For those who receive it, education seems as taken-for-granted facility as any, but for those who miss out on it, the possibilities lost are really hard to comprehend. Millions of children around the world continue to be deprived of their right to education due to various obstacles. While some like a sheer absence of schools in a certain area are obvious, there are some other factors that the naked eye misses out on. Here, we have listed the 6 key obstacles to education around the globe that continue to keep millions of children out of school, and out of luck.
Limited Education Budgets
Different international organizations, such as Global Partnership for Education (GPE), The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), non-governmental organizations (NGOs) etc., work to educate the children from developing countries and employ their influence to convince politicians and policymakers about the significance of education. However, the lack of sufficient capital and funding is still the primary reason that makes education impossible for many. Also, the total amount of funding allocated to financing education in developing countries has actually decreased in the last few years. This lack of sufficient funding remains the primary barrier because it also affects the availability of learning materials and classrooms for children. In addition, children in several countries are taught in overcrowded classrooms and provided with no hygiene-related facilities such as clean water and toilets. With increasing populations, new schools, colleges, and institutions need to be established but decrepit economies of developing countries do not allow governments to allocate sufficient funds for the same.
Untrained Teaching Staff
A dearth of qualified teachers both at the child and adult education levels has added to the limitations that keep quality education out of reach for many. The constraint becomes even more pronounced at the primary education level, where imparting knowledge to novice mind requires the highest skills.
Untrained teachers are usually a result of developing countries opting to or being forced to allocate only small budget for the education sector and invest little capital in the training of teachers. Resultantly, the poor quality of teachers at the primary level affects the very foundations of a child’s educational journey, forcing many to either drop out of school or in an otherwise failure to exploit their true human potential through education.
Limited Facilities For Special-Needs Pupils
Although education is recognised as a universal human right, a large number of children with disabilities are denied education for a number of reasons. First, children with special needs are discriminated against because of their physical limitations. Second, the overall lack of education funding in many countries adversely affects the mainstream education system, leaving little room for expenditure on specialised teaching methodologies and training that encourage inclusive education for children with varied abilities. Lastly, poor parents prefer not to educate their children with disabilities because of the extra expenses specialised education for such children demands.
Prejudice Towards Girls
Although several major countries across the world have broken free of the social malaise, there remain several regions around the globe where education and girls are still considered two separate ideas that cannot co-exist. Even in today’s age, traditional ideas and customs about genders and their societal roles make it impossible for women to move outside of homes freely, let alone get an education. Contrarily, large segments of societies in underdeveloped and developing nations invest heavily in education for male children, as they are traditionally considered the breadwinners for families.
Conflict Regions
Throughout the world, many regions remain perpetually in conflict due to ethnic, religious, linguistic, and economic reasons. The conflict not only leads to the destruction of public institutions, such as schools and hospitals but also cripples the daily routine life in the afflicted areas. A region, which is threatened with fighting, murder, and suicide attacks, cannot ensure the normal functioning of schools. Case in point is Pakistan, where schools in the tribal areas were a routine target of bombings by militants in the last decade. Besides the psychological scarring left by war and terrorism, children in conflict areas almost completely miss out on education for as long as such agitations continue. Such unfortunate manmade crises not only force children to remain uneducated, but also raises a generation of adults that is uneducated as well as permanently traumatised, both mentally and physically.
Hunger And Poverty
Although the negative effects of hunger on the education of children are underreported, it is one the most destructive factor that disables the normal brain development of children in underdeveloped regions. Malnutrition stunts the cognitive abilities of affected children and slows down their learning potential. In addition, poverty deprives many children of education as parents are often forced into putting their children into labour from an early age to help families survive the ordeals of financial instabilities. For households that are barely making enough to have one full meal a day, expenses like school fees, clothing, books and stationery are simply too much of a luxury to afford.
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