Education is officially compulsory for children between the ages of 6 to 12 but only a small proportion of the children of Haiti attend school. Some of the reasons are the lack of funding, lack of facilities and staff and the lack of qualified teachers. Statistics show that higher levels of attendance occur in private schools or church-administered institutions compared to the public school.

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• Education is a basic human need.
• Legally, in Haiti public education is free and open to ALL, but in actuality, state-sponsored education is limited.
• Haiti has the lowest school enrollment and literacy rates in the Western Hemisphere and little more than 50% of the adult population is literate.
• About 33% of children of Haiti never begin school.
• Only about 1 child in 5 attends secondary school
• Of the 2.5% of GDP spent by the government on education, only 20% goes to rural areas where 70% of the population lives.
• Teachers are poorly prepared. Materials are inadequate. In many of the rural schools it is common that only the teachers have books. Rote learning is the most common form of instruction.
• Schools are terribly overcrowded. Teachers have too many children in each classroom.
• The private sector provides 91% of children’s education in Haiti.
• Most secondary of university education is available only to those who have financial means.

 

In the 1940s, the recorded literacy rate was 2%. Missions have made a vital contribution to raising that percentage to numbers currently over 50%.

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Source: http://www.childinfo.org/areas/education/
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