A new report released by the cultural agency of the UN, revealed the concerning state of the global education today. According to it, about 250 million kids around the world have problems learning basics skills like reading. This is just one of the factors for which the UN refers to the state of education as a “crisis.” The research has estimated that this educational crisis costs $129 billion a year.
UNESCO believes that inadequate teaching is partly to be blamed for that. The report states that this trend has been around for many years. As a result, it is plays a major role in today’s high illiteracy rates witnessed all over the world.
UN has discovered that in poor countries, every fourth child is not able to read even a sentence. The percentage is even higher in Sub-Saharan Africa. There, the number of illiterate kids reach 40%.
The research’s director, Pauline Rose, states that this crisis makes education today almost pointless. Rose adds that even when children spend years in school, they graduate with limited practical skills.
In over 33% of the countries that were examined in the report, fewer than three-quarters of teachers in primary schools were trained in accordance to national standards. Moreover, around 120 million kids in primary age have never visited an educational institution.
The study has also found that this crisis has its price. The 250 million kids that have failed to learn basic skills in school cost approximately $129 billion to governments. That is around 10% of all primary education spending in the world.
Worrying is also the finding that 37 of the countries included in the research tend to lose about 50% of the money they invest in primary education. This is due to the fact that children there did not receive any knowledge during this stage of their education.
In many developed countries there is an educational and knowledge gap between immigrant kids and local children. Such is the case in the United Kingdom, Germany and France. There, immigrant children have trouble leaning even the most basic school material. Australia’s and New Zealand’s indigenous groups also experience similar problems.
The report advises that government should not measure education success in enrolment rates. Instead they should focus on equal access to education. In addition, more attention should be paid on higher teaching quality as well.
In the Arab countries, for example, only a little over 50% of the kids in primary age are learning basic skills like reading. The rate in the region varies from 70% in the UAE and Qatar to barely 9% in Mauritania.
The UN concludes that this year governments should focus not only on children’s access to education, but also the quality of the training they receive.
