Education Fact Sheet

• This year, over 100 million children will not go to school. 60 million of these children are girls.
• 96% of unschooled children live in developing countries.
• 75% of unschooled children live in Sub-Saharan Africa and West and South Asia.
• In Western and Central Africa, less than half of poor children complete even the first year of school.
• Studies predict 150 million children currently in school will drop out before completing their primary education.
• In 2000, through the Millennium Development Goals and the Dakar Framework for Action, world leaders pledged to achieve universal primary education by 2015.

How does education fight poverty?
What barriers prevent children from going to school?
What can be done put more children in school?

How does education fight poverty?

• Raises income: Just one additional year of schooling can raise income by as much as 20%.
• Improves health: Educated mothers are 50% more likely to immunize their children than mothers with no schooling.
• Reduces H.I.V./AIDS: Young rural Ugandans with a secondary education are three times less likely than those with no education to be HIV-positive.
• Promotes economic growth: No country has ever achieved continuous and rapid growth without reaching an adult literacy rate of at least 40%.
• Increases productivity & reduces malnutrition: More productive farming due to increased female education accounts for 43% of the decline in malnutrition achieved between 1970 and 1995.

What barriers prevent children from going to school?

• Cost: It can cost a month's wages or more to send a child to public primary school.  Many families depend on the income generated by their children's work to survive.
• HIV/AIDS: HIV/AIDS has reversed progress in many poor countries, leading to a sharp decline in school participation for those orphaned by the disease. In Zambia, 815 teachers died of HIV/AIDS in 2000, the equivalent of 45% of the teachers trained that year.
• Safety: In rural areas, the nearest school may be five or ten miles away.  In regions with political instability, it can be unsafe for children to walk any distance.
• Gender Insensitivity: A scarcity of female teachers and prevalence of sexual harassment in schools prevent many parents from sending their daughters to school.

What can be done to put more children in school?

• Eliminate fees: When governments eliminate school fees, as they did in Kenya, Uganda and Malawi, enrollments can double or even triple.
• Provide stipends: A World Food Program initiative that provided school meals and take-home rations increased girls' attendance by at least 50% in targeted countries.
• Increase aid: Many donor countries do not contribute their fair share to fund basic education.  The United States, for example, gives $435 million, the appoximate cost of building 17 U.S. high schools.
• Relieve debt: Foreign debt payments prevent many poor countries from spending money on essential social services. Debt relief has made an enormous difference in those countries that have received it. Niger, for example, is using 40% of the resources freed up by debt relief to fund its universal primary education program.

Sources:

Center for Global Development, Rich World, Poor World Series: A Guide to Global Development, 2004.

Council on Foreign Relations, What Works in Girls' Education: Evidence and Policies from the Developing World, Barbara Herz and Gene B. Sperling, 2004.

Global Campaign for Education, A Fair Chance, Attaining Gender Equality in Basic Education by 2005, 2003.

Global Campaign for Education, Girls Can't Wait: Why girls' education matters, and how to make it happen now, 2005.

Global Campaign for Education,  Missing the Mark: A School Report on rich countries' contribution to Universal Primary Education by 2015, 2005.

UNESCO, Global Monitoring Report on Education for All, 2003.

UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2003-2005 Education For All 2005 Fact Sheet, 2005.