Barriers to Primary Education
- Poverty
- Political instability
- Shortage of qualified teachers
- Low perceived value of education
Interventions to Barriers
- Classroom construction/rehabilitation
- Community mobilisation
- Accelerated learning programmes
- Teacher training
The Government of Comoros has identified education as critical and decisive to furthering the country’s political, economic and social development agenda. It has elaborated an Interim Education Sector Plan, prioritising the construction/rehabilitation of essential school infrastructure, increasing education access to children with disabilities and improving education quality and learning outcomes. To that end, the government has made some notable gains. As it happens, the student/teacher ratio has been on a steady decline since 2008 and reached a low of 37:1 in 2013.
However, vulnerable and disadvantaged children face challenges in accessing a quality education. For instance, though the percentage of trained primary-level teachers has increased by 20 points between 2011 and 2013, the overall figure still stands at about 75 per cent. Moreover, as the rate of children completing primary education has gradually been on the rise since 2013, official data indicates that OOSC prevalence in the country has been on the rise as well.
In partnership, EAC and UNICEF have come together to increase education access to some of Comoros’s most marginalised OOSC. Through the Formal Education for OOSC project, UNICEF will focus on: 1) expanding access and improving retention; 2) stimulating demand for school enrolment; and 3) strengthening sector/project management. The project will target the reduction of distance to school for children living in peri-urban and rural areas and increase the capacity of existing schools to accommodate children newly integrated into the mainstream at the conclusion of accelerated learning programmes.
Geographic Location: Eastern Africa
Languages: Arabic (official), French (official), Shikomoro
Projects
Formal Education For Out of School Children in Comoros
Several political and economic crises in Comoros since its independence in 1975 have contributed to instability and poor living conditions for the 745,000 inhabitants of its four islands. A result of the instability is a marked increase in the number of out of school children in recent years. EAC and UNICEF have partnered to address the issue of out of school children in Comoros through the Formal Education for Out of School Children in Comoros project.