By Dr Etuna Simon
Last week, I found myself in a room where Namibia’s education story was being examined from many different perspectives.
Policymakers spoke from one angle. Researchers from another. Teacher unions, teachers, students, academics and development partners all brought their own experiences into the conversation.
The discussion moved through familiar concerns. Access. Equity. Participation. Progress. And, inevitably, the road to 2030.
At first, I found myself listening to the different views being shared.
But as the conversation continued, I started thinking less about the presentations and more about the time we have left. 2030 no longer feels like a distant target written into an international development agenda.
It feels close. Very close. And once that thought settled in, the conversation changed for me. It was no longer only about what Namibia has achieved. It became a question of what we still need to fix, and how much can realistically be done before 2030 arrives.
On 30 September, Namibia hosted a national policy dialogue around UNESCO’s 2026 Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report, the first instalment in the Countdown to 2030 series.
This year’s report focuses on access and equity. The next will turn to quality and learning, followed by relevance. That sequence is revealing. It reminds us that opening the school gate is only the beginning of the education journey. The more difficult question is what happens after a learner enters.
Access gets learners into the system, but it is the quality and relevance of what happens next that determines whether education changes their lives. That is where Namibia’s real challenge now begins.
Access is not the same as arrival
At the launch, Deputy Minister of Education, Innovation, Youth, Sports, Arts and Culture (MEIYSAC) Hon. Dino Ballotti put the issue plainly: getting a child into a classroom is only the first step. True access means starting at the right age, attending consistently, progressing through the system and eventually completing an education that is meaningful. That distinction matters for Namibia.
NDP6 records a school enrolment rate of 76.5% in 2023, with urban enrolment at 78.4% and rural enrolment at 74.6%. Primary net enrolment exceeds 97%. Those figures show that Namibia has made real progress in opening access. But access must not become the statistic that allows us to stop asking harder questions. Who is progressing through the system? Who is repeating? Who leaves before completion?
Who has access to qualified teachers, electricity, technology, textbooks and safe learning environments? And when learners complete school, what have they actually learned? These are the questions that will determine whether Namibia reaches the spirit of SDG 4, rather than simply approaching its deadline.
Namibia is investing. Are the outcomes following?
Namibia’s commitment to education is evident in both its public spending and its teaching workforce. Reporting on the 2026 Global Education Monitoring findings indicates that education expenditure amounts to about 9.1% of GDP and 24.6% of total government expenditure. The same findings indicate that approximately 93% of pre-primary teachers, 95% of primary teachers and 96% of secondary teachers are formally trained and qualified.
These are significant strengths. A country that invests substantially in education and develops qualified teachers has already built parts of the foundation needed for progress.
But investment should ultimately be judged by what it changes for the learner. Namibia devotes substantial public resources to education and has a largely trained teaching workforce. Yet Government’s 2026/27–2028/29 Medium-Term Expenditure Framework records that only 28% of Grade 3 learners achieved basic literacy skills and 32% achieved basic numeracy skills in the 2024/25 actual-performance period. This is the uncomfortable part of the conversation.
The challenge is therefore not simply how much Namibia invests in education, but how effectively and equitably those investments are translated into learning outcomes.
The foundation still decides the future
One of the most striking figures discussed around the GEM launch was the estimated shortage of 1,977 pre-primary classrooms. That shortage is not a small infrastructure gap. It is a signal about what happens before formal schooling has properly begun. A child who enters Grade 1 without adequate school readiness may spend the next several years trying to catch up. Early disadvantage can become repetition, weak literacy, frustration and eventually disengagement.
This is why access must be understood from the beginning of the learning journey, not only from Grade 1. It is also why equity cannot be reduced to whether a school exists somewhere in a region. The quality of access matters.
Recent reporting on the GEM findings indicates that 98% of primary schools have basic drinking water and 94% have basic sanitation. Yet only about 60% have electricity, and just 25% have internet or computer access for teaching and learning. At secondary level, the figure for internet or computer access rises to 64%. Those differences matter in a country that is simultaneously talking about digital transformation, artificial intelligence and future skills.
The learner who enters a connected classroom and the learner who enters a school without reliable electricity may technically both have “access”. Their educational opportunities are not the same.
Four years is not enough time for comfortable conversations
The temptation with 2030 is to treat it as an international reporting deadline. It should be treated as a national accountability deadline. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were never meant to become a collection of percentages that countries present at conferences. They were meant to change lives. For education, that means Namibia should be asking what can still be changed meaningfully before 2030, rather than waiting to explain in 2031 why certain targets were missed.
Which regions require the most urgent pre-primary expansion? Where are repetition rates highest? Which schools remain without electricity and digital connectivity? Where are teacher deployment patterns misaligned with learner needs? Which children are still entering school late or leaving too early?
The answers should shape budgets, infrastructure decisions, teacher deployment and curriculum support now. Four years can be short in education planning. A school takes time to build. A teacher takes years to train. A child who is already struggling with reading cannot wait for the next policy cycle.
Readiness must mean more than enrolment
Namibia deserves credit for the progress it has made. The country has invested heavily in education, expanded participation and built a largely qualified teaching workforce. Thought leadership, however, also requires us to resist celebrating progress so loudly that we stop hearing the gaps. The next phase must be about conversion: converting access into attendance, attendance into progression, progression into learning, and learning into the knowledge and capabilities young people need to participate meaningfully in society and the economy.
That is why the 2026 GEM Report matters at this particular moment. Its findings on access and equity should not simply reassure us about the progress Namibia has made, nor should they be read only as a list of shortcomings. They should challenge us to decide what must happen next.
The real value of the report will lie in whether its evidence changes planning, budgets, infrastructure decisions, teacher deployment and the support given to learners who are still being left behind. As the discussion came to an end, I found myself returning to the same thought that had stayed with me throughout the morning: 2030 is close. Namibia has already opened many doors to education.
The challenge now is to make sure that access leads to meaningful learning, progression and opportunity. Because reaching 2030 should not simply mean being able to say that more children entered the education system. It should mean being able to show that more children emerged from it able to read, reason, participate and build better futures for themselves. That is the real test ahead of us.
Dr Etuna Simon is a researcher, strategist and writer with a keen interest in education, innovation, artificial intelligence and national development. The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author. She can be reached at etunasimon@icloud.com
