Some 30 million girls in sub-Saharan Africa are out of school, an education official has said. Prof. Senteza Kajubi also says that out of 100 million children in the world who do not attend school, 44 million are from Africa, the majority girls from the sub-Saharan region.

Kajubi, who is the patron of the Forum for Education NGOs and vice chancellor of Nkumba University, said this while closing an educational dialogue at Fairway Hotel on April 23.

The dialogue, officially known as the Global Week of Action, is a worldwide annual activity carried out by NGOs and teachers unions to realise the right of education for all by 2020.

Kajubi said girls were less likely than boys to stay in upper primary and secondary school in Uganda. The educationist said poverty, conflict, HIV/Aids, early marriages, sexual harassment, and harsh school environment were keeping Ugandan girls out of school.

Children, Kajubi said, should be encouraged to learn and speak their local languages to help them learn better and build their personalities.

The national co-ordinator of the Forum for African Women Educationists, Ms Florence Kanyike, said more boys were attending school than girls in Uganda.

Kanyike said that even with UPE, some families still give priority to sending boys to school. The executive director of the Uganda Society for the Disabled Children, Mr Jackson Aturia, decried the low enrolment of disabled children.

He said only 30 percent of the 800,000 disabled children in Uganda attend school.

Source: PUSH Journal