Education
is considered a human right and every child has the right to have basic
education.
Investing
in education is critical for countries because education investments yield enormous individual and societal rewards. In the areas of population and health, education, particularly of women leads to later age at marriage and first birth, higher use of family planning, better maternal and child health, greater survival of children and higher life expectancy.
Also of importance is the need for countries need to invest in quality education because that is what leads to learning and skills development.
Also of importance is the need for countries need to invest in quality education because that is what leads to learning and skills development.
We compare educational attainment and literacy using data on young adults aged 15-24 years in 20 sub-Saharan African countries* who conducted their most Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) in the past 5 years. We see that despite gains in educational attainment - 84% of these young adults have had some schooling and just under half have completed secondary education and higher - there is still considerable work to be done.
When we look at literacy measured simply as the ability to read a short sentence in English or a local language, we find that young adults need to complete at least secondary education to have the basic literacy skills. Based on the educational attainment we would expect that the percent of young adults who cannot read a sentence would be about the same as the percent who have not been to school but we see that is not the case. Only about half of people that have completed primary education are able to fully read a short sentence. Almost one in five (19%) of people that completed primary education can only read parts of a sentence and a little under one in three (29%) cannot read at all.
This is cause for concern as one would expect that by the end of primary school, most children should have acquired the foundation literacy skills needed to navigate adulthood. However, that happens for only half of primary school leavers. With many sub-Saharan African countries offering free primary education but not secondary education, poorer children are at greater risk of not acquiring the needed literacy skills if they cannot afford to pay for secondary education. It is clear that countries offering free primary education must now turn their efforts to improving the quality of education to ensure primary school leavers have basic literacy skills that they can utilize when transitioning to the labour force.
* Angola, Benin, Burundi, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mali, Nigeria, Rwanda, Senegal, South Africa, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.