Formal education

Although primary enrolment rates are often high, completion rates are much lower, and subsequent enrolment in secondary school drops to very low levels indeed. The case of drop-outs is even more extreme among girls. Both primary and secondary education are the responsibility of government.

We therefore work with local and national governments to that ensure that:

• per-capita spending is balanced across the whole education system 
• minimum levels of quality are reached across the whole system 
• education is gender sensitive, promotes tolerance of others and opens, rather than closes down, children's minds

Early childhood education
School starting age varies from 4 to 7 years old in the countries where we work. Early childhood education is therefore quite important. We support early childhood education in two ways: either supporting government provision through teacher training, providing toys or equipment; or running non-formal early childhood centres for pre-school children.

Primary schooling
A successful schooling system depends a great deal on cooperation: between parents and teachers (eg by ensuring school attendance), and between teachers and management (eg in implementing pupil incentive schemes). There is an urgent need to improve accessibility, affordability and quality of schooling in general.

We support government-run primary schools in many ways, including:

• supporting construction: building classrooms, boarding facilities, toilets, kitchens, school gardens, sports facilities, safe water wells or tanks
• providing equipment and materials such as furniture, books, teaching aids, stationery, toys and sports equipment, medical chests, bicycles and motorbikes for teachers
• improving the quality of teaching and learning by developing locally appropriate learning and teaching materials, training, running essay competitions or sports events; supporting children with learning difficulties and disabilities
• selecting and supporting local or ethnic minority teachers 
• using child-to-child education methodologies
• promoting teaching in local or mother tongue languages
  

Secondary schooling
It is increasingly acknowledged that the appalling quality of most primary schools means that the real benefits of education will not be achieved unless a child accesses secondary education. And secondary education is usually accessible only to richer children or those lucky few who receive scholarships.

For most of the children who successfully complete primary education, secondary education remains a distant dream. The high costs of secondary education could also partly explain low primary school completion rates, as parents, knowing there is no chance of following it through, give up on their children's education early.

We therefore put pressure on governments to expand the provision of secondary education as a whole. In some countries we support the tracking of national education budgets and policies to ensure that investment in primary schools is balanced with investment in secondary schools.

photo : ©Kalpesh Lathigra/ NB Pictures/ ActionAid