Blog #4: Ethiopia Set to Achieve Universal Primary Education by 2015

In Ethiopia, one of Africa’s poorest countries, over the past few years have been on the path of trying to provide education for all of its 20 million school age children. Their goal is to achieve universal primary education by 2015 and from 2003 to 2009-10 the progress towards reaching this goal has increased by 40 percent.  About 15 years ago Ethiopia had fewer than 2,000 primary schools, but now they have 28,000. Experts from development aid say that as much as one quarter of all public expenditures have been devoted to schools over the past couple of years. This has led to many international donors pumping in about $150 million a year to support the fund.  However, due to the growth of the number of schools, there is a shortage of qualified teachers. Also, in most classrooms there are no books and surveys indicate that a lot of the children leave without being able to read. Each year about $1 billion comes in from the U.S.  to Ethiopia which includes a five-year $100 million commitment for education. Allyson Wainer,  USAID’s chief education officer in Ethiopia says that they plan to bring reading skills to 15 million students and getting books and building a curriculum are upon the next developments in the coming year. Another objective on their list is to bridge the literacy gender gap because Ethiopian girls traditionally lag way behind when it comes to the Ethiopian boys in school attendance and achievement.

                Primary education is very important. This is the beginning, the foundation on which students build on and without a good solid primary education I believe students will struggle. It is great to see that education, primary education is of great importance. I think now that they have  more schools, they should focus more on teaching and getting qualified teachers. The article talks about how they are building all these schools but what good is the school if they don’t have books and the students are leaving the school unable to read. Getting books and a solid curriculum in place would push Ethiopia’s achievement rate even higher, so it's important that they get these things done. I also think that it is great how much international support the country is receiving to help build up their education system. Hopefully in the near future we will see more progress with better appropriation of funds (going to books) and more students being able to read. 

http://www.voanews.com/english/news/africa/Ethiopia-Set-to-Achieve-Universal-Primary-Education-by-2015-139051809.html