Education plays effectively a central role in achieving the MDGs. Scientific research and studies have proven the significant contributions of education to individuals and this has sustained economic growth through increased productivity, especially in agriculture. Therefore, education does have a huge impact on reducing poverty and hunger factors (The Millennium Development Goals Report, 2015)
According to countless reports by the UN and other institutes, Ghana has progressed in goal 2 (Achieve Universal Primary Education) however failed to meet the target in MDG – Millennium Development Goals. The paper will be highlighting tangible facts and statistics on why goal 2 (Achieve Universal Primary Education) has failed in Ghana and finally my own personal view on why most MDGs might have failed in many other countries in the world.
Ghana made 29.2% significant progress in the total net enrollment rate in primary education (of both sexes) through the years of 2000-2015. Unfortunately, Ghana failed to achieve the target goal of 100% by 2015, instead achieved 99.69%, which was considerably close. (Rozer, M., & Ortiz Ospina, E., 2019)
In spite of the improvement made in the education, major challenges existed in the education sector in MDGs and will continue to exist in SDGs phase if the issues are overlooked. The issues include:
Ensuring equitable access to education
Household wealth remains an important cause of a child’s possibility of attending school. The attendance ratio at primary level differs from 65.8% in rural areas to 74.4% in urban areas. Moreover, 66.6% of children belonging to families in the lowest wealth quintile attend primary school, compared to 80.9% in the highest quintile. (MDG 2: Achieve universal primary education, n.d.)
Young girls above a certain age are often married off, and boys who are seen by the community to be grown-up are often taken out of school to work since parents often can not afford to feed them.
Also, children feeling a sense of insecurity due to them being displaced from their communities and moved to another area for schools availability.
Promoting lifelong learning
Allowing the children into the classroom is not sufficient – they must have the urge to learn in the classroom. According to the 2013 Early Grade Reading Assessment, most students in Ghana not performing well in reading and numbers. Hence why some may have dropped out or no full interest in enrolling in the beginning. Therefore, the quality of education needs to be improved, for example, additional trained teachers in school, as most hold low academic qualifications. This will improve the environment of education and welcome and motivate students to improve their performance. (MDG 2: Achieve universal primary education, n.d.)
As overlooking the goals in MDGs, I suppose the timeframe given was insufficient (2000-2015: 15years) The UN should have measured the goals through the strategy of SMART and adjusted the timeframe accordingly. If sufficient time was given to the education sector, I strongly believe Ghana would have been able to attain the target goal of 100%.
I also believe in the concept of quality of quantity; prioritize your goals, solve those first then move to the second batch. Many goals are required to be solved fully to have a greater effect on other goals. For example, looking at the first goal (Extreme Poverty and Hunger) if we do not fully solve this issue, we will eventually have some children dying out of hunger and this will have a greater impact on goal 4 (child mortality)
Lastly, the distribution of resources in the world is not fair. We need to highly focus on the under-developed countries, provide them trained teachers for schooling, food for hungry people or any necessities they might need to achieve their goals.
However, as an overall start, I’m very pleased to see the world has taken a few steps to change for the better and help others in need. Education, in my opinion, is a free ticket to life, with an education degree, you are able to attain a job, receive an income, potentially able to start a family and support them. It is a powerful tool in life and every individual must not miss this opportunity.
References:
MDG 2: Achieve universal primary education. (n.d.). Retrieved February 20, 2019, from http://gh.one.un.org/content/unct/ghana/en/home/global-agenda-in-ghana/millennium-development-goals/mdg-2-achieve-universal-primary-education.html
Rozer, M., & Ortiz Ospina, E. (2019). Empirical View: Primary School. Retrieved from https://ourworldindata.org/primary-and-secondary-education
The Millennium Development Goals Report. (2015). New York: United Nations. doi:http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/2015_MDG_Report/pdf/MDG 2015 rev (July 1).pdf
