Press
Release No.2002-98
SURVEY SHOWS
THAT SEYCHELLES, MAURITIUS AND KENYA TOP REGIONAL MATHS AND READING
SCORES
Dar-es-Salaam, December 4 - Sixth
grade students in the Kenya, Mauritius, Seychelles, and Tanzania
are outperforming their peers throughout southern, eastern and
central Africa, according to a sweeping new survey of educational
quality carried in some 15 countries of those regions.
According to the research, 13 year
olds from the Seychelles are the best readers in the countries
covered, followed by Kenya, Tanzania and Mauritius. The lowest
performances came from students in Lesotho, Namibia and Uganda.
In mathematics, students from Mauritius
scored top marks, ahead of Kenya and Seychelles. The lowest marks
came respectively from sixth-graders in Namibia, Lesotho and South
Africa.
The results of the survey were
released here today during the Eighth Conference of African Education
Ministers (MINEDAF VIII) and are based on data covering 46,560
sixth grade students from 2,493 schools. It was carried out by
the Southern African Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality
(SACMEQ), comprising the ministries of education from Botswana,
Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles,
South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, Zanzibar and
Zimbabwe, and supported by UNESCO.
The survey examined the success
of school systems in each of the countries concerned, establishing
criteria for minimum and desirable performances. According to
results, two thirds or more of sixth grade students in Lesotho,
Namibia, South Africa and Uganda had not reached the minimum reading
level required to "barely survive at the next stage of schooling."
It also revealed great disparities
in individual school performances, by comparing the results of
students within each country. Pupils in the Seychelles showed
the least range of difference in their results, indicating a fairly
even quality between schools. South African schools showed the
greatest difference, indicating what the report calls "major
inequalities" between schools.
Apart from testing and comparing
students' reading and numeracy, the SACMEQ survey also examines
a range of other general conditions of schooling that could influence
educational quality, including enrolment rates, government spending
on education, language differences, student nutrition, teacher
age and qualifications and school facilities.
In all countries, for example,
nearly half of the pupils were in schools that head-teachers felt
required major repairs or needed to be completely rebuilt. The
situation was most critical in Uganda and Lesotho where over three
quarters and one third of all schools respectively fell into this
category.
Almost half of all pupils were
in schools without electricity, as against only 15 percent that
were without water. In Kenya and Uganda, less than one quarter
of pupils had their own reading and maths textbooks. In Tanzania,
only six percent of the surveyed children had them.
The amount governments devote to
education varies widely. The country with the highest percentage
of government spending (Swaziland, 28.5%) was more than four times
that of the country with the lowest allocation (Tanzania, 7%).
"Where percentages are low," says the study, "it
can be expected that resource provisions to schools will be correspondingly
lower, unless resources are mobilized from other sources."
The survey shows that nearly half
of all pupils in the countries involved had repeated a grade at
least once. Seychelles was the only country where grade repetition
was not a major problem, said the study. Seychelles also enjoyed
one of the highest enrolment rates, joining Mauritius and South
Africa as the only countries with over 90 percent of primary school-age
children actually in school.
SACMEQ was born out of a proposal
drawn up by a team of educational planners from the region and
benefits from the technical support of UNESCO's Paris-based International
Institute for Educational Planning (IIEP), along with financial
support from the governments of Italy and the Netherlands. Its
survey is the most extensive educational quality study ever carried
out in this region, and aims to provide hard, empirical data to
education ministries and offer guidance about the specific areas
they need to focus on to improve their education systems.
****
Contact
Sue Williams
Bureau of Public Information, Editorial Section
Tel: (+33) (0)1 45 68 17 06
Email: s.williams@unesco.org
In Dar-es-Salaam: (+255) (0) 7 44 61 30 74
Jasmina Sopova
Bureau of Public Information, Editorial Section
Email: j.sopova@unesco.org
In Dar-es-Salaam: (+255) (0)7 55 61 30 74
