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Education in The Developing World
Education in The Developing World
Education in The Developing World
More people in the world today are educated than ever before. In 1820 only
12% of the people in the world could read and write. Today the share is reversed:
only 17% of the world’s population remains illiterate. Primary school enrollment is
now almost universal in most countries, with as many girls enrolling as boys.
Nevertheless, these figures overshadow the impact of persistent inequity.
Some 63 million children of primary school age were out of school in 2016 and
progress on primary school enrollment remains flat. Most impacted are the world’s
poorest countries, where the lack of basic education is a hard constraint on
development. In Niger, for example, just 36.5% of 15- to 20-year-olds are literate.
Oxfam caught the world’s attention in 2014 with the astounding statistic that
just 85 individuals had the same wealth as the 3.8 billion people who make up the
poorest half of the world’s population. Three years later the number was down to
43, and in 2018 to just 26. In their annual report to the 2019 World Economic
Forum in Davos, Public Good or Private Wealth, Oxfam takes a strong,
unequivocal position: this spiraling inequity must be checked, and the way to do it
is for all governments to provide universal health care, education and social
protection, free at the point of delivery, funded by fair taxation of rich individuals
and corporations. Governments, says Oxfam, must “Stop supporting privatization
of public services.”
“For some time, the view of institutions like the World Bank was that public
services should be rationed and minimal, and that the private sector is often a
better provider. It was argued that individuals should pay for their schools and
hospitals, market mechanisms should be used to organize services, and that social
protection should be very limited and targeted only at the very poorest people.
While some of the rhetoric, programming and advice has changed, including
notably from the IMF, change in practice has been slower. This trend is too often
compounded by the influence of elites over politics and governments, skewing
public spending in the wrong direction and ensuring that it benefits the already
wealthy rather than those who need it most. It is time to focus on what works. To
most effectively reduce the gap between rich and poor, public services need to be
universal, free, public, accountable and to work for women…
“The World Bank and some donor governments are upbeat about the
possibility of public-private partnerships (PPPs) and private provision as
alternatives to government-funded services. Yet research by Oxfam and other
NGOs has shown clearly that education, health and other public services delivered
privately and funded through PPPs are not a viable alternative to government
delivery of services. Instead they can drive up inequality and drain government
revenues. Even the IMF is now warning of the sizeable fiscal risks of pursuing
PPP approaches.”
Pakistan, for example, has 24 million children out of school, with just 15%
of poor rural girls finishing primary school. Public spending on education is among
the lowest in the world. The state of Punjab is no longer building new public
schools and instead, turning over management of the public schools to the private
sector. The goal was to get more of the 5.5 million out-of-school children in
Punjab into school, but Oxfam’s research shows this is not what’s happening. Only
1.3% of children in the schools surveyed had previously been out of school. A
large majority of the schools enrolled more boys than girls, and drop-out rates for
girls were reported to be higher. Non-fee expenditures like uniforms can be as
much as 40% of the household income of the poorest households, so many families
choose to educate only their male children. One private school principal is quoted
as saying, “We as school owners cannot include the poorest of the poor in this
school with other kids. It’s not like a charity; we have limited funds from the PPP,
and I also need to earn a livelihood from this.” Teachers in the PPP, mostly
women, are poorly paid and this further exploits gender inequality.
On the other hand, there are many examples of developing countries successfully
expanding access by providing universal free education:
In Uganda, removing direct costs through universal primary education
increased enrollment by over 60 percent and significantly lowered cost-
related dropouts.
In Malawi, free primary education increased enrollment by half, favoring
girls and poor people.
In Ghana, in September 2017, after fees for senior high (upper secondary)
school were dropped, 90,000 more students walked through the school doors
at the start of the new academic year.
Sierra Leone’s government has made primary and secondary education free
and is increasing tax collection from the richest.
Ethiopia is a poor country, with around the same per capita income as
Canada’s in 1840. And yet it is the fifth-largest spender on education in the
world as a proportion of its budget, employing over 400,000 primary school
teachers. Between 2005 and 2015, it brought 15 million more children into
school. Ethiopia still faces serious challenges with learning outcomes and
improving the quality of education, but as Oxfam reports, “the scale of its
commitment and effort to educate its girls and boys is dramatic.”
Education for All—Starting with Women
The poor in the developing world and those stranded in refugee camps
across the world know what they want for their children. Almost all of them
recognize that a good education is key to providing a better future for their children
and improving their own quality of life.
First and foremost, education needs to prepare young people so that they and
their community can get out of poverty. Education in all communities, especially
in the developing world, needs to involve parents, students, and teachers and
address the needs of the local community first, and then society at large. The
subjects taught would then be relevant to learners. It’s not as if children lack the
potential to change their world for the better. They are, as it were, waiting for the
opportunities to expand their natural ability to create, learn and problem solve.
In Redefining Education in the Developing World, Marc J. Epstein and
Kristi Yuthas contend that the very idea of what constitutes quality education for
students in the developing world must change. Government agencies and other
organizations, they say, should shift the focus from test scores and mastery of
traditional curriculum to helping students develop knowledge and skills that are
relevant to their lives and can lift them and their communities out of poverty. It’s
time, they write, “to seek out the interventions that lead to the greatest social and
economic impact for the poor.”
Tanzania, for example, has a high number of unemployed graduates who
attained good degrees that have no or little application in their local communities.
They may well have been excellent pupils, but were not taught to think critically,
problem-solve, or focus on studies that would lead to a better livelihood either for
themselves or their communities.
As the World Bank report puts it “Having knowledge is not the same as being able
to apply it. Having a skill means having the ability to do something well. Having a
skill requires knowledge, but having knowledge does not necessarily imply having
skills. Knowing how a wind turbine works does not mean a person has the skill to
fix one.”
Epstein and Yuthas advocate a concept they call “school of
life”: “Conceptual knowledge is put into practice at school through activities that
empower children to use what they have learned. For example, students practice
routine health behaviors, such as hand washing and wearing shoes near latrines—
and, to the extent feasible, gain exposure to other important behaviors, such as
boiling drinking water and using malaria nets. …
Simple and common Nokia phones are found even in remote villages of Afghanistan.
Software called “Ustad Mobile” utilizes these more affordable cell phones as teaching
tools.
UNESCO’s findings indicate that women and girls tend to use mobile devices for
reading and learning more than do their male counterparts, but have less access to
these devices than men. Since about two out of every three illiterate people are
female, an urgent solution is to ensure women have equal access to mobile phones.
There may well be cultural resistance to this in some countries. And unfortunately,
governments are as yet not taking enough advantage of m-learning. More work
needs to be done to promote this as a cost-effective way to improve education for
men and women of all ages, and to improve infrastructure and guarantee reliable
broadband connectivity.
Many programs around the world are tackling the challenges of expanding
meaningful education in the developing world, both public and private.
BRAC, a Bangladesh NGO dedicated to alleviating poverty by empowering
the poor, owns and operates 32,000 primary schools operating in 12
countries.
Pratham provides literacy and other educational support programs, and has
served some 33 million children in India. Google has been funding Pratham
through Storyweaver, an open source platform to share and translate books.
As many as 30 languages are spoken in India. Now with books in 60
languages and the ability to post new stories, the platform integrates Google
Translate, transliteration tools, and Google volunteers to improve the
translation. The goal is to provide 200,000 titles for 500,000 users.
Escuela Nueva, originating in Columbia, is an educational model for
collaborative learning. Students work in small groups, using interactive
modules designed to promote dialogue, critical thinking, and the application
of new knowledge to family and community situations.
Savelugu Girls Model School in northern Ghana, is one of dozens of model
schools in the north of the country funded and administered by the local
authorities. According to Oxfam, who partnered with Ghana Education
Service, the school district, and local communities to build the school,
“Teaching is based on learner-centered methodologies, a concept that has
previously not applied very often by teachers in this part of Ghana, who
lacked the know-how to implement it. Discussions and group work are core
elements. The girls form study groups in the evenings. Parents are invited to
support the girls’ education through school management
committees. Computers are integrated into lessons, and teachers are
trained to encourage the girls to participate actively in the classroom, and
even to challenge teachers with individual points of view. These schools go
beyond the national curriculum to address sexual health and life skills.”
Future Prowess Foundation School in Maiduguri, Nigeria, incorporates
Islamic education with Western education and vocational training. The
school takes in children of Boko Haram fighters as well as those whose
parents were killed by the fighters; the children of security forces attend, as
do the children of traditional rulers and religious leaders. “Bringing them all
to learn under the same roof promotes friendly co-existence among the
children thereby building everlasting peace,” says Suleiman Aliyu, the head
teacher.
Corporations are also engaged, particularly in providing technology.
In 2016 Google launched a $50 million global program to support
organizations that are using technology to help children who do not have
basic math and reading skills, even after several years of school.
Google’s Rumie educational tablet, targeted to older kids who can already
read, is essentially a “library on a chip.” It is low-cost, lightweight,
updatable, trackable, and does not depend on an internet connection.
Content can be adapted to age and learning level, tailored to local context,
and continually updated.
Worldreader uses technology to deliver books and other content, working
with a variety of governments, nonprofits, local agencies, and corporations,
notably Amazon. Worldreader has distributed about 25,000 preloaded
Kindles to 160,000 people in 12 sub-Saharan African countries. Says David
Risher, founder of Worldreader, “It really is the best way to get books into
people’s hands where the physical infrastructure isn’t very good, the roads
are bad, gas costs too much . . . but you can beam books through the
cellphone network just like you can make a phone call—and that’s really the
thing that changes kids’ lives.” The e-readers contained culturally and age
appropriate reading materials in both local language and English.
Refugees: A Growing Crisis
According to the 2019 UNESCO Global Education Monitoring (GEM)
report, Migration, Displacement and Education: Build Bridges Not Walls, there
are in the world today more than 25 million refugees and nearly 60 million people
internally displaced by war and natural disasters. More than half of refugees are
under age 18, and 1 in 6 are under age 5. The school-age children in these
populations could fill half a million classrooms. Clearly, the UN’s landmark
2016 New York Declaration for Refugees and Migrants call for all refugee and
migrant children to be receiving education within a few months of arrival is not
being met.
In the world today there are more than 25 million refugees and nearly 60 million people
internally displaced by war and natural disasters. Photo: Democratic Republic of the
Congo, by Julien Harneis.
The GEM report emphasizes that guaranteeing the right of migrant and refugee
children to quality education serves the interests the children and their host
communities. Says Director-General of UNESCO, Audrey Azoulay, “Everyone
loses when the education of migrants and refugees is ignored. Education is the key
to inclusion and cohesion. Increased classroom diversity, while challenging for
teachers, can also enhance respect for diversity and an opportunity to learn from
others. It is the best way to make communities stronger and more resilient.”
The report issues seven recommendations:
1. Protect the right to education of migrants and displaced people.
2. Include migrants and displaced people in the national education system.
3. Understand and plan to meet the education needs of migrants and displaced
people.
4. Represent migration and displacement histories in education accurately to
challenge prejudices.
5. Prepare teachers of migrants and refugees to address diversity and hardship.
6. Harness the potential of migrants and displaced people.
7. Support education needs of migrants and displaced people in humanitarian
and development aid.
The world track record on these recommendations is a mixed bag. Countries such
as Rwanda, Uganda, and Iran have made considerable investments to ensure that
refugees attend school side by side with their native children. Canada, with the
largest percentage of immigrants among the seven richest industrialized countries,
makes sure children learn about migration starting in second grade and enshrines
multi-culturalism in its constitution. Ireland has the highest percentage of first
generation immigrants in the European Union, and has funded an intercultural
education strategy, even in the midst of a deep financial crisis.
Others countries, despite good intentions, face serious challenges such as lack of
funds or teacher shortages. Germany would need 42,000 new teachers, Turkey
80,000 and Uganda 7,000 to provide quality education to all their refugees.
Lebanon and Jordan host the largest number of refugees per capita, but lack
resources to build more schools. Instead, these countries have morning and
afternoon shifts for citizen and refugee children, which limits interaction between
the two groups.
Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh, Burundian refugees in Tanzania, Karen refugees
in Thailand and many Afghan refugees in Pakistan can only get an education in
separate, non-formal schools, some of which are not certified.
Migrant children now number some 36 million in high-income countries,
equivalent to the entire school-aged population of Europe. Even if they are not
forced to live in makeshift camps as are the most desperate of refugees, these
children are marginalized, often living in the poorest neighborhoods, and are
simply not given a fair chance to succeed.
There are some efforts to provide solutions for those children trapped in refugee
camps. The Instant Network Schools are provided by UNHCR in partnership with
the Vodafone Foundation. These “schools-in-a-box” are equipped with a laptop, 25
tablets pre-loaded with educational software, a projector, a speaker and a hotspot
modem with 3G connectivity. As with all viable education technology, these
“instant classrooms” can be easily implemented by people who live and work in
the camps and know the culture and conditions of the communities they serve.
Renewing the Commitment
Goal #4 of The Global Resolutions Initiative: “Ensure inclusive and equitable quality
education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all.” 2018 progress update.
For the long term, working collaboratively, we must make radical, systemic
changes if we are to meet the UN Sustainable Development Goal for education
(SDG4): Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong
learning opportunities for all. The Oxfam report details four local and
international strategies required to implement free, universal public education for
all residents—native citizens, immigrants and refugees:
Overhaul taxation to collect a fair share of taxes from the world’s richest
individuals and corporations. Aside from fixing tax rates, this would involve
global policies to fight tax evasion and tax dodging tactics such as moving
capital offshore; closing tax code loopholes that are costing governments as
much as $200 billion in tax revenues; and curbing the practice of granting
tax exemptions in exchange for capital.
Extend international aid—without increasing fiscal deficits—to the 48
countries who, even with strong growth and fair taxation, would lack the
domestic resources to fund these universal services. Delivered correctly,
says Oxfam, aid works. At the Dakar World Education Forum in 2000,
donors pledged increased aid for quality education for all, resulting in 34
million more children attending school. With multilateral funding through
the Global Partnership for Education, some 238,000 teachers were trained in
2016, up from around 98,000 in 2014. Both investments got more girls into
school, tackling gender inequality as well as poverty. Unfortunately, aid to
education has been stagnant in recent years.
Crackdown on corruption. According to a World Bank report “Successful
anti-corruption efforts are often led by a ‘coalition of concerned’ –
politicians and senior government officials, the private sector, and by
citizens, communities, and civil society organizations. … Much of the
world’s costliest forms of corruption could not happen without institutions
in wealthy nations: the private sector firms that give large bribes, the
financial institutions that accept corrupt proceeds, and the lawyers and
accountants who facilitate corrupt transactions. Corruption is a global
problem that requires global solutions.”
Vocal, grass roots organizing. Ultimately, ordinary people coming together
are the greatest force for real change. The Argentinian born movement Ni
Una Menos and the Fight Inequality Alliance are just two examples. In
2015, a spirited group of Kenyan school children faced tear gas and armed
police and succeeded in saving their playground from being gabbed by
developers for a hotel parking lot.
Now is the time to act decisively on these strategies. Quality education for all is a
must to ensure a creative and engaged global citizenry, ready to meet the
challenges of our changing world.