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Of the 72 million children out of school [down from 115 million in 2006], 39 million live in conflict-affected countries, according to The Future is Now report, published on 11 May by the Save the Children Alliance.

In Liberia, 73 percent are out of school, and in Somalia 81 percent have no access to education. In Afghanistan’s Uruzgan, Helmand and Badges provinces, 80 percent are in the same boat. “Without urgent action to help these hardest-to-reach children, Millennium Development Goal Two – that all children get a full course of primary schooling by 2015 – will not be met,” the report warned.

In Southern Sudan, only 14 percent of the children attended school during two decades of conflict that ended in 2005, according to the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF. In Angola, at least two million have enrolled in school but 1.2 million are still out, yet only 54 percent complete primary school. Similarly in Iraq, 22 percent of school-going age children failed to attend school in 2007. A study by the education ministry and UNICEF, found that 77 percent of these were female.

“The sad reality is that if our progress continues at its current pace, by 2015 there still will be approximately 56 million children out of school,” Mr. Lake said at the opening session of the E4 meeting. “And worse: You can count on those children being the hardest to reach, living in the poorest countries, with the highest and hardest barriers to overcome.”

• Children from the poorest 20 per cent of their societies, the so-called ‘fifth quintile’, are much less likely to attend primary school than those in the richest quintile • Girls in impoverished rural households are the most likely to be excluded from primary school • Children from indigenous and minority groups, as well as children with disabilities, are the least likely to be able to attend or stay in school. “These are the forgotten children,” said Mr. Lake, “marginalized simply because of the economic and social inequities in their societies, left behind simply because they were born poor or female, or of the wrong caste or in the wrong country.”

Indeed, the evidence shows that educated girls, in particular, grow into agents of change for their families, communities and societies as a whole. Providing girls with quality education can be a highly effective tool to address poverty, fight disease and improve economic development.

Kigali — Early last year, the government introduced the 9-Year Basic Education (9 YBE) programme, which offers six years of primary education and three years of secondary education to all Rwandan children free of charge.The idea was to have school-going children unable to access education in the past to do so, and be able to compete in the job market regionally. The Ministry of Education also hopes that the programme will reduce the dropout rate in schools.Information from the Ministry of Education indicates that already, the current enrolment rate stands at 97 percent for boys and 98 percent for girls.

According to UNESCO, this is the highest enrolment rate in the region. So far, many countries are implementing free primary education. Few, however, have put in place a programme for post-primary education.

Several Headteachers say the programme has gained momentum following a recent schools construction campaign that has seen thousands of new classrooms built across the country. Nearly all the classrooms have been voluntarily built by parents, teachers, university students or government officials. They say the strategy of free education for all is beginning to pay off. The enrolment rate has increased as more children go to school.

In a landmark ruling, the ECOWAS Community Court of Justice in Abuja yesterday ordered the Federal Government to provide as of right, free and compulsory education to every Nigerian child.

It submitted that the right to education could be enforced before the court and dismissed all objections brought by the Federal Government, through the UBEC that education is "a mere directive policy of the government and not a legal entitlement of the citizens".

Commenting on the ruling, SERAP's lawyer, Mr. Femi Falana, who filed and argued the case before the court with Adetokunbo Mumuni, said this was the first time an international court has recognized a state obligation to provide legally enforceable human rights to education to its citizens.

Enrolment at primary schools nationwide has leapt from 59% in 2000 to 95.4% today, putting the impoverished country well on course to achieve the second millennium development goal (MDG) of primary school education for all by 2015.

half of pupils will fail to qualify for secondary school, with 3,000 girls a year dropping out due to pregnancy.

The progress has come with a lesson in the law of unintended consequences. Enrolment has grown so fast in Tanzania that the school system is creaking with overcrowded classrooms, shortages of books, teachers and toilets, and reports of corporal punishment being used to keep order. In short, it seems that quality has been sacrificed for quantity.

The poor, who make up some 45 percent of Bangladesh’s 164 million population, are the main beneficiaries of the country’s education efforts. In addition, girls have overtaken boys in rates of enrolment, attendance and completion of primary education. With over 94 percent net enrolment, Bangladesh is one of only a handful of the world’s least developed countries that are close to achieving the U.N. millennium development goals of 100 percent enrolment rate in primary schools by 2015.

For example, schools by the Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee (BRAC) – whose 1.2 million students account for 76 percent of all students in NGO-operated primary schools – are unique in that local community members decide and implement all academic programmes in consultation with parents and stakeholders. "We enrol drop out (and) non-enrolled children – mostly girls – from poor families, ensure high attendance, child friendly pedagogy and high completion of five-year academic studies in our primary schools," Safiqul Islam, director of BRAC’s education programme, told IPS.

Children and education systems are often on the front line of violent conflict. Of the world’s 72 million children who don’t attend school, about one-third live in only 20 conflict-affected countries.

The report will also explore the role of inappropriate education in fostering conflict and explore ways that education can be a force for peace, social cohesion and human dignity.

Save the Children, which in 2006 launched its campaign Rewrite the Future to get children in conflict-affected countries into school, released a report this month called The Future is Now, which points out that “civilians now make up more than 90% of casualties in the world’s conflicts and about half of those are children.”

Though today more than half of the students at the Liberté VI school are girls, Ms. Kidjo said there was more work to be done. Violence in school remains a reality for many Senegalese children, especially for girls.

Student Aida Yacine Sy, 8, said girls must be careful. “My mom told me not to wear short clothing. I should not go into a room alone with a teacher or a group of boys. It is not smart,” she said as her friends nodded in agreement. Other students at the school said violence could mean anything from bullying to rape. Seated alongside students at a small wooden desk, Ms. Kidjo listened to their stories. Violence, she told them, is never the answer. “When I was young, kids bullied me because I was small. My dad told me that my brain is my best weapon,” she said. “You must have a strategy. You must speak to your teachers and parents.”

A safe learning environment is essential to keeping girls in school. In Senegal, violence in school, early marriage, sexual abuse, gender discrimination and poverty can impede a girl’s ability to learn.

It’s been almost a year since the quake brought Christine and her mother, brother and sister to this muddy sprawl of tents by a garbage-choked canal, where planes roar overhead and cars and trucks zoom close by.

 Her memories of Jan. 12, 2010 are vivid and sad. “We were standing in the middle of the street: myself, my mum and my younger sister,” she said. “We were holding each other. We were in a circle, screaming: ‘Jesus, save us, save us.’

Tanzania and Burundi, for instance, have recorded a 99 per cent enrolment rate into the first grade of primary school.The pertinent question is: How effective are these funds in retaining children in school? Once enrolled, how long can the pupils be expected to last in the education system, and how many years of schooling, on average, are actually attained by East African pupils?

However, East Africa is faring badly a 9.1 years, equivalent to a pupil completing primary school, but dropping out of high school. The average number of school years actually completed regionally was a mere 4.7 years. The scenario is particularly dismal in Burundi, where on average pupils completed only 2.7 years of school.

According to the Global Education Digest 2010 published by Unesco, in the late 1990s, developing countries began to recover some of the educational ground lost in the 1980s, when enrolments stagnated or even declined in sub-Saharan Africa, East Asia and the Pacific, Central and Eastern Europe and Central Asia. In fact, the pace of progress accelerated since 2000 and if trends between 2000 and 2008 continue, the increase in school life expectancy in the current decade will be three times the level achieved in the 1970s.In sub-Saharan Africa, school life expectancy nearly doubled from 4.4 years to 8.4 years in the past 30 years. Despite this progress, the region has the lowest number of school years — almost half of the number of years in North America and Western Europe (16.0 years).

Tunis — Kenya has been cited as one of the best spenders in education in Africa, signalling its commitment to international development goals. An international education conference in Tunis, Tunisia, heard at the weekend that Kenya commits 7 per cent of its total income to education annually, surpassing the continental average of 5 per cent.

The figure this year is Sh180 billion, with basic education taking Sh150 billion and Sh30 billion for higher education. As a result, school enrolment has increased by more than 20 per cent in the past five years, putting the country on good stead to realise education for all goals.

A new policy was announced on Tuesday which will make it easier for bright students from poor families to join prestigious public secondary schools.

A new policy was announced on Tuesday which will make it easier for bright students from poor families to join prestigious public secondary schools.

Out the 4,517 Form One vacancies in the 18 national schools, 3,293 will be reserved for candidates from public schools. The other 1,224 places will go to best performing boys and girls from private schools.

“Kids are enrolling in school in much greater numbers than ever before,” she said, “but that really masks the fact that they’re actually not learning very much. One example is that in Uganda, half the kids in third grade can’t read a single word.”

“We know how to train teachers. We know how to put in curricula. We know what the right things to do for kids are to give them all the right skills,” added Mr. Wong. “But the investment required, and the time and the commitment, is not there if you don’t have the political support.”

A Brookings Institution analysis of the wealthiest philanthropic donors in the United States found that global education was a very low priority for them. Ms. Winthrop said she believed this was because a focus on enrolment – which is on track to meet the Millennium Development Goal on education – has “lulled people into thinking that the global education agenda is done, check, we can cross that off the list.”

For many pupils and parents, the dreams of joining the so-called best schools have been shattered because they did not score the required points. Now, they must fight tooth-and-nail to find a place in other schools.

At the root of all this is an archaic colonial education system, which no longer has a place in our situation today. In developed countries, an exam-based education system for primary pupils has long been abandoned.

promotion to secondary school should be on the basis of continuous assessment. Also, let the government increase capital expenditure to secondary schools. Most schools have the space to expand their facilities but they lack capital. As the number and the performance of pupils continue to increase every year, the facilities should be able to increase at the same pace.

Kampala — The government has warned school head teachers against hiking school fees as the new term opens. Closing a two-day Senior One selection exercise at Mandela Stadium-Namboole on Friday, Education Minister Namirembe Bitamazire said the habit of increasing fees by top schools deny hundreds of students a chance to join their dream schools.

"We don't say that they shouldn't increase but let the increment be reasonable, justifiable and they must seek our permission. Our target is to see that all Ugandan children acquire quality education regardless of their parents' financial predicaments," she said.

This means that at least 155,716 students will not be admitted despite having garnered the required aggregate for admission. But the Commissioner for Secondary Education, Mr Francis Agula, said the number of admission could be raised to 350,000 due to expansion of existing education facilities in some schools and establishment of new ones.