Haiti: Education is a Luxury That Many Parents Cannot Afford

February 28, 2024 Hour: 4:11 pm

On Wednesday, several sources stated that education remains a luxury that many parents find impossible to afford in Haiti, where 80 percent of schools are private and the number of public schools is insufficient.

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Article 32.3 of the Constitution stresses that basic education is compulsory, but this right does not reach the majority of the population due to the lack of free schools, recalls the newspaper Le Nouvelliste.

The shortage of qualified and competent teachers is such that, even with adequate equipment in some institutions, students cannot understand the lessons, according to a meeting organized by the Inter-American Development Bank.

According to a report, “85 percent of Haitian teachers did not receive any training in the teaching profession, and 30 percent have less than a ninth year of basic education.”

La faible allocation de 1,1% du PIB à l’éducation en Haïti souligne le manque d’investissement public. Lors des Mercredis de la Réflexion de la BID, le 21 février 2024, des experts ont débattu sur le renforcement du système éducatif pour un avenir durable, avec la participation…

— Le Nouvelliste (@nouvelliste)
February 27, 2024

The tweet reads, “The low allocation of 1.1% of GDP to education in Haiti highlights the lack of public investment. At the IDB Reflection Wednesdays on February 21, 2024, experts discussed strengthening the education system for a sustainable future, with the participation of the Minister of Education and other speakers.”

Charles Guy Etienne, director of Catts Pressoir College, said that Haitian families are too poor to be able to pay for long-term studies, hence only 10 percent of the students finished secondary school and the same number completed their professional training.

Etienne criticized this situation, which is exacerbated by the lack of access to school infrastructure in remote areas and the inability of many families to pay for their children’s schooling.

He recommended that schools become incubators for regional economic development. “In coastal areas, we could give priority to fishing and environmental management schools,” he said.

The schools, Etienne emphasized, should be the genesis of regional development projects, combining education with socioeconomic stability, bearing in mind that 80 percent of graduates have packed their bags and left the country.

Currently, the government of Haiti’s Prime Minister, Ariel Henry, allocates only 1.1 percent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to education, a budget that still does not cover the essential needs of this sector.

This demonstrates the weakness of public investment in the education system, declared the specialist, Marie Evane, who explained that this percentage of GDP is well below the average, which is 4.3 percent.

The figure reflects the Haitian government’s lack of interest in education; meeting the needs of schools, and even the quality of teaching, seems an impossible mission, the expert pointed out.