Thursday, 16 January 2014 00:00
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The latest UNESCO report reveals that a global learning crisis is costing governments $ 129 billion a year. It reinforces the responsibility on governments to safeguard the right to a universal, free and quality education, particularly for developing nations to champion inclusivity.
Ten percent of global spending on primary education is being lost on poor quality education that is failing to ensure that children learn. This situation leaves one in four young people in poor countries unable to read a single sentence. The Report concludes that good teachers are the key to improvement and calls on governments to provide the best in the profession to those who need them most.
This year’s report, ‘Teaching and learning: Achieving quality for all,’ warns that without attracting and adequately training enough teachers, the learning crisis will last for several generations and hit the disadvantaged hardest. In many sub-Saharan African countries, for example, the report reveals that only one in five of the poorest children reach the end of primary school having learnt the basics in reading and mathematics.
Poor quality education is leaving a legacy of illiteracy more widespread than previously believed. Around 175 million young people in poor countries – equivalent to around one quarter of the youth population – cannot read all or part of a sentence, affecting one third of young women in South and West Asia. On current trends, the report projects that it will take until 2072 for all the poorest young women in developing countries to be literate; and possibly until the next century for all girls from the poorest families in sub-Saharan Africa to finish lower secondary school.
The report calculates that the cost of 250 million children around the world not learning the basics translates into a loss of an estimated $ 129 billion. In total, 37 countries are losing at least half the amount they spend on primary education because children are not learning. By contrast, the report shows that ensuring an equal, quality education for all can generate huge economic rewards, increasing a country’s gross domestic product per capita by 23% over 40 years.
Even in high-income countries, education systems are failing significant minorities. In New Zealand, while almost all students from rich households achieved minimum standards in grades 4 and 8, only two-thirds of poor students did. Immigrants in rich countries are also left behind: in France, for example, fewer than 60% of immigrants have reached the minimum benchmark in reading.
The report shows that to achieve good quality education for all, governments must provide enough trained teachers, and focus their teacher policies on meeting the needs of the disadvantaged. This means attracting the best candidates into teaching; giving them relevant training; deploying them within countries to areas where they are needed most; and offering them incentives to make a long-term commitment to teaching.
The report also highlights the need to address gender-based violence in schools, a major barrier to quality and equality in education. It underscores the importance of curriculum and assessment strategies to promote inclusion and improve learning.
This stark message should not be lost on the policymakers of Sri Lanka. Despite having a high literacy rate, Sri Lanka’s schools are often inadequately funded, have outdated syllabi, lack basic resources and are impaled on bureaucracy and red tape. The result is that children are left behind and the struggle of poverty continues.
