There is an evident worry concerning the stagnation of education at all levels and UNESCO has made it clear that it will not tolerate leadership’s complacency at this level, all the way from ministries to classrooms. This statement was made in conjunction with the new data points you are about to read about in the 2024/5 Global Education Monitoring GEM Report released during the Global Education Meeting in Brazil on the 31st of October 2024.
The latest GEM Report now indicates that education is not progressing as it did before. Nowadays, the youth will hardly be able to read for comprehension as was the case ten years ago. The percentage of out-of-school children has only improved by 1%, since 2015 there are still 251 million children and youth who do not access education. Moreover, 650 million students around the world drop out before they finish high school and thus, this embeds educational inequality further.
The report also reveals some worrying tendencies towards education financing. A fresh issuance of the Education Finance Watch by UNESCO and the World Bank indicates that education expenditure per child has not improved much since 2010, while the proportion of ODA funding used for education dropped healthily from 9.3 percent in 2019 to 7.6 percent in 2022. In a majority of low-income and middle-incoming countries, the national budgets allocated for education are well below the set standards where in four out of ten countries education gets less than 15% of total public spending or 4% of GDP. Especially in Africa, Education is also losing competition for the budget as funding goes to service debts which are on the rise.
A comparison between the United Nations Education for All (EFA) initiative and the World Bank’s Education system of EFA Global Monitoring Report. The major task identified in the EFA review is the tremendous leadership and management development needed at school level in order to change the status quo. That is to say, as noted by the times, the leadership of an educational institution is a second most important variable after the quality of instruction in determining the outcomes of students. Good leadership improves the quality of teaching as well as lowers the incidence of attrition and absenteeism among staff.
Nonetheless, the paper points out that a significant number of school heads spend too long on administration and management tasks, leaving little time for work aimed at enhancing student learning. Two-thirds of principals’ time is taken up with administrative work in low- and middle-income countries, whereas in high-income countries the amount of time spent managing teaching by the principal has decreased.
To support effective educational systems, effective school managers must be provided with the right blend of time, talent, training, and trust. In many nations, there are still no effective mechanisms for the selection of competitive recruitment of candidates for the position of principals, and a great number of school leaders’ step into their positions without proper training for leaders. Additionally, most of the principals do not have the freedom to make key staffing and operational budgets management, thus incapacitating them from effective leadership.
