Tag: education

We must act to end inequality in education

(Pic: Flickr / THINKGlobalSchool)
(Pic: Flickr / THINKGlobalSchool)

As several thinkers have said over the past century, a society should be judged by how well it treats its most disadvantaged members. By that count, the world is not faring very well when it comes to education.

In spite of the laudable progress across the world in getting more children into school, the most marginalised – including girls, children in poor rural areas and the disabled – continue to be systematically left out.

Consider these troubling facts, from the 2013/4 Education for All Global Monitoring Report, Teaching and learning: Achieving quality for all, which launched today in Addis Ababa:

  • In low and lower middle income countries, the poorest rural young women have only spent three years on average in school – at least six years less than the richest urban young men.
  • In sub-Saharan Africa, at recent rates of progress, all the richest boys will complete primary school by 2021, but the poorest girls will not catch up for at least another 60 years.
  • It may take until 2072 for all poorest young women to become literate in low and lower middle income countries.
  • About 90% of children with disabilities in Africa are out of school.

The global picture is even more stark: 250 million primary school age children are not learning the basics, whether they are in school or not – and a majority of them are children who face marginalisation or discrimination.

These numbers should not only prick our collective conscience but also galvanise us to act – and act quickly. It is fair to say that the main reason we are 57 million children off-target to reach the second Millennium Development Goal (MDG) – to get every child in school – is because we have not paid attention to the most marginalised and the most vulnerable. We should resolve to do better.

Luckily, we have an opportunity to do just that as we focus on the global development framework that will succeed the MDGs. We have to make it our top priority to end inequalities by meeting the needs of the marginalised.

Young people made that clear during the first “Youth Takeover” of the United Nations General Assembly. On July 12 last year – dubbed Malala Day because it was the 16th birthday of the Pakistani education activist Malala Yousafzai – youth leaders including Malala called for equity to be at the heart of new global education goals. We want the post-2015 goals to have clear targets that can be measured using indicators that track the progress of the most disadvantaged.

The 2013/4 EFA Global Monitoring Report reinforces this point, outlining the need for targets should be set to achieve equality, taking into account that characteristics of disadvantage often interact: girls from poor households in rural areas, for example, are usually among the most marginalised. Each goal should be tracked not only overall but also according to the progress of the lowest performing groups in each country to ensure that these groups reach the target by 2030.

One of the report’s findings is that children with disabilities are likely to face the most severe discrimination and exclusion, which often keep them out of school. It is urgent to collect better data on children with different types and severity of impairments so that policy-makers can be held accountable for making sure these children’s right to education is respected.

And it is not enough just to get marginalised children into school – they also need to be actually learning once they are there. But they tend to get the worst deal when it comes to education quality, often being taught by the least-trained teachers. The EFA Global Monitoring Report’s main theme this year is the need to meet their needs by recruiting teachers from diverse backgrounds, training them to help disadvantaged children, and giving the best teachers incentives to teach in difficult areas and to remain in the profession.

In a special section, the new EFA Global Monitoring Report also lays out the wealth of evidence for education’s unique power to transform lives. Education boosts people’s chances of escaping poverty, of leading a healthier life and of getting a good job.

I can attest to this. I grew up in a poor, war-torn country, Sierra Leone. Despite overcrowded classrooms and the challenges of being a refugee, I have been lucky to be among the few that have managed to get a good education. That education has not only unlocked many opportunities for me and my family but has also equipped me to contribute positively to the betterment of my society.

Too many of my friends and others in similar circumstances have been denied the boost that education affords, however. It is is doubly unjust that the marginalised, who most need such a boost, are so often bypassed by efforts to improve education.

In 2014, it is not acceptable for any child or adolescent to remain out of school, or to be getting such low-quality education that they aren’t learning. Neither should we tolerate a situation in which so many young people lack the skills they need to get decent work and lead fulfilling lives. Across all our post-2015 global education goals, we should aim for no one to be left behind by 2030.

Chernor Bah is a youth advocate and former refugee from Sierra Leone. Following years of civil war in his country, he founded and led the Children’s Forum Network, Sierra Leone’s children parliament. In that role, Chernor presented a report on the experience of Sierra Leonean children to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In 2002, Chernor served as Junior Executive Producer of a UN Children/youth radio project, designed to involve young people in Sierra Leone’s post conflict discourse. Since then Chernor has worked with youth in Liberia, Lebanon, Haiti, Philippines and other emergency settings, leading efforts to strengthen youth voices in development and policy processes. A former UNFPA Special Youth Fellow, Chernor co-wrote a report titled “Will You Listen-Young Voices from Conflict Zones” and co-led the Youth Zones initiative. He holds an MA in Peace Studies from the University of Notre Dame and a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Sierra Leone. 

In 2014, it’s unacceptable for girls in Malawi to be unable to go to school

Every Wednesday, Shakira Yakiti gets together with a group of at-risk girls at the Nampingunja School in the rural Mangochi district of Malawi. Their Girls Club organises home visits to girls who have dropped out of school to get married, works with teenage mothers to encourage them to return to school, interfaces with school headmasters to make sure the returning students are welcomed, and provides social support for girls facing serious challenges in a country where poverty is endemic, secondary school attendance for girls is significantly lower than for boys, and girls routinely get married and have children as teenagers.

Shakira said: “Whenever those girls come back, we sit down as a club to discuss what problems they’re facing and what problems caused them to drop out of school. Sometimes we even raise money to help them out if the problem is poverty, so they can buy soap and the like. We are always proud when we see a girl coming back to school.”

Shakira is a force of nature, slim and poised and speaking with the easy eloquence of a seasoned politician. When I met her, she was talking to a team of aid workers and visiting journalists jamming microphones in her face and jotting down her every word. She handled our questions fluidly and coherently, providing incisive answers and encouraging the members of the Girls Club to share their stories. As we left, we all agreed that her grassroots organising skills and her persuasiveness indicate a fine future in politics.

Did I mention she’s 13?

I met girls like Shakira across Malawi: bright, resilient, and working hard in their communities to make life better for women and girls. I also met girls who are hanging on by a thread, desperate to go to school but facing enormous barriers. There was Ethel, whose parents were too poor to buy soap for her to wash her clothes, let alone pay for her school uniform (the Girls Club got her soap and encouraged her to come back to school; Ethel is now enrolled).

There was Chrissa, who got pregnant as a teenager and had twins. The man who impregnated her is 21 and left her and the children for a more lucrative job in South Africa. She came back to school, despite being ostracised by some of her peers. “I don’t mind if they’ll be laughing at me”, she said. “I’m going to continue with learning.”

There was Christie, whose mother abandoned the family, leaving Christie to raise her six siblings alone and in extreme poverty. Her only way out was marriage at 14 and a child the same year. She dropped out of school after eighth grade, and wants to go back, but can’t quite find a way.

Challenges
They face barriers that are cultural as well as practical. When family income is limited, paying for a male child’s schooling can seem like a better investment than paying for a girl’s. Cultural norms promote early marriage, and a lack of access to comprehensive sexual health education and contraception means pregnancy is common among young women – nearly two-thirds of women in Malawi have given birth by their 20th birthday. Adolescent pregnancy poses serious risks to the mother and the child: 65% of fistula patients developed the condition as adolescents, and infant deaths in the first month of life are 50-100% higher when the mother is under 20 than if she’s older. Girls who get pregnant are more likely to get married, and once a girl is married she quits school.

Secondary school girls in Malawi. (Pic: AFP)
Secondary school girls in Malawi. (Pic: AFP)

Girls also face the practical challenges of getting to school in a country with a largely rural population. At another school in the Mangochi district, headmistress Molombo Basuro said some students walk as far as 16 km each way to a schoolhouse where there are no chairs, not enough exercise books, no electricity, a limited water supply and as many as 65 students to a class. With no boarding facilities, 32 girls who live far away currently sleep in one of the classrooms.

Seemingly simple problems become substantial barriers for girls’ education. Lack of access to soap and sanitary pads means girls miss school when they’re menstruating. No chairs make it harder to sit comfortably and focus on the lesson instead of modesty when your school uniform is a dress.

But the girls keep showing up, in large part thanks to innovative efforts led by community members and the girls themselves, funded mostly by international aid organisations. Some of the girls at Headmistress Basuro’s school have bikes, purchased by a joint United Nations program carried out by Unicef. The bikes mean the girls not only get to school faster, but safer – walking for kilometres along rural roads puts them at risk for harassment and sexual assault. Other Unicef funds go to things like soap, sanitary pads, school fees, supplies and exercise books.

Thanks to endemic corruption, though, these girls who are doing everything in their power to stay in school may see the few resources they have stretched even further, or taken away all together.

Cash Gate
The problem is a scandal called Cash Gate, where Malawian officials are accused of plundering millions of dollars in aid money from a country where 40% of the budget comes from donor funds. In response, many big Western donors are withholding aid until the Malawian government can prove that donor funds will be used appropriately. It’s a harsh decision, and not necessarily unfair – why funnel millions into a system that has proven itself to be corrupt?

And yet it’s girls like Shakira, Chrissa and Christie who will lose out.

There’s no easy solution. The Malawian government has a series of options, including allowing international auditors to evaluate the scope and depth of the corruption. Donors, though, have to make tough decisions: keep giving aid and essentially fund corrupt officials with little consequence, or pull aid with the knowledge that the ones who suffer most are the many Malawians who need basics like health care and education.

Nearly three-quarters of Malawians are extremely poor, living on less than $1.25 (US) per day. Over and over, the girls and women I spoke with emphasised that the most effective programs were the most local – the ones that were developed with leadership from girls, community members, health care providers and grassroots organisers, not outsiders parachuting in. But they need money to be implemented effectively.

The Malawian government needs to step up, and allow international auditors full access for an investigation. But donors shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. And girls like Shakira, polished and intelligent as they may be, are still children – babies deserving support and protection.

Jill Filipovic for the Guardian

Nuruddin Farah: Getting kids back to school in Somalia

A child’s right to education is as sacrosanct as a child’s need for water, food, shelter and peace. But tragically the education system, like much of Somalia, has been virtually destroyed over the last 20 years by the terrible, senseless civil war. Now only four out of every 10 children go to school – one of the lowest enrollment rates anywhere in the world. And the numbers are far lower for girls, who are often kept at home for housework or pushed into an early marriage.

I travelled home to Somalia back in 1996, which was after only five years of civil war and already the schools had stopped functioning. At that time, I told anyone who would listen that education needed a kick-start and in the intervening years the situation has only got worse and worse. Students attend religious schools learning Arabic rather than Somali, and secondary education has been almost wiped out. So, teenage boys were attracted to the militias, like al-Shabab and other militant groups, for the food and money they provided.

When I was a young child, we lived in the Somali-speaking part of Ethiopia. There were no decent schools at that time there either. So my father took it upon himself to travel around, recruit a few teachers and personally pay them. I got to go to school – and as I was nearing the end of my primary education, as luck would have it, some missionaries set up a secondary school.

I clearly remember after a week at the secondary school thinking that this was a different world from the one in which my parents and my grandparents had grown up. This was because I could see myself through the eyes of the world to which I was being introduced. Through education, through books, I was given the chance to expand my universe far above that of my classmates and my parents. And this was all due to the exposure that I had to other languages, other cultures and other world views.

As a child I was able to place myself in the shoes of a child growing up in England or in America and my ambitions flew far ahead of my contemporaries in the same town simply because they didn’t have an education. The chances I had in the classroom quite simply made me the person I am today and gave me the opportunity to make a success of my life.

(Pic: Unicef)
(Pic: Unicef)

I believe that if you give any child the opportunity to read and study they will use the opportunity to take themselves – even if only in their imaginations – out of misery, out of civil war and out of strife to a higher plane.

Literacy also changes an entire community, an entire nation. It is not only schooling that is important, it is the idea of training the mind that becomes important. A child who attends school regularly behaves differently from one who is a truant and is more likely to be self-destructive and more likely to break rules.

It is discipline, patience and continuous learning that educates the mind, that makes a person produce peace: first of all within themselves and then moving that peace outside of themselves and sharing it with many, many others.

A peace process is therefore just another form of schooling – training adults’ minds to accept that there is no alternative to peace. And above all, that is what Somalia needs right now.

Nuruddin Farah is a prominent Somali novelist. He was awarded the 1998 Neustadt International Prize for Literature. 

On September 8 2013 – World Literacy Day – Somali education authorities with support from Unicef launched the Go 2 School initiative, an ambitious three-year campaign that plans to provide one million children and youth in Somalia with access to quality education. Farah and Beninois musician Angelique Kidjo have urged support for it.

Creches as cash cows in Kenya

It used to be a common joke in Nairobi’s bars, salons and taxis: the fastest way to get rich in Kenya is to start your own church. Now the joke has matured – the surest way to make a quick buck (and dodge taxes) in Kenya today is to open your own creche.

Infant day care schools are springing up at such an alarming rate in Nairobi that they may soon outnumber bars and butcheries in some townships.

During colonial days and many years after Kenya’s independence, it was not common to find black African kids attending preschools in droves.  Africans – “natives” – were expected to jump straight into primary school with over-size uniform shorts, rusty brogues and peak caps. The expectation was for one to attain an education fit for the colonial economy (bricklayers, trolley pushers, coffee graders, veranda painters). Creche was a fancy foreign concept reserved for kids of local bankers, lawyers, European expatriates, diplomats and cushy industrialists who had a fond nostalgia of daycare centres back home in London, Berlin or Paris.

This is no more. With the tie-down of education standards and generally relaxed rules, anyone can now open a creche in Kenya without much financial investment. The most sensible requirement is to have to have kids nearby, lots of them. Hence, creches are flourishing in Kibera slum, farming settlements and cluster towns.

Kids play in a shipping container that's been turned into a creche in Nairobi. (Pic: David Gianti)
Kids play in a shipping container that’s been turned into a creche in Kibera slum, Nairobi. (Pic: David Gianti)

A proper classroom is far from being a requirement. Livestock sheds, ancient grinding rooms and derelict garages are being torn down in Nairobi to make way for new creches. Infant meals or proper desks are not necessary either. With stressed and short-on-time parents willing to cough up to 3066 Kenyan shillings ($US35) per child per month, there’s no shortage of cheeky entrepreneurs willing to “renovate” their homes into creches.

“Mine is a creche in the morning, paint room in the afternoon and a bar at night,” says Hakem, a 35-year-old entrepreneur who has 30 kids enrolled at his Thanks Tidings Day Centre in Kibera.

“I retire my furniture, sofas, television, table suites to a kitchen during the day to make way for kids attending creche in my house,” says Sofia Wanari, another creche owner. “At night it’s a proper home again when the kids are gone.” When pressed about how much of revenue she makes, she smiles. “The earnings are pretty juicy.  In a month where all parents pay fees I collect about 105 010 Kenyan shillings ( $1200).”

Unlike registered and affluent creches in leafy parts of Nairobi, many springing up in the townships have little regulation. Teachers are not trained or qualified – that’ll be expecting way too much. With steely will, a former kitchen maid, a tobacco clerk or a retired bus driver can turn into a creche school teacher anytime. Curriculums or timetables are neither designed nor followed. One only needs to spend the whole day yelling at infants, minding their general silly tantrums, enforcing sleep times, rehearsing Mau-Mau-era songs and chaperoning them when they stray close to a broken pool or busy road. Not that many parents care: urban Kenyans are tied down in booming factory jobs, office chores and green fruit market stalls, so anyone willing to take care of kids during the day readily finds willing parents.

It’s not entirely unsurprising to see a burger or pizza shop in the evening being dusted and scrubbed to make way for a creche in the morning.  An advert on the wall will read: “Sally’s pizza 5pm to 8pm;  infant preschool 8am to 3pm”.

A suitable, safe location is a not a priority for creche owners. It’s not unthinkable to see a creche opening up next to a strip bar, a gamblers’ saloon or a railway crossing. “Greedy entrepreneurs don’t necessarily care about kids’ safety.  It’s a mighty shame one way or another,” explained Michelle Gaziki, a special needs education facilitator with the Kenyan education ministry.

Of course these creche owners live with a permanent fear of authorities who often inspect creches for health facilities, licences and building safety. Like in any part of East Africa, an under-the-table ‘gift’ to a government inspector will help take care of any problems.

However, for entrepreneurs like Wanari this business is a win-win scenario. “No one wants to be saddled with a weeing infant during the day when there are jobs to chase in the economy. Those who say unlicensed creches are menacing are simply grumpy middle-class Kenyans used to seeing their children in gated preschools years before primary. It has changed.”

David Gianti is a Kenyan student studying towards a master’s degree in education at the University of Nairobi. Connect with him on Facebook.

Senior citizens? No, senior students

At 5pm every day, the streets of Nairobi are flooded with people spilling out of their offices and queuing at the nearest bus depot to catch their buses and matatus home. Joyce is one of them but she’s not rushing to get home in time for her favorite soapie or a glass of wine. She’s rushing to get to class. Joyce is a part time MBA student. Big deal, you think?  Well, it sort of is.

A mother of three adult children, 56-year-old Joyce is four years away from retirement. She is employed as a secretary at a government ministry in Kenya. When she started working thirty years ago, her certificate in Secretarial Studies from the Polytechnic of Kenya was enough to get her a job and enable her to house, clothe and feed her children. But, as it happens, times changed, and Joyce had to change as well. A certificate will not get you very far in Kenya today, and anything less than a university degree is not considered a worthwhile qualification. At her age, Joyce is not trying to get a promotion – the time for that has passed. She’s trying to learn as much as she can now, to prepare for her retirement. Joyce, who is also a part-time farmer, always loved business. At the age of 50 she decided to enrol for a Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) degree. She studied, farmed and worked part time, and five years later she graduated with her BBA degree. Why stop now, she thought. In 2012, Joyce enrolled in an MBA program at Kenyatta University.

“I don’t want my life to stop when I retire, I want it to start,” Joyce says. She had to take a loan out to cover her tuition fees but she is confident that her time and effort will pay off once she is a full-time, successful farmer.

(Pic: Flickr/rnav1234)
(Pic: Flickr/rnav1234)

Her choice to continue studying may be unusual but she’s not alone. Thousands of older Kenyans are enrolled in part-time undergraduate and post-graduate programs, all of them wanting to make their dreams of a tertiary education finally come true. Take Juliet for example. By day, Juliet is a nursery school teacher, rhyming out ABCs to restless four-year-olds, but by night and weekend, Juliet is a Psychology of Childhood Development student at a college in Nairobi. There is also Claire, a corner kiosk owner. She runs her business fulltime but takes accounting courses over the weekend.

All the women I have met and spoken with are not just students. They are mothers, grandmothers, wives and caretakers and their student status does not exempt them from their other traditional domestic duties. Culture is still largely unforgiving to the Kenyan woman that doesn’t cook, clean and keep an organised household. By any standards, these women have at least three jobs, but for them, their student status is one they wear with pride because it is a choice they made for themselves.

From as early as I can remember, I was taught that a good education was what would make all my dreams come true. My parents often told me to get better grades or suffer a beating. At some point during my pimple-popping teens and great depression over my nonexistent hips, my mother told me quite bluntly that my looks would get me nowhere in this life, but my brain would get me everywhere. The power of the book is preached fervently to all children in Kenya, and academic competition is as bloodthirsty as a boxing match. I always just knew that after high school I was going to a university and that I was going to get a degree. This was never something I questioned, as far as I knew it was a fact.

This was not the case for our mothers and fathers. In their time, tertiary education was for the extremely bright and well-to-do. Only so many people could get scholarships, and at that time, only a select few had degrees. Now that tertiary education is no longer a luxury but a necessity, our parents’ generation is taking every opportunity available to obtain those degrees that were been denied to them so many years ago.

I’m fortunate to be doing what I always wanted to do: write. I doubt that Joyce wanted to be a secretary, or Juliet a nursery school teacher. But luckily for them, they have a second chance to do what they have always dreamed of doing. Despite the challenges – time, money, late nights – sitting in that lecture hall and feeling that your life’s purpose is finally coming to fruition is the price Joyce, Juliet and Claire are willing to pay.

Sheena Gimase is a Kenyan-born and Africa-raised critical feminist writer, blogger, researcher and thought provocateur. She’s lived and loved in Kenya, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Zambia, South Africa, Botswana and Namibia. Sheena strongly believes in the power of the written word to transform people, cultures and communities. Read her blog and connect with her on Twitter.