Access to Education
It’s crazy to think that the quality of our education depends mostly on where we’re born. An education is a basic right that many of us take for granted… it means imparting knowledge and training to future generations... to the future of our world.
Access to education is a complex global issue. It includes both the cost and quality of primary, secondary and tertiary education. It’s especially an issue for those of us living in developing nations, particularly women and Indigenous people.
Right now, 68 million children of primary school age don’t have access to schooling.
…
32.2 million of these are in sub-Saharan Africa and 18 million in South Asia…
…36 million are girls - that’s a 2 million person gender imbalance… UNICEF reports that this inequality is especially prevalent in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Education isn’t just literacy and numeracy. It’s also HIV/AIDS and drug awareness, health and family planning, income generation skills, as well as an understanding of civil rights and laws and environmental stewardship.
As our global population graduates from primary to secondary school, only 60% of our world’s children can attend. This drops further to only 25% in sub-Saharan Africa.
Africa is, by a
substantial amount, the region worst affected by lack of education.
The average survival rate to the last grade at the global level is
85%, with virtually no difference between boys and girls. However, in
Sub-Saharan Africa, the rate of primary school completion is 64%. In
Benin in 2010, only 59% of children that enrolled in grade 1 reached grade
5. Adult literacy rates in Africa have been reported as low as 33% in
Chad.
East Asian nations such as
Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh also have very low literacy rates. A UN
2010 report found that just 62% of these adults are literate.
There is no reason why all people in our world can’t have an education. Someone just hasn’t figured out how it can be done yet....
We need to ask ourselves what we can all do... who will take responsibility for our world’s education...? Who will teach adults literacy skills to give people greater control over their lives...? Who will teach adults so they can teach their own children...? Who will teach children knowledge and wisdom to become good parents and the future leaders of their nations...?
FEATURED IDEAS
