Why Nigeria, others failed to meet millennium education targets

One hundred and sixty four  countries across the world had in April 2000, pledged to systematically improve the education sector in their domains over 15 years.Consequent upon reaching the final date without achieving substantial percentage of the global pledges, UNESCO boss, Irina Bokova, said there will now be another set of education goals set for […]

One hundred and sixty four  countries across the world had in April 2000, pledged to systematically improve the education sector in their domains over 15 years.
Consequent upon reaching the final date without achieving substantial percentage of the global pledges, UNESCO boss, Irina Bokova, said there will now be another set of education goals set for 2030.
According to Bokova, this will be agreed next month at the World Education Forum in South Korea, before being approved at the United Nations in New York in the autumn.
The meetings are expected to place a greater emphasis on the quality of education, rather than concentrating on the number of pupils in school.
Bokova told the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) that there are 58 million children without access to primary school and 100 million others who do not complete primary education.
The UNESCO boss explained that only a quarter of countries achieved the goal of halving adult illiteracy, but said there had been “tremendous progress”.
Although none of the six global pledges has been fully achieved by the 2015 deadline, Bokova said: “Millions more children are in school than would have been had the trends of the 1990s persisted.”
There is a $22bn funding gap if the deadline target of getting children into primary school is to be achieved.
Lack of school places is now more concentrated in sub-Saharan Africa than 15 years ago. Those most likely to be missing out on school in the region are girls from poor families.
Other factors that contributed to the failure, according to Bokova, include barriers to the creation of primary places for all including conflict, poverty, discrimination, poor governance, corruption and rising population.
The UK is the most successful country in the world regarding the six Education for All targets.
The EFA’s expand early childhood care and education target was only achieved by 47% of countries with two thirds more children in early-year education compared with 1999, while universal primary education target was achieved by 52% of countries.
On the equal access to learning target, she explained that there is universal enrolment in lower secondary school in 46% of countries. But in low-income countries, one in three youngsters will not complete lower secondary school.
On the order hand, adult illiteracy was cut by 50%. Only one in four countries achieved this goal. In sub-Saharan Africa, half of women remain illiterate and gender parity in 69% of countries. There is gender parity in access to primary school and at secondary level in 48% of countries.
On the improvement of the quality of education, Bokova said, the pupil-teacher ratio has improved in more than three of four countries. But to achieve universal primary education would require an extra four million teachers.
There was far more rapid progress in much of Asia, with an increasing proportion of those missing out on school being concentrated in countries in sub-Saharan Africa.
Nigeria, Chad and Niger were all highlighted for their lack of progress. In Asia, Pakistan was seen as failing to make sufficient progress.
But Nepal, Afghanistan and Sierra Leone were among the countries making the biggest improvements in access to education.
To achieve the goal by the target date, all children at the official entry age for primary school would have had to be attending classes by 2009 or so, depending on the duration of the primary level and how well schools retain pupils to the end of the cycle. But in half of sub-Saharan African countries with available data, at least one in four children of primary-school age was out of school in 2008.  
Although the enrolment in sub-Saharan Africa remains the lowest of all regions, it still increased by 18 percent. It was jumped from 58 percent to 76 per cent between 1999 and 2008. Progress was made in southern Asia and northern Africa, where enrolment increased by 11 and 8 percent over the last decade respectively.  
Major advances have been made even in some of the poorest countries, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa. The abolition of primary school fees in Burundi resulted in a threefold increase in primary-school enrolment since 1999, reaching 99 per cent in 2008. Similarly, the United Republic of Tanzania doubled its enrolment ratio over the same period. Guatemala, Nicaragua and Zambia also broke through the 90 per cent threshold towards greater access to primary education.
It was learnt that in half of the countries in sub-Saharan Africa, more than 30 per cent of primary-school students dropped out before reaching the final grade. Household data from 42 countries showed that rural children are twice as likely to be out of school as children living in urban areas. The data also indicated that the rural-urban gap is slightly wider for girls than for boys. But the biggest obstacle to education is poverty.
Children remain out of school for a variety of reasons, including cost. Social and cultural barriers to education are also common. In many countries, educating girls is widely perceived as being of less value than educating boys. And children with disabilities across the world face far more limited opportunities than their non-disabled peers.
Commenting on the development, Professor Umaru Pate of the Mass Communication Department, Bayero University Kano, said the failure of African countries to achieve the education goals can be attributed to a number of reasons.
Firstly, the resources, like in Nigeria the resources invested into the programme were inadequate to take care of the number of those who are requiring the services. Secondly, the issue of management; in Nigeria it is not only the issue of resources alone but how those resources are managed. And with the allegation of corruption at different levels, the resources were mismanaged.
On how to achieve the 2030 MDGs’ targets, Professor Pate said, apart from the general objectives set by the United Nations, there are still peculiar objectives for countries like the states and local government objectives.
“So there should be a better management of the resources. There should be constant training and re-training of our teachers at the lower level, because it is not a matter of creating primary schools but also having qualitative schools that will produce sound students.
“If you look at statistics from UNICEF, we have over 10 million or more of children who are not going to school and it is worrying. The Almariji programme of the federal government is not deceptive and not completely successful as many desire. There are many gaps in several areas, which means we need high level of commitment at different levels of government,” he said.
Also commenting, an Associated Professor and Director of Continuing Education at Bayero University Kano, Professor Salisu Shehu, said to move the education sector forward, there is need for drawing the attention of the communities and the rich to partner with government in that respect.
He said: “Communities can come together with cash and kind to build more schools for their people. Opinion leaders also need to come together and rethink just like what happened at the beginning of the forth republic, that was during the Obasanjo’s regime when the northern education summit was held at Arewa House, Kaduna and upon it, the northern education forum was established.
“It is really a serious problem that needs concerted effort between the government and communities. There is need for revitalisation of public/private partnership. There is need for sensitisation and awareness and advocacy. People at different strata in the society need to be made to understand the criticality of this problem.”
Moses Joseph, a private school teacher in Bwari, Abuja, said most African countries failed to achieve the MDGs goal on education because of their inability to put in place certain things. He emphasised that most of the developing countries have sidelined their people as far as the MDG programme is concerned.
“Building of block of classrooms is not enough for you to make them enroll their wards in school but you need to put some incentives that are attractive to make them see the importance of going to school. Government should also put in place some measures to punish parents who refused to send their wards to school.
Another issue is that while some of the schools built under the MDGs are not functioning, others that are not completed have been abandoned.