Spain’s austerity measures will leave children out of school

The latest Education for All Global Monitoring Report, Youth and Skills: Putting Education to Work, asked whether aid to education had reached its peak. Recent news from Spain suggests that the reality could be even worse – that aid to education could be sliding backwards. This news could not come at a worse time: we have also recently reported that progress towards the six internationally-agreed education goals is stagnating with 61 million children out of school, just at a time when a final push is needed to achieve the goals by 2015.

According to the European NGO, Concord, the Spanish government will be cutting 300 million Euros from next year’s budget. This will sink Spain’s overseas development assistance (ODA) to its 1981 levels.  What is understandable is that the country cannot escape from the need to implement austerity measures with a sharp economic downturn snapping at its heels. What is less understandable is that it is not looking at the most effective way to spend its remaining funds, and the cuts risk hurting those the most in need. The cuts are affecting the country’s aid budget more than other sectors within the country, moving it even further away from the international commitment of DAC donors spending 0.7% of GNI.

The recent announcement of reductions in aid from 2013-2016 is on top of Spain’s reduction in its ODA budget between 2010 and 2011 which was already far bigger than other OECD-DAC donors. The cut between 2010 and 2011 resulted in it dropping its overall aid from 0.43% of its GNI to just 0.29%.

There are very real implications of Spain’s planned cuts for 2013-16 for the future of children and young people in some of the poorest countries in the world. Having previously been in the top ten biggest donors to both basic education and education overall, we estimate the cuts will push Spain down to 16th and 17th place respectively between 2010 and 2013, assuming other donors maintain their commitments at the current level.  We estimate that its aid to basic education will be reduced almost three-fold between 2008 and 2013, from US$246 million in 2008 to just US$94 million in 2013.

In recent years, Spain has also begun to play a greater role in the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) which plays a vital role in supporting education in low income countries. But its aid cuts appear to be having a strong impact on its support. Over the period 2004-2010 Spain made contributions equivalent to 16% of the GPE education fund. Their pledge for 2011-2014, however, has been significantly reduced, leaving them contributing just 2% of the GPE education fund. This will leave Spain playing a minor part in the GPE, having been the third biggest donor, after the Netherlands and the UK.

It is not only about the amount of aid that Spain will be giving, but also the countries that this aid is targeted to reach. By the end of 2016, reports suggest that Spain plans to cut back its aid to 29 of the 50 countries that it currently supports. Seven low income countries that are most in need are amongst these:  Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Cambodia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gambia, Guinea Bissau and Guinea.

The Global Monitoring Report team identifies the impact that these cuts would have on these seven low-income countries in terms of the number of school children whose primary school education was being paid for by their aid. We find that the reduction in aid could mean that around 97,000 children will no longer have the chance to go to school thanks to Spain’s support.

To take one example, Spain spends USD$5.1 million on basic education in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. This would have had the potential to fund the education of 83,015 primary school children in the country.

83,015 children may longer have the chance to go to primary school in the Democratic Republic of the Congo due to Spain’s proposed cuts

Of the 21 countries that have survived Spain’s cuts, only around a quarter are low income. While Spain plans to cut its aid to Bangladesh, for example, where there are millions of children out of school due to poverty, they are planning to continue giving aid to a high income country, Equatorial Guinea, where there are only 43,000 children out of school.

It is vital that aid donors keep to their promises that no country will be left behind in achieving education goals due to lack of resources, ensuring that they protect the poorest countries from the impact of austerity measures as much as possible.

Life skills taught in school vital to reduce risk of HIV and AIDS

Only 7% of school children in E & S Africa have desired level of knowledge on HIV and AIDS

On World AIDS Day, new research conducted for the Global Monitoring Report  ‘Youth and Skills: Putting education to work’ shows the importance of investing in life skills education in school to ensure children have the confidence and negotiating skills to say no to sex and negotiate condom use.  Tests with around 60,000 grade 6 students in fourteen countries in South and East Africa showed that only 7% of school children in the regions have the desired level of knowledge on HIV and AIDS; and just 36% have even the minimum level of knowledge.

In twelve of the fourteen countries assessed in the regions, children from poorer households and those in rural areas scored significantly lower than those of high socio-economic status. In South Africa for example, one of the countries with the highest prevalence rates, more than half of students from rich households reached the minimum level of knowledge on HIV and AIDs compared with just one in five of those from poor households.

Even in the country scoring the highest on awareness of HIV and AIDS amongst schoolchildren, the percentages were low. Tanzania scored the highest and yet still only 33% of grade 6 students reported they had never attended HIV education classes during the year. 

Knowledge about HIV and AIDS varies within countries

Monitoring global progress towards Education for All goals, the 2012 Global Monitoring Report gathered evidence from across the region to demonstrate the impact that a life skills education – empowering children with confidence, self-esteem, decision making and ability to negotiate – along with HIV and AIDS education can have on increasing its prevention.

In Kenya, a life skills curriculum with grade 8 students decreased the incidence of teenage pregnancies by 61%. In South Africa, a life-skills education programme increased condom use at first sex by 10-12 percentage points for 14-18 year olds.

Botswana halved the rate of new adult HIV infections from 2001 to 2009, partly thanks to introducing a life-skills education approach in 2006.  The new curriculum increased the percentage of women aged 15-24 years who correctly identified ways of preventing sexual transmission of HIV from 28% to 45% between 2003 and 2009.

In Zimbabwe, the ‘Grassroots Soccer’ programme, an out of school activity which includes life skills education on HIV and AIDS, increased the proportion of those who knew condoms were effective from 40% to 71% and proportion of those who knew where to go to turn for help from 47% to 76%.

The impact of maternal education on preventing transmission of HIV and AIDS

Last year’s Global Monitoring Report on Education for All calculated the impact of an education for mothers on reducing HIV transmission from mother to child – a factor which infects 370,000 children a year. It showed that a secondary education as opposed to no education at all doubles the number of mothers who know that mother-to-child transmission can  be prevented using anti-retroviral treatment during pregnancy. Likewise, while only 59% of mothers without any education know that the chance of HIV and AIDS can be reduced by condoms, the percentage rises to 72% with a primary education, and 81% with a secondary education.

Impact of primary education on awareness of HIV and AIDS

Recommendations:

–          Life skills training, such as confidence, self-esteem, negotiation and decision making, must be a concrete part of any curriculum teaching health, sex education and broader HIV and AIDS education.

–          Programmes of this type should be planned and sequenced across primary and secondary school, incrementally adjusted to age, stage and situation of the learner. They also need to reach those out of school.

–          Teachers need to be trained and supported to deliver life skills education on sensitive issues related to sexuality and HIV and AIDS.

–          Involving parents and communities in the development of life skills curriculum can help to ensure their acceptance of sensitive issues.

Join the consultation on Teaching and Learning for Development

A learning crisis is leaving one in three primary school-aged children not achieving  basic skills, whether they are in school or not. This revelation makes the theme of the 2013 Education for All Global Monitoring Report (GMR) on Teaching and Learning for Development more timely than ever. World leaders ignore the learning crisis at their peril. It is not only failing children, but also leaving countries without the knowledge and skills needed to accelerate progress towards tackling poverty reduction, malnutrition, environmental degradation, and other development outcomes.

#teachandlearn

To inform the 2013 GMR, we are seeking your views on how to promote teaching and learning in ways that will ensure education contributes effectively to the desired development outcomes, such that policymakers give education the central place it deserves in any post-2015 global agenda. We hope to hear your ideas in any of the areas to be covered in the Report, as outlined below – please share them by posting comments on our consultation website.

As our concept note outlines, the 2013 Report will include three inter-connected parts:

• Part 1 will provide the annual stocktake on progress towards the six Education for All goals. With just two years until the goals expire, it will review the relevance of the goals for a post-2015 education framework. In particular, it will assess the potential for equity-based targets post-2015.
• Part 2 will present data in new and innovative ways to show how more education and better learning for all children and young people, regardless of their background, whether their gender, wealth or where they live, contributes to a broad range of development outcomes. It will identify in particular the relationship between education and development outcomes that are anticipated to be part of the international agenda after 2015.
• Part 3 will explain how investing wisely in teachers, and other reforms aimed at strengthening equitable learning, can transform the long-term prospects of people and societies.

Some questions that we are particularly keen to get your feedback on include:

1. What development outcomes should be the focus post-2015, and how can education accelerate progress towards these outcomes?

2. What evidence could we draw on to demonstrate that it is not just access to education but improved learning outcomes that accelerates the achievement of development outcomes?

3. What are the implications of inequality in education and learning in holding back progress in development outcomes?

4. What successful examples can provide evidence on the vital role that teachers play in promoting improved learning, especially for low achievers?

5. How can policymakers prioritize policy choices they face in teacher reforms to improve learning?

6. What are examples of curriculum and assessment reforms that have supported teachers in improving learning?

To help us shape our report, click here to join the consultation

Whether you are a policymaker, researcher, teacher, working for a non-governmental organization, or more generally have an interest in education and development, we look forward to hearing from you!

You can also join the discussion with @efareport and @pauline_rosegmr using #teachandlearn.

Lost opportunities: The impact of grade repetition and early school leaving

This guest post is by Albert Motivans, Head of Education Indicators and Data Analysis Section at Unesco Institute for Statistics (UIS).

There is an urgent need to face the issue of high numbers of children who are repeating grades and leaving school before completing primary or lower secondary education. New data from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) show that, globally, about 32.2 million primary pupils were held back a grade in 2010, and 31.2 million dropped out of school and may never return.

The latest edition of the Global Education Digest, entitled Opportunities Lost: The Impact of Grade Repetition and Early School Leaving, presents a wide range of UIS data and indicators that help to better identify the millions of children who are falling through the cracks in education systems and leaving school, often without being able to read or write.  The report is complemented by an on-line interactive tool which allows users to visualize repetition and dropout rates by grade in the region and country of their choice.

The challenges to complete primary school are greatest in three regions:

–        Sub-Saharan Africa, where about one in six pupils will leave school before reaching Grade 2 and two in five pupils will leave before the last grade;

–        South and West Asia, where for every 100 pupils who start primary school, 33 will leave before the last grade;

–        Latin America and the Caribbean, where 17% of pupils leave school before completing primary education.

The Digest also highlights some potential good news, namely that the global repetition rate has fallen by 7% between 2000 and 2010 even though there many more children entered primary school, with enrolment rates rising by 6% during the same period. Yet, high repetition rates persist in many countries.

In countries such as Burundi or Togo, a child starting school today can expect to spend, on average, two to three years repeating a primary grade. In the case of Burundi, if the resources spent on repeating a grade were instead invested in enrolling new pupils, the country’s annual gross domestic product (GDP) could grow by 1.3%, according to the Digest. Overall, it is estimated that each year of education a child receives (not repeating a grade) could increase her/his individual earnings by 10% and lift annual GDP globally by 0.37%.

In general, girls are less likely than boys to enter school, but boys are slightly more likely than girls to repeat grades and are also at greater risk of dropping out, according to the Digest. The age of pupils can be another determining factor: under-age pupils are more likely to repeat a grade, while over-age pupils tend to leave school early. Yet, according to the data, the most important factors which relate to educational progression are household wealth and geographic location. In general, poor children living in rural areas are more likely than urban children from better-off households to repeat grades and leave school before completing primary education and attaining basic foundation skills, like literacy and numeracy.

What are the policy options? The main objectives are to keep children in school and reduce the over-use of grade repetition. To better inform this debate, the report presents the most recent results of learning assessments among primary pupils and examines the economic costs associated with high rates of grade repetition and dropout. While it is important to provide various routes back into learning for children who drop out, overall, the data show that it is far more difficult and costly to reach children once they leave school than it is to address the barriers and bottlenecks operating within schools (OR replace bottlenecks that lead them astray). But for these interventions to be effective, they must be precise and timely. For example, great gains can be made by improving the quality of education provision in early grades while better identifying and supporting children facing the greatest risk of leaving school. And while the use of grade repetition may serve learning goals for a small number of children in more developed countries, it may increase the risk of early school leaving for a very large number of children in less developed countries.

Born Equal: Inequality, education and post-2015

Migrant families pitch camp next to a railway line in Delhi, while they look for work, India. ©Raghu Rai:Magnum for Save the Children

A guest post from Alex Cobham, Head of Research at Save the Children UK.

Children suffer twice the inequality of income as the general population, and this has grown by a third since the 1990s. As the UN High Level Panel on the post-2015 international development framework met in London earlier this month, Save the Children’s new report, Born Equal, presented this new evidence and called for inequality to be at the centre of the new framework.

Born Equal alsoincludes a synthesis of eight country case studies (Brazil, Canada, China, Ghana, India, Indonesia, Nigeria and the UK) focusing on horizontal (group) inequality, which draws out some important dimensions of inequality – not least, in terms of education.

I’ve written on Uncounted about the reasons why inequality is so important for post-2015, and for Save the Children, but will summarise briefly here. First and foremost, it is because inequality undermines children’s well-being, with permanent effects across their entire lifespan. In addition, we know that inequality is an obstacle to development in general – reducing economic growth and fuelling conflict. Finally, of course, inequality has grown sharply – in seven out of our eight case study countries, for example – and so has become the major obstacle to international development. Without challenging these deeply damaging trends in the post-2015 framework, there is little hope of making the scale of development progress that we are aiming for.

Education for children is an especially important area of inequalities. In summarising the literature, we highlight in particular the findings on the impact of inequality on children’s development. The evidence from the major Young Lives study is that progress is “highly dependent” on perceptions of relative social status, and of personal and economic opportunities. Previous work such as that of Hoff and Pandey has shown immediate impacts of social divisions – in this case, with the visibility of caste exhibiting a major influence on children’s performance in tests.

The Young Lives studies, because of their longitudinal nature, have been able to trace additional and long-term paths of inequality. Perhaps most powerfully, the results show that nutrition not only has significant effects on intellectual capacity, but also major psychosocial effects (on self-esteem and educational aspirations). The systematic way in which the same groups (notably rural children, children from ethnolinguistic minorities and children from less educated mothers – see e.g. the graph here from the Vietnam study) are marginalised in different study countries and in different dimensions of development compounds the effects of inequality in any one.

The eight country case studies conducted for Born Equal provide a great deal of evidence on education, and indeed inequalities here (and the policy responses to them) emerged as a consistent theme. We saw consistently higher dropout rates in India for children from scheduled castes and – above all – from scheduled tribes. We set out new regression results on the relative importance of income, race, gender, rural-urban and regional location differences for the chances of children being delayed in school in Brazil.

More positively, we found evidence on the power of policy to respond – starting with universal provision but going beyond, aiming to ‘correct’ for underlying inequalities and marginalisation (for example, in Canada and Brazil). In addition, we identify a range of broader policy areas – including in labour markets, and through progressive taxation and transfers – through which inequality can, and should be targeted.

Aside from domestic policy implications, what does this mean for the post-2015 framework itself? In Born Equal, we make the recommendation that to address inequalities in outcomes (and to improve children’s economic opportunities) the post-2015 framework should include a target on reducing income inequality and other disparities in wealth within countries, under the broader goal of poverty eradication. The target and indicator could utilise the gap between the richest and poorest quintiles (the 20:20 gap) or, following recent research, the 10:40 gap between the top decile and the bottom two quintiles. Similar targets that aim to reduce the gap between the best-off and worst-off groups can be proposed in each major dimension of inequality, and for each area that the post-2015 framework covers (eg, mortality rates as well as income).

As I argued at UNESCO just before we released the report, there is an opportunity for the education sector to play a major leading role, in putting inequality at the core of post-2015. A combination of three factors support leadership from education, in setting inequality at the hear of post-2015:

• the (relatively!) strong availability of disaggregated data;
• the opportunity for political consensus (because of the social costs of inequality undermining individuals’ access to education, so that injustice and instrumental arguments align); and
• the fact of education having provided, through the original Education for All goals, the most direct and powerful inequality challenge in the Millennium Development Goals: the gender equality target (which is the exact forerunner of the broader inequality targets that Save the Children has proposed).

There’s a full post on Uncounted setting out this argument in detail, and I’m very keen to hear from education sector specialists on this. As Born Equal illustrates, Save the Children believes that inequality must be fundamentally tackled in the post-2015 framework, if the necessary scale of progress is to be possible. It would be immensely valuable to hear that argument being made strongly from the education sector.

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The bottom ten countries for female education

As we approach ‘Malala Day’ on 10 November, the EFA Global Monitoring Report reveals that Pakistan scores in the bottom ten of new country rankings for education of poor females.

As we stand together on ‘Malala Day’, it is vital to stand up for what Malala believes in, and to put the spotlight on the extreme disadvantage that many poor girls and young women face in getting to school.

Our new Education for All Global Monitoring Report and our new interactive website – World Inequality Database in Education, WIDE – provides us with a global scorecard ranking the extent of education poverty in countries around the world. Pakistan is in the bottom ten countries for the proportion of poorest girls who have never even spent time in a classroom. Only six African countries are in a worse situation. It is also in the bottom ten for the amount of time that young women have spent in school in their life-time.

Almost two-thirds of poorest girls in Pakistan have never been to school. The long term neglect of education means that the poorest young women in the country have only spent around a year in school on average. Without a real step change by the government to give these children and young people the education and training they need, including a second chance for those who have missed out, they will be denied equal opportunities in work and life forever.

COUNTRY SCORECARDS

Percentage of poorest females aged 7-16 who have never been to school			Average years of education for the poorest 17-22 year old females
Rank	Country	%	Rank	Country	Years
1	Somalia	95%	1	Somalia	0.3
2	Niger	78%	2	Niger	0.4
3	Liberia	77%	3	Mali	0.5
4	Mali	75%	4	Guinea	0.5
5	Burkina Faso	71%	5	Guinea-Bissau	0.8
6	Guinea	68%	6	Yemen	0.8
7	Pakistan	62%	7	Central African Republic	0.8
8	Yemen	58%	8	Burkina Faso	0.9
9	Benin	55%	9	Pakistan	1.0
10	Côte d’Ivoire	52%	10	Benin	1.1
11	Nigeria	51%	11	Sierra Leone	1.3
12	Sierra Leone	50%	12	Côte d’Ivoire	1.3
13	Gambia	48%	13	Gambia	1.6
14	Central African Republic	46%	14	Madagascar	1.8
15	Madagascar	46%	15	Senegal	2.0
16	Guinea-Bissau	44%	16	Ethiopia	2.1
17	Senegal	43%	17	Burundi	2.2
18	Ethiopia	42%	18	Liberia	2.2
19	Djibouti	40%	19	Djibouti	2.4
20	Burundi	38%	20	Togo	2.4
21	Zambia	36%	21	Mozambique	2.5
22	Togo	34%	22	Mauritania	2.8
23	Mauritania	32%	23	India	2.9
24	Iraq	32%	24	Iraq	3.0
25	D. R. Congo	31%	25	Haiti	3.1
26	India	30%	26	Nepal	3.2
27	Haiti	27%	27	D. R. Congo	3.2
28	Ghana	26%	28	Ghana	3.6
29	Timor-Leste	24%	29	Rwanda	3.7
30	Mozambique	23%	30	Nigeria	4.1
31	Nepal	22%	31	Uganda	4.1
32	Egypt	21%	32	Honduras	4.1
33	U. R. Tanzania	20%	33	U. R. Tanzania	4.2
34	Kenya	19%	34	Bangladesh	4.4
35	Uganda	18%	35	Cambodia	4.5
36	Philippines	16%	36	Zambia	4.6
37	Swaziland	15%	37	Malawi	4.8
38	Lesotho	14%	38	Sao Tome and Principe	5.1
39	Suriname	13%	39	Congo	5.1
40	Vanuatu	13%	40	Syrian A. R.	5.4
41	Rwanda	10%	41	Timor-Leste	5.9
42	Honduras	10%	42	Egypt	6.1
43	Bangladesh	9%	43	Kenya	6.3
44	Malawi	9%	44	Swaziland	6.3
45	Tajikistan	8%	45	Mongolia	6.5
46	Congo	8%	46	Lesotho	6.7
47	Cambodia	8%	47	Suriname	6.7
48	Syrian A. R.	7%	48	Indonesia	6.7
49	TFYR Macedonia	7%	49	Dominican Republic	6.8
50	Republic of Moldova	7%	50	Bhutan	6.8
51	Namibia	7%	51	Philippines	7.0
52	Azerbaijan	6%	52	Namibia	7.1
53	Mongolia	5%	53	Bolivia, P. S.	7.1
54	Montenegro	5%	54	Belize	7.4
55	Serbia	5%	55	Colombia	7.6
56	Sao Tome and Principe	4%	56	Guyana	7.7
57	Indonesia	4%	57	TFYR Macedonia	7.7
58	Maldives	4%	58	Vanuatu	7.7
59	Dominican Republic	4%	59	Zimbabwe	7.9
60	Zimbabwe	4%	60	Tajikistan	8.6
61	Guyana	2%	61	Serbia	8.8
62	Albania	2%	62	Albania	8.9
63	Colombia	2%	63	Montenegro	9.0
64	Georgia	1%	64	Maldives	9.1
65	Trinidad and Tobago	1%	65	Azerbaijan	9.3
66	Jordan	1%	66	Bosnia and Herzegovina	9.7
67	Belize	1%	67	Jamaica	10.1
68	Bolivia, P. S.	1%	68	Georgia	10.6
69	Bhutan	1%	69	Jordan	10.8
70	Ukraine	1%	70	Cuba	10.8
71	Bosnia and Herzegovina	1%	71	Armenia	10.9
72	Kazakhstan	0%	72	Trinidad and Tobago	11.1
73	Armenia	0%	73	Republic of Moldova	11.3
74	Cuba	0%	74	Kazakhstan	11.6
75	Jamaica	0%	75	Ukraine	12.3

Source: World Inequality Database on Education http://www.education-inequalities.org/

Investing in skills makes good business sense

Opinion Editorial by Pauline Rose, Director of the Education for All Global Monitoring Report, UNESCO, Paris

In Kenya one in ten young people lack the skills learnt at primary school and are struggling to find dignified work © UNESCO:D. Willetts

The figures in the recently published Education for All Global Monitoring Report are a sad indictment on how we continue to fail children around the world. In our report we reveal that one in three young people in sub-Saharan Africa have never completed primary school. While in Kenya the figures are better, still one in ten young people lack the skills learnt at primary school and are struggling to find dignified work. And those who are most likely to lack these skills are from the poorest households, either living in urban poverty or in rural areas. One in three young women living in rural Kenya has spent fewer than four years in school.

But if governments believe that education is merely a problem for the education ministers to solve, then they are wrong. In today’s global economy, failing to provide proper education will undermine economic growth, reinforce social inequalities and mean those running businesses do not have a skilled work force they need.

In many ways, the past decade has been a good one. Africa’s economies are growing consistently faster than any other region. In 2011 Ghana had the highest rate of growth in the world. From 2005-9, Ethiopia even recorded higher growth than China, and Uganda outperformed India. The World Bank estimates that more than a third of the countries in the sub-Saharan region achieved growth rates of at least 6%.

Yet governments will be fooling themselves if they think that such growth can be sustained in the long term through the notoriously volatile exports of oil, minerals or agricultural products. This growth surge can only be sustained if we learn lessons from places like the Republic of Korea; the country went from being poor to wealthy in the space of 30 years because of emphasizing developing skills among young people.

As the Global Monitoring Report reveals, investing in schoolchildren and students represents a sound financial opportunity. If 75% more 15-year-olds reached the most basic benchmark in maths, economic growth could improve by 2.1%, and 104 million people could be lifted out of poverty.  We’ve seen it work on the small scale already: In Kenya, Uganda and the United Republic of Tanzania, famers benefiting from field schools saw their crop value per acre increased by 32% on average, and by 253% for those who had not had any formal schooling. Income increased by 61% on average, and by 224% for households where the farmer had no previous schooling.

Before the good news, however, we must look at the facts in the report. 250 million children of primary school age today cannot read or count whether they have been to school or not. We know that the poorest make up the majority of this headcount as well. Among grade 3 students in Kenya, only 28% of students from the poorest fifth of households had attained the expected numeracy skills from school compared with 48% of the children from the richest fifth.  It is not clear how this generation of children will fill roles in knowledge based economies unless there is a change.

So we need to make it easier for more children to go to school, no matter how disadvantaged they are – and ensure that they learn more when they do. Alongside the efforts made to abolish secondary school fees in Kenya, we also need to see classrooms built closer to the communities that they serve. One million children are still out of school in Kenya- the ninth highest figure of any country in the world. Many live in urban poverty, with 60% of Nairobi’s inhabitants living in slums. Many young people in these slums can’t go to school for the simple reason that there aren’t any schools available. The lack of education and training opportunities severely limits their work opportunities: about 50% of men and 80% of women aged 15 to 24 have no income-generating activities.

For those who have seen the school system fail them already, we also need ‘second chance’ programmes to ensure young people have the skills they need. There are encouraging signs here.  In Malawi, where only half of children manage to complete primary school, as many as 10,000 students have taken part in such a scheme; half of those so far have either completed the course or returned to primary school

Donors also need to fulfill their promises, however tempting in these tough times; it is to cut back on aid.  We need US$16 billion a year just to keep the Education for All promise made in 2000 that by 2015 all children are able to complete their primary education. To achieve universal lower secondary school enrollment would cost a further US$8 billion.

That sounds like a lot of money. Yet simply by reallocating aid, some of the gap could be filled – US$3.1 billion alone could be used to help post-secondary education in developing countries rather than being used to fund students studying abroad. To put this in perspective, for the amount it costs for one Ghanaian student to study on scholarship in Japan, 72 young people could have accessed secondary education in Ghana.

How important is it to invest in skills training from disadvantaged youth? It is vital. Learning will drive economic growth, fuel innovation and create jobs. Better education will equip Kenyans and other Africans with the skills they need to escape poverty and build more prosperous countries. And it will empower many, by helping them enjoy secure livelihoods and give them the chance to participate in political processes.

We have to take action now. By 2030 there will be three and a half times as many young people in sub-Saharan Africa as there were in 1980.  We cannot afford to fail another generation.

The 2012 Education for All Global Monitoring Report will be launched in Nairobi on 16 November 2012.  Prior to the launch UNESCO, in partnership with the University of Nairobi, Kisii University College and Kenya National Commission for UNESCO, are organizing two open forums to generate a dialogue on the theme of youth and skills in Kenyan context amongst policy makers, the academic community, employers, students, and listen to the voices of the youth in particular.  Outcomes of the two open forum events will feed into not only the official launch of the Report but also a technical panel discussion to take place on 16 November 2012.

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Education must not fail another generation

School in Ethiopia, Africa © UNESCO/P. Wiggers

Olusegun Obasanjo, a former president of Nigeria and a member of the Africa Progress Panel, looks at the implications for Africa of the findings and messages in the 2012 Education for All Global Monitoring Report. This article was first published in the Nigerian newspaper The Vanguard.

My life was utterly changed at the age of eight when I was sent to school – a journey that saw me abroad for further and higher education.  This precious education meant I could return to my country and support efforts to improve the lives of future generations and make a meaningful contribution to the development process all over the continent of Africa.

This was more than five decades ago. Today, as the 2012 Education for All Global Monitoring Report demonstrates, we continue to fail our children.

The report shows that one in five young people in developing countries have never completed primary school. In Nigeria where I grew up, we have more children out of school today than we had at independence.

Education is not merely a problem for education ministries to solve. In today’s global economy, failing to provide proper education will undermine economic growth and reinforce social inequalities.

Africa has some of the world’s fastest-growing economies, as we highlight in the 2012 Africa Progress Report, and this pace looks set to continue for the coming years. But oil and minerals alone will not sustain this economic growth. And development indicators suggest the growth figures are much less impressive than they initially seem. Places like the Republic of Korea and other East Asian ‘tiger’ economies teach us that a meaningful and sustainable growth surge can only be maintained by emphasizing the development of our youth with skills and education.

At the Africa Progress Panel, we talk about a “twin crisis” in Africa’s education. The numbers of children out of school may have dropped significantly between 2000 and 2009 but Africa is still likely to have 17 million children out of school in 2025, a decade after the world’s 2015 target date for universal primary education.

Meanwhile, many African children are receiving an education of abysmal quality. Far from equipping themselves for a globalized economy, millions of Africans emerge from primary school lacking basic literacy and numeracy skills. They face the prospect of marginalization, poverty, and insecure unemployment. They easily fall into crime and squalor.

The 2012 EFA Global Monitoring Report shows that investment in schoolchildren and students represents a sound financial opportunity. If 75% more 15-year-olds reached the most basic benchmark in maths, then economic growth could improve by 2.1%, and 104 million people could be lifted out of poverty.  An African NGO, Camfed (Campaign for Female Education), supports poor girls from rural areas with grants and training in business management, for example. More than nine in ten of the young women’s businesses are now making profit as a result of the work of this NGO.

Governments and their partners must make it easier for more children to go to school, no matter how disadvantaged they are – and to ensure they receive a better quality education when they do.

Governments should target those who have been left behind. A child’s education should not depend on whether they are male or female, or on whether their parents are rich or poor, urban or rural. Public spending should target disadvantaged schools and regions. Financial transfers aimed at keeping children in school – and young girls out of child labour or early marriage – all have a role to play.

Second, we need to find more teachers and equip them to teach. Too often, our children are being subjected to rote learning by teachers lacking the skills to deliver effective instruction, and lacking the support to improve their performance. And too often they are sitting in classrooms lacking benches to sit and textbooks. This cannot be an effective way of learning.  Children are more discouraged than encouraged to learn within the environment and quality of teachers provided.

Third, we need to see more attention paid to the education crisis in conflict countries, where conflicts that last a decade or more can set back education by a generation.

Fourth, donors must spent less time talking about commitments and more time acting on those promises. We need $16 billion a year just to keep the Education for All promise made in 2000 that by 2015 all children are able to complete their primary education. To achieve universal lower secondary school enrollment would cost a further $8 billion.

For those who have seen the school system fail them already, we need ‘second chance’ programmes to ensure young people have the skills they need. There are encouraging signs here. In Malawi, where only half of children manage to complete primary school, as many as 10,000 students have taken part in such a scheme; half of those so far have either completed the course or returned to primary school.

I was given my chance to succeed with the education received more than 60 years ago. And for today’s girls and boys we have to take action now. By 2030 there will be three and a half times as many young people in sub-Saharan Africa as there were in 1980.  We cannot afford to fail another generation.

United Nations High Level post-2015 Panel must prioritise equity in education

By Pauline Rose, Director of the Global Monitoring Report.

Studying at school, Karachi, Pakistan. © UNESCO/A. Soomro

Unlike hurricanes and health epidemics, education emergencies rarely hit the news headlines. The tragic shooting of Malala in Pakistan has brought the world’s attention to the plight that 5 million children face in the country who are denied their basic right to an education. What will it take to fully open the eyes of the media and politicians to the additional 56 million in the rest of the world also out of school?

As our recently-published Education for All Global Monitoring Report identifies, we are facing a global education emergency even now. Numbers of children not able to go to school have stalled in recent years and even increased in sub-Saharan Africa. This has left those marginalized due to their poverty, ethnicity, gender or where they live, most likely  to be denied the chance of an education. Getting children into school is not the only problem – once there, many children are not even achieving the basics. The Report shows that this education emergency is leaving as many as 250 million children unable to read or count whether they are in school or not.

This is why I am very pleased to see that human development is on the agenda of the United Nations High Level Panel that meets this week in London to discuss the post-2015 development agenda. To address the problems identified in our Report, it is vital that the High Level Panel putsinequalities in education at the heart of their deliberations.

The failure of the MDGs to place sufficient attention to the marginalized has left behind those who are hardest to reach – often poorest girls living either in remote rural areas or urban slums cannot make it through school. In at least 68 countries, poorest girls are in school for a shorter period of time than other groups in their country.

Denying the right to education to the most disadvantaged has left a legacy of one in five 15- to 24-year-olds who has not even completed primary school in developing countries – 58% of whom are young women and the majority of whom are in poverty. This not only means that these young people cannot find work that allows them to feed themselves and break free from that poverty, but is also damaging for social justice, and for their country’s prosperity, peace and security.

In order to facilitate equity-based monitoring in education the EFA Global Monitoring Report team has recently developed a user-friendly website – the World Inequality Database on Education – that provides vivid visualizations of education inequalities. The site shows how multiple forms of disadvantage, such as gender, poverty and location, hold back education opportunities; it exposes the reality of the disparities which have, in some countries, remained static over time, and need concrete equity targets to bring global attention on closing the gaps.

A previous blog reporting on WIDE, our new website, highlighted that as many as 80% of poorest young women in Pakistan experience extreme education poverty – having spent less than two years in school – whether they live in Balochistan or even the wealthier province of the Punjab. We cannot – and neither can those meeting in London this week – afford to ignore the education of girls and young women that Malala and others like her have bravely stood up for.

As we move towards the post-2015 agenda, it is also crucial that more emphasis be placed on ensuring that children learn once they are in school. The goals set in 2000 brought real vigour to increasing primary enrolment between 1999 and 2004. This same vigour is now needed to ensure that there are enough teachers in classrooms, and also that these teachers are equipped with the right training to give children the best start in life, regardless of their background. This year’s Global Monitoring Report clearly shows how low socio-economic status has a huge impact on a children’s learning in school, even in rich countries. And the 2013 Global Monitoring Report will take up these issues in more detail.

The evidence on the global education emergency in both access to education, and learning once in school, points to the urgent need for the UN High Level Panel to place equity at the centre of any post-2015 discussions. We cannot risk failing another generation of children and young people who need our help the most.

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From the streets of Sudan: Khalid’s story

The winner of the 2012 EFA Global Monitoring Report art contest, Khalid Mohamed Hammad Elkhateem, knows the importance of education. His winning artwork “In the middle of nowhere” describes how youth of today are lost in the mismatch of skills and work. In this guest blog, Khalid shares the remarkable story of how he escaped life on the streets of Sudan and got the skills and education he needed to improve his own situation.

My name is Khalid Mohamed Hammad Elkhateem. I grew up in the Nuba Mountain region of Sudan with seven siblings. When I was six months old, we had to move to Khartoum because of wars in Nuba Mountain. My father died when I was three, and my mother was left with little money and little support from our relatives to take care of us and pay for our schooling. My mother worked in the market to earn some money. I also worked there when I could in between school.

After third grade, I left school to work. Later, my mother married another man, who didn’t take care of us but instead made our life harder. In the end, I left home to live on the streets. God looked after us, and a good volunteer from Canada called Babra gave us food, played with us and gave us soap to wash our clothes. The policemen sometimes made us clean their cars and their compounds, and even poured cold water on us. Some street children were sexually abused by policemen and others because no one looked after us. In this harsh environment, many street children started to fight to protect themselves.

After some years on the streets, the police caught most of the street children in Bahri and took us to the court in Omdurman. We were sent to a camp for displaced children. We were given clothes and food. The children there asked us for news from the outside world, about news from their relatives, and about how we were caught. After a month, I got used to life in the camp. Although there was a lot of trouble and abuse, I was with my new family there.

While living in this camp, I heard many life stories, and heard why other kids had left their families. I learned that live is not easy – not only for me, but also for others. No one came to visit me, so I spent most of my time drawing pictures about my family, school and sometimes I looked at magazines, wishing I could learn how to read them. One day my supervisor asked me what I wanted to do with my future, and I said I want to help all the street children in the world and promote human rights. He just laughed at me, but I said “you will see, one day”. One day my friend told me I had a visitor. I couldn’t believe it, but it turned out my stepfather had come to take me back home.

When I came home my mother embraced me and cried, saying she was sorry for everything. I felt sorry for her, but the situation at home had not improved. Only one of my siblings was still in school, two of them had been taken by the government to fight in south Sudan, and my mother had no news from them. The people in my region saw me as a street child, and assumed I was dangerous. “Don’t play with Khalid”, parents warned their children. I left home once again to live on the streets.

Later I was chosen by an organization called the Child Development Foundation to be trained in carpentry, mechanics and wiring electricity for four months. During my time there I composed a play about education for street children, which we performed at our graduation party. I went home and showed my mother the certificate, she was so proud. I was also selected to join a Youth Forum by UNICEF and Plan Sudan. When I went to bed that night I kept thinking about all these other children of my age, who had gone to school, had families and protection. “Why me?” I asked myself. I decided that night to try hard to get back to school.

I went home and told my mother I wanted to go to school again. She asked me if I should start in fourth grade, since I had left after third. “No, I want to start from eight grade”, I told her. “Are you sure you can make it?” she asked. I managed to get into eight grade. I could read books well, but struggled with mathematics. At the end of the term I did not perform poorly, and passed my exams – which meant I could go to high school. I was so happy, and my mother and my friends on the streets were so happy for me.

I started high school, but since I had no money, I had to leave after just a few weeks and go back to the street. I managed to get training and work experience through different organizations, including teaching painting to other boys and girls. After two years, I managed to gather enough money to go back to high school and graduate. After high school, I enrolled in Sudan University for Sciences and Technology’s Fine and Applied Arts faculty, where I am still a student. I had become an example for other street children, that it is possible to get an education no matter how difficult life is. I want to help my friends on the street to go to workshops and school, and to change the attitudes people have towards street children.

My artwork “In the middle of nowhere” is made up of uncertain shapes and quite ambiguous features to reflect how the link between youth, skills and jobs remains “in the middle of nowhere”. It shows the difficult situation many children and young people are in today, as the 2012 EFA Global Monitoring Report, Youth and Skills: Putting Education to Work shows. I hope my story and my art can inspire street children and other marginalized children to not give up their hope to get an education.