Poor performance on education MDG in region blamed on poverty, governance

East African Community member states will not achieve the UN Education for All (EFA) goal set 15 years ago, due to bad governance, inadequate investment and high poverty levels among other reasons.

With an EFA development index (EDI) score of less than 0.80, the five EAC members, like most sub-Saharan African states are still far from reaching the goal.

However, none of them features on the list of poor performers, which comprises Chad, Niger, Nigeria and Pakistan.

According to Unesco’s 2015 EFA Global Monitoring Report, the EAC and the whole of Africa has performed dismally in delivering this goal.

Unesco says that although progress has been made globally, only a third of the countries in the world have met all the measurable EFA targets and one half of them have not reached the most watched goal of Universal Primary Education.

“None of the countries in the EAC have achieved all six measurable goals needed to reach Education for All. The overall performance of the countries is mixed and reflects an uneven progress seen throughout sub-Saharan Africa,” Kate Redman, a Unesco communications and advocacy specialist told The EastAfrican.

Despite the poor showing, three EAC countries — Burundi, Rwanda and Tanzania — are among seven sub-Saharan African countries that have met or will meet the universal primary education target. The others are Sao Tome and Principe, Zambia, Mauritius and Cape Verde.

Tanzania has already fully attained the goal and so has Rwanda, with a score of 99 per cent. Burundi is among countries expected to make it before the expiry of the 2015 deadline.

“Sixteen of the 20 lowest ranked countries in progress towards Education for All are in sub-Saharan Africa. Only seven countries in the region achieved even the most watched goal of Universal Primary Enrolment, leaving 30 million children out of school in 2012,” Ms Redman said.

Tanzania is also in the group of five countries — Sierra Leone, Afghanistan, India and Nepal —which Unesco says have worked hardest to meet the literacy targets. Ms Redman said Tanzania has in the past 15 years doubled its primary enrolment to be able to achieve universal education.

Kenya and Uganda are projected to be far from the target with a score of less than 80 per cent. However, the proportion of children reaching the end of primary school in Kenya increased from 42 per cent in 2000 to 62 per cent in 2007 and improved further in the subsequent years.

“Uganda managed to increase enrolment and reduce drop outs (especially of girls and children in rural areas) by reducing school fees but survival rates to the last grade in primary education have still decreased by at least 20 per cent since 1999,” Ms Redman said.

Several reasons are given for the region’s overall poor showing — among them corruption, political violence and inadequate investment. For example, while Kenya’s growth in spending on education exceeded its economic growth, the Unesco official said bad governance made it lose $48 million of education funding during the 15-year period.

Lack of optimal financing is another decisive factor. Unesco says an extra $22 billion a year is needed on top of already ambitious government contributions in order to ensure that the world achieves the new global education targets being set for the year 2030.

“While governments and donors have increased their spending on education in sub-Saharan Africa, the lack of adequate, equitable and sustainable financing has been a major obstacle to achieving EFA in the region.”

In addition to poverty, Unesco says barriers to education include children’s gender, caste, ethnic and linguistic background as well as disability, geographical location and livelihood. These, the report says, increase inequalities within countries and deny poor children access to quality and equitable learning.

The report says that pastoralist populations globally remain among the most underserved by education. Even in East Africa, where nomadic groups make up at least 20 per cent of the population, infrastructure and other investments for the educational needs of nomadic children remain extremely limited.

“The abolition of school fees in Kenya in 2003 largely failed to catalyse enrolment of nomads in schools, despite the fact that its policy initiative for nomadic communities is one of the most developed,” it adds.

There is also the challenge of sufficient, and trained teachers, especially for pre-primary education, where East Africa lags far from the enrolment target ratio of 80 per cent.

Kenya is the best performer in the region, but it is in the low level category, where enrolment ranges between 30 per cent and 69 per cent. In 1999, Kenya had nearly 1.2 million children in pre-primary schools.

With a ratio of less than 30 per cent, Rwanda and Burundi are in the very low level group. The two countries had fewer than 200,000 children in pre-primary schools in 2012.

Tanzania and Uganda are not included in the pre-primary prospect analysis due to lack of readily available data, which is yet another key shortcoming towards EFA attainment.

“None of the EAC member states achieved the 80 per cent pre-primary enrolment rate. All have been far off from achieving the target, with Burundi only managing an eight per cent enrolment rate, Rwanda 13 per cent, Uganda 14 per cent, Tanzania 34 per cent and Kenya 43 per cent,” Ms Redman said.
The Unesco report says teacher absenteeism also impacts negatively on student learning.

“In Ghana, Kenya, Senegal and Uganda, teacher absenteeism in primary education is estimated to exceed 20 per cent. In many countries, the availability of textbooks and other reading materials remains severely limited,” it adds.

Educationist Nyanda Shuli said it is now time for the EAC to give education the attention it has been denied in the past 15 years. Anything short of that, argues the former HakiElimu official, means thousands of children will continue to remain out of the formal learning system.

While there is no current Unesco data on Tanzania and Kenya, the agency’s figures show that children out of school now stand at 81,000, 23,000 and 663,000 in Burundi, Rwanda and Uganda respectively.

A year before the EFA agenda was set, there were 730,000 children out of school in Burundi, 1,955,000 in Kenya, 223,000 in Rwanda and 3,194,000 in Tanzania. The government’s Education Sector Performance Report 2010/11 shows that the number in Tanzania was drastically reduced to less than half a million three years later.

Prof Kitila Mkumbo of Twaweza said the increase in school enrolment in Tanzania is evident at all levels of education, from primary to higher education. Today, he said, 25 per cent of the Tanzanian population is receiving various levels of education.

However, despite these impressive school attendance rates, recent statistics show that Tanzania is actually failing to sustain the upward enrolment rate.

“Although the 2015 deadline will be largely missed, progress has been made and more can be achieved if the requisite resources are committed by our leaders. Today, there are more children in school than would have been the case if our countries had not committed themselves to the EFA agenda,” Mr Shuli said.

The enrolment in Burundi went up from 705,000 to 1,981,000 children between 1999 and 2012 while Uganda’s increased from 6,288,000 to 8,098,000. In Rwanda, it surged from 1,289,000 to 2,395,000 while Tanzania almost doubled the figure to 8,247,000.

Apart from increasing the number of children being enrolled in school, all EAC members will also manage to achieve or are expected to attain gender parity in primary school. Another 12 countries will attain this goal in sub-Saharan Africa and six are close to the target while the Central African Republic will be the only country not to reach it.

Ms Redman said the EAC has also done well in making sure education financing goes where it is needed the most by using funding to introduce initiatives to make education more accessible.

Uganda and Burundi have scrapped school fees, while Tanzania has financed well targeted initiatives to help the most disadvantaged including the poorest and disabled children. Rwanda has made its allocation of education funding more equal between rural and urban areas.

Tanzania has also impressed by its gender sensitive curriculum and the tremendous efforts made to reduce early pregnancy rates. More than 8,000 girls have been dropping out due to early pregnancies, making it one of the major factors in curtailing girl education.

Its top marks have also come from the introduction of water facilities in communities to ensure girls too go to school instead of spending hours collecting water.

“The list of policy interventions Tanzania carried out to achieve its universal primary enrolment in an equitable manner is extensive. It also has an education plan specifically for its nomad population, it has textbooks in braille, and has abolished school fees to prevent cost barriers for the poor,” Ms Redman said.

The bloc’s other major failures include reducing adult literacy and reaching gender parity in secondary education. However, Rwanda stands out as the only country in sub-Saharan Africa that has been close to reaching the gender parity target in secondary education.

Burundi is the only EAC member that will achieve the set 50 per cent reduction in adult illiteracy target. Its illiterate population fell to 641,000 from 1,376,000 between 1995 and 2012. In Uganda, adult illiteracy decreased by 32 per cent during the period. The number of illiterate Ugandans increased to 4,589,000 during 2004-2012 from 4,131,000 in 1995 to 2004.

In Tanzania, the situation worsened to nearly eight million illiterate adults between 2004 and 2012 from about six million between 1995 t0 2004.

In Rwanda, the number increased to, 2,030,000 from 1,555,000 whereas in Kenya it surged to nearly six million from 3,032,000 withing the same reporting periods.