The news out of Africa is rarely good. A coup, unrest, starvation, disease etc etc.
It is therefore more than heartening to read this positive report in the IHT out of sub-Saharan Africa:
"Even before workers hung the last wooden shutter on the new classrooms here, School H was overcrowded.
Makamba Keito, the new school's director, was expecting no more than 420 first through sixth graders. But as he opened registration on a sizzling Saturday in September, twice that many were already on the list, and those were only the students who had transferred from other jam- packed schools nearby.
Keito registered a few dozen more, then halted with a whopping 887 pupils, an average of 126 per teacher. "That's it," he recalled telling parents who were turned away. "You must go find some other place."
Finding places for millions of new students is one of sub-Saharan Africa's most overwhelming and gratifying missions.
After two decades of sluggish growth in enrollment rates, the region's 45 countries find themselves with an embarrassing number of eager schoolchildren.
Nearly 22 million more students flooded classrooms between 1999 and 2004, increasing the enrollment rate by 18 percent, more than in any other region of the world, according to Unesco. More than 6 out of 10 primary school-age children are now enrolled, and that ratio does not even include older students, like 14-year- old second graders, who have also streamed into schools."
It is therefore more than heartening to read this positive report in the IHT out of sub-Saharan Africa:
"Even before workers hung the last wooden shutter on the new classrooms here, School H was overcrowded.
Makamba Keito, the new school's director, was expecting no more than 420 first through sixth graders. But as he opened registration on a sizzling Saturday in September, twice that many were already on the list, and those were only the students who had transferred from other jam- packed schools nearby.
Keito registered a few dozen more, then halted with a whopping 887 pupils, an average of 126 per teacher. "That's it," he recalled telling parents who were turned away. "You must go find some other place."
Finding places for millions of new students is one of sub-Saharan Africa's most overwhelming and gratifying missions.
After two decades of sluggish growth in enrollment rates, the region's 45 countries find themselves with an embarrassing number of eager schoolchildren.
Nearly 22 million more students flooded classrooms between 1999 and 2004, increasing the enrollment rate by 18 percent, more than in any other region of the world, according to Unesco. More than 6 out of 10 primary school-age children are now enrolled, and that ratio does not even include older students, like 14-year- old second graders, who have also streamed into schools."
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