Only one in 10 children in Africa complete primary school with basic skills

A new African Union, UNESCO Global Education Monitoring report and African Centre for School Leadership Spotlight Report, Lead for foundational learning, launched at the ADEA Triennale in Accra, Ghana, 29 October, 2025, shows that learning levels in Africa are lower than previously thought:  only 1 in 10 children in Africa complete primary education and achieve minimum learning proficiency.

Some core findings: 

Additional analysis of recently released data from the early grade reading assessment shows that, by grade 3, most Congolese, Nigerian and Zambian students could not read a single word.

The out-of-school population in Africa may have stopped rising in the last few years, reaching 44 million in 2023.

The report calls for school leaders to prioritise learning tasks over administrative tasks in order to improve foundational learning. 

School principals in 14 low- and middle-income countries spent 68% of their time on routine management tasks.

Pedagogical advisors often spend too much time helping principals with discipline and administration instead of on pedagogy. 

Strong school leaders are also required to navigate often low learning standards. 

Textbooks are scarce—in Cameroon, up to 23 students share one textbook on average, although Côte d’Ivoire has managed to ensure the provision of a textbook for each student. 

Over half of countries still do not provide textbooks in children's home language making early literacy acquisition hard. 

Finally, while 81% of countries in Africa provide school meals, they only cover, on average, 43% of primary students.

The report sets out 3 urgent actions to bolster instructional leadership for learning:

• Ensure school leaders monitor learning with data to help struggling learners improve. Effective school leaders set clear learning goals, focus on teaching and learning, support and motivate teachers, and promote collaboration across the school community.
• Select, prepare and support school and system leaders as future instructional leaders. Currently, 35% of countries have competency frameworks, which shape selection, training and professional development and only 19% require principals to have prior training before taking on their role.
• Develop education officials’ capacity to understand learning objectives and support schools to achieve them. District education officers should have clear learning objectives linked to their evaluations and receive targeted professional development to strengthen instructional leadership and data-driven quality assurance.

Beyond leadership, the report also shows that only 20% of countries have a national assessment framework, meaning that most countries have no clear learning objectives. It calls for countries to use the new African Union Continental Assessment Framework, which can help them shape their objectives towards generating robust, reliable data on learning.

A new policy dashboard, under the auspices of the African Union’s LEARN peer learning mechanism, accompanies the Spotlight report’s recommendations and outlines member states’ approaches to a range of policy challenges, from curriculum to school leadership, to promote collaboration and policy dialogue on foundational learning. 

Additional country reports on positive practices driving learning in Africa are also produced in partnership with relevant Ministries of Education alongside the continental Spotlight report: for Kenya, Cameroon, Cote d’Ivoire and Kaduna State, Nigeria. A report for Morocco will follow soon. 

By: Patricia Roy

info@patriciaroy.com 

Tel.  +34 696 905 907

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