Schooling crisis leaves children illiterate

In some countries, less than half of youngsters are learning the basics, Unesco’s annual monitoring report has revealed, as billions of dollars are being spent on poor quality education that is failing to ensure children are adequately educated.

The United Nations agency said that more good teachers are needed, and called on governments around the world to provide enough decent, trained teachers to ensure that all children get a good education.

The latest Education for All Global Monitoring Report calculates that the cost to governments of about 250 million children not learning the basics is an estimated $129bn (about £80bn) – which equates to 10 per cent of global spending on primary education.

This learning crisis is extensive, it warns, with figures suggesting that less than half of children are learning basic English and maths in 21 out of 85 countries with complete data available. Of these, 17 countries are in sub-Saharan Africa, the others are India, Mauritania, Morocco and Pakistan.

The report goes on to say that the quality of education during childhood has a marked impact on literacy.

A new analysis conducted for the study found that around 175 million young people living in low and lower middle income countries – equivalent to one in four youngsters – cannot read all or part of a sentence.

The report concludes that to improve learning for all, national education plans need to improve teacher management and quality.

“Investing in teachers is key,” it says.

“In around a third of countries, less than 75 per cent of primary school teachers are trained according to national standards. And in a third of countries, the challenge of training existing teachers is worse than that of recruiting and training new teachers.”

It adds: “To end the learning crisis, all countries, rich and poor, have to ensure that every child has access to a well-trained and motivated teacher.”