260 million children not in school

A World Bank 2018 World Development report entitled: “Greater Measurement, Action on Evidence” says its statistics do not account for 260 million children who, for reasons of conflict, discrimination, disability, and other obstacles, are not enrolled in primary or secondary school.

According to the report, while not all developing countries suffer from such extreme learning gaps, many fall far short of levels they aspire to, and learning international assessments on literacy and numeracy show that the average student in poor countries performs worse than 95% of the students in high-income countries.

Former Peruvian Education Minister, and now the World Bank’s Senior Director for Education, Jaime Saavedra says developing countries are far from where they should be on learning because they do not invest enough financial resources and need to invest more in the capacity of the people and institutions tasked with educating the children.

He suggests that urgent reform is needed and requires persistence as well as the political alignment of government, media, entrepreneurs, teachers, parents, and students who have to value and demand better learning.

It identifies the shortfalls as the ways in which teaching and learning breaks down in too many schools, coupled with the deeper political forces that cause these problems to persist.

The report adds that three-quarters of students did not understand what is said in rural India, and nearly three-quarter of students in grade 3 could not solve a two-digit subtraction.

The report notes that significant progress is possible when countries and their leaders make “learning for all” a national priority, education standards can improve dramatically from a war-torn country with very low literacy rates.–Report