Education in Haiti: Crisis and Opportunity

There are few public schools in Haiti. In fact, four out of five Haitian students must attend private schools. These private schools are often no more than lean-tos with dirt floors, overcrowded with children who have few if any books and who sit shoulder to shoulder on rickety benches before a teacher who is poorly paid and rarely qualified to teach. In spite of the modest fees most private schools charge, they are still too expensive for many Haitian families to afford. As a result only about half of Haiti's children ever attend school. Of those children who do, only about a quarter manage to complete elementary school.

Of the Haitians students who complete elementary school, only a few manage to complete high school. High schools are fewer and much more expensive than elementary schools. To attend high school, many students must leave their homes and families in the countryside, where most Haitians live, and move to an urban area where nearly all high schools are located.

This move to the city is often a trap. Few students who start high school graduate. But whether they graduate or not, most discover that the years of schooling has done little to prepare them to face Haiti's harsh economic reality. Their families may imagine them taking fancy desks job in an air-conditioned office, but jobs are scarce in the city. So these young people who came to the city with so much hope invested in them, often end up stranded in urban squalor, refugees of a failed education system. They are too educated and too ashamed to return to the countryside.

It is hard to imagine how the crisis in education in Haiti could be worse. Haiti has one of the lowest adult literacy rates in the world; and Oxfam International ranks only four countries in the world lower than Haiti for the availability of basic education for its people.

Nevertheless, there are many things to be encouraged about. The literacy rate and numbers of children attending school has been gradually rising over the past few decades. Haitian Creole, the native language of Haiti's people, is being used more and more as the language of instruction, rather than French, a language few teacher or students in Haiti speak with any fluency. Haiti's political climate, though unstable, is more open than in the past and leaves space to leaders and communities to develop local educational initiatives. This space has allowed adult literacy programs to multiply across the country, responding to the great thirst most Haitians have to become literate. All these developments hold promise for positive change.

Beyond Borders is committed to making quality education more widely available, especially to Haiti's poorest children and adults. The task is daunting. But, through our partners in Haiti, we are investing in a five part strategy that has been making a real impact in the lives of thousands of Haitians.

Beyond Borders' Three Part Strategy to Make Quality Education More Widely Available in Haiti

In response to the invitation of our partners in Haiti over the years of our work, Beyond Borders' efforts to make quality education more available has evolved into a five-part strategy.

1. Funding the programs local organizations that provide basic education and literacy services for the most disadvantaged Haitian adults and children,
   
2. Supporting teacher training and the developing pedagogical methods and materials that are more liberating and better adapted to Haiti's reality.
   
3. Promoting the development of local leadership and strengthening local institutions that manage schools and literacy programs,