Progress for Children: putting secondary education in the spotlight

Taken from the UNICEF report Progress for Children - A report card on adolescents, the map below highlights the net enrolment/attendance ratio of adolescents worldwide (net enrolment accounting for students of the official secondary school age, rather than students of all ages). My areas of interest - Pakistan and East Africa - evidently have a lot of progress to make. 

'In many countries there is a drop-off in enrolment  between primary and lower secondary education, and between lower and upper secondary education. Particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, drop-off is high  between the primary and lower secondary levels.  Globally, the lower secondary gross enrolment rate  was 80 per cent in 2009, whereas the upper secondary gross enrolment rate was 56 per cent. 

[...] 

The gap in lower secondary school completion rates between sub-Saharan Africa and the rest of the world appears to be widening. In fact, sub-Saharan Africa has the worst secondary education indicators of any region: Its level of enrolment of secondary-school-aged children is the lowest, as are its rates of secondary school completion, and it has fewer girls enrolled than boys. 

Low secondary school enrolment stems in part from low primary school completion. In sub-Saharan Africa, only 47 per cent of 15–19-year-old girls and 52 per cent of 15–19-year-old boys have completed primary school (see Figure 3.3 for percentages in selected countries). 

The effective transition rate measures the probability that a student in the last grade of primary school will enrol in the first grade of secondary school. Many industrialized countries and many countries in CEE/CIS, the Middle East and North Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean have primary-to-secondary school transition rates of nearly 90 per cent or above. In the least developed countries, three fourths of children who complete primary school make the transition to secondary school. 

Behind the regional averages, however, are wide  variations in primary-to-secondary school transition rates. In sub-Saharan Africa, rates range from as low as 36 per cent in the United Republic of Tanzania to as high as 98 per cent in Botswana. The transition rate does not reflect whether primary completion in the country is high or low, nor does it reflect such quality indicators as age in grade.'

Good to see a focus on adolescents, at a time of disproportionate attention given to primary education. The report explores adolescence in relation to various areas including education and work; sexual behaviour, maternal health, and HIV; and violence. You can read the full report here. 

Report: Protecting Education from Attack

A recent report from the Global Coalition to Protect Education from Attack entitled Study on Field-based Programmatic Measures to Protect Education from Attack.

Protecting higher education from attack

'Attacks on higher education may occur in countries where there is not an ongoing armed conflict, but when 

national governments, opposition groups, or other non-state actors fail to respect the ‘neutrality’ of education. 

It is therefore worth considering responses to attacks on education beyond situations of armed conflict in countries 

in which education is repressed, polarized, or highly politicized. 

Attacks on academic staff can often 

occur for publishing research as well as undertaking teaching.  

The negative consequences of attacks on higher education affect not just universities, but also primary and 

secondary schools that depend on quality teachers trained at the tertiary level and on research that informs 

pedagogy and curriculum at all levels. Attacks on higher education institutions and personnel also cause a 

‘brain drain’ as threatened scholars flee or are killed, diminishing the quality of education overall. The situation 

for scholars in Iraq is an extreme example: over 460 Iraqi scholars have been assassinated from 2003 to 

December 2011. 

Many more have been kidnapped and their families targeted or threatened in great numbers,

leaving them with no option but to flee. 

 

Overall, those assisting higher education personnel indicate that they are assisting those that have fled from 

many countries in almost every region of the world. Scholars and academics who face persecution work in many 

different disciplines - sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities - meaning that attacks on higher 

education are not always just about silencing the political opposition, but also about controlling ideas and knowledge in society.' 

The report takes a look at attacks on education from the perspective of: protection, prevention, advocacy, and monitoring and reporting. The end of the report provides several relevant country profiles. The sections on conflict sensitive policy and curriculum reform are worth reading. Check out the report here.

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Refugee camp schooling - should we be doing more?

Some highlights from UNHCR's (2011) Refugee Education Review: 

• Educating urban refugees requires different strategies to encamped refugees; 
• Access to post-primary schooling remains limited in camps; 
• Quality teachers are in short supply in camps; 
• Specialised educational knowledge amongst UNHCR staff and its partners is lacking;
• The quality of education - when it is received - leaves a lot to be desired, and is not an adequate precursor to the world of work.

In some cases, refugees are better off than their hosting nationals - see page 25 of the report for country examples. In many cases however, camp secondary school fees are a huge barrier to access (UNHCR's Review suggests Gross Enrolment Rate in camps is 37%).

Whilst limited scholarships are available to post-primary education in camps, this does not appear to be a sustainable option, or in fact one that builds local capacity. It is also important to note that UNHCR does not have its own education specialists and therefore relies on partnerships to fulfil this role.

17 years is the average length of a protracted refugee situation according to UNHCR, yet refugee circumstances are still categorised as 'temporary'. I'm left wondering how reconstruction of the home country is expected to take place upon repatriation (as the rhetoric goes), if education is the first provision to be cut when funds are low.

Full report available here.