Facts and Information About Education Around the World
Poverty
Poverty is the single largest factor that causes disparities in education. Many poor parents cannot afford school fees and uniforms, as well as the supplies necessary to send their children to school. If all of their children cannot attend school, then parents will most likely give boys precedence over girls.
- In Côte d’Ivoire, about a quarter of children from the wealthiest households attend pre-school, while the attendance rate for those from the poorest households is close to zero.
- In Pakistan, almost half of children aged 7 to 16 from the poorest households are out of school, compared with just 5% from the richest households.
Gender
Despite increasing enrollment, gender discrimination against girls persists. Over 72 million children are out of primary school and almost 60 percent of them are girls. Deeply-rooted cultural beliefs about the role of women in society bind many girls to the home, learning to do domestic and agricultural work alongside their female relatives.
- In South Asia, only 47 percent of secondary school-aged girls are enrolled in school. In Sub-Saharan Africa, only 30 percent are enrolled.
- GPI is still low in Afghanistan (0.44), Chad (0.68), Central African Republic (0.69), the Niger (0.73), Yemen (0.74), and Pakistan (0.78). Gender parity in primary education is achieved in only four of the twenty-six countries with GER below 90%.
- In Ethiopia, gaps between boys and girls widen through the system – in 2000/2001 only 20% of girls passed the Grade 10 examinations compared with 53% of boys, and 46% and 67% respectively passed the Grade 12 examinations.
Conflict
Conflict takes many forms and can range from intra border wars to civil unrest/conflict. All forms of conflict negatively affect and disrupt a countries education system. In certain countries, such as Afghanistan, schools are the site of deliberate attacks by militant groups such as the Taliban. In other instances, parents will keep their children out of school because the violent climate and rampant gun violence does not make it safe for children to walk to school. There is evidence that violent conflict exacerbates disparities within countries linked to wealth and gender. Conflict-affected areas often lag far behind the rest of the country in every indicator associated with education. Around 28 million children of primary school age in conflict-affected countries are out of school. With 18% of the world’s primary school age population, these countries account for 42% of the world’s out-of-school children.
- In 2009, some sixty schools were closed in Mogadishu, Somalia, while at least ten were occupied by armed forces.
- Security fears have resulted in the closure of over 70% of schools in Helmand province of Afghanistan. In Gaza, in the occupied Palestinian territory, Israeli military attacks in 2008 and 2009 left 350 children dead and 1,815 injured, and damaged 280 schools.
- In Yemen, all 725 schools in the northern governorate of Saada were closed during five months of fighting in 2009 and 2010 between government forces and Houthi rebels, and 220 schools were destroyed, damaged or looted.
- Insurgent groups in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (formerly North-West Frontier Province) and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas have targeted girls’ primary and secondary schools.
- In 2009, more than 1,000 children were injured or killed in conflict-related violence in Afghanistan, most by improvised explosive devices intended for government or Western forces, by rocket attacks or by air strikes.
- In Iraq, bomb attacks by insurgents in public areas such as markets and outside mosques injured or killed 223 children from April to December 2009.
Quality
Although there have been increases in enrollment rate around the world, the educational quality lags far behind. In some countries, recent studies show that a quarter to a half of youth who have graduated from primary school cannot read a single sentence. A country’s poor educational quality results from a myriad of factors, mainly stemming from teacher absenteeism, inadequate teacher training, lack of funding and large classrooms. There is a direct correlation with low educational quality and high drop-out rates.
- In India, one survey in 2009 found that just 38% of rural grade 4 students could read a text designed for grade 2. Even after eight years of school, 18% of students were unable to read the grade 2 text.
- In Malawi and Zambia over a third of grade 6 students were unable to read with any fluency.
- In Kenya, half of the poorest children in grade 3 could read a standard grade 2 Kiswahili text, compared with about three-quarters of the richest students.
