Worldwide, 100 million children did not complete primary education in 2015. An additional 58 million children of primary school age received no schooling at all (2015 EFA Global Monitoring Report). Most of these children are concentrated in a few areas: Sub-Saharan Africa, the Indian sub-continent, the Philippines and Latin America.
In many emerging economies, the situation is at a crisis point. For example, Liberia is home to the highest proportion of out-of-school children with nearly two-thirds of primary-aged children not attending school. The second highest is South Sudan, where 59 per cent of children are missing out on their right to a primary education, and 1 in 3 schools is closed due to conflict.
Of those children lucky enough to attend school, many are being hampered by underperforming school systems. While the determinants of an “underperforming school” vary from country to country, student achievement outcomes do not: Globally, approximately 1 in 3 primary school-age children are not learning the basics in reading and mathematics, sometimes known as foundation skills. As many as 250 million children either leave the fourth grade without basic skills in reading, writing and math, or they don’t even make it to grade 4 at all. Fully 130 million of these children are in school and not learning. Under present trends, by 2030, only 1 out of 10 young people in low-income countries will be on track to gain basic secondary-level skills. The cost of 250 million children not learning the basics is profound: the equivalent to a loss of USD 129 billion per year.
We are not just talking about student failure—we are also talking about the failure of the schools they have attended. These schools typically are characterized by the poor student outcomes described previously; by unworkable teacher/student ratios and high numbers of unqualified teachers; and by poor leadership, professional development and school cultures.
School and student failure in many countries is exacerbated by student dropout rates. Two principal contributing factors to student dropout are poor teaching and irrelevant curricula. Worldwide, 263 million children and youth are out of school--roughly the equivalent of the entire populations of Mexico and Russia combined. The magnitude of this failure is evident in the subsequent drain on the economy. In the USA alone, each year’s class of dropouts will cost the country over USD 200 billion in lost earnings and unrealized tax revenue during their lifetimes.
The situation is untenable. Finding solutions—and finding them now—has become a global imperative.