Food for thought - UN's Millenium goal on Universal Primary Education

[speedymama]

Just received my latest issue of Developments magazine from DFID and it provides some sobering stats on education in the developing countries in light of the UN's Millenium goal of getting all children into primary school by 2015.

Sometimes I think that too many people in this country do not appreciate or value state education in this country so I thought that I would share some of these stats because after reading them, I thanked my lucky stars for the education that my 3yo DTS are and will be receiving in the UK.

57% of the 77 million out of school children are girls.

To reach the goal of full access to primary education, 1.6 million teachers need to be hired in Africa alone.

Abolishing school fees for parents in Malawi, Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya has enabled 1,000,000 extra children to enrol in primary school in each country.

38 million children do not go to school in Africa.

In 1999, over 1,000,000 children in sub-Saharan Africa lost their teachers to AIDS.

The number of out of school children in India (age 6-10 years) decreased by 6 million between 2001 and 2003.

Thought that I would respond to this because it is incredible - we really do not understand how fortunate we are.

It seems that there is no way that univeral access to education for all primary school aged children will be achieved by 2015, and yet it is not because there is not enough wealth in the world to make it a reality. It has to do with wealth distribution, debt unfair trade rules, and a whole host of other factors, that the report illustrates.

More info here:
Unicef
and here: Ungei

and here:save the children

Thanks for responding Rantmum. I thought it was only me who cared about this. I find it incredible that on a parenting forum where there are such strong and strident views about state v private education, grammar vs comprehensive schools, the eleven plus, sat results etc, that there are not more views on this but alas, imo,people only really care about what is in their own backyard.

I totally agree about the fact that the distribution of wealth, unfair trade etc contribute to this colossal stain on the modern world. It is an absolute disgrace.

My dh works for DFID Speedy so well aware of this stuff.
Staggering isn't it???
He's in Tajikistan at present 920th poorest country in the world.You can imagine......)

Thanks Moondog. I can't even begin to imagine......