Global Learning Crisis: A Note
Despite all our claims of being at the pinnacle of civilisational progress, we have a Global Learning Crisis at hand. We have 57 million primary school-age children are out of school, half of them in Sub-Saharan Africa. 31 million of them are girls, and half of them have never ever set foot in a school. A further 250 million children can not read or write, despite being in school: Out of these, 130 million can not read or write even after spending more than 4 years at school. 90% of the children in Honduras, more than 50% in Uganda and 33% in Mali can not read a single word of connected text at the end of grade two. Among the children who manage to attend Primary School, 25% of them drop out before reaching the Secondary School. 69 million school-age adolescents are not attending secondary school. UNESCO reports that these numbers have hardly decreased in the last three years and the progress has stalled or reversed in a number of countries. Finally, add to that 774 milli...