Over many years, many people have not valued education especially the uneducated parents most of who are in the developing countries with Africa being the most affected. As the cost of living is drastically increasing, education is becoming more and more essential in enabling one to live a more comfortable life through provision of employment opportunities.
Besides opening employment opportunities, basic education should be provided to uplift the way of thinking of the young ones who are our future leaders. All efforts should therefore be done to ensure that primary education is made available to every child not by choice but as a must.
Millennium development goals on education
Universal education is one of the most important goals of the millennium development goals. Due to the inequality in primary education provision in many developing nations, the United Nations set goals that are aimed at ensuring primary provision of education to all children. Their primary goal is to ensure that all children regardless of their gender get the required formal education.
Their goals towards achieving equal education to all involves provision of infrastructure to schools such as building classrooms, laboratories, as well as other facilities such as residence houses for students to avoid time consumption getting to school every morning.
This way students are not required to pay extra fees on accommodation and the other mentioned facilities. For equal primary education to be achieved, the rates of school drop outs should be reduced.
Since most drop outs result from early marriages in the girl child, efforts should be made to prevent and completely elevate early marriages which in most cases are arranged by parents due to poverty so that the family can get financial assistance from the other. Reduction of poverty is therefore directly related to school drop outs not only where early marriages are involved, but also where the basic necessities for schooling cannot be met.
The UN has already put strategies to abolish school fees with the aim of promoting continuity of primary education for the poor especially in many parts of Africa such as the sub-Sahara regions. Abolishment of school fees would definitely increase the number of children being enrolled in schools; as a result, the UN is also ensuring provision of adequate teachers and classrooms to help meet the demand resulting from overpopulation in primary schools.
For instance, after abolishment of primary school fees in the sub-Sahara regions in Africa, the number of teachers as well as classrooms needs to be doubled. This has led to allocation of funds by the UN to meet such demands. The beneficiaries of abolished primary school fees include countries such as Kenya, Malawi and Ghana among many other African countries.
Some countries such as gone have even gone to the extent of recruiting retired teachers all in the effort of ensuring that pupils do not lack some teachers. These efforts have seen Tanzania build thousands of classrooms as well as additional teacher recruitment.
Equal education opportunities involve both the boy and girl child. For many years, the girl child has been discriminated against in certain aspects such as education, but now it is the high time that they get equal treatment as the boy child.
Programs have been initiated in different countries to help in promoting education rights for the girls. For example, Egypt has initiated a program, FFE that promotes provision of friendly facilities for school girls such as providing them with free sanitary towels.
Readmission opportunities for drop outs have also been availed to give second chances to the young drop outs. Some countries such as Mongolia are providing mobile schools to help reach out to the rural residents making it easier for the children to access the service.
Children from the remote areas are as well benefiting from the introduction and use of indigenous languages. The UN through UNESCO has been supporting many countries in providing quality education to their children through programs based on legalizing primary education for all children below the age of eighteen years.
Efforts have been made to promote and encourage girls to stay in school until they obtain the final grade. Such efforts include awarding girls who complete primary education with gifts. For instance, in Ethiopia, a female is given to girls who do not drop out of school before the program is completed.
Laws that prevent early marriages are being established in some countries such as Malawi. Other means of ensuring quality provision of basic education to all children include provision of food to help sustain the children in school. Organizations such as the World Food Program are helping a lot in providing free food for the children.
This has helped as a drive for parents to send their children to school because of the assured nutrition which some of them are unable to provide due to lack of adequate income. The UN has also provided training courses for teachers where potential teachers can build their career as well as helping in meeting the rising demand for teachers (United Nations Summit 2010 p. 1).
Reference List
United Nations Summit. (2010). Millennium Development Goals. Web.