Education in decline in Chad

One in ten students in rural areas will finish primary school.

The sub-Saharan African nation of Chad is one of the poorest countries in the world. With children often sent to work to boost a family’s income or help provide food, just getting to school is a victory.

For students in rural areas, just one in ten will finish primary school.

“The problem we are facing is that parents do not understand what we are doing,” a local teacher told Al Jazeera. His primary class has 88 registered students and supplies, including seats and desks, are scarce.

Students in Chad’s capital, N’djamena, face different challenges. 100-person classrooms are not out of the ordinary, and teachers struggle with limited resources.

Abdullah Omran, a private education official in Chad, told Al Jazeera that the problem affects the whole state.

“The education sector’s budget alone is not enough to build classrooms,” he says

Chad’s government spends 2.5% of its GDP, much less than the average for sub-Saharan Africa, estimated by the World Bank to be 4.66% of GDP in 2010.

Source: Al Jazeera