While there are many different issues with the way we educate our children in the US, education is a humanitarian issue that deserves attention all over the world. One of the ways that organizations are addressing the universality of these issues is by defining them and setting goals to mitigate their effects. The World Bank, which provides grants to low- and middle-income nations, is doing just that with their new metric: learning poverty.
What is learning poverty?
In Oct. 2019, the World Bank introduced the concept of learning poverty. This is a way to put a face to a name when it comes to the learning crisis that children and adults across the world face every day. According to the World Bank, learning poverty occurs when one is unable to read and comprehend simple text by the age of ten.
Though the definition of learning poverty seems relatively straightforward, there is a lot of research and factors that led to the creation of the term. Because it is relatively new, a good amount of commentary on the term, and what it means for education reform at the global level, also exists. In today’s article, I look at what learning poverty means, and how we can fight its detrimental effects.
The World Bank is very clear that the world is in the midst of a learning crisis. Across the globe, students are underprepared or unprepared, teachers are ill-equipped or unqualified, and administrative institutions lack the organization to enforce high standards of teaching. This, along with other concerns related to health and shelter, make progress even more challenging. All of this puts a strain on human capital, perpetuating economic issues that feed back into education, housing, and the like, as learning is a contributing factor in sustainable development. Overall, a vicious cycle occurs. The learning poverty metric highlights the learning crisis occurring so that we might better tackle these issues.
In places like Niger, these issues are particularly pronounced. The country ranks at the very bottom of the United Nations’ Education index. According to the U.N., the average student in Niger is expected to receive only 6.5 years of schooling. Sixty-six percent of primary school teachers are trained in teaching, and enrollment drops from 75 percent to 25 percent between primary and secondary school. Ninety-nine percent of children in Niger are experiencing learning poverty. Almost all of them are not proficient in reading by the time they are ten years old.
Proposed solutions to learning poverty
Along with their learning poverty definition, the World Bank proposed a plan that aims to halve rates of learning poverty over the next ten years. In the plan, all countries are charged with improving learning outcomes as well as the top 20% of countries did between 2000 and 2015. The World Bank specifically emphasized reading skills, as literacy is one of the earliest and most useful indicators of child success.
Because each country is different, a one-size-fits-all plan cannot possibly meet these goals. Therefore, the World Bank has outlined some policies that have worked in the past. They are allowing countries to tailor these to their own needs. These include changing assessment systems, focusing on literacy in the mother tongue, and setting goals in both the short and long term. In Egypt, the government has set out reform programs that target areas where their education system needs improvement. Some of these include expanding the availability of digital technologies and increasing kindergarten enrollment. They expect to see a 50 percent improvement in kindergarten school enrollment and teacher-preparedness as a result.
Literacy is one of the best, most important things we can teach our children. When children are successful in reading, and our educators have goals for what schooling should look like, everyone benefits. Defining and making plans to limit these barriers to literacy are important first steps in this process.
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