While some countries are on track to meet the Millenium Development Goals (MDG) target of full enrollment in primary schooling by 2015, others in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa are lagging "far behind", the World Bank said Sunday. The MDGs are ambitious development goals, including reducing hunger and poverty and fighting AIDS, agreed to in 2000 and to be reached by 2015, but a World Bank report said that more needs to be done to make sure the targets are met. "Wealthy countries need to help developing countries, which are serious about giving all their boys and girls a quality primary education, with the additional finance and support they will need to boost enrollments, start training extra teachers, build more classrooms and improve the quality of education," said Jean-Louis Sarbib, the World Bank's senior vice president for human development. Fifty-one countries have already achieved the goal, the report stated. Yet "over 100 million primary-school-age children remain out of school" globally and nearly 60 per cent of them are girls. "This situation endures despite overwhelming evidence that teaching children how to read, write and count can boost economic growth, arrest the spread of AIDS and break the cycle of poverty," the World Bank said. "In a world tragically short of magical solutions, primary education remains one of the most dramatic development solutions available," said Sarbib. "Progress on education - as with many other development challenges - becomes possible when political will and resources come together."
