Thriving, Not Just Surviving

In an article from CNN, Catherine Mbengue, a trustee of the African Child Policy Forum (ACPF) and former senior UNICEF official, discusses a new report from Harvard entitled “Children’s Chances: How Countries Can Move from Surviving to Thriving“.  The report highlights the success of many Africa countries to remove barriers to primary education, like school fees and limited infrastructure.  But the report also reiterates the need to shift from education access to quality learning.

“When we look beyond the issue of accessibility to the quality of education our children receive,”  Mbengue notes, “the region has among the lowest education requirements for teachers, with 50% of countries requiring lower secondary school teachers to have completed no higher than a secondary education (so teachers have barely more education that their students).” African leaders must call for higher quality of education for all children, at all levels, in the post-2015 development agenda.

 

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