Education improves from terrible to just bad.

Source: The Economist.

Keeping within the same theme of education, I have just come across another article in the Economist from 2010, about improving education in Brazil from terrible to bad. Here is an extract:

IN 2000 the OECD, a group of mostly rich countries, decided to find out how much children were learning at school. At the time, only half of Brazilian children finished primary education. Three out of four adults were functionally illiterate and more than one in ten totally so. And yet few Brazilians seemed to care. Rich parents used private schools; poor ones knew too little to understand how badly their children were being taught at the public ones. The president at the time, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, saw a chance to break their complacency. Though Brazil is not a member of the OECD he entered it in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Brazil came last.

Across Latin America there is far more awareness than a decade ago that poor education is holding the region back.  A decade on, it is clear that the shock was salutary. On December 7th the fourth PISA study was published, and Brazil showed solid gains in all three subjects tested: reading, mathematics and science (see chart 1). The test now involves 65 countries or parts of them. Brazil came 53rd in reading and science. The OECD is sufficiently impressed that it has selected Brazil as a case study of “Encouraging lessons from a large federal system”.

For the full article click here.

Private Schooling for the Poor?

Source: The Economist.

We all can appreciate the value of education. Not necessarily for the subjects learned or even for the knowledge gained, but more so for the signals that it sends to the world; That you are capable and have the ability to succeed in a given task. 

In many developing countries / LDCs the opportunity and privilege of an education is not often available. 

But there are an increasing number of private fee paying schools appearing. Parents are opting out of sending their children to the free schools and making higher and higher sacrifices in order to secure a place for their child in the local Eton. So why is that? 

The Economist offers some suggestions in their article Rich Pickings. Obtaining education, any type of education is no longer enough. Parents require more, they are looking for quality. With an increasing number of highly educated individuals (further and higher education), it is no longer enough to say you have your A-levels, degree or even a Masters. The world requires more and recruiters request more. They want to know what type of education you have, where you obtained it. Education purely as signalling phenomena has less pull. 

And in developing countries, parents know this. Even in some of the poorest regions they will sacrifice their needs to secure a place for their child. According to the Economist, it is not the fancy surroundings that they are after; in fact many of the oversubscribed schools in some parts of India and Kenya are in the smallest darkest rooms in some remote regions.

There are some valuable lessons to be learned here. In securing development it is no longer acceptable to just provide schools. Without adequate resources, investment in teaching (many schools have poor teacher with low rates of literacy) or focus on how skills can be practically utilised in the global market, little progress will be made.