Education
Under the regime of Francisco Macias, education had been significantly neglected with few children receiving any type of education. Under President Obiang, the illiteracy rate dropped from 73% to 13% and the number of primary school students has risen from 65,000 in 1986 to more than 100,000 in 1994. Education is free and compulsory for children between the ages of 6 and 14.
The Equatorial Guinea government has also partnered with Hess Corporation and The Academy for Educational Development (AED) to establish a $20 million education program through which primary school teachers participate in a training program to teach modern child development techniques. There are now 51 Model Schools. It is hoped the active pedagogy in the Model Schools will be a national reform.
In recent years, with change in economic/political climate and government social agendas, several cultural dispersion and literacy organizations are now located in the country, founded chiefly with the financial support of the Spanish government. The country has one university, the Universidad Nacional de Guinea Ecuatorial (UNGE) with a campus in Malabo and a Faculty of Medicine located in Bata on the mainland. In 2009 the university produced the first 110 national doctors. The Bata Medical School is supported principally by the government of Cuba and staffed by Cuban medical educators and physicians. However, it is predicted that Equatorial Guinea will have enough national doctors in the country to be self-sufficient within the next five years.
Read more about this topic: Sport In Equatorial Guinea
Famous quotes containing the word education:
“I think the most important education that we have is the education which now I am glad to say is being accepted as the proper one, and one which ought to be widely diffused, that industrial, vocational education which puts young men and women in a position from which they can by their own efforts work themselves to independence.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“... in the education of women, the cultivation of the understanding is always subordinate to the acquirement of some corporeal accomplishment ...”
—Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797)
“We have not been fair with the Negro and his education. He has not had adequate or ample education to permit him to qualify for many jobs that are open to him.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)