causes of inadequate education
Around the world, some 75 million children – more than half of them girls – have no opportunity to attend primary school. One in three children in Africa enrolled in school drop out of primary education. For socially disadvantaged groups such as rural or indigenous communities, poor urban dwellers, AIDS orphans or the disabled, access to education is especially difficult. In many countries, traditional role patterns stop parents enrolling girls in school. The stronger the cultural preference for boys in a particular country or region, the greater the gender disparities in the educational sector, for instance in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, and in South and West Asia.
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Rural regions in particular but also poor urban districts often lack a comprehensive primary school network. Children in rural regions often have to walk extremely long distances to school. Many girls are not allowed to attend schools some distance away as parents are concerned about their safety. Four out of five children who do not go to school live in rural regions.
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In most developing countries, the budgets allocated for primary education are too low to meet requirements and to achieve the goal of universal compulsory school attendance. According to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), developing countries spend an average of 4.4 percent of their national income on education. The United States and countries in Western Europe invest 5.5 per cent on average, some countries even invest more than 8 per cent on education. In the period between 1999 and 2006, 40 countries reduced their education expenditure – and that figure does not even include many countries that did not supply statistics. Due to high poverty rates, many people in developing countries cannot afford to pay school fees or for learning materials, school uniforms and transport to school. In countries in which school fees have been abolished enrollment rates have risen markedly.
If the primary school system is to keep pace with the growth in the number of school-age children, which is still strong, considerably more money will have to be invested – and the developing countries at any rate do not have the necessary resources at their disposal. Schools are poorly equipped - lacking textbooks and teaching materials, which even available are often as outdated as the furnishings. Schools often have no funding to cover overheads such as water, electricity, or transport for pupils. Bad governance, high staff turnover, inefficient use of funding, corruption and lack of management and organizational skills are other obstacles to the universal provision of education.
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Teachers' working conditions are unacceptable in many developing countries: many teachers have to teach two or three shifts a day – in classes with very high student numbers and on poor pay. Many teachers are also poorly trained and ill-prepared for what awaits them in schools. Many countries in sub-Saharan Africa also face a health problem: in some regions so many teachers have contracted AIDS that schools are forced to remain closed. Many developing countries face the problem of low-quality teaching. The curricula are overloaded with subjects and do not meet the learning needs of the children, and convey distorted or stereotypical images of female and male social role models. Too little account is taken of cultural and regional factors. Teaching times and curricula are too little geared to the children's actual day-to-day reality. Group work, independent learning, critical thought and problem-solving, use of new technologies, and the promotion of life skills, are not sufficiently promoted.
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