Education
Although public education is free, private and parochial schools provide around 75% of educational programs offered. Less than 65% of children of primary school age are actually enrolled. At the secondary level, the figure drops to 55%. Of those enrolled in primary school, 63% will complete it. On average, it takes 16 years to produce a single graduate of the 6-year cycle. Though Haitians place a high value on education, few can afford to send their children to secondary school. Remittances sent by Haitians living abroad are important in paying educational costs.
In the metropolitan area of Port-au-Prince, home to 2.21 million of Haiti's 8.5 million people, only 23 percent of adults have completed secondary school with 16 percent passing the state graduation exam. More than half (53.5 percent) of children aged 5–17 do not attend school.
Read more about this topic: Demographics Of Haiti
Famous quotes containing the word education:
“Because of these convictions, I made a personal decision in the 1964 Presidential campaign to make education a fundamental issue and to put it high on the nation’s agenda. I proposed to act on my belief that regardless of a family’s financial condition, education should be available to every child in the United States—as much education as he could absorb.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“As for the graces of expression, a great thought is never found in a mean dress; but ... the nine Muses and the three Graces will have conspired to clothe it in fit phrase. Its education has always been liberal, and its implied wit can endow a college.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Every day care center, whether it knows it or not, is a school. The choice is never between custodial care and education. The choice is between unplanned and planned education, between conscious and unconscious education, between bad education and good education.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)