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Ethiopian School System

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In 2000, the United Nations introduced the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) as part of the United Nations Millennium Declaration. The MDGs were established to attempt to improve overall well-being for as many people as possible, and targets issues such as poverty, starvation, and disease. This paper will focus on the development goal of achieving universal primary education, specifically focusing on the country of Ethiopia. Achieving universal primary education is important because it acts as a building block towards the development of counties as a whole. Primary education is not only a necessity, but a right to all individuals regardless of gender or class. Over the course of the last decade, Ethiopia has experienced vast improvements …show more content…

This is due to a variety of reasons, the biggest due to the socioeconomic state of Ethiopia. According to a local Ethiopian advisor, the biggest reason most children discontinue school is that their parents simply cannot afford to pay for their school supplies and transportation. In Ethiopia, children are seen as a resource by their parents, and often times the financial state of the family requires that the child helps work on their farm or provide money for the family by other means (ROOTS Ethiopia). Because the financial stability of the average Ethiopian family is so fragile, a variety of events such as a drought or death of a family member can necessitate a child dropping out of school and working to make up for losses. Ethiopian children commonly drop out of school because of the lack of quality within the school system. Many of the schools in Ethiopia are lacking in resources. There is an insufficient number of qualified teachers, a lack of learning materials such as books and blackboards, and in extreme cases, some schools do not have enough chairs or desks for every student to have a seat. The USAID performed a study on a small sample of Ethiopian schools. Out of their 46 classroom observations, all teachers and students were present only 24% of the time, some teachers and students were present 57% of the time, and no teachers were present 20% of the time (DeStefano and Elaheebocus). Due to a

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