No matter
your job, you need standards to ensure that you are working to meet your
objectives. Unfortunately, where education and schools are concerned, these
standards sometimes do not exist. Or, more often, they are not enforced.
Schools are decidedly sub-standard in some places, with those in sub-Saharan
Africa facing particularly strong challenges. Many teachers are not
sufficiently prepared in the region, classrooms are often overcrowded, infrastructure
is crumbling and learning is suffering.
Even though
the number of children not in school globally has stagnated between 2008 and
2015, this doesn’t mean that the number going to school is stagnating too.
During the same period, 30 million more children enrolled in primary school in
sub-Saharan Africa alone - that’s more than all the children enrolled in
primary school in the United States. Is it any wonder that standards are
slipping?
Depending
on what side of the fence you sit, the diversification of education providers,
often in the form of low-fee private schools, can be a blessing or a curse.
Many of these schools sprouted in densely populated slums, including in Kibera,
Kenya, where governments did not wish to set foot. They attracted families
aspiring to improve the education of their children. But oftentimes these
schools have not lived up to expectations.
What the
newest Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report, Accountability in education: meeting our
commitments, shows
us is that governments must establish standards and regulations that lay down
the law for all education providers, public and private. If they do not,
negative practices quickly take hold.
At present,
governments may not have standards in place even for public schools. We found
that there are no regulations on class sizes in primary school in 10 countries
in sub-Saharan Africa, including Liberia, Sierra Leone, Mali and Togo. This is
a major challenge for teachers and a big contributor to low learning outcomes.
Less than half of low and middle income countries reviewed by the World Bank
had established standards for early childhood education – and even fewer
monitored and enforced those regulations.
When governments relinquish control of education to private
providers, it is equally if not more important that standards be in place to
regulate them. By 2021, it is expected that one in four primary school age
pupils in sub-Saharan Africa will be in private schools, up from 13.5 per cent in 2015.
If these schools’ way of working does not meet the aspirations of our global
education goal, SDG 4, it is highly unlikely we will achieve it.
The reality, we found, is that regulations are not being
created or streamlined to adjust to the fast rate with which education systems
are expanding. The very first step of accrediting schools in the first place is
often cumbersome, prone to corruption, and therefore slow, leaving many
operating without meeting even minimum safety and infrastructure standards. In
2010/11, for example, only 26 per cent of private schools in Lagos had been approved by
the Ministry of Education. In Kenya and Uganda, some private schools were
operating without qualified teachers and with inadequate infrastructure before
regulations were put in place and courts shut them down.
An education system is not the work of just one person or
body. An education system of good quality is a shared responsibility between
multiple actors, governments, teachers, schools, parents and the private
sector. But governments need to set the example, and introduce clear
regulations that lead towards the global education goal. They are the missing
link for restoring trust in the education system.
*Contributed
by Dr. Manos Antoninis, Director, Global Education Monitoring Repor at UNESCO
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