Without doubt, investing in skills makes good business sense

By Pauline Rose

The figures in the recently published Education for All Global Monitoring Report are a sad indictment on how we continue to fail children around the world. In our report we reveal that one in three young people in sub-Saharan Africa have never completed primary school.

While in Kenya the figures are better, still one in ten young people lack the skills learnt at primary school and are struggling to find dignified work.

And those most likely to lack these skills are from the poorest households, either in urban poverty or in rural areas. One in three young women living in rural Kenya has spent fewer than four years in school.

But if governments believe education is merely a problem for education ministers to solve, then they are wrong. In the global economy, failing to provide proper education will undermine economic growth, reinforce social inequalities and mean those running businesses do not have a skilled workforce they need.

In many ways, the past decade has been a good one. Africa’s economies are growing consistently faster than any other region.

In 2011 Ghana had the highest rate of growth in the world. From 2005-2009, Ethiopia even recorded higher growth than China, and Uganda outperformed India. The World Bank estimates that more than a third of the countries in the sub-Saharan region achieved growth rates of at least six per cent.

Yet governments will be fooling themselves if they think that such growth can be sustained in the long term through the notoriously volatile exports of oil, minerals or agricultural products. This growth surge can only be sustained if we learn lessons from places like the Republic of Korea; the country went from being poor to wealthy in the space of 30 years because of emphasizing developing skills among young people.

As the Report reveals, investing in schoolchildren and students represents a sound financial opportunity. If 75 per cent more 15-year-olds reached the most basic benchmark in maths, economic growth could improve by 2.1 per cent, and 104 million people could be lifted out of poverty.

A second chance

It works on the small scale already: In Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, famers benefiting from field schools saw their crop value per acre increase by 32 per cent on average, and by 253 per cent for those without any formal schooling. Income increased by 61 per cent, and by 224 per cent for households where the farmer had no previous schooling.

Before the good news, however, we must look at the report facts. About 250 million children of primary school-age today cannot read or count whether they have been to school or not. And the poorest make up majority of this headcount.

Among grade three students in Kenya, only 28 per cent of students from the poorest fifth of households had attained the expected numeracy skills from school compared with 48 per cent of the children from the richest fifth.

It is not clear how this generation will fill roles in knowledge-based economies unless there is a change.

So we need to make it easier for more children to go to school, no matter how disadvantaged they are – and ensure they learn more when they do.

Alongside efforts to abolish secondary school fees in Kenya, we also need to see classrooms built closer to communities they serve.

A million children are still out of school in Kenya – the ninth highest figure of any country in the world. Many live in urban poverty, with 60 per cent of Nairobi’s inhabitants living in slums.

Many young people in these slums can’t go to school for the simple reason that there aren’t any schools available.

The lack of education and training opportunities severely limits their work opportunities: about 50 per cent of men and 80 per cent of women aged 15 to 24 have no income-generating activities.

For those who have seen the school system fail them, we also need ‘second chance’ programmes to ensure young people have the skills they need. There are encouraging signs here.

Keeping the promise

In Malawi, where only half of children complete primary school, as many as 10,000 students have taken part in such a scheme; half of those so far have either completed the course or returned to primary school.

Donors also need to fulfill their promises, however tempting in these tough times; it is to cut back on aid.

We need $16 billion a year just to keep the Education for All promise made in 2000 that by 2015 all children are able to complete their primary education. To achieve universal lower secondary school enrollment would cost a further $8 billion.

That sounds like a lot of money. Yet simply by reallocating aid, some of the gap could be filled – $3.1b alone could be used to help post-secondary education in developing countries rather than being used to fund students studying abroad.