – no school materials at all. First I cleaned the classes with the help of my teachers. I made the surrounding wall in mud and stones. I gave messages to families and, mosques and asked them to send their daughters to school.

“The girls came back slowly, slowly. I encouraged families, asked their parents to school, encouraged them, talked with them. Also I sent my female teachers to their homes. I announced it in different mosques.”

Gender Summary turns spotlight on girls’ education

Over 100 million young women in low and lower middle income countries are unable to read a single sentence. And 31 million girls are out of school, with half of them unlikely ever to set foot inside a classroom.

Those worrying findings of the 2013/4 EFA Global Monitoring Report are in the spotlight as we launch the Gender Summary of the report today, to mark International Women’s Day. The launch is taking place in New York in partnership with the United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative. Keynote speakers include Irina Bokova, director-general of UNESCO; Pauline Rose, director of the 2013/4 EFA Global Monitoring Report; Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, executive director of UN Women; and Susan Hopgood, president of Education International.

As well as outlining the deficits in education for girls and young women, the Gender Summary focuses on four main recommendations to get girls’ education back on track:

1.  Equity must be at the forefront of new education goals after 2015. Every girl should have an equal chance of going to school and learning while there. New goals need clear, measurable targets with indicators that will track the progress of the most disadvantaged, and girls in particular.

2.  The best teachers must reach the learners who need them most. National education plans must include an explicit commitment to reach out to girls and the marginalized. Female teachers, in particular, should be recruited locally. Incentives must be provided to ensure the best teachers work in remote, under-served areas.

3. Teachers need gender-sensitive teacher education: Teachers, both female and male, need training to understand and recognize their own attitudes, perceptions and expectations regarding gender.

4.  Curricula must be inclusive. Teachers can only break down learning barriers effectively if they are supported by appropriate and inclusive curricula that pay particular attention to the needs of girls at risk of not learning.

The Gender Summary also demonstrates the importance of investing in girls’ and women’s education, not just for individuals but for the whole of society. Education reduces women’s poverty and boosts their chances of getting jobs that pay as well as men’s. It has enormous benefits for women’s health, as well as their children’s, saving millions of lives through better knowledge of disease prevention and treatment. Education also empowers women to make better life choices, helping to avert early marriage and childbirth.

Honduras: Teachers need support to teach in multilingual classrooms

Natelee, from the Bay Islands in Honduras is the second participating teacher in our ten-week #TeacherTuesday campaign. She describes the challenges teaching in a multilingual environment, and the barriers to learning for children who do not benefit from a bilingual classroom.

There are 9 indigenous and minority groups in Honduras (Miskitu, Tawahka, Lenca, Tolupan, Maya-Chorti, Garifuna, Nahao, Pech, Negro de Habla Ingles) and 7 languages. Spanish is the first spoken language on the mainland, but English is the main spoken language on the Bay Islands, whose inhabitants are mainly descended from the Grand Cayman and Jamaica, with a scattering of Garifuna people.

“It leaves a gap,” said Natelee, a teacher in the Bay Islands, when we asked her what it was like being taught in a language different from your your own. “Some children won’t be able to read or write because they’ve been taught in a language they don’t understand.” Our Report shows that, in Honduras in 2011, 94% of those who spoke the language of instruction at home learned the basics in reading in primary school compared to only 62% of those who did not.

Being taught in a language they don’t understand not only impacts on whether children make the grades, but also whether they decide that school is worth carrying on with. “Over the years there have been a number of dropouts in our system,” Natelee explained, “Sometimes it’s because their learning style is not catered to, and others it’s because the language at school is not their first language”. The EFA GMR 2013/4 shows that in Honduras in 2010, only 75% of children were surviving to the last grade of primary education, with 25% dropping out.

Malawi: A shortage of teachers is putting children’s learning at risk

Esnart, from Malawi is the first participating teacher in our ten-week #TeacherTuesday campaign. She describes what it’s like teaching over 200 children under a tree, and explains how the huge shortage of trained teachers in the country is having detrimental effects on children’s ability to learn.

“Teachers are few and far between”, Esnart told the audience at the global launch event of the EFA Global Monitoring Report 2013/4 in Ethiopia last month. “The truth of the matter is that huge classes and learning under unfavorable conditions in Malawi drastically reduce the quality of time that a teacher can spend with a child. This is having a negative impact on the quality of teaching and children’s ability to learn.”

Esnart teaching under a tree in Malawi

Malawi has one of the world’s most dramatic teacher shortages. Our latest Report shows that the teaching force is growing at just 1% per year in the country, and the average number of children per teacher has increased from 63 in 1999 to 76 in 2011. For Malawi to achieve universal primary education by 2015, it would have needed to increase its teaching force by 15% every year. But, in addition, the capacity of its teacher education programme is currently far from sufficient to meet this need.

Unfortunately, this situation is not rare and needs to be urgently addressed. Our latest Report shows that 5.2 million primary school teachers need to be recruited globally by 2015 if we are to achieve universal primary education.

Teachers in overcrowded classrooms will struggle to ensure the children obtain foundation skills when in school. Out of the six subjects Esnart was supposed to get through, she’d sometimes teach just 2, or 3. “I just ran out of time,” she said. With limited one-on-one time with the teacher, some of the children fell asleep in class, she said, others started hitting each other or just went out to play. It is no wonder that dropout rates in such circumstances are high.

The knock-on effects of overcrowded classrooms and a lack of teachers are severe: “You will be shocked to hear that some children in Malawi reach grades three and four without being able to add up, read or write,” Esnart told us. “I’ve even seen children as old as 9 and 10 who are unable to read and write their names when clearly they should be able to do this.” Our Report confirms that even spending 4 years in school is not enough. Less than a third of young people who left school after spending no more than 4 years in school in Malawi are literate.

Low quality education of this nature has contributed to there being 250 million children who do not learn the basics around the world. In Malawi, less than half of children know how to read or count. Over the long term, this leaves young people illiterate when they are trying to find a livelihood. Youth literacy rates hardly improved over a decade in Malawi, rising from 72% in 2000 to 77% in 2010.

This teacher shortage is affecting the disadvantaged – girls, the poor, those in rural areas and the disabled – the hardest, making it essential that governments do their utmost to get teachers where they are needed most. Left unaddressed, crosscutting disadvantages of this nature build tall barriers that children find hard to overcome: In Malawi in 2010, fewer than 5% of rural poor girls were completing lower secondary school.

Part of the problem, explains Esnart, is that “rural children are taught by teachers who are often demotivated due to poor working conditions, poor accommodation and from living in remote areas where they are unable to access healthcare and other social amenities.”

To help address this imbalance, the Malawian government has introduced a hardship allowance and offers a faster career track for teachers who work in rural areas. Open distance training is also now available to enable more teachers to be recruited locally. However, in Esnart’s words, ‘the government needs to do more to improve teacher salaries, conditions, building teacher housing, giving electricity, better facilities closer to rural areas.”

The quality of an education system is only as good as the quality of its teachers. Our Report shows clearly that it is not enough just to want to teach. People should enter the profession with at least a lower secondary education. In Malawi, however, the teaching profession is not attracting the best candidates. Esnart describes the teaching profession as “a last resort”. Candidates are signing on to the profession, in other words, “because they have nowhere else to go.”

To address these deficits and meet future demand as enrolment increases, it is vital that countries ensure they attract the best candidates to the job and have the capacity to train them. Countries must start planning now to make up the shortfall, not only in primary schools but also at the lower secondary education level.

I think that you will all agree that this has to change, said Esnart at the end of her interview. We do.

 Join the #TeacherTuesday campaign: Write a blog, send a tweet, join our weekly Twitter Q&As

Share your views on the forthcoming 2015 EFA Global Monitoring Report

The 2015 Education for All Global Monitoring Report (EFA GMR) will review how much the EFA movement has contributed to ensuring that all children, young people and adults have benefited from the right to an education that meets their basic learning needs. Please share your views on the new extended outline of the Report through our new consultation process.

The 2015 EFA GMR will provide a definitive assessment of overall progress at the national, regional and global level toward the six EFA goals that were established in Dakar, Senegal, in 2000. The assessment will establish whether the goals were achieved and, if not, whether progress slowed or accelerated since 2000. It will pay particular attention to gaps between those groups who benefited from progress and those who did not. This assessment will provide lessons for the framing of post-2015 education goals and strategies.

The EFA GMR team is particularly keen to receive your thoughts on the areas noted below, including suggestions on relevant data analysis and case studies.

• Submit your comments as part of our online consultation, which will be open for the next six weeks. The views of researchers, academics, governments, non-governmental organizations, aid donors, teachers, youth and anyone with an interest in education and development are extremely welcome.
• We will also be holding a consultation in Paris on the 6^th March 12.30-1400hrs at UNESCO’s headquarters. Please get in touch for more information and to attend.

As this extended outline shows, the next and final EFA GMR Report will:

• Identify the big changes that have taken place in educational policies and programmes since the World Education Conference in Dakar vis-à-vis the six EFA goals highlighting the factors behind these changes, including the role of the EFA movement;
• Assess to what extent such policies and programmes were successful in making progress towards EFA objectives; and
• Analyse how the present policy environment may influence the achievement of a more ambitious education agenda after 2015 and what monitoring tools will be needed.

We want to know if you think the note on our forthcoming Report captures the key factors that have affected progress towards each goal. To what extent – and how – do you think the EFA movement contributed to what was achieved? What lessons can be drawn from the EFA movement as a new international education agenda is taking shape?

Thank you for your time and interest in our Report – we look forward to hearing from you.

Children need to be taught in their mother language

In many countries, children are taught in languages they do not speak at home. As we show in the 2013/4 EFA Global Monitoring Report, that can be a potent source of disadvantage. Children need a chance to learn in their mother tongue as well as the official language.

International Mother Language Day, celebrated on February 21, was founded by UNESCO in 1999 to draw attention to the importance of learning in local languages. This year’s special focus is on global citizenship and science.

Nguyen, a teacher in Muong Khuong county, Viet Nam: ‘There are 13 ethnic students in my class. All Hmong girls. Sometimes when you teach in Vietnamese they seem not to understand.’
Credit: Nguyen Thanh Tuan/UNESCO

As well as presenting clear evidence that learning in an unfamiliar language can hold children back, the 2013/4 EFA Global Monitoring Report lays out strategies for making sure that children from ethnic and linguistic minorities acquire strong foundation skills.

Schools need to teach the curriculum in a language children understand. A bilingual approach that combines continued teaching in a child’s mother tongue with the later introduction of a second language can improve performance in the second language as well as in other subjects.

Our latest report shows that in Ethiopia, for example, primary school children learning in their mother tongue performed better in grade 8 in mathematics, biology, chemistry and physics than pupils in English-only schooling.

Join our #TeacherTuesday campaign

Around the world, teachers work in conflict zones and urban slums, and in multigrade and multilingual classrooms that are often overcrowded. They experience the joy of seeing children learn and the frustration of trying to cope without the materials they need. They live the reality of 250 million children not learning the basics, whether they have been to school or not. Over the next 10 Tuesdays, starting on February 25, 10 teachers from 10 countries will share their stories with a global blogging network as part of a new campaign, #TeacherTuesday.

Teachers need more support to meet such daily challenges, as we showed in the 2013/4 EFA Global Monitoring Report, Teaching and learning: Achieving quality for all. But policies can only be effective if those responsible for implementing them are involved in shaping them. Policy-makers who aim to improve education quality rarely consult teachers or their unions, however. A survey in 10 countries showed that all teachers thought it was vital to have influence on the direction of policy, but only 23% felt they had any at all.

To this effect, #TeacherTuesday is designed to give teachers a voice, and allow them to describe the difficulties of their everyday work. It is the start of an ongoing consultation the EFA Global Monitoring Report team will be carrying out with teachers, with the aim of publishing a teachers’ resource based on our latest Report later this year.

Next Tuesday, our campaign begins with the story of Esnart, from Malawi. In her country, which is suffering from a huge teacher shortage, fewer than half of children are learning the basics. Our latest Report shows that globally there is a huge lack of qualified teachers, which hits disadvantaged children hardest. At current rates of recruitment, almost 60 countries will still not have enough primary school teachers in 2015.

Let’s clarify the definition of aid to education so that it benefits the poorest

What is aid? Most people would agree with the dictionary that says aid is “material help given by one country to another” – and would expect aid to go to those most in need. But almost a fifth of what the OECD’s Development Assistance Committee counts as aid never leaves donor countries, as the research group Development Initiatives revealed in a report last September. And a surprising amount of aid is going to countries that are far from being the poorest.

Without a clearer definition of “aid”, in other words, the targets to which countries commit themselves are largely meaningless – and the countries that really need aid are not benefiting. So it’s timely that the rules set back in 1969 about what counts as aid –the OECD’s definition of “official development assistance”– are up for review later this year.

Education has much to gain from clearer, fairer new rules. Currently, as shown in our recently released 2013/4 EFA Global Monitoring Report, a quarter of direct aid to education never leaves donor countries, equivalent to $3.2 billion over the year 2010-2011. These funds are instead spent on scholarships and “student imputed costs” – the costs of foreign students studying in universities in donor countries. And, while much of the aid in the form of technical assistance is used to support governments in development countries, there is always a component that is spent in the donor country – but this distinction is currently not possible based on the available aid statistics. 

In addition, the money going to scholarships has also mostly been going to upper middle income countries. From 2010-2011, China was the largest recipient of scholarship-related aid, receiving around a fifth of the total. This “aid” to China totaled more than the aid received by some of the poorest countries for basic education. For instance, on average over 2010–2011, donors – primarily Germany and Japan – disbursed US$656 million per year to China for scholarships and student imputed costs, which was 77 times the amount of aid disbursed to Chad for basic education over the same period, and 37 times the amount given to Niger.

The current elastic definition of aid also covers a kind of donor contribution can actually harm rather than help: 15% of aid is in the form of loans that countries have to pay back at concessional interest rates. This deprives poorer countries of resources that they could spend on education.

To make matters worse,  loans with an interest rate of 10% are deemed ‘concessional’ under current rules, but with market rates at a historic low of around 3% to 5%, these ‘concessions’ are not concessional at all. At the extreme, donors may even be making interest on the ‘aid’ they’re giving to poorer countries. It is clearly time for the definition of aid to be tightened.

The aid landscape would change dramatically if new definitions of aid excluded amounts spent on scholarships and loans. Germany, the largest donor of direct aid to education in 2010–2011, would fall to fifth place, and France would drop two places to fourth-largest. The World Bank would fall from third to 14^th place, since a large share of its funding is in the form of loans. The United Kingdom and United States, which give negligible amounts of aid to education in the form of loans or student imputed costs, would jump from sixth and seventh places to first and second.

To build a full picture of financing for education, it is also important to give countries credit for the aid that they contribute via pooled funds. For example, donors should report the amount they give to the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) and, likewise, the GPE should report what it disburses to countries.  In 2011, GPE was the fourth-largest donor to low and lower middle income countries. If the GPE’s funds increase after its forthcoming replenishment meeting, as we hope, it will be even more important that the way these funds are distributed is centrally reported.

Once we have agreed on the definition of aid, we must then also be sure that the contributions are targeting those most in need. There are vast inequalities in progress towards education goals. Our latest report shows that the poorest girls are 60 years behind the richest boys in achieving universal completion of primary school, for example. If we are to rectify these huge gaps in progress in education after 2015, we must be sure to agree on what constitutes real aid, and then target our resources – financial and technical – to those most in need.

We can get more children into school and improve their learning

By Hailemariam Desalegn, Prime Minister of Ethiopia

In Ethiopia, we have reason to be very proud of the progress we have made in education over the past decade. In 1999, just 37% of children were going to primary school. By 2011 this had risen to 87% – one of the fastest increases in the world.

We still have a long way to go, but thanks to this expansion of primary school, the share of our young people who are literate has also increased, from 34% in 2000 to 52% in 2011.

How did we manage all this?

This rapid and equitable expansion of access to free education has been enabled through a sustained government-led effort to reduce poverty and expand the public education system by creating an effective balance between supply-side policies (such as the construction of schools in remote areas) and complementary policies to stimulate demand (e.g. fee abolition and mother tongue instruction).

This has been backed by substantial increases in national education expenditure and aid to the sector, which is doubled between 2000 and 2010, to 25%, as well as improved planning and implementation capacity at all levels.