Learning the Basics

All parents want to give their children the benefit of an education, but not all parents are able to do so. In Ethiopia, for example, only 36 percent of the country’s 31 million children under 18 attended primary school during the last decade.

Save the Children’s community-based schools are part of a Primary Education sponsorship program that is successfully improving that ratio for thousands of Ethiopian children, as well as many more in areas where Save the Children works. With the help of sponsors, we can build schools, train teachers and develop appropriate lesson plans. Teachers are drawn from local communities, and local school management committees are responsible for school operations. We are proud to report that according to recent evaluations, student achievement levels in community-based schools are comparable to, or better than, those in government schools.

Save the Children also works with communities to remove the barriers that prevent girls from enrolling in school and today, half of the students in each community are females, while in most comparable institutions, boys outnumber girls by at least two to one.