NN40, May 2008
Education for Sustainable Development? Or The Sustainability of Education Investment? A Special Issue
Universal Primary Education in Ethiopia: Going Beyond Increasing Numbers and Considering the Diversity of Out of School Children
By Jana Zehle, Addis Ababa University
Email: janazehle@yahoo.deKeywords
Ethiopia, Out of School Children, Basic Primary Education, Quantitative and Qualitative Growth
Summary
The paper considers the remaining challenges for the Ethiopian Educational Primary System to achieve EFA goals by 2015 and sets priorities on the diversity of out of school children.
In the summer of 2007 an Ethiopian educational expert claimed that EFA goals are ?old wine in new bottles? for Ethiopia. He referred to government officials who have expressed their thoughts to the effect that none of the EFA goals are new in Ethiopia. ?Well there are six goals. One is education for all and this is not new for Ethiopia. Starting from the era of Minilik, in the era of Haile Selassie or the provisional Military government of Ethiopia, those three governments were trying to reach the whole society and education for all is not new to us.? (AYELEW/ARSANO in Yamada 2007:129). Contrasting to this statement and to an estimated gross primary school population of 8.1 million an estimated number of 5.05 million children aged 7-14 remain out of school (CHECKOLE 2004: 1). More than half out of school children have never been in school and may never enrol without additional incentives (UNESCO 2008:51[1]). We argue that there cannot be a sustainable approach to primary education without understanding who are the missing children.
Who are these estimated 5.05 million children out of school?
- Girls: Ethiopia has increased substantially the enrolment of girls in lower primary education but still the gender parity index (GPI) lies at 0.87 (BINES/WOOD 2007:5).
- Extremely poor children: According to the Human Development Index 2005 Ethiopia takes position 170/177. Poverty significantly reduces the likelihood of school participation and a strong negative correlation [-0.4 or above] exists between household poverty and primary school attendance in both rural and urban regions in Burkina Faso, Cameroon, and Ethiopia (UNESCO 2008: 3 [2]). Still today education is regarded as a ?useful luxury? particularly among poor parents (MAYRHOFER 2001: 140).
- Orphans: More than 1.2 million AIDS orphans (CHECKOLE 2004: 4) challenge the education system by increasing the dropout rate and especially gender disparity as girls are expected to care for the victims. The former tradition where close kin takes care of orphans no longer seems to function. Many relatives seem to feel too poor to take an additional child in their home and poor children especially in towns are often left to manage on their own (POLUHA 2007: 4). The Ministry of Education (MoE) reacts to the HIV/AIDS threat by introducing HIV/AIDS education into their curricula. But so far there is no governmental program showing how to support AIDS orphans.
- Children with various disabilities: In 2006 a special needs strategy was introduced in Ethiopia. Special needs education (SNE) remains still in its initial stage. The chances of a disabled child not being in school are two to three times greater than for a child who is not disabled in many sub-Saharan countries. In 2000 the enrolment in special schools in Ethiopia was only 3800 out of 2.73 million children with special needs. This figure does not include children enrolled in inclusive orientated schools or in school programs offered through NGOs and faith based organizations. One of the main obstacles to expand SNE, besides untrained staff and teachers, is to find in backward attitude and bias explaining disability as a curse or punishment from God (ZEHLE 2008: 239).
- Children from remote areas and pastoralists? children: Primary net enrolment rate (NER) increases led to greater geographic disparities in Benin, Ethiopia, the Gambia, Guinea, Kenya and Zambia (UNESCO 2007: 5 [2]).
- Street children: This group of children include street working children, working children and street children. Some provision is made for street children in Ethiopia mainly through NGOs and faith based organizations. According to the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs (MoLSA) 2002 about 150,000 children live on the street in Ethiopia, 60,000 of them in Addis Ababa. However, UNICEF 2000 estimates that the problem might be more serious with nearly 600,000 street children countrywide and over 100,000 in Addis Ababa. If children are able to combine daily labour work and school attendance then this is mainly in non-formal education (NFE) programs (ZEHLE 2008: 309). Although strengthened as a fundamental pillar within the educational system the amount of budget allocated to NFE still remains low: 1.1% of the total education budget (CHECKOLE 2004: 4).
- Children growing up in refugee camps.
- Children growing up in prison as their mothers are in custody.
Hardly any investigation has been conducted so far in the education of the last two mentioned groups of children. And of course this list of out of school children is incomplete and different priorities have to be set in different regions. Additionally to the actual enrolment situation at primary level, demographic pressure will remain a challenge for the next decade, when the primary school age population is expected to grow at a sustained pace particularly in sub-Saharan Africa with expected growth of 22% (UNESCO 2008: 42). Ethiopian?s Government public expenditure on education as a percentage of the gross national product (GNP) increased from 3.6% in 1999 to 6.1% (UNESCO 2008: 14 [2]). At the same time external assistance and loans to implement the education sector development plan (ESDP) and to promote EFA goals through Fast Track initiatives show an increasing trend compared to governmental contribution: 1996/97: 12.5% to 2000/01: 21.3% (CHECKOLE 2004: 7). The numbers and figures noted so far do not give evidence of the quality of primary education. Ethiopia has undertaken two national learning assessment samples, both of which indicated that only half of the students at grades four and eight met the achievement expected of their grade.
To conclude, noteworthy progress has been made by the Ethiopian Government to achieve EFA. But it is doubtful whether the expansive growth (of numbers) really leads to sustainable fundamental growth ? not only quantitative but qualitative. As long as marginalized groups of the population are still excluded from basic primary education, achieving EFA by 2015 will remain a challenge for Ethiopia.
References
AYALEW Shibeshi; ARSANO, Yakob [1]: the Case of Ethiopia. In: Yamada, Shoko: The local meanings of education for All and the Process of adopting EFA development Goals in Kenya, Tanzania and Ethiopia, Tokyo 2007
BINES, Hazel; WOODS, Eric: Cross country (Eritrea, Ethiopia, Rwanda and Tanzania) case study. Country profile prepared for the Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2008. Education for All by 2015: will we make it? Paris 2007
CHECKOLE, K.: Ethiopia Study. Background paper prepared for the Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2005 The Qualitative Imperative, Paris 2004
MAYRHOFER, Wofgang: the history of education in a (nearly) forgotten country: The case of Ethiopia. In: Wartenberg, Dieter: Mayrhofer, Wolfgang (Editor): Education in Ethiopia, Hamburg 2001: 138-165
MOE (Ministry of Education) Education Management Information System (EMIS): Educational Statistics Annual Abstract 1998 E.C./2005-06, Addis Ababa 2007
POLUHA, Eva: Research on Ethiopian Children: Subjects covered and possible new themes, Trondheim 2007 (unpublished manuscript)
UNESCO: Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2008. Education for All by 2015: will we make it? Paris 2007 [1]
UNESCO: Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2008. Education for All by 2015: will we make it? Regional overview; sub-Saharan Africa, Paris 2007 [2]
ZEHLE, Jana: Dropout im Schuleingangsbereich an staatlichen Primarschulen Aethiopiens als ein Indikator fuer latente Lernschwierigkeiten. Eine wissenschaftliche Untersuchung im Rahmen der interkulturell und international vergleichenden Sonderpaedagogik in der qualitativen Entwicklungszusammenarbeit, Berlin 2008
Notes
[1] Ethiopian names have been entered generally by first name rather than by father?s name.
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