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200M children in the world are out-of-school

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By Mercy Kelani

Education aids easy acceleration of achievement of progress towards SDGs.

The right to education is entrenched in article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The declaration stresses free and mandatory elementary education. Likewise, the Convention on the Rights of the Child which was adopted in 1989 assert that countries should make higher education accessible to all. Education is globally regarded as a human right, a public responsibility and a public need. To celebrate the role of education in ensuring peace and development, the United Nations General Assembly announced January 24 as International Day for Education.

In September 2015, when the United Nations adopted the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, there was a recognition of education as an essentiality for achieving all its 17 goals. Education is highly significant for acceleration of progress towards all the Sustainable Development Goals against global recession, the climate crisis and growing inequalities. The Sustainable Development Goal 4 is particularly focused on ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education and promotion of lifelong learning opportunities for all by 2030.

600 million children cannot read or do basic math.

Education helps children out of poverty and directs them towards a promising future. However, there are currently over 200 million children and adolescents across the world who are out of school; about 600 million children and adolescents who lack the ability to read and do basic math; about 30 percent of girls in Sub-Saharan Africa complete junior secondary school while some four million children and youth refugees are out of school. According to human rights, there is violation of the children’s right to education.

Lack of inclusive and equitable quality education and long-lasting opportunities for all would not make countries succeed in achievement of gender equality and elimination of the cycle of poverty that affects millions of children, youths and adults across the globe. The Transformation Education Summit was therefore organized to address the global crisis of equity and inclusion, quality and relevance in education. The Summit provides an opportunity for elevation of education to the forefront of the global political agenda, mobilization of action, ambition, solidarity and solutions for recovery of pandemic-related learning losses and enable transformation of education in the world.

Children in northern Nigeria are deprived of education.

Although primary education is officially free and mandatory in Nigeria, over 10 million of the children aged 5-14 years in the country are out of school; about 60 percent of 6-11 year old children attend primary school on a regular basis and only 35 percent of children from age 36-59 months get early childhood education. In north-eastern Nigeria, almost 3 million children require education in emergencies support in three states affected by the conflict; Borno, Yobe and Adamawa states.

Education deprivation is highly apparent in northern Nigeria and is propelled by different factors which include economic barriers and socio-cultural norms and practices that demoralize attendance in formal education, mostly for girls. However, 29 percent and 35 percent of Muslim children in north-eastern and north-western states, respectively, receive Qur’anic education which lacks inclusion of basic skills like literacy and numeracy. Officially, children who attend such schools are considered out-of-school by the government. There is therefore a need to ensure educational provision in these states.

Agency ensures quality education from childhood to higher education.

UNESCO is saddled with the responsibility of providing global and regional leadership in education, strengthening education systems around the world and responding to contemporary global challenges with the aid of education, emphasizing gender equality as a fundamental principle. It is concerned with quality educational development from early childhood education to higher education and beyond. UNICEF support education by contributing to pre-primary education in 129 countries across the globe through “building political commitment to quality pre-primary education through evidence generation, advocacy and communication.


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