9
In sum, notable progress has been made in access to primary school during the MDG era. The
number of out-of-school children has fallen while literacy rates for children and adults have
increased. In many countries, gender disparity in primary school enrolment and completion has
also been addressed. However, progress has been slow in other aspects, particularly those
identified in the Dakar-framework. Children from marginalized socio-economic groups are not
yet reached by 2015. As discussed later in this section, the rich-poor gap in access to primary
education remains sizable. Factors such as household economic status and geographic location
(e.g. rural vs urban) continue to decide student learning level.
The 2015 MDG report also notes a rise in the proportion of out-of-school children – from 30%
in 1999 to 36% in 2012 – in conflict-affected countries in Northern Africa and Southern Asia.
Most importantly, according to GMR 2015, the focus on universal primary enrolment reduced
attention to other areas critical for educational development --education quality, early
childhood care and cognitive development, and adult literacy. The single-focus on access and
primary education has often led to pursuit of strategies that overlooking a silent learning crisis.
These concerns were taken into account when various national and international stakeholders
met to set new global targets for post-2015 years.
The MDG campaign is widely regarded a success when assessed in terms of the goal of halving
global poverty by 2015 (“The Millennium Development Goals Report,” 2015). Poverty is one of
the major barriers to children’s schooling. Therefore the progress in poverty reduction also led
to income-mediated progress in school enrolment in many parts of the world. At the same time,
not all countries benefited or responded equally to theMDG campaign. A number of external and
internal factors combined to undermine progress in poverty reduction, ending hunger and
bringing all children to schools. This is particularly true in the case of Sub-Saharan Africa where
high unemployment rate, growth slowdown, climate change and natural disasters, political
instabilities and numerous humanitarian crises limited the capacity of the progress to advance
the cause of education (“The Millennium Development Goals Report,” 2015).
Moreover, there are however concerns over the limitations of the MDG framework in terms of
the formulation of the MDGs, their structure, content and implementation. Only two out of the
three time-bound education goals identified at the Dakar World Education Forum in 2000 were
included in the MDGs (Fehling, Nelson, & Venkatapuram, 2013). Most importantly, because of
the limited focus of MDG 2 on primary education, the importance of secondary education was
ignored (Mekonen, 2010). The absence of a target pupil–teacher ratio in the MDG agenda meant
that universal primary education could be achieved with a worsening of PTR. This led to
abnormally high PTR in some OIC countries (e.g. 69 pupils per teacher in Chad) (Mekonen 2010).
Overall, MDG 2 failed to ensure quality issues such as availability of quality teachers, adequate
school infrastructure and maintenance (Barrett, 2011; Lay, 2012).
At the end of the MDG area, it is acknowledged that schooling without learning is a tremendous
waste of resources and opportunities. There is a global consensus that the focus on primary
education in the MDGs was inadequate. Moreover, exclusion of quality-specific indicators and
targets led to a focus on quantity at the cost of progress in literacy and numeracy. The other
lesson from the MDG era is the importance of system-wide approach instead of the uni-sectoral
approach to deliver quality as well as quantity. The focus on primary education caused huge
challenges in countries that successfully met the MDG goal of universal primary education.
However with no target relating to post-primary education, these countries did not expand the
secondary education to absorb primary school graduates. The focus on enrolment instead of