Education in the Africa Progress Report 2012

From the Africa Progress Report 2012:

'Looking towards 2015, there is an unfortunate air of resignation hanging over much of the region. Many governments and donors appear to view a large shortfall against the MDG targets in education as an inevitable outcome. Indeed, much of the debate surrounding the MDGs in education has moved on to dialogue on the “post-2015” agenda.   

Without discounting the importance of this dialogue, the shift in priorities is premature. As many countries across the region have demonstrated, rapid progress towards the 2015 goals is possible. Both Tanzania and Ethiopia reduced out-of-school numbers by over 3 million in the first half of the decade after 2000. The immediate challenge for governments and their development partners is to identify strategies aimed at getting more children into school, reducing dropout rates and improving learning achievement levels.  

Some of the barriers to participation in education can be swiftly removed through well-designed policies. 

[...]

The more difficult part revolves around teaching. Ultimately, no education system is better than its teachers. With a deficit of around 1 million teachers, Africa urgently needs to step up recruitment. However, far more needs to be done to raise the quality of teaching. Many of Africa’s teachers enter classrooms with limited subject knowledge. One survey found that fewer than half of grade 6 teachers in Mozambique, Uganda and Malawi were able to score at the top of the competency level for the pupils. Teaching is typically delivered in rote fashion, reflecting training systems that regard “child-centred learning” as an alien concept. In-service support systems are weak. And whether as a result of low morale, poor pay or a lack of accountability, Africa’s schools are plagued by an epidemic of teacher absenteeism.'

Check out the Report for more on what more can be done for education across various different African countries. 

French Aid to Education Staying in France, says EFA Blog

According to the EFA World Education Blog: 

'Foreign aid is supposed to go to foreign countries. But there are many grey areas in terms of what can be counted as aid, and who can be classified as a recipient. Figures on total aid to education, for example, suggest France is a top performer: it was the largest bilateral donor to education in 2009 (the latest year for which data are available) with $1.9 billion disbursed. But only a quarter of this sum goes to developing countries. The rest essentially stays in France, or directly benefits French citizens.

 [...]

For several years in the Education for All Global Monitoring Report we have highlighted the fact that the majority of aid to post-secondary education from France, Germany and smaller donors such as Austria or Portugal goes to “imputed student costs,” or the cost of educating developing-country students in institutions in donor countries. As the figure below shows, in 2009 half of all French aid to education was channelled to French higher education institutions that way.'

Worth reading the short post in full to get the full story. 

Literacy - just reading?

UNESCO's (2011) EFA Global Monitoring Report suggests that '171 million could be lifted out of poverty if all students in low-income countries left school with basic reading skills'. Nice infographic explaining more here. 

All well and good. But...yes, there is a but...besides (presumably) low-quality schooling, is there a reason these students don't have basic reading skills? Is the definition of literacy more than reading and writing for them? Is their native language only available in oral form? Have global targets like EFA completely missed the mark in defining literacy as reading and writing?

Have a think about your definition of literacy and post your comments below. And, if you liked the infographic, you can find more at: www.efareport.unesco.org