Education for African Children

Another reason for the low education rates in Africa is the lack of proper schooling facilities and unequal opportunity for education across countries. Many schools across Africa find it hard to employ teachers due to the low pay and lack of suitable people. This is particularly true for schools in remote areas. Most people who manage to receive education would prefer to move to big cities or even overseas where more opportunities and higher pay await. Thus, there will be an overly large class sizes and high average number of students per teacher in a school. Moreover, the teachers are usually those unqualified with few teaching aids and poor textbook provision. Due to this, children attending schools in rural areas usually attain poorer results in standardised tests compared to their urban counterparts. This can be seen in the reports given by the Northern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality (SACMEQ). ^[9] Those taking the tests in rural areas score much lower than those in small towns and big cities. This shows a lack of equal education opportunity given to children from different parts of the same country.

With teachers being less qualified than others in urban areas the teaching to learning environment takes an effect amongst the students. In one instance teachers took the same test as their students and three fourths of them had failed. ^[10] In addition, those that do not receive the same education to those in the bigger cities have trouble even after graduation with reading, writing, and doing math. ^[11] Students who do not attain the same equal education to those in urban environments do not achieve the same outcome in establishing success with a career. With education being a major concern towards achieving a career and establishing a future, Africa needs to be aware that equal education needs to be established within all schools throughout the countries.