2015 Education Goals: Progress Not Fast Enough

Source: AllAfrica.org

Article: Africa: Halfway to 2015 Education Goals, Progress Not Fast Enough

*The following are excerpts from the aforementioned article:

~Critics say donors at a recent high-level meeting failed to make firm funding commitments for improving education, particularly in impoverished, fragile and war-torn countries, making it highly unlikely the world will meet ambitious education goals by the 2015 deadline.

~While developing countries agreed to allocate 10 percent of budgets to education, donor countries could not agree to include a specific percentage of budgets for education aid, instead pledging "to work to maintain and increase levels of funding to education" and to prioritise low-income, fragile and emergency and conflict-affected states.

Progress

~Still, both recently-released reports note significant progress in education since 2000, including a 36-percent jump in primary school enrolment in sub-Saharan Africa and a five percent annual increase in domestic spending on education in Africa and South Asia.

~Fourteen countries abolished primary school fees between 2000 and 2006

~However, 774 million adults cannot read or write, 18 million more teachers are needed, and early childhood - the first of the EFA goals - has been completely neglected. Quality of education still suffers.

~"The question is not 'is there progress?' but 'what is the pace of progress?'" said the Global Monitoring Report's Burnett

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*Note the abovementioned excerpts are direct quotes from the article and thus all credit and references should be afforded to the authors/sources.