$130 billion a year wasted on poor quality education

A quarter
of a billion
children worldwide are failing to learn basic reading
and maths skills in an education crisis that costs
governments $129 billion annually, the UN's
cultural agency warned in a report Wednesday.
Inadequate teaching across the world has left a
legacy of illiteracy more widespread than
previously thought, UNESCO said in its annual
monitoring report.
It said one in four young people in poor countries
was unable to read a sentence, with the figure
rising to 40 percent in sub-Saharan Africa,
The United Nations defines "youth" as people aged
between 15 and 24, although UNESCO's definition
varies across regions.
"What's the point in an education if children
emerge after years in school without the skills they
need?" said Pauline Rose, the director of the nearly
500-page Education for All Global Monitoring
Report.
In a third of countries analysed, fewer than three-
quarters of existing primary school teachers were
trained to national standards, while 120 million
primary age children across the world had little or
no experience of school, the UNESCO report found.
"The cost of 250 million children not learning the
basics is equivalent to $129 billion, or 10 percent of
global spending on primary education," the report
said.
Thirty-seven countries monitored by the report are
losing at least half the amount they spend on
primary education because children are not
learning, UNESCO said.
In developed countries including France, Germany
and the United Kingdom, immigrant children lag
behind their peers, performing far worse on
minimum learning targets.
Indigenous groups in Australia and New Zealand
face similar problems, it said.
The report called for global education policies to
focus not only on enrolment rates but also on equal
access and better teaching.
"Access is not the only crisis — poor quality is
holding back learning even for those who make it
to school," UNESCO director general Irina Bokova
wrote in the report's foreword.
She said it was clear that the educational targets
set in 2000 by the UN's Millennium Developments
Goals would not be reached.
Rose said "new goals after 2015 must make sure
every child is not only in school, but learning what
they need to learn".

Sent From David Aniemeka