New UN report on education to be launched today

State minister for higher education John Chrysostom Muyingo

A new global education monitoring report will be launched today.

This is an annual report, which monitors the progress in education towards the internationally agreed sustainable development goals for education.

The report, according to the preliminary insights, found that despite progress made in recent years, many countries are struggling to cater for their poorest children.

The report, however, cautions against blaming any one actor - including teachers - for these problems.

Blaming schools or teachers for poor student test scores for example, can push people into a corner, resulting in the most marginalised being left out, blatant cheating, and with no clear benefits for learning. (Find the details of the report in our Mwalimu pull-out, to be published tomorrow. We will do a detailed analysis, after the launch today, in the New Vision newspaper. Don't miss your copy of the newspaper).

According to a statement from UNESCO: "Around the world today, 264 million children are failing to go to school and almost two in 10 children do not complete primary school."

More so, Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest out-of-school rate in the world, with 32.6 million children out of school in the region, 55% of which are girls.

The report, to be released today, found that less than half of low and middle-income countries had established standards for early childhood education and just a handful had mechanisms to monitor compliance.

"As a result, many children end up in overcrowded, poorly resourced low-fee private schools without qualified teachers and with inadequate infrastructure," reads a statement from UNESCO.