– More than two-thirds of the students in low-income countries, will not learn the basic skills of primary education in the year 2030, despite an ambitious goal that every child is in school and learning, according to a report published by the International Commission for the Funding Opportunities for Global Education.
The exhibition “The Generation of Learning: Investing in Education for a Changing World”, points out that without an urgent increase in investment in education by national governments, children in low-income countries will remain trapped in the vicious circle of poverty from generation to generation and will be left without the skills and knowledge they need in order to contribute to the societies and economies of their countries when they reach adulthood.
“Every child, in every country, in every neighborhood, in every household, has the right not only to a seat in a class, but to a quality education – starting from the first years of life, the most important stage of brain development,” said the Executive Director of UNICEF Anthony Lake. “We need to invest in time, invest in quality, and to invest in equality – or pay the price of a generation of children doomed to grow up without the knowledge and skills that is needed in order to exploit its potential.”
The report shows that over 1.5 billion adults have no education beyond elementary school 2030. UNICEF supports the recommendations contained in the report and calls for increased national spending on education from 3% to 5% to help cope with this could be a world educational crisis.
Other key findings from the report:
Only half of children in primary education and just over a quarter aged secondary, in countries of low and middle income, learn basic skills.
330 million students in primary and secondary schools do not achieve even the most basic learning outcomes.
The crisis grows, as populations grow there will be an estimated 1.4 billion school-age children in countries of low and middle-income by 2030.
Two times more girls and boys will never go to school.
“We are facing the struggle of the civil rights of our generation – the requirement of young people for their right to education and the ticking time bomb of discontent as a result of disappointed hopes of that half of an entire generation,” said the Chairman of the Committee on Education and Special Envoy of the UN for Global Education Gordon Brown. “We can’t accept even a year or a decade like this. The Commission intends to unlock the greatest expansion of educational opportunity in modern history.”
The report is available at: http://report.educationcommission.org
For information and interviews, please contact UNICEF (mr Ilias Lymperis), tel.: 210-72 55 555 or 6944-65 37 99
UNICEF calls for the increase of expenditure in education as a new report reveals global crisis in learning
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