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 in its education system. In 2005, the net enrollment ratio in Ethiopia was 77.5% for grades 1-4 and 37.6% for grades 5-8. Since then, enrollment has increased to 92.2% for grades 1-4 and 48.1% for grades 5-8 (UNDP). With the aid of the United Nations and other groups, Ethiopia has been making progress towards achieving primary education throughout the country; however, there is a necessity for a final push in completing this development goal. One of the largest obstacles that Ethiopia had towards achieving nation-wide primary education was the fact that the schools had fees. With a poverty rate of about 30% (UNDP), this created a problem for a large portion of Ethiopia’s population eligible for schooling, as they simply could not afford to attend. Between 1974 and 1991, Ethiopia was a communist state. With resources sparse and funds lacking, the communist government of Ethiopia initiated the fees that students had to pay in order to attend schooling. The communist government system fell to make way for a federalist government system in 1991, and over the course of the next 5 years, all public government schools had abolished registration fees (UNICEF). With this obstacle out of the way, school attendance began to rise, but attendance was still lacking as the two decades of school fees had caused a change in lifestyle for those that could not afford to send their kids to school. Furthermore, there existed many other problems hindering the accessibility of primary education for a large population of children. Another significant obstacle towards improving the school system in Ethiopia is the large amount of people that live in rural areas. As agriculture makes up almost half of Ethiopia’s economy, about 85% of Ethiopia’s population is spread out across vast farmlands (UNICEF). It is difficult for the Ethiopian government alone to provide enough schools that cover all of the rural areas. To help solve this problem, Save the Children got involved. Save the Children is a non-governmental organization that promotes the rights of children. The organization started programs that encouraged and assisted villages in rural areas to start community-based schools, with an ultimate goal of the rural schools being transferred to Ethiopia’s formal government system (US AID). Most farmers live within a reasonable distance from a village, thus the village community-based schools can cover a large portion of the rural populations. Ultimately, the implementation of these schools was successful. The success of these village community-based schools can be used as a model for other developing countries with rural populations: establish informal schools in rural villages, and then provide assistance and aid until the school is recognized by the country’s government.
Another issue with the school system in Ethiopia is the fact that about half of the students drop out by grade 5 (UNDP). 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 poor learning environment in some schools, some children believe that there time would be better spent working and earning money for their family than making a commute to school (ROOTS Ethiopia). It is quite clear how a student who has to walk multiple hours to attend a school where there is a 20% chance that his or her teacher will not be present can be discouraged from attending. Ultimately, the condition of existing schools needs to improve for student attendance to continue to increase. A significant challenge to overcome was the cultural gender roles in Ethiopia. Girls are often encouraged to find a husband rather than to attend schooling, as once she is married she is no longer dependent on her family. Once the woman is married, the typical Ethiopian female gender role is to perform household duties, most importantly collecting clean water for her family (Edelstein). In order for a woman to do these, attending school is not necessary, and thus is often discouraged by her family because they see the daughter staying at home helping with chores as more important. However, a United Nations program called the United Nations Girls' Education Initiative established in 2000 has made significant progress towards eliminating the gender gap with regards to education. The program helps to support the self-development of countries, and strives to influence countries to make gender equality decisions and investments (UNICEF). Because of their involvement in Ethiopia, within the past decade the gap in attendance rates between male and females has decreased significantly; however, there is still a gap left to conquer. Another significant cultural challenge is the fact that Ethiopia has no official language; Ethiopia’s population is made up of 80 different ethnic groups speaking 7 different languages (Edelstein). This creates an issue as it is critical that students can understand their teachers, and speaking the language of the students in the area is a limitation towards eligible teachers. As of October 2004, grades 1-6 are instructed by teachers in local languages, while grades 7-8 are taught via televised lessons in English that are received by a satellite dish (Negash). After these televised lessons, a teacher is present to answer questions. Interestingly, the teacher is “not required to lecture or even explain in English” (Negash). This can create problems if a student and teacher do not understand English, the student does not learn anything from the televised lecture, and the teacher is only able to explain what he or she was able to understand based on context. The best solution for this problem would be for Ethiopia to adopt an official language or two; however, this is a challenge in itself as Ethiopia is so culturally diverse. The most practical solution would probably be a long-term, generational solution, where teachers instruct in native languages and students later become teachers, creating a positive feedback where teachers are constantly becoming more educated. In general, the strategies that have been executed in Ethiopia to improve the primary education system have been successful thus far. The fact that attendance for primary schooling for grades 1-4 has increased from 77.5% to 92.2% over the course of a decade is concrete evidence that the efforts in Ethiopia are working. The success that the strategies implemented in Ethiopia have had validate their use as models for countries with similar issues. The biggest issue in the continued success of the school system seems to be that the schools require more qualified teachers and more instructional materials. To help solve this, the Ethiopian government could more aggressively seek out qualified teachers, and possibly establish more rigorous programs to focus on training more teachers. For the lack of materials, the schools simply need more funding, from either their own government or from the assistance of other countries. The millennium development goal of achieving universal primary education has made significant progress in Ethiopia; however, there still remains just under 8% of Ethiopian children that need the barriers preventing them from receiving an education removed in order for this goal to be completed.

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