251 million children globally are out of school- UNESCO report

The new annual global education monitoring report by UNESCO indicates that 251 million are out of school (OOS) which is a mere reduction of 1% since 2015.

Also, the number of OOS children in Africa increased by 12 million. Nigeria’s OOS population accounts for 15% of the global total.

For instance, a 2022 report by UNICEF shows

“1 in 3 children are out-of-school (OOS) in Nigeria. This means 10.2 million at the primary level and 8.1 million at the junior secondary school (JSS) level1. 12.4 million children never attended school and 5.9 million left school early”.

Global progress in improving education is clearly stagnating, particularly since 2015 when the global education goal, SDG 4 was set.

Other findings from the report states that:

650 million leave school without a secondary school certificate.  The gap between the poorest and richest students’ education completion rates has widened, significantly affecting the most disadvantaged.

The quality of education and learning levels are suffering as children are less likely to be able to read with understanding today than a decade ago, a step back in progress.

The quality standards for teachers are dropping in both sub-Saharan Africa, but also in Europe and North America.

In terms of finance, the report indicates that finance has been insufficient to help speed up progress, and the cost of debt servicing is adding pressure.

Also, education spending per child has remained flat since 2010, signalling a lack of investment. In Africa, nearly as much is spent on debt servicing as on education, which limits the ability to improve education outcomes.

The report therefore calls for investing in strong leaders within the education system to find a way out of this crisis.

Professionalising the role of teachers

Almost a third of countries hire principals based on their political stance. Also, based on a survey of principals in poorer countries, 68% of their time was spent on administrative issues.

Therefore school leaders need to be free from excessive administrative tasks so that they can focus on improving learning outcomes.

In addition to that is to professionalize the role of school leaders as over half of leaders in the richest countries start their job without any training.