The conference centered on three main problems to getting and keeping girls in school: violence, poverty and poor quality education.
Ann-Therese Ndong-Jatta is education director for UNESCO in Africa. She says donors are pumping in a lot of resources and civil society groups are working on access to education.
ANN-THERESE NDONG-JATTA: "But the truth is, seventy-five percent of the children fail."
The UNESCO official says schools need to modernize and improve what they teach and how they teach it. For example, she says schools should teach African children in their native languages, not simply in English or French.
To stay in school, experts say children must consider their education useful -- and so must their parents. May Rihani from the Global Advisory Committee of the U.N. girls' initiative gave an example from a "life skills" program in Mali.
One lesson is about diarrhea. The idea is for children to go tell their mother what they learned. May Rihani says: "The mother would recognize that this education is important to her and to her family and would want the child to continue to go to school."
And that's the VOA Special English Education Report, with reporting by Anne Look in Dakar. I'm Steve Ember.
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2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25
2013-11-25