Education of Disadvantaged Children in OIC:
The Key to Escape from Poverty
49
In the majority of OIC countries, not all teachers are trained according to the member countries’
standards and, compared to the teacher shortage problem, country income is less relevant in
explaining this issue (Se anel B). In 38 countries (of the 47 for which data is available)
the percentage of trained teachers in primary education who have the adequate training for the
country is less than 90 percent.142 And in 17 of them it is even less than 50 percent. Qatar is one
of the countries in this position. In Qatar which is a high-income member country, 49 percent of
the teaching work force was trained in 2009 (the last year data was available). Other countries
with the lowest rates are Suriname, an upper middle-income country, and Sierra Leone, a low-
income country, where the rates are 5.8 percent and 29.3 percent respectively.
While teachers might be appointed to the schools and trained according to national
standards, they might actually not be present in the classroom. Teacher absenteeism is an
important problem that needs to be tackled. In Senegal 29 percent of teachers were not found in
classrooms teaching while the rate reaches 53 percent in Uganda.143 In Uganda absence from the
classroom for teachers reaches as high as 69 percent in the Northern region.144 In countries in the
Middle East and North Africa region teacher absenteeism is also reported as a problem. Principals
of 40 percent of the students in Morocco, 33 percent of the students in Tunisia and 27 percent of
the students in Saudi Arabia reported that teacher absenteeism is a serious problem in their
school.145 In South Asia, Bangladesh and Indonesia also have a similar problem, with 16 and 19
percent of absence rates respectively for teachers in public primary schools.146
Another problem in the OIC is the low quality of education as indicated by low learning
achievement. Low levels of achievement could be observed in the PASEC (CONFEMEN
Programme for the Analysis of Education Systems) 2014 for member countries in Sub-Saharan
Africa.147 Among 10 countries from Sub-Saharan Africa that participated in PASEC 2014, 8 were
OIC countries. The results of the reading test for children in Grade 2 in primary education show
that after two years of education a considerable share of children either cannot read a single word
or have difficulties in reading in the official instruction language (See . Among the
participating countries the share of children who cannot read a single word is the lowest in
Burkina Faso with 11.6 percent while it is the highest in Niger with 48.1 percent.
Learning outcomes in international assessment tests is low in general in the participating
OIC countries compared to the rest of the participants (See . OIC countries
participating in PIRLS 2011, generally perform worse than other participating countries.
Azerbaijan was the most successful among the 9 OIC member countries participating in PIRLS
142 The indicator is described as follows: Percentage of teachers by level of education taught who have received at least the
minimum organized pedagogical teacher training pre-service and in-service required for teaching at the relevant level in a given
country.
143 See World Bank (2012) for Senegal and Wane and Martin (2013) for Uganda.
144 Wane and Martin (2013)
145 Brixi, Lust, and Woolcock (2015)
146 Chaudhury, Hammer, Kremer, Muralidharan, and Rogers (2006)
147 PASEC (2015)