Grim future for girls - primary school attendance in Sub-Saharan Africa

In the year 2000 the probability of an African child attending primary school was no higher than it had been in 1980. Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) has the lowest primary enrolments of any major region in the developing world and the number of African children out of school is increasing at a faster rate than anywhere else. Has Africa any hope of meeting the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of primary schooling for all and gender equity by 2015?

A book, resulting from a major collaborative research project between the University of Sussex, nine African governments and the Forum for African Women Educationalists, assesses challenges in improving school enrolment and promoting gender equality. The authors show that SSA – with around 10% of the population of developing countries – will soon be home to over a half of all children not receiving schooling. Most of these 60 million unschooled children are girls.

National studies – presenting detailed information on enrolment trends, educational indicators, costs and public expenditures – reveal scope for reducing unit costs and raising additional resources for primary schooling. The authors argue that, although public finances are limited, schooling for all is both affordable and achievable.

Although most SSA governments substantially increased allocations of Gross National Product to primary schooling in the 1990s, Africa’s economic decline has been so severe that their absolute value has fallen sharply. This combined with aid flows to increase enrolment.

The relationship between wealth and levels of primary enrolments is weak. Countries with similar income levels have notably different enrolment ratios – those of Malawi and Mali are over three times greater than those of Ethiopia. Other key findings stress:

• The extent of gender inequality in primary schooling varies substantially among equally poor African states.
• Anglophone countries spend more on primary education, pay teachers less and have significantly lower unit costs and higher enrolment ratios than Francophone states.
• Indirect costs of school attendance and gender relations in households, families, schools and workplaces disproportionately affect girls’ prospects of getting educated.
• Lack of latrines, chairs and desks denies educational opportunities to girls.

Annual rates of expenditure growth to achieve schooling for all over 15 years range from 4% in Senegal to more than 9% in Ethiopia. Although, in principle, these resources could be domestically generated by expenditure restructuring and economic growth, supplementary external assistance is essential to close the funding gap.

World Bank projections about resources to be released for education as a result of the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative and the extent to which households can be expected to cover schooling costs are optimistic. The researchers calls for governments to commit to increasing recurrent expenditure allocated to primary education. Other recommendations include:

• a two-to-three fold increase in education aid and an end to donor bias towards giving education grants and loans to those states with less acute needs
• governments and aid agencies to work together to promote gender mainstreaming and ensure SWAPs reflect a shared understanding of gender objectives in education policy
• more generous mechanisms for debt rescheduling and debt forgiveness.

Despite resource constraints, African states have practical options to achieve the education MDG. Much of their success will depend on whether there are genuine nationally-owned reform processes promoting society-wide gender reforms.

Source(s):
‘Achieving schooling for all in Africa: costs, commitment, and gender’ Ashgate Publishing; co-authored by Christopher Colclough, Samer Al-Samarrai, Pauline Rose and Mercy Tembon, January 2004

Funded by: Rockefeller Foundation, Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD), HEDCO-Ireland, Association for the Development of Education in Africa and The World Bank Institute, in collaboration with the Forum for African Women Educationalists (FAWE)

id21 Research Highlight: 7 November 2004

Further Information:
Christopher Colclough
Centre for Commonwealth Education
184 Hills Road
Cambridge
CB2 2PQ
UK

Tel: +44 (0) 1223 507133
Fax: +44 (0) 1223 767602
Contact the contributor: c.colclough@educ.cam.ac.uk

Institute of Development Studies (IDS), UK

Pauline Rose
Centre for International Education
Sussex School of Education
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9RE
UK

Tel: +44 (0) 1273 877628
Contact the contributor: P.M.Rose@sussex.ac.uk

Centre for International Education, Sussex Institute, University of Sussex

Mercy Tembon
The World Bank
1818H Street NW
Washington DC 20433
USA

Tel: + 202 473 5524
Contact the contributor: mtembon@worldbank.org

World Bank

Other related links:
'Progress to gender equality in education'

'Looking beyond numbers: measuring Africa’s progress towards gender equality in education'

'Counting gender equality in education - not as easy as 1, 2, 3'

'Far from the front line: how likely is universal primary completion by 2015?'

'Moneyed classes: public spending on universal primary education'

'Aid, public expenditure and Millennium Development Goals: is collaboration possible?'

'Meeting education development goals: simply a question of money?'