63 Million Adolescents Denied Right To Education

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The UNESCO Institute for Statistics and UNICEF have announced that over 63 million adolescents between the ages of 12 to 15 years old have been denied the right to education.

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This was contained in a report issued by UNESCO and UNICEF. According to the report, “Fixing the Broken Promise of Education for All: Findings from the Global Initiative on Out-of-School Children” one in five adolescents is not in school as compared to one in eleven primary school-age children.

It indicated that adolescents are twice as likely to be out of school as their younger counterparts.

The report which was funded by the Global Partnership for Education, also shows that as children get older, the risk that they will never start school or will drop out increases, as 121 million children and adolescents have either never started school or dropped out despite the international community?s promise to achieve Education for All by 2015.

“Data show that there has been almost no progress in reducing this number since 2007. Children living in conflict, child labourers and those facing discrimination based on ethnicity, gender and disability are the most affected. There is also a growing concern that previous gains in expanding access to education will erode without a major shift in policies and resources.”

However, as pressure mounts to include universal secondary education in the post-2015 global development agenda, the report shows the way forward to break the barriers that keep children out of school.

It stated that:

?To realize the promise of universal education for every child, we need a global commitment to invest in three areas: getting more children into primary school; in helping more children ? especially girls ? stay in school through the secondary level; and improving the quality of the learning they receive throughout their schooling,? said UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake. ?There should be no debate among these priorities: we need to do all three, because the success of every child ? and the impact of our investment in education ? depends on all three.?

Poverty is also considered a major barrier to education.

The report suggested that new policies must focus specifically on the most marginalised children as part of larger efforts to improve access to and quality of education. To do this, governments need robust information on who these children are, where they live, whether they have ever attended school and if they are likely to do so in the future.

Source: spyGhana.com

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