Setting the Global Context
In the United States, a public education is guaranteed by law and schooling is required until at least age 16. However, this is not the case worldwide. Many who want and need a quality education will never receive one. Consider these statistics:
- Nearly 70 million children currently lack access to primary school around the world. More than half of those children are girls.
- According to the United Nations Development Program, if we do nothing, it could take more than 50 years to achieve universal primary enrollment in the Arab states and 100 years in the Sub-Saharan states.
- A single year of primary school increases the wages an individual earns later in life by 5 to 15 percent for boys—and even more for girls.
- Universal basic education can influence health outcomes by decreasing the number of HIV infections per year by as much as 700,000 worldwide.
- Every additional year of schooling reduces a young man’s risk of becoming involved in conflict by 20 percent.
Of those who attend school, many will leave after a short period of time—it is estimated that 20 percent of students in Sub-Saharan Africa and as many as 150 million children currently in school worldwide will drop out before completing primary education.
Furthermore, it is not a guarantee that those who attend school will receive a quality education. For example, there are some countries in Sub-Saharan Africa where 40 percent of young adults who have completed five years of education cannot read or write in their native language. Schools all over the world have untrained teachers, large class sizes and lack basic school resources. For example, in Mozambique, the teacher student ratio is 1:72.
Access to quality education has been identified by all national governments as essential. Progress has been made in many places—there are approximately 33 million fewer children out of school now than in 1999—but more work remains. Worldwide, nearly two million new teachers are needed in order to meet the global goal of universal primary education by 2015. In Sub-Saharan Africa alone, the current number of teachers will need to double.
Use these links for more information about access to quality education in developing countries:
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