Title: Educational
engagement and out of school youth in the Commonwealth: Unpacking educational
inequalities
More than 60% of the Commonwealth population are made up of
young people, who represent the hope and strength of the Commonwealth
sustainability. The best way to prepare these young people is by giving them
the deserved quality education. That is why the young people in the
Commonwealth consider quality education as number priority as contained in the
2013 Hambantota Youth Declaration. By extension, education is the number one
mandate of the Commonwealth Youth Council, being the official voice for the
young people. The question we ask ourselves is how qualitative and accessible
is the education.
According to UNESCO report, adolescents are more likely to
be out of school than children, and there are more than 121 million children
and adolescents across the world who never started school or dropped out, and
this has caused concern about the future prosperity of the Commonwealth. It
also costs a lot on these nations, for example in Nigeria, it was reported that
the country loose equivalent to 15% of its GDP due to out of school population,
whom would have added value to the economy if educated.
Because education is monetized, the issue of affordability
becomes a concern, and that’s what underpins the large inequality between
nations and individuals in terms of access to quality education. Even though,
researches have shown that there is no absolute positive correlation between
income status of a country and the level of its literacy as some poor countries
that spend less per capita achieve high level of literacy. However, income
status has remained huge cause of inequality among individuals.
Children of the rich have higher propensity of having access
to quality education than the children of the poor. There is also inequality in
terms of ethnic and cultural persuasions, though there was a tremendous change
in perception about formal education in some strong cultural societies, there
are still remnants of such indifferent attitude toward formal education in those
society. Inequality between genders is the prominent one, as women are
perceived as domestic properties rather than active participant in societal
development.
The illusion that women’s formal education is not important,
as even if they went to the school, it is useless as they will eventually get
married. That was the fundamental and wrong belief that causes gender
inequality in educational system. Women require special provisions at
educational environments, which often not provided. Female students feel more
comfortable seeing a mixture of male and female teachers, or rather pure female
teachers. However, there are fewer female teachers in some countries. These and
so many other reasons cause the huge gaps between genders.
The women education is paramount, as we are taught that
educating one woman is like educating the whole society. This is because women
nurture all classes of people we have in society, and the best discipline and
knowledge we receive comes from mothers, and that’s why girl’s education is
very important.
Inequality as a result of disability; young people with
special requirements are literally forced out of school because there are no
provision to cater for their unique circumstances, and subsequently, they
become hopeless and feel not part of the society. Researchers have found that
people with disabilities if adequately provided with educational facilities can
outperform regular students. There are also inequalities between rural and
urban locations, as both teachers and students prefer to live in urban areas.
However, in recent times as a result of over flooding the urban areas,
educational supplies in these urban cities cannot meet up the demands.
Therefore, unequal economic and social opportunities between rural and urban
areas has caused the locational educational inequalities.
Because of the income disparities, there are children who
are perceived to be in school but are actually out of schools. There are
children who are forced to engage in labour activities to help the family earn
a living, these could be through hard labour or street hawking. Parents are
usually worried about what a child can eat at school or back at home. Some
children are out of school because they do not have mobility to travel to the
far distant and only available school. So, that is why societies loose great
scientists, engineers, economist etc, and you cannot quantify the economic loss
of losing these latent talents. Similarly, lack of quality education cause
continuous violence and restiveness in society, which is another social cost of
unequal access to education.
Education and poverty are therefore a vicious cycle; if you
are not educated you are three times more likely to be poor, and when you are
poor you are equally unlikely to be educated. Therefore, we have to ask
ourselves to what extend should we monetise our educational system. Education
is like the air we breathe, you need air to live, and you don’t pay for it.
Equally education should be accessible for all and relatively affordable.
According to the Commonwealth Youth Development Index,
educational outcomes are not wholly dependent on income of a nation (at country
level). Poor nations can achieve high levels of education, and this is further
evidenced by the fact that government spending and education do not correlate
highly. For instance, Tonga (a Commonwealth country) achieves almost complete
youth literacy whilst spending less than the United Kingdom. Therefore, size,
income, location, and history of a country does not influence the quality and
accessibility of its education systems.
What matters are the all-inclusive and robust educational
policy, compliance and strong monitoring and evaluation systems. There should
be a general and disaggregated educational indices that can be used to understand
the context of the educational issues for policy priority and evaluation. If
for example we have an index that say there are 1 million out of school young
people in xx year, then these statistic should be monitored in years to come so
that we can gauge to what extend our educational policy are impacting by now
looking at the number of the out of school children. Poverty alleviation
programmes can help improve access to education.
Education is not only about passage of knowledge, it is
about communication, and it does not make sense to me to teach a child with a
strange language. That is why primary and secondary schools should be taught in
mother’s tongue or regular language in the community. Second languages like
English, Arabic or French should be taught as a separate language study within
the educational system. So that, children can learn to speak a common language
for international and national interactions and for communication purpose.
Targets and professionals goals should be set for every student, and should be
coached toward achieving that particular goal. Student loans should be provided
for those that want to further their education. Appreciation incentives should
be provided to parents who send their kids to school regularly.
Teachers at primary and secondary schools should receive
equal salary as those of polytechnic lecturers, so that best brains can be
attracted to teach at the foundation levels. Countries that spend so much is
sponsoring students abroad should save the money and build their local
universities so that more people can access quality education within the
country, rather than allowing it for the few lucky ones. Special training and
courses can be sponsored abroad, but, it is an economic cost to keep sponsoring
students abroad to study regular courses that can be offered locally. With the
savings from reducing the foreign scholarships, government can train and hire
more qualified teachers and provide the required facilities locally. Corruption
in managing educational budget must be squarely addressed.
Finally, the importance of education cannot be over
emphasized, as education correlate with life expectancy, wellbeing, gender
equality and development. Therefore, I recommend demonetization of education.
Instead of spending money on weapons for wars, and power competition, let’s put
that money to the educational sector. We as citizen of the world, we must not
live in isolation, we must be sensitive to other nations’ backwardness and help
them prosper. Let us compete in knowledge and education, rather than competing
in nuclear and wealth.
Thank you
Ahmed Adamu
President/Chairperson, Commonwealth Youth
Council.
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