Senegal's Islamic Schools

Many are sent by parents in Senegal to Islamic schools, called daaras, where they are expected to receive food, shelter and teachings from the Koran. But tens of thousands of children in daaras across the West African nation are forced to beg in the streets to make money for their teachers, called marabouts, said rights groups such as Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Anti-Slavery International.

President Macky Sall in June ordered the removal of children from the streets and said those who force them to beg would be imprisoned in a drive to end a practice estimated by the United Nations to generate $8 million a year for Koranic teachers in the capital.

Yet fewer than 1,000 talibe [street-kids] of more than 30,000 in Dakar have been swept off the streets to date, with marabouts hiding them away or dressing them smartly to evade detection, said the state's national director of child protection Niokhobaye Diouf. "Many disappeared after Sall's announcement ... hidden by the crooked people who profit from their begging," Diouf said.

Sall vowed to close unsafe daaras after nine children died in 2013 in a fire, yet few have been shut down, while an anti-trafficking law passed in 2005 to stop the abuse of talibe has since led to only a dozen prosecutions of marabouts, HRW said. A draft law to regulate and modernise the daaras has stalled amid concerns from marabouts about the integration of the schools into Senegal's education system, activists said.

Many activists said prosecuting marabouts is key to ending abuses. "With the regulatory law in limbo and daaras not part of the education system, how else can Senegal ensure talibe are not subjected to begging and abuse?" said Lauren Seibert of HRW.

Yet few prosecutors choose to take on cases against marabouts, according to a spokesman for the justice ministry's anti-trafficking task force (CNLTP). Only a handful of marabouts have been jailed in cases of extreme abuse and deaths of talibe in recent years, activists said, while Senegal has only made two convictions for forced begging since 2014, found the U.S. TIP report.

"It may be harder to change the mindset of prosecutors than that of marabouts," said Laetitia Bazzi of the U.N. children's agency (UNICEF).

Class War - Fees Must End

Protests have raged on South African campuses in recent weeks as students demand free university tuition for all in a nation still riven by inequality and racial divisions. Bishop Ziphozihle Siwa, the head of the South African Council of Churches, says that the students’ grievances started well before they were born, even before he was born -- when the racist apartheid regime drew a hard line between black and white, rich and poor. Apartheid may have formally ended, but the fees make attending university impossible for many black youth.

"The aftermath of apartheid has not been sufficiently dealt with. You are allowed to go around, but economic marginalization hasn’t changed much and opportunity certainly isn’t equal," student council representative Thalo Mokoena explained. "It’s no way as bad as it was, but there are parallels with back then." 

The protests are showing no sign of stopping after they first emerged late last year. In recent weeks, protests have swept across most of South Africa’s 26 universities, with clashes between students and police at some campuses. Some universities have been forced to suspend classes, citing security concerns.

The latest round of protests was spurred by September’s announcement that universities could raise fees by as much as 8 percent. The government has been obliged to pledge to cover that increase for lower-income students, which is about 75 percent of the student population. The government says it does not have enough money to provide free higher education.

The issue is not exclusive to South Africa. Many students who graduate around the world end up doing so with huge amounts of debt. The protests are also a proxy against wider inequality that still persists in the country. The universities have become a class battle-field

Laptops or desks?

Six-year-old Kenyan pupil Kizito Wafula could soon be using a government-funded laptop, but his school in the west of the country has no desks or chairs - and, crucially, no electricity to power it. Kenya's government pledged to give first year primary school students access to laptops in an ambitious $600m (£425m) Digischool scheme.

Kizito will continue to use scraps of paper to write down his notes, keeping them bundled in a small black plastic bag. Kizito and his six siblings live with their grandmother, who cannot afford to buy exercise books. "He doesn't have proper books so he borrows paper plucked from other pupils books," says Florence Misiko, the head teacher at St Jude Nabuyeywe in Bungoma, a poor farming area.

At school, he sits on the dusty floor with his 90 classmates, using torn cardboard boxes and worn out sacks as mats.

"It is really hard for these pupils to learn like this," says Mrs Misiko. "But we are doing everything we can even with little resources. We have actually just received several bags of cement from the county government to finish off the floors of the classes. But we need much much more, as you can see," she says, pointing at the gaping holes where windows and doors should be. Even if we get laptops, how would we have used them under these conditions? Our priority now is getting students desks and enough books."

St Jude Nabuyeywe is typical of many schools in poor and rural areas of Kenya - connection to the electricity grid and internet remains a pipe dream. 20% of Kenya's primary schools do not have the basic necessities.

Marriage and Poverty

Tanzania has one of the highest adolescent pregnancy and birth rates in the world with one in every six girls aged between 15 and 19 getting pregnant, according to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)

While Tanzania has made huge progress in enrolling children in primary schools, few girls in rural areas manage to finish their education due to pregnancy said Consolata Mabula, a district social worker in Shinyanga region.

Zulmira Rodrigues, the UNESCO representative in Tanzania explained that “Education is the only key to allow young girls make informed decisions about their lives to improve their social economic wellbeing,” she said. According to her, most adolescent girls in rural areas often succumb to sexual violence and unwanted pregnancies due to a lack of proper reproductive health information.

“Some parents would rather marry off their daughters to get a dowry than let them go to school” said Leah Omari, a lecturer at the Institute of Social Work in Dar es Salaam. According to UNESCO, teachers in Shinyanga region reported that some parents have been instructing their daughters to deliberately fail so that their education would be terminated and then they could get married.

While sex with underage girls is criminalised in Tanzania, activists say parents often use this tactic to marry off their daughters under special dispensation granted by the marriage law. According to Tanzania’s Marriage Act of 1971, a girl as young as 15- years old can get married with parental or a court consent.

“Poverty is a key factor,” says Eda Sanga, the Executive Director of Tamwa - a women’s rights organisation based in Dar es Salaam. “Parents force underage girls to marry so they can escape the role of taking care of their daughters and grandchildren.”

http://www.ipsnews.net/2016/01/tanzania-girls-struggle-to-avoid-forced-marriage-yearn-to-learn/

Promoting the private, for-profit schools in Africa

Private, for-profit schools in Africa funded by the World Bank and U.S. venture capitalists have been criticized by more than 100 organizations. A schools project is called Bridge International Academies and 100,000 pupils have enrolled in 412 schools across the two nations. BIA is supported by the World Bank, which has given $10 million to the project, and a number of investors, including U.S. venture capitalists NEA and Learn Capital. Other notable investors include Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Pierre Omidyar and Pearson, a multinational publishing company.

Jim Kim, president of the World Bank, praised BIA as a means to alleviate poverty in Kenya and Uganda. Critics responded that many Kenyans and Ugandans cannot afford private education, further arguing that this type of investment merely supports Western businesses at the expense of local public services.

In an open  letter addressed to Kim critics assert:

“We, civil society organisations and citizens of Kenya and Uganda, are appalled that an organisation whose mandate is supposed to be to lift people out of poverty shows such a profound misunderstanding and disconnect from the lives and rights of poor people in Kenya and Uganda. If the World Bank is serious about improving education in Kenya and Uganda, it should support our governments to expand and improve our public education systems, provide quality education to all children free of charge, and address other financial barriers to access.”

It was written and signed by 30 organizations in Uganda and Kenya and supported by 116 organizations around the world, including Global Justice Now and ActionAid. They claim BIA uses highly standardized teaching methods, untrained low-paid teachers, and aggressive marketing strategies targeted at poor households.

The World Bank president’s assertion that the “the cost per student at Bridge Academies is just $6 dollars a month” was misleading.

“This suggestion that $6 is an acceptable amount of money for poor households to pay reveals a profound lack of understanding of the reality of the lives of the poorest,” Global Justice Now, a London-based organization promoting social justice, wrote on its website in May. A spokesperson added that Kenyan and Ugandan organizations calculated that for half their populations, the $6 per month per child it would cost to send three primary school age children to a Bridge Academy, is equal to at least a quarter of their monthly income. Many families are already struggling to provide three meals a day to their children. Global Justice Now claimed that the real total cost of sending one child to a Bridge school is between $9 and $13 a month, and up to $20 when including school meals. “Based on these figures, sending three children to BIA would represent 68% (in Kenya) to 75% (in Uganda) of the monthly income of half the population in these countries,” the organization stated.

Salima Namusobya, director of the Initiative for Socio-Economic Rights in Uganda, said:

“If the World Bank is genuine about fulfilling its mission to provide every child with the chance to have a high-quality primary education regardless of their family’s income, they should be campaigning for a no-fee system in particular contexts like that of Uganda.”

Kishore Singh, the U.N. special rapporteur on the right to education, who argues that private schools must be resisted because they aggravate inequality. Singh cited a study on private education by the U.K.’s Department for International Development that said a large number of low-fee private schools targeting poorer families in developing countries were unregistered. “These schools save costs by hiring ill-trained teachers and running large classes in substandard school buildings,” Singh wrote, adding: “Such ‘edu-businesses’, as they have come to be known, are an unsatisfactory replacement for the good public education governments should be providing.”

A Global Justice Now spokesperson told MintPress News: “British taxpayers are forcing private education systems on countries like Uganda and Kenya through schemes like this backed by DfID and the World Bank.” Aid is being used as a tool, Global Justice Now added, to compel the majority of the world to undertake policies which help Western business while undermining public services in emerging nations. “The introduction of universal education, the increasing length of compulsory education, the creation of comprehensive schools — these are some of the greatest social achievements we have ever made in the U.K., and we remain rightly proud of them. The U.K. aid budget and World Bank development policies could and should be used to help others to achieve these vital components of a decent society.”

Katie Malouf Bous, of Oxfam International, is quoted by Action Aid as saying:

“Too many governments have neglected their duty to adequately finance education, leading to weakened public schools and increased privatization as the inevitable result. Serious and substantial investments to provide good quality public education must be the antidote to privatization.”

Education should be free...Everything should be free

Just one third of countries have achieved all of the measurable Education for All (EFA) goals set in 2000. None achieved them in sub-Saharan Africa; only seven countries in the region attained even the most watched goal of universal primary enrolment. Sixteen of the 20 lowest ranked countries in progress towards 'Education for All' are in sub-Saharan Africa.

The 2015 EFA Global Monitoring Report (GMR) found that the number of children enrolled in primary school in sub-Saharan Africa increased by 75 percent to 144 million in 2012. However, 30 million children remain out of school in the region. Corruption, conflict, climate change and poverty are factors that hampered progress in many countries.

Nigeria, for example, now has more children out of school than when the global goals were set. Inefficient public spending saw the loss of US$21 million of education funding leaving a shortfall of 220,000 primary school teachers.

Niger not only failed to reach any of the goals, but also has growing inequality, leaving the poorest far less likely to get free education than they were in 2000.

South Africa and Cape Verde had both achieved Universal Primary Education in 1999, but have since moved away from the goal. Chad ranks at the bottom of the Education Development Index with less than 70 percent of children enrolled in primary school.

Some countries have made remarkable progress since 2000. Progress is especially notable among those who focused on helping the poorest with initiatives, including abolishing school fees, providing school uniforms, meals and books. Burundi, the Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Sierra Leone and Tanzania more than halved the percentage of children who had never been to school. South Africa reduced its adult illiteracy rates by two-thirds. Equatorial Guinea had fewer than four girls to boys in primary school in 2000, but has now achieved gender parity. Ghana, for example, had pre-primary enrolment rates of only 47 percent in 1999, but now provides universal access at that level.

As long as education is something to be bought and sold, it can’t be as fulfilling as it should be. If society was owned and run by the community as a whole, then we could have free access to the kinds of education we want.

The World Socialist Movement aims for a world without national borders. Countries, as the boundaries of different states, represent the ruling class who own the land and resources there. This way of dividing up the world doesn’t benefit the vast majority of us, who have very little influence in how the country we happen to live in is run. In a socialist society, people could move freely anywhere, without being dictated to by economic and political pressures. The artificial divisions between us which come with our nationality would no longer apply. If the world was owned in common, then we would live and work co-operatively for the benefit of everyone.

The World Socialist Movement aims for a world where all work is voluntary and co-operative, without employers or employed. We would have the freedom to train and work in whichever career we wanted. If society’s infrastructure was owned in common, rather than by a minority, we could run it to benefit everyone. We could work sustainably with all the resources we need, without the market system holding us back. The reasons for the stress and frustration of being employed – and unemployed – won’t exist.

The World Socialist Movement  aims for a comprehensive health service which has all the trained staff and resources it needs. The only way this could happen is if it was part of a society where all resources are owned and democratically run by the community as a whole. Then, we could work directly to benefit ourselves and others. This health service, along with all other services and goods, would be free for anyone to access.

Land-grabbing from children

Kenyan police have fired tear gas at school-children in Nairobi who were protesting about the sale of their playground to a private developer. Pupils had returned to the Lang'ata school after a two-week teachers strike to find the play area fenced off to construct a parking lot for a politician’s hotel adjacent to the school.

The school has about 1,000 children between the ages of three and 14 and is run by Nairobi city council. Several children were hurt in the police action to disperse the protest and have been taken to hospital. Around 100 primary school children and a small group of activists pushed over a newly built wall that separated playing fields and the school buildings, close to the capital Nairobi's main domestic airport. The majority of the children were aged between eight and 13. Around 40 armed police accompanied by dogs dispersed the protesters by firing tear gas canisters, an AFP photographer at the scene said. Dozens of children were caught in choking clouds of tear gas before being forced to shelter on a pedestrian bridge over the main road to escape the noxious fumes. Children screamed as police officers in riot gear and waving truncheons pushed them back, some panicking as they sought water to wash their burning eyes.

A senior police officer at the demonstration, Mwangi Kuria, told Kenya's Daily Nation newspaper that officers had been deployed to "safeguard the property." Macharia Njeru, chairman of the Independent Policing Oversight Authority, said the incident would be investigated. "Tear-gassing children is inexcusable,"

The city council has said the playground is public land. It has not commented on the legal status of the apparent sale. Critics have alleged that corrupt elements were behind a deal to turn the land over to the developer. The playground which has been acquired by a private developer said to be a powerful politician, said Boniface Mwangi, a Kenyan human rights activist. “The governor, the senator and other government officials are all scared of the politician, they cannot do anything to stop the playground from the being taken,” Mwangi said.

Nairobi, a city of more than three million people, is rapidly growing and land prices are rising at some of the fastest rates anywhere on the continent, according to real estate experts. Children carried placards protesting against the alleged land grab. "Kenya: the land of shameless grabbers," read one.

“This is brutality beyond words and greed beyond description. It is difficult to believe that police can actually deploy against primary school children and lob tear gas at them to defend a land grabber. This image of a nation determined to steal forcefully from its own children cannot be what we aspire to. It cannot be the legacy we want to bequeath the children,” said opposition leader Raila Odinga.

Education? What's the use?

Africans with more education do not always see an employment benefit from their schooling. In fact, in most of the 29 countries Gallup surveyed in 2013, Africans with at least some secondary education fare only marginally better than Africans with a primary education in terms of a positive employment outcome (Gallup defines a positive employment outcome as working full time for an employer, working part time but not wanting full-time work or being self-employed by choice and not because they cannot find a job.)

Figures paint a dismal, inconsistent picture of the employment reward for continued education in Africa. This situation likely only further fuels the lack of incentive that often exists for Africans to continue their education. Throughout sub-Saharan Africa, basic needs often compete with a family's ability to send their children to school. While primary education may be viewed as supporting certain occupational activities in rural and urban communities, it is likely that some families do not see the benefit of continued education. And, even if families do, the labor sacrifice makes enrollment beyond primary school infeasible. African families who continue sending their children to school likely do so because they believe it will lead to better jobs.

The results suggest the levels of unemployment and underemployment in most countries surveyed are similar regardless of Africans' educational attainment. This means a family may sacrifice for their child to get more education only to see their child unemployed or underemployed at the same level as someone who only obtained a primary education.

The disparity in educational attainment across sub-Saharan Africa further highlights the region's challenges in achieving universal education. Countries such as Niger and Burkina Faso have lower percentages of their populations achieving at least some secondary education (6% and 10% respectively) while South Africa and Zimbabwe have 73% and 74% of their population with at least some secondary education. Interestingly, while the levels of some secondary education and higher vary significantly between Zimbabwe and Niger, the positive employment outcome is nearly the same.

Developed countries often experience structural unemployment where the persistent mismatch of skills and available jobs requires job seekers to obtain additional education or vocational training. The levels of unemployment and underemployment seen throughout sub-Saharan Africa, however, suggest the mismatch may lie in the lack of opportunities available for those with more education. African employment opportunities must keep pace with growing levels of secondary and tertiary education achievement. Persistent structural unemployment that penalizes those with higher education creates the conditions for "brain drain" while also creating disincentives for continued education.

Sub-Saharan Africa's structural unemployment challenges illustrate the complexities of sustainable development. For instance, Nigeria's oil industry funds further investment in education but produces relatively few jobs. In other parts of sub-Saharan Africa, university curriculums prepare graduates for public, not private, sector employment. This focus ensures persistent skills mismatches while also potentially influencing the decisions of multinational corporations seeking to recruit locally. Education is an important component in addressing sub-Saharan Africa's challenges. However, if Africans do not see higher education leading to better employment opportunities, the region will continue to lose its brightest talents to countries with better economic opportunities. This might be one factor ultimately leading to the region having a diminished voice in determining its own future.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/180413/africans-not-reaping-job-benefits-education.aspx

Fact of the Day

 About 30 million primary school-aged children in sub-Saharan Africa are not in class, partially because of conflict and poverty. The situation is especially dire in West and Central Africa, which has the largest proportion of children out of school of any region in the world.

http://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/education/article/UN-30-million-African-kids-missing-primary-school-5558573.php

Desperate For School

DOYABA/SIDDHO/N’DJAMENA, 26 May 2014 (IRIN) -

 Some 40,900 children and thousands more youths displaced by the violence in the Central African Republic (CAR) are stuck in transit camps in southern Chad with no formal school to attend, few to no training opportunities, and no jobs, leaving them with no sense of what the future will bring.

“There is nothing to do here - we do nothing all day,” said Ibrahim Oumar, 25, in Doyaba transit camp near Sarh, which houses mainly Chadian returnees from CAR, many of them born in CAR. Oumar studied finance at college. “I’d do anything I could work-wise. One day I’ll return [to Bangui] to finish.”

Abdou Aziz Tarik, 17, from the CAR capital Bangui, told IRIN: “With school you can do something. Without it you’ll achieve nothing.”

Displaced teachers have set up informal schools in some sites. For instance, in Doyaba transit camp, they set up a school in which 3,200 primary and pre-school children have enrolled. But none cater for the needs of secondary school students. Some 4,000 of the displaced children have been relocated to pre-existing schools but as yet no children are being formally educated in camps, according to the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF).

Some 97,000 refugees and returnees have fled CAR over 2013 and 2014 seeking safety in Chad, according to the UN Refugee Agency.


Read more about this here

Schools Out

It will be more than 70 years before all children have access to primary school, says a report from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.  57 million remain without schools and at the current rate it will be 2086 before access is reached for poor, rural African girls.

In poor countries, one in four young people is unable to read a single sentence. There are 130 million children who remain illiterate and innumerate despite having been in school. Nigeria has the single greatest number of children without a primary school place - a higher figure now than when the pledges were made at the beginning of the century. In Tanzania, only 3.5% of children have textbooks and there are overcrowded class sizes of up to 130 pupils in Malawi.

 In west Africa, it warns of too many teachers who are on low pay, temporary contracts and with little training. The quantity of teachers would also need to be increased, with an extra 1.6 million needed to provide enough primary school places.

But aid to education has declined at a greater rate than overall aid budgets, says the report.
"One of the things that we found shocking was that low income countries faced the biggest losses in aid," says report author, Dr Rose.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25811704

Education For Self-Determination And Emancipation

From Good Governance Africa some statistics revealing the paucity of possibilities for millions of Africans, especially those of Sub-Saharan Africa. Without doubt education is an absolute prerequisite enabling individuals to have access to the tools and information they require for developing their lives on their chosen path. Education matters, as the writer says, for emancipation and self-determination. Socialists would add that this education, for Africans and the world, should be stripped of its capitalist based monetary principles in order to assure real emancipation.
JS

Africa’s education on shaky foundations

In sub-Saharan Africa, one in every three adults is illiterate, according to the
World Bank. African governments have improved the next generation’s literacy by getting more children into schools. Their efforts have shown results: primary school enrolment has increased from 59% in 1999 to 77% in 2010 in sub-Saharan Africa, according to UNESCO, the UN agency responsible for promoting education. This progress is part of a global campaign to ensure that all children are able to complete primary school by 2015, one of the Millennium Development Goals defined in Dakar in 2000.

With the exception of the Arab states and sub-Saharan Africa, all regions of the world are close to achieving the target, with enrolment rates above 93%
throughout. Although more African children are entering school, too many leave before finishing. In three-quarters of sub-Saharan African countries for which data are available, more than 30% of primary students who start school are expected to drop out before they reach the last grade of elementary school, and less than 10% make it through the education system to university, according to UNESCO. Nor are children learning as much as they should.

The Brookings Institution, a US think-tank, estimates that 61m African children of primary school age—one out of every two—will reach their adolescent years unable to read, write, or perform basic numeracy tasks. In Tanzania this means that 28% of Tanzanian sixth-grade pupils are able to read at the appropriate level; in Kenya only 19%; and less than 10% in Uganda, according to the Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational
Quality, a group of 15 African education ministries.
This matters because modern states and economies cannot function without
well-informed and educated citizens. Poor education limits a nation’s economic
productivity and prevents citizens from interacting fully with their state and society.

The need for education is made even more pressing by Africa’s growing
population, expected to balloon from 1 billion in 2010 to 1.6 billion in 2030, according to the African Development Bank. To reap the demographic dividend—an economic bonanza resulting from having many working-age people and few dependents—the continent will need many more educated young people who are able to create jobs and compete with the rest of the world.

For as long as Africans neglect good education, they will depend on outsiders.
Chinese engineers will continue to build their roads and railways. The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund will develop their economic policies. They will remain exporters of raw materials rather than manufacturers of industrial goods. Education matters not only for economic development and democratic progress, but also for emancipation and self-determination.

John Endres CEO of Good Governance Africa (www.gga.org)

Curse Charity

I worked as a school manager at Bridge International Academiesfrom  2010 to mid this year. The company’s business is educating the less fortunate in society at an affordable cost. Most of the company's schools are constructed using iron sheets. And they are located in the slums.

Workers (teachers, school managers) in these schools are poorly paid, work for long hours and are not represented in any trade union. The proprietor of these schools is a top American capitalist. Profit is his main theme, though from time to time high quality education is dangled to parents and in prospectuses to attract them to the schools.

Workers are paid per the pupils who pay that month. Those who pay later on don't count for this and the money remains the profit of the company (worker's sweat). Any worker who makes a slight attempt to as complain or show displeasure is shown the door.

Morale has been low and prospects of employees scaling the corporate ladder are slim as there is no upward mobility in the firm. The company pays US nationals handsomely while Kenyans are left to feed on crumbs.

Out of the 210 schools, 75% are profitable but this profit doesn't get to those who make this a reality (teachers and school managers).

If that's the way capitalism operates, then damn the system. It's ugly and repugnant. Companies ought to realise that without their workers the wheels of their operations would grid to a halt.

Patrick.W.Ndege, 
Nairobi, Kenya.

Birthrights - Sub-Saharan Africa

The worst place in the world to give birth is the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where a woman has a one in 30 chance of dying as a result – while the best is Finland, where the risk of death is one in 12,200, according to a new analysis. The Save the Children mothers’ index, now in its 14th year, records not only the likelihood of death in pregnancy or labour but also the difficulties women face when they become mothers.

 The charity scores countries on maternal health, child mortality, education, women’s income and women’s political status. The top end of the table is dominated by European countries and Australia. The UK manages only 25th place, although it is ranked higher than the US at 30th. “The 10 top-ranked countries, in general, are among the best countries in the world for mothers’ and children’s health, educational, economic and political status,” says the report.

“The 10 bottom-ranked countries – all from sub-Saharan Africa – are a reverse image of the top 10, performing poorly on all indicators.
Conditions for mothers and their children in these countries are devastating.” In the bottom 10 countries, which include Nigeria, Gambia and Somalia, one woman in 30 is likely to die of a pregnancy-related cause. In these countries, one child in seven dies under the age of five, compared with one in 345 in Finland. Children get between two and nine years of education at best, whereas in Finland they can expect 17.

While the US scores well on the educational and economic status of women – 10th on both in the world – it is way behind the high-scoring countries on maternal health (46th) and children’s wellbeing (41st) and does badly on the political status of women (89th) – women hold only 18% of seats in Congress. Only five developed countries in the world – Albania, Latvia, Moldova, the Russian Federation and Ukraine – do worse than the US on maternal mortality.
Women in the US face a one in 2,400 risk of dying of causes related to pregnancy or childbirth. “A woman in the US is more than 10 times as likely as a woman in Estonia, Greece or Singapore to eventually die from a pregnancy-related cause,” says the report. Mortality among under-fives is 7.5 per 1,000 births in the US. “This is roughly on par with rates in Bosnia-Herzegovina, Qatar and Slovakia. At this rate, children in the US are three times as likely as children in Iceland to die before their 5th birthday,” says the report.

 Save the Children International’s chief executive, Jasmine Whitbread, said: “By investing in mothers and children, nations are investing in their future prosperity. If women are educated, are represented politically, and have access to good-quality maternal and child care, then they and their children are much more likely to survive and thrive – and so are the societies they live in. Huge progress has been made across the developing world, but much more can be done to save and improve millions of the poorest mothers’ and newborns’ lives.” For the first time, the charity has compiled a separate index on newborn deaths. While deaths of children under five around the world have come down substantially in recent years, there has been little progress on newborns.

The riskiest day of a child’s life is the day of its birth, says Save the Children: 1 million die on that day every year. The most dangerous place to be born, the index shows, is Somalia, followed by the Democratic Republic of the Congo; these are also the two most unfavourable countries for mothers.
Babies in sub-Saharan Africa are more than seven times as likely to die on the day they are born than babies in industrialised countries; Luxembourg, Iceland and then Cyprus have the best safety records.


from here

Protecting the young from marriage

75 percent of girls get married before the age of 18 in Niger, a  country of 16 million. Early marriages result in early pregancies, which compromises the girls’ future as many do not go to school once they are of marriageable age. According to 2011 statistics from the Ministry of Public Health, teenagers make up 19 percent of women of reproductive age and contribute 14 percent to the total female fertility in this country. Medical sources indicate that 40 percent of young brides fall pregnant a few months after marriage. Less than 40 percent of teenagers go for antenatal care,

“For us Muslims, marriage holds an important place in our lives,” Aminatou Abdou, 53, a housewife in Niamey told IPS.  She married off her two daughters at the ages of 15 and 16. “It is unacceptable for Muslim daughters to have no husband after puberty.”

“There is misinterpretation of the religion. Islam advocates social wellbeing. This is why I am against prematurely marrying off a daughter because this has bad implications for her health,” Malam Issa Dogo, a religious preacher “Those who marry off their daughters early do so because of ignorance. Islam is a religion which is against lack of knowledge.” However, a draft law drawn up in 2002 setting the minimum age for marriage at 18 is still being opposed by religious associations.

According to Abdou Sani, an anthropology doctorate student at the University of Abidjan, people use religion as a false pretext. The real reasons for these early marriages are ignorance and poverty, he said. “In most cases, these young girls are married off to older people who are financially well-off or have a high social status.”

“Socio-cultural pressures, particularly the desire to have a child before the first marriage anniversary often forces the young girl to prove her fertility a few months after marriage,” Salissou Habou, a sociologist in Niamey, Niger’s capital.

Because young girls fall pregnant before their bodies are mature, they are twice as likely to die during childbirth than women who over the age of 20. According to the Ministry of Public Health’s 2011 survey, the rate of maternal mortality in Niger is 554 deaths per 100,000 live births – among the highest in the world. Teenagers account for 13 percent of these deaths. Survivors often suffer from illnesses such as obstetric fistula.  In April 2013, out of 163 obstetric fistula victims counted in the country’s six healthcare centres, 80 percent were married before the age of 18.

“We must educate and keep young girls at school in order to put an end to this situation,” urged Hadiza Issoufou, a teacher and member of the Nigerien Association for the Defence of Human Rights.

private schools - private profits

Gems Education, a private school group operating in 10 countries, is embarking on a major expansion in Africa. In September, the company opened its first secondary school in Africa in Nairobi, Kenya. Further schools are planned in Nigeria, Uganda, Ghana, Mozambique, Tanzania and South Africa.

With fees starting at $1,700 a term, tuition at the Gems school in Nairobi will certainly be out of reach for the poorest people.

"Gems schools are geared to provision of high-cost education for Kenya's elite. Doubtless they will provide Mr Varkey and his shareholders with a healthy profit." Kevin Watkins, a senior fellow at the Centre for Universal Education, declared.

Uganda's class education

Children from well-to-do families take up 75% of all scholarships in public universities, while those from poorer families are left to fend for themselves. A study conducted a few years ago by A. B Kasozi, the executive director of the National Council for Higher Education, shows that 93% of slots in public universities go to the children of rich commercial farmers, businessmen and civil servants.

According to records at the public universities, 36.6% of the students’ parents are rich farmers, 33.1% are salary earners and 23.2% are business people.

The remaining 25% of the scholarships, which are 1,000 slots, are distributed three ways. That is quota system (896 slots), talented sports persons (40 places) and students with special needs (64 slots).

 One’s background determines their access to higher education and scholarships in public universities.

“Children of the wealthy attend the best nursery, primary and secondary schools,” says the executive director of the National Council for Higher Education, A. B Kasozi. He explains that these institutions have facilities needed to enable students obtain the good grades required for tertiary institutions, thereby earning them a government scholarships. At the end, it is those children from rich families that can compete to join public universities, or even get the state to pay their fees. 


These findings are corroborated by another study on social backgrounds of Makerere students. The study conducted by K. M. Mayanja found that higher education was dominated by students from wealthy backgrounds. The Gordon McGregor visitation committee of 2007, to public universities also made the same observations.

 In recent years, out of the 12,000 schools in the country, about 300 take up all the slots for government sponsorship at state universities. Nearly 100 schools of the 300 take up about to 80% of all the government sponsorship slots annually. In such upscale schools, parents pay about sh1.2m per term or sh3.6m annually in school fees. 


“How then do they fail to pay just sh2m at university?” asks Patrick Magezi, a secondary school teacher in Kiboga district.

 This year the highest number of students admitted on government sponsorship came from schools like St. Mary’s S S Kitende, Uganda Martyr’s High School, Namugongo, Ntare School, St Mary’s College, Kisubi and Mount St Mary’s College, Namagunga had the highest number of students sent to university on government sponsorship. The other top schools include Namilyango College, Mbarara High School, St. Mary’s Rushoroza, Buddo SS, Trinity College, Nabbingo, Gayaza High School, King’s College Budo, Turkish Light College, Naalya SS (Namugongo) and Nabisunsa Girls School. The schools that topped the admissions are Bweranyangi Girls, Kawempe Muslims, Crested SS and Kitabi Seminary. In 2011, Kitende, Namugongo and Mengo still had the highest number of students, who were admitted on government sponsorship to the five public universities. Others are Gombe SS, Masaka SS, Kawempe Muslims, St. Mary’s College Kisubi and Naalya SS. About 64 upscale schools had more than 10 students admitted on government scholarships to public universities this year. A total of 113 schools countrywide had only one student admitted on government Sponsorship. In 2010, still Kitende, Kawempe, Budo and Namagunga had some of the highest number of students admitted on government sponsorship. Other schools that performed were Uganda Martyrs’ Namugongo, Mulusa Academy, Ntare School, St. Mary’s College Kisubi, Naalya SS (Bweyogerere), BP Cyprian Kihangire SS.


Some senior educationists like Makerere University’s chancellor Prof. Mondo Kagonyera have argued that the government sponsorship scheme in public universities be scrapped and replaced with one which caters for poor students only. This, he observes, is because the scheme benefits children from well-to-do families, who attend top schools, while the under-privileged counterparts, who go to rural schools, cannot compete for the limited slots. In a 2004 paper, Government Student Sponsorship at Makerere University: a Fivefold Paradox, it was found that 80% of the 39 schools from which over 70% of the students admitted to Makerere came from, charged a lot more tuition fees than some of the most populous university faculties and schools.

Where are the books?

Most South Africans still face to quality education, 18 years after apartheid. A court last week found two government schools that went for five months without books in the northern Limpopo province in breach of the country's constitutional right to basic education.

"The issue of shortage of textbooks ... is not isolated in Limpopo," said Lukhanyo Mangona, spokesman for an NGO Equal Education. "We cannot quantify the number of (affected) schools, but everywhere you go you hear about these things."

Education was one of the main areas where blacks fought the racist apartheid regime, which sacrificed entire generations of blacks to the desks of a second-class "Bantu" education.

"Education was the foundation upon which inequality was fashioned during the years of apartheid, but unequal educational opportunities still remain amongst the greatest obstacles to equality, dignity and freedom in today's South Africa," said Equal Education.

http://www.thesundaily.my/news/383844
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/more-news/court-case-highlights-south-africas-lack-of-books/story-e6frf7lf-1226361429844

Union Lessons

More than 200,000 Kenyan teachers went on strike Tuesday to protest the diversion of government funds meant to hire more teachers and ease classroom overcrowding. The money has instead gone to the ministry of defense, whose spending is not publicly scrutinized.

"Children of this country are not enjoying equal opportunities," Wilson Sossion, who heads the Kenya National Union of Teachers said. "This is the struggle. We are not doing it this time around for a salary increment. We are doing it for the poor child of this country and for the poor parent of this country."

The union wants the government to give full-time jobs to 18,000 teachers hired on temporary contracts and hire an additional 9,040 teachers. Some 79,000 teachers are needed to reach the internationally recommended teacher to student ratio of one teacher to 35 students. Kenya's public schools see an average of 50 students for every teacher, though some classes have only one teacher for 100 pupils. The union projects a shortfall of 115,000 teachers in the next couple of years as the population increases.

Nearly 10 percent of 13-year-old Kenyan students cannot complete a math problem meant for 7-year-olds, according to research done earlier this year by Uwezo, a pressure group that aims to improve literacy among children in Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. Britain suspended payments to the Kenyan government intended to help poor schoolchildren after $45 million in international donor money went missing.

Literacy day

International Literacy Day was celebrated on 8 September.

According to data from UNESCO's Institute for Statistics, 793 million adults – most of them girls and women - are illiterate. A further 67 million children of primary school age are not in primary school and 72 million adolescents of lower secondary school age are also missing out their right to an education.

More than half the adult population of the following 11 countries are illiterate: Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad, Ethiopia, Gambia, Guinea, Haiti, Mali, Niger, Senegal, and Sierra Leone.