Quality suffers as graduates learn too little in the African classroom

Growing evidence that students in most African countries are learning far too little was the main agenda of a continental ministerial conference held in Senegalese capital Dakar last week. The conference was to establish a road map to ensure youths acquire skills they need for life and work.

The conference, themed ‘Revitalising Education Towards the 2030 Global Agenda and the 2063 African Agenda’, observed that over 60 million African children reach adolescence lacking basic literacy and numeracy skills. The issue is that although progress has been made in getting children to enter and stay in school, deficits in learning and skills are still of a major concern.