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Out of fear of militant attacks, he said 200 teachers had transferred to jobs in safer areas, while another 200 were hoping to find jobs elsewhere.

Ms Bitamazire also urged head teachers to supplement the theoretical teaching with vocational knowledge to enable students attain survival skills. "It doesn't really help to speak good English when you cannot practically do anything .These (vocational skills) many despise are the ones that change people's lives," She said

The Namibian Constitution guarantees “freedom to practice any religion and to manifest such practice”, and “a learner at a State school or hostel has the right to practice any religion which is not against public policy.”  

In light of the close to 50 per cent of grade 10s who failed last year, Iyambo said: "We spend too much money on repetition, dropouts, repetition rates and failure rates. We cannot afford to send children into the streets year in and year out."

The most important means to address the crisis is to invest more in teachers, he said. "Teachers are the solid backbone of any education system. The determinant factor of the quality of any education system is the quality of its teachers and more importantly the collective capacity of teachers.

The report's research claims that far fewer of the 2.4 million girls enrolled in school are actually in the classroom. In 2009 approximately 22% – around 446,682 – of female students were considered long-term absentees.

While 2,281 schools have been built in the past two years, data from the Afghan Ministry of Education shows that 47% still have no actual building. A lack of investment in female teachers is proving a significant obstacle to girls attending school.

In the past years schools and girl students have been targeted by anti-government forces or other extremist groups, prompting teachers to leave their jobs and parents to keep their children out the classroom. In 2009 there were 50 attacks on schools across Afghanistan every month.

Many of the pupils attending schools in the area were forced to flee their homes due to the conflict between rebel groups and government forces, and are now living in informal settlements in and around the village.

“Finding teachers who would want to work in this area is very difficult. But pupils’ parents are very supportive and voluntarily contribute with 100 CFA each [50 cents] to support the trainee teacher,” said one of the teachers.

However, Aruna Pendse, associate professor with the Mumbai University`s department of civics and politics, supported the move. "Raising the pre-qualification condition (for a primary schoolteacher`s job) may result in children getting quality education," she said.

According to the existing rules, to become a primary schoolteacher one needs to pass the Higher Secondary Certificate (HSC) exam and then enrol for a diploma in elementary education (DEd).

The median (or middle-performing) student in Algeria, Egypt and Syria scores below the low-benchmark; in Tunisia they score just above. In other words, half of the students in each country have gone through eight years of school to arrive at a level that leaves them with no working knowledge of basic math. In Saudi Arabia and Qatar, over 80% of students fall below the low benchmark. The median student in both performs at around the same level as their counterpart in Ghana and El Salvador – and Qatar is the worst performing country covered in the survey.

Why are education systems in the Middle East and North Africa performing so badly? In many countries, teachers are poorly trained – and teaching is regarded as a low-status, last-resort source of employment for entrants to the civil service. There is an emphasis on rote learning, rather than solving problems and developing more flexible skills. And education systems are geared towards a public sector job market that is shrinking, and for entry to post-secondary education. Most don’t make it. And those who do emerge with skills that are largely irrelevant to the needs of employers.

Moreover, many Arab youth view their education systems not as a source of learning and opportunity, but as a vehicle through which autocratic rulers seek to limit critical thinking, undermine freedom of speech and reinforce their political control.

To a large extent, the protest movement across the Arab States has been led by educated youth and adults frustrated by political autocracy and limited economic opportunity. This has deflected attention from an education crisis facing low-income households in primary education – and from the needs of adolescents and youth emerging from school systems with just a few years of sub-standard education.

The Arab states have an unfinished agenda on basic education.  They still have 6 million primary school age children out of school – around 16% of the world’s total. Despite the vast gap in wealth between the two countries, Saudi Arabia has a lower primary school enrolment rate than Zambia. The Arab world also has some very large gender disparities: in Yemen, primary school enrolment rates are 79% for boys, but just 66% for girls.

Consider the case of Egypt. On average, someone aged 17-22 years old in the country has had around nine years of education. That’s roughly what might be anticipated on the basis of the country’s income. Scratch the surface, though, and you get a different picture: around 12% of Egyptians have had less than two years of education.

High dropout rates from primary and lower secondary school are symptomatic of parental poverty, poor quality education, and a sustained failure on the part of the Egyptian government to tackle the underlying causes of inequality. Adolescents from poor backgrounds entering labor markets without a secondary education are carrying a one-way ticket to a life of poverty, insecurity and marginalization.

The political crisis sweeping Arab states is the product of many years of political failure. The aspirations and hopes of young people – who are increasingly connected to each other and the outside world through the Internet – are colliding with an atrophied political system governed by complacent, self-interested elites who are disconnected from the population.

Bisi Olateru-Olagbegi, executive director of the Women's Consortium of Nigeria (WOCON) and board member of WILDAF, said educating girls with both formal and practical education was key to addressing the gender imbalances and breaking the cycle of poverty. "When a women is empowered and she can assert her rights in the community she can rise up to any position and be part of decision making and raise the status of women," Olateru- Olagbegi said.

Although enrolment levels have risen in many developing countries since 2000, UNICEF estimated there were still more than 100 million children out of school in 2008, 52 percent of them girls and the majority living in sub-Saharan Africa.

Subsequently there has been a measurable increase in girls attending school, a trend that has led to fewer early marriages and teenage pregnancies as well as a reduction in the number of youths who are trafficked and prostituted. In spite of the gains, however, girls are still largely underrepresented in the science and technology fields. "Even when girls go to school there is a bias that girls are not supposed to learn science and technology; they're still doing the social sciences and humanities," Olateru-Olagbegi said. "They don't think that the faculties of girls are developed enough and it's mere discrimination."

It aims to facilitate the empowerment of adolescent girls by working with governments and civil society on policies to that effect. In a joint statement, the UNAGTF organisations listed educating adolescent girls, improving their health, protecting them from violence, promoting their leadership, and collect statistic data on them as five priorities in their efforts to advance the rights of adolescent girls.

Karim praised the work of U.N. agencies in Malawi, where adolescent girls face many challenges, including early marriage and early childbearing, which pose serious health risks. Additionally, females account for more than half of all HIV infections in Malawi. The level of sexual and reproductive health of girls in Malawi is among the worst in the world.

"The UNFPA has mobilised and worked with the National Youth Council [of Malawi] to advocate against a bill on child marriage that was going to go to parliament that would have made the legal age of a marriage 16," she said.

Wong also stressed the importance of respecting local culture while introducing new ideas and relevant practices. In Ethiopia, for example, UNFPA has found that working with the community is enormously beneficial, particularly in bringing about long-term change that seriously improves the lives and futures of adolescent girls.

Equal Education spokeswoman Yoliswa Dwane said she was “disappointed” that the minister had not come to accept the memorandum, but the organisation was happy with the turnout of school children. “Young people in the province showed today that they have an interest in their education.

"Is Konkani only for the poor to study? Let the parents be given the choice (of deciding which MOI to choose)," Godinho said, with legislators from the ruling Congress backing his demand.

The challenges are indeed immense. The number of Somalis entering Kenya grows daily, but the resources available for education have not kept pace. “Education is the only thing we can take home,” refugees I met when I visited Dadaab last year told me.

Recognition by the Kenyan government of the challenges faced by refugees is an important first step in filling these unmet needs. The next step will be to ensure that refugee education is incorporated within the government’s strategic planning, and that pressure is put on aid donors to make sufficient funds available on a multiyear basis.