Accra, Oct 29, - Millions of
young students in low and middle-income countries face the prospect of lost
opportunity and lower wages in later life because their primary and secondary
schools are failing to educate them to succeed in life.
Warning of ‘a learning crisis’ in
global education, a new Bank report said schooling without learning was not
just a wasted development opportunity, but also a great injustice to children
and young people worldwide.
The World Development Report
2018: ‘Learning to Realise Education’s Promise’, which was made available to
the Ghana News Agency, argues that without learning, education will fail to
deliver on its promise to eliminate extreme poverty and create shared opportunity
and prosperity for all.
It said even after several years
in school, millions of children cannot read, write or do basic math and the
learning crisis was widening social gaps instead of narrowing them.
It said young students who were
already disadvantaged by poverty, conflict, gender or disability reach young
adulthood without even the most basic life skills. “This learning crisis is a
moral and economic crisis,” World Bank Group President Jim Yong Kim said.
“When delivered well, education
promises young people employment, better earnings, good health, and a life
without poverty. For communities, education spurs innovation, strengthens
institutions, and fosters social cohesion. But these benefits depend on
learning, and schooling without learning is a wasted opportunity. More than
that, it’s a great injustice: the children whom societies fail the most are the
ones who are most in need of a good education to succeed in life.”
The report recommended concrete
policy steps to help developing countries resolve this dire learning crisis in
the areas of stronger learning assessments, using evidence of what works and
what doesn’t to guide education decision-making; and mobilise a strong social
movement to push for education changes that champion ‘learning for all.’
According to the report, when
third grade students in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda were asked recently to read
a sentence such as “The name of the dog is Puppy” in English or Kiswahili,
three-quarters did not understand what it said.
It said in rural India, nearly
three-quarters of students in grade three could not solve a two-digit
subtraction such as “46 – 17”—and by grade five, half still could not do so.
It said although the skills of
Brazilian 15-year-olds had improved, at their current rate of improvement they
would not reach the rich-country average score in maths for 75 years; adding
that in reading, it would take 263 years.
It said these statistics do not
account for 260 million children who, for reasons of conflict, discrimination,
disability, and other obstacles, were not enrolled in primary or secondary
school.
It said while not all developing
countries suffer from such extreme learning gaps, many fall far short of levels
they aspire to.
It noted that leading
international assessments on literacy and numeracy show that the average
student in poor countries performs worse than 95 per cent of the students in
high-income countries—meaning such a student would be singled out for remedial
attention in a class in those countries.
It said many high-performing
students in middle-income countries, young men and women who achieve in the top
quarter of their group would rank in the bottom quarter in a wealthier country.
The report, written by a team
directed by World Bank Lead Economists, Deon Filmer and Halsey Rogers,
identifies what drives these learning shortfalls, not only the ways in which
teaching and learning breaks down in too many schools, but also the deeper
political forces that cause these problems to persist.
The report noted that when
countries and their leaders make “learning for all” a national priority,
education standards can improve dramatically.
It cited that, from a war-torn
country with very low literacy rates in the 1950s, South Korea achieved
universal enrollment by 1995 in high-quality education through secondary
school, its young people performed at the highest levels on international
learning assessments.
It said Vietnam’s 2012 results
from an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) test for
high school students in maths, science, and reading called the Programme for
International Student Assessment (PISA), showed that its 15-year-olds performed
at the same level as those in Germany—even though Vietnam is a much poorer
country.
“The only way to make progress is
to ‘find truth from facts.’ If we let them, the facts about education reveal a
painful truth. For too many children, schooling does not mean learning,” said
World Bank Chief Economist, Paul Romer.
Relying on evidence and advice
gathered during extensive consultations in 20 countries, with governments,
development and research organisations, CSOs, and the private sector.
The report offers three policy
recommendations: firstly, it calls for assess learning, so it could become a
measurable goal; secondly, it recommends making schools work for all children
and thirdly mobilising everyone who had a stake in learning.
“Developing countries are far
from where they should be on learning. Many do not invest enough financial
resources and most need to invest more efficiently. But it is not only a matter
of money; countries need to also invest in the capacity of the people and
institutions tasked with educating our children,” said Jaime Saavedra, World
Bank’s Senior Director for Education.
GNA
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