Big news emerged last week of exploding enrollments in primary schools across the globe. 41 million more kids were enrolled in primary school between 1999 and 2005, according to UNESCO’s recently released Global Monitoring Report.

The annual report, which tracks global progress towards achieving Education for All, found that sub-Saharan Africa has seen some of the most marked improvements in expanding access to education. 29 million more African kids were enrolled in school between 1999 and 2005, the world’s fastest increase in enrollment.

A lot of this progress was made possible due to increased spending on education by African governments and international donors. With savings from debt relief, for example, many governments were able to abolish primary school fees, which allowed huge numbers of kids to go to school for the first time. Such measures led to an additional 1 million children in school in Kenya and 3 million more children in school in Tanzania since 2003.

While these numbers are encouraging, much more progress is needed to achieve Universal Primary Education and meet the second Millennium Development Goal by 2015. Although Africa has made impressive increases in enrollment, 33 million primary school-aged kids are still out of school, 54% of whom are girls. Dropout rates are also high across the region – fewer than half of pupils reach the last grade of primary school in Benin, Chad, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritania, Mozambique, Rwanda and Uganda. Another challenge for African governments is to make sure that the number of teachers, classrooms and textbooks increase to accommodate the growing number of students.

-Nora Coghlan