A post-2015 youth perspective: It’s make-or-break time for education

By Naim Keruwala

I came across this picture on my Facebook timeline a couple of days ago. It captures very well the state of education in many countries, where government schools providing free education are inadequate and quality of education is extremely poor.

In India, where I live, the government is going berserk to enrol children in schools and higher education institutes but quality has suffered badly, according to the Annual Status of Education Report (ASER) 2012 published by Pratham, a non-government organization. The enrolment rate has risen but so has the dropout rate. Over 75.2% of all children enrolled in Standard 5 in government schools could not do simple division problems.

Globally, 61 million primary school age children are still out of school. More than 56 million people in Sub-Saharan Africa aged 15-24 have not completed primary school. In Tanzania, of 48 schools assessed, not even a single student could pass the primary school exam.

Primary education is vital for the inclusive growth of a country – and the individual. If you haven’t got primary education – because there were no schools or you went to a school that was dreadful – you don’t have an initial platform to stand on. It is the chief source of social mobility but it is not accessible to astonishingly large proportion of the poor.

Education, one of the basic rights of an individual, has become a distant dream for many; “quality education” has become a niche product accessible only by the elite. This has resulted in an extremely high skill deficit especially in developing countries, creating social malaise.

The OECD projects that India will produce 24 million graduates by the end of this decade, however:

• an earlier survey by the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) found that only 39.5% of all graduates in India were viewed as employable
• only 10% of graduates from business schools in India manage to get hired
• a study by Aspiring Minds showed that India produces more than 500,000 engineering graduates a year, but barely 3% of an assessed 55,000 graduates were viewed as ready to be employed without extra training.

The problem is not just in India or developing countries; Harvard Business Review estimates that by 2020, the worldwide shortage of highly skilled, college-educated workers could reach 40 million.. “Even America is neither producing enough college graduates to sustain a robust workforce, nor fulfilling its national promise of economic opportunity for all,” writes Daniel Greenstein.

Africa’s 3 top education priorities for the next decade

By Birger Fredriksen, a senior advisor at the Results for Development Institute and former director for human development for Africa at the World Bank. 

How can countries seize the opportunities and minimize the risks posed by the rapid change that is reshaping societies and economies worldwide? The answer will increasingly depend on their ability to provide their people with the skills they need to respond to such change. The challenge of building the necessary education systems is particularly daunting for low-income Sub-Saharan African countries. What should be their top priorities over the next decade to achieve this?

Obviously, Africa must develop secondary and higher education to produce the skills needed to compete in the global knowledge-based economy. But this has to be coupled with continued high priority to achieving good quality basic education for all. This is the foundation for post-basic education, shared economic growth and increased productivity of those engaged in the farming and non-farming informal sectors – the overwhelming majority of Africa’s labour force (around 90%).

Therefore, governments must make budget trade-offs in favour of population groups who missed out on basic education, by giving high priority to the following areas over the next decade:

1.         Invest in ALL young children: The best long-term investment most African countries can make is early childhood care and education. Not only do Africa’s child health and education indicators lag behind those of other developing regions, the gap is increasing:

• Child mortality: In 2010, Sub-Saharan Africa’s under-5 mortality rate (121 per 1,000) was double that of South Asia and six times that of East Asia and Latin America. In 2010, Sub-Saharan Africa accounted for 49% of the children worldwide dying before the age of 5, up from 19% in 1970.
• Malnutrition: Sub-Saharan Africa is the only region where the number of children who are stunted (short for their age) increased between 1990 and 2010 (from 38 to 55 million).
• Pre-primary education: In 2010, Sub-Saharan Africa’s gross enrolment ratio was 17% against 48% in South Asia, 57% in East Asia and 70% in Latin America.

Malnutrition and a lack of pre-school education seriously undermine children’s life chances, including their education. Many of these impacts are irreversible. Save the Children has called malnutrition a “life sentence for children”.

A goal for 2030: primary and lower secondary school completion

Cris Revaz, executive director of the Basic Education Coalition, lays out the coalition’s recommendations for a new set of global education goals, outlined in a new paper, Each Child Learning, Every Student a Graduate. 

Our recommendations are built around a straightforward objective – that by 2030, all children should be able to complete a quality primary and lower secondary education based on each country’s standards for learning and skills acquisition. Our vision is reflected in post-MDG and EFA goal language and accompanying indicators, and would cover both formal and non-formal education.

The particular language we suggest for a post-MDG goal is:  By 2030, all children and youth should complete primary and lower secondary education which enables them to meet measurable learning standards and acquire relevant skills so they may become responsible, productive members of society. 

The paper’s key themes are highlighted below:

1. The central vision of completing an education – graduation – is commonly understood and appreciated by children, youth, families and people everywhere.  It is critical that we step back and remember that the post-2015 education goals must first inspire and rally people everywhere who are demanding education.  If we cloak the goal language in complex formulas or techno-speak, we risk losing their faith and support.

 2. Our goal language encompasses all three key challenges to continued progress towards Education for All:  access, equity and learning. This is strategically important since it may not be realistic to expect separate post-MDG education goals relating to each of these issues.

An open letter to the new CEO of the Global Partnership for Education

An open letter to Alice Albright, new Chief Executive of the Global Partnership for Education, from Pauline Rose, Director of the Education for All Global Monitoring Report

Dear Ms Albright,

I would like to extend a very warm welcome to you in your new role heading the Global Partnership for Education, a vital part of the Education for All architecture. I’m sure your skills and experience will be invaluable in leading the GPE and its team of committed education experts. Like Carol Bellamy, we are thrilled that someone with your leadership qualities and solid management experience will be helping to make sure that all children — whatever their circumstances — get a good quality education.

The annual Education for All Global Monitoring Report undertakes independent analysis of progress towards the six EFA goals, and is published by UNESCO. Each year it has a particular focus – our 2013 Report will present evidence on the links between education and broader development outcomes to highlight the central role of education in the post-2015 development framework. It will also be addressing the importance of equitable learning in achieving these outcomes. The EFA Global Monitoring Report team is ready to support you in providing data and policy analysis on topical education issues.

I would like to take the liberty of offering three pieces of advice to help GPE ensure that no country is prevented from achieving the EFA goals due to lack of resources. These points seem particularly timely given discussions on education financing at the World Economic Forum this week, and our own analysis showing how little the private sector is contributing to education.

1.     Renew the focus on mobilizing resources for education, targeting those who need support most

We need $16 billion per year to achieve Education for All, but currently commitments fall far short of this. Analysis in our 2012 Report shows that donors are contributing just $1.9 billion to basic education in poor countries, and some are even reducing their spending. With less than three years until the EFA deadline, donors need an urgent reminder of the need to fulfill their commitment to ensure countries have the resources needed for all children to be in school and learning.

Business leaders at the World Economic Forum must boost finance for education

As political and business leaders gather in Davos for another year’s World Economic Forum, the Education for All Global Monitoring Report has released a new policy paper  showing that contributions from corporations and private foundations combined total only $683 million a year, equivalent to just 5% that aid donors spend on education. And while aid donors are increasingly backing government-led education plans, private sector contributions often reflect business interests rather than the education needs of the poorest countries.

To put the private sector contributions to education in perspective, $683 million is equivalent to just 0.1% of the two world’s biggest oil companies; it is equal to the cost of just two Airbus A380s, or, alternatively, the same amount people in the USA spend on pizza in just over a week. It is also a tiny amount compared with the $16 billion needed annually to ensure every child is in primary school.

Why does the private sector not give more to education since it is the first to benefit from a skilled workforce? Some argue it is because they aren’t interested in giving to social sectors. But this is not true. They fund health far more than education. Around 53% of US foundations’ grants are allocated to health, compared with only 8% to education.

Others suggest that the private sector, in particular pharmaceutical companies, has far more reason to be interested in health. But this cannot be the only reason. Health has benefited from the support of global business champions such as Bill Gates giving visibility to the vital importance of ensuring every child is vaccinated, for example. But there are not any business leaders of the same stature giving visibility to the need to educate 61 million children out of school.

Not only is $683 million a small amount of money, but a small number of companies contribute most of it. There is clearly room for more companies to join in. Only five corporations give more than $10 million a year each – Banco Santander, Cisco, Intel, Coca Cola and Exxon. These five provide more than half the total amount given by private foundations and corporations together.

Private foundations are more likely to allocate funds in a way that is more closely aligned with aid donors supporting national governments. Yet their contributions comprise just one-fifth of overall private sector contributions. Among foundations reporting their funding, only five provide more than US$5 million a year – Open Society, MasterCard, William and Flora Hewlett, Ford and Carnegie Corporation of New York. Their contributions are important but small. They are comparable to the amount of aid to education from some of the smallest government donors, such as Luxembourg and New Zealand.

Education after 2015: The Commonwealth perspective

Commonwealth ministers of education recently outlined their vision for education’s role in the new global goals for development, emphasizing education’s catalytic power and stressing the need for equity and quality in addition to access.

By Jonathan Penson, education adviser at the Commonwealth Secretariat.

The Commonwealth is an association of 54 countries united both by shared values and by great diversity. It consists of developed and developing countries, rich and poor, large and small. It is home to 2 billion citizens of all faiths and ethnicities, more than half of whom are 25 years old or under.

The end of the MDG and EFA period in 2015 will signal a paradigm shift in the global development framework. Commonwealth ministers of education met in London in December 2012 and developed recommendations for post-2015 which are now feeding into the UN discussions and wider debates. This blog post provides a summary.

Much has already been written about the need to re-focus on learning without compromising efforts to secure 100% access; to align the EFA and education MDG frameworks; and to pay more attention to equity. Commonwealth ministers correspondingly recommend that three core concerns – access, quality and equity  – should run through all education goals, and that EFA and MDGs should be harmonized to avoid overlaps or gaps.

In their meeting statement, Commonwealth Ministers of Education reaffirmed the centrality of education to all development objectives. This summary provides more details on the ministers’ recommendations. The rationale for the recommendations can be found in this background paper, while this issues paper identifies education priority areas in the Commonwealth. We would welcome your engagement in the continuing discussions on education in the Commonwealth via comments to this blog and via our web forum. For information contact: education@commonwealth.int.

Ending the learning crisis: education and equity after 2015

Today Save the Children is publishing its proposals for the post-2015 global development framework. Giving every child a chance to learn – particularly the poorest – is a central part of this framework, as four Save the Children education experts from around the world explain.

By Desmond Bermingham, Gerd-Hanne Fosen, Will Paxton and Dan Stoner

Global education debates are now abuzz with discussions about what will replace the Millennium Development Goals in 2015. You would be forgiven for thinking, however, that at this stage these debates are generating more heat than light. That is why today Save the Children has published its proposals for a post-2015 development framework. In Ending Poverty in Our Generation we have set out proposed goals, targets and indicators across all areas of human development.

We believe passionately that our generation is the first that can realistically talk of ending a series of global injustices. A world without poverty and without preventable child and maternal deaths is within our grasp. Education is no different. It falls to our generation, to ensure that no child is denied their right to education and no child’s life chances are cruelly limited by poor quality schools and limited opportunities to learn new skills.

That is why for education the global goal we are proposing is that “by 2030 we will ensure children everywhere receive quality education and have good learning outcomes”.

To underpin this goal our framework has three targets. The first, and most critical, is to “ensure that girls and boys everywhere are achieving good learning outcomes by the age of 12, with gaps between the poorest and the richest significantly reduced.” The second focuses on the early years and the third on young people. They are to “ensure that the poorest young children will be starting school ready to learn, with good levels of child development” and to “ensure that young people everywhere have basic literacy and numeracy, technical and life skills to become active citizens with decent employment”. We propose indicators for each target.

Running through this proposed framework are two key principles: learning and equity. Around 120 million children either never make it to school or drop out before their 4^th year, and another 130 million fail to acquire basic skills while they are there. A good education is richer and broader than being able to read, write and do basic maths, of courseIn a changing world, skills such as critical thinking and creativity are becoming more important. But basic skills provide the platform from which children can access and benefit from a broader education. It is a scandal that millions of children are still learning little or nothing.

The most deprived children continue to be denied access to school, are failed even if they get into school and have the fewest resources (material and human) in the home to support learning. That is why a focus on learning must be combined with one on equity.

In 2013, let’s keep our education promises – and get ready to make some more

By Pauline Rose, director of the Education for All Global Monitoring Report

With less than three years until the deadline for the Education for All goals, I sincerely hope 2013 is a year of urgent action to accelerate progress – particularly given the recent stagnation , with 61 million children still out of school.

It’s likely we will have unfinished business in 2015, as well as new challenges, so I also hope we see consensus this year on the central place of equitable educational access and learning in the broader post-2015 framework.

Even though 2015 is not far away, there are three actions that can be taken to accelerate progress:

1.     Make primary schooling fee-free

Many countries have abolished primary school fees over the past decade, resulting in a massive boost to enrolment that has particularly benefited children from poor households, and especially girls in these households. But more needs to be done to reach children in countries where fees are still being charged, and to ensure schooling really is free even where fees have been abolished. Evidence in our latest EFA Global Monitoring Report shows that in seven countries that have officially abolished fees, they still make up at least 15% of household education spending, reaching over 30% in Uganda.

2.     Set national priorities by identifying marginalized groups

Identifying the groups that are being left behind is the first step to addressing the problem of the remaining 61 million children out of school. In 2012, the EFA Global Monitoring Report team developed a new, user-friendly, interactive website, the World Inequality Database on Education (WIDE), that allows easy identification of groups who are being denied education opportunities, whether due to poverty, gender or where they live – the groups that need to be given priority in national policies.

The website also shows where progress is being made. Comparing Bangladesh and Pakistan, for example, it is clear that Bangladesh’s policies targeting disadvantaged girls by providing stipends has helped to narrow gaps, which remain wide in Pakistan. The percentage of the poorest girls in Pakistan who have never been to school fell from 78% in the early 1990s to 62% in the late 2000s, a much smaller drop than in Bangladesh, where it fell from 91% to 44% over a similar period.

Comparing the percentage of children who have never been to school by wealth and gender in Pakistan from 1991 to 2007

Pakistan: children who have never been to school, 1991

Pakistan: children who never been to school, 2007

Comparing the percentage of children who have never been to school in Bangladesh by wealth and gender from 1993 to 2007

Bangladesh: children who have never been to school, 1993

Bangladesh: children who have never been to school, 2007

3.     Ensure donors keep their promises

When international leaders met at Dakar in 2000, donors pledged that no country would be thwarted in its bid to meet the EFA goals due to lack of resources. Our latest assessment of financing trends finds that aid to education is stagnating just when it is needed the most. Cutbacks in aid are hitting education in 19 low income countries. It is vital that these negative trends are reversed before it is too late.

***

It is also time to lay the groundwork for action that will needed after 2015 to address unfinished business and new challenges. There are wide-ranging debates and consultations taking place on what a post-2015 framework might look like. Poverty eradication is expected to remain central, but issues not previously addressed are likely to be more prominent, including urbanization, good governance, environmental sustainability and climate change. Regardless of the precise framework, education must be included as a specific goal given its central role in meeting other development objectives. Our forthcoming 2013 GMR on Teaching and Learning for Development will facilitate this by providing robust evidence on the linkages between education and broader development outcomes.

Given what we have learned from the EFA goals and MDG framework, I hope that progress will be made in 2013 towards developing a post-2015 agenda in the following areas:

What’s top of the 2012 global education news?

By Pauline Rose, director of the Education for All Global Monitoring Report

The tragic shooting in Pakistan of Malala in the name of girls’ education, the rebuilding of education in South Sudan one year after independence and in Haiti two years after its devastating earthquake all featured in the Education for All Global Monitoring Report’s top 10 blog posts of 2012. The 10 most-read posts also highlighted messages of the 2012 EFA Global Monitoring Report, notably on the importance of skills for rural young women, and lessons from Germany on bridging the gap between school and work.

Rebuilding schools after the 2010 earthquake, Haiti.

Our most read blog of 2012 presented new data on literacy, showing that 775 million adults are still unable to read or write, leaving many countries unlikely to achieve the Education for All goal of halving illiteracy by 2015 [1. Literacy rates are rising – but not fast enough]. The goal for adult literacy has seen the slowest advances over the past decade.

As our 2012 Report shows, progress across all six education goals has stagnated, raising fears that education is slipping down the global agenda. At a time when the international community begins to plan a post-2015 framework it is vital to ensure that education is given its rightful place by showing how education makes a key contribution to all areas of development.

To inform debates on post-2015 frameworks, another of our top 10 blogs provided evidence on the links between education and development for the Rio+20 meeting on sustainable development that took place in June this year [4. Let’s not forget 61 million out-of-school children at Rio+20]. We will be providing new evidence to support further the case for education in the 2013 GMR – you can find out more and join our consultation here.

A key reason for stalled progress in reaching universal primary education is that the 61 million children who remain out of school are among the hardest to reach. In 2012, the GMR team developed a new interactive website, the World Inequality Database on Education (WIDE), to show who these children are and where they live. WIDE was released to coincide with the launch of the UN Secretary General’s global initiative for education, Education First. Our blog on WIDE illustrates the need to make greater progress in narrowing education inequalities, a concern that needs to feature strongly in a post-2015 framework [6. The World Inequality Database on Education (WIDE) – a new visualization tool to measure marginalization]. Drawing on data in WIDE, another of our most-read blogs identifies the worst places for girls’ education, with Pakistan featuring in the bottom 10 countries [8. The bottom ten countries for female education].

Our recently published 2012 Report found that 200 million young people in developing countries have not even completed primary school. Several blogs in the top 10 explored the reasons behind this, including the fact that rural women miss out the most due to discrimination both in education and labour markets [5. Rural women miss out on education — and decent jobs]. Our 2012 Report identified many successful programmes aimed at providing young women a second chance in education combined with assets to give them opportunities to set up businesses and so overcome disadvantage at work too.

The 2012 Report showed that it was not just in poor countries that young people lack skills. High levels of unemployment in countries such as Spain and the United Kingdom are partly a reflection of young people leaving before completing secondary school and, for those who stay, lacking opportunities to gain relevant skills. Another of our top 10 blogs highlights the fact that Germany’s tradition of companies working with schools to ensure that young people gain relevant skills is a secret of its success in keeping unemployment low even during times of economic austerity [9. Can the ‘German model’ bridge the skills gap elsewhere?]. It is not just a question of what skills are needed, but also how skills develop, as argued in a guest blog in the top 10 by Helen Abadzi of the Global Partnership for Education [7. How do skills develop? Cognitive neuroscience offers some insights].

While much more needs to be done, the beginnings of the rebuilding of education systems in Haiti and South Sudan offer signs of hope [3. Education rises – slowly – from Haiti’s rubble; 10. In South Sudan, many girls are missing out on school]. To ensure children and young people are given the opportunities they need and deserve and to ensure lasting peace and prosperity, it will be vital for education to remain top priorities in these and other countries that are emerging from conflict or natural disasters.

And, finally, my New Year’s wishes for the year featured in the top 10 blogs of 2012 [2. Education for All: Three New Year’s wishes]. Tune in again in the new year to hear my hopes for 2013 – no doubt one of my 2012 wishes on putting education at the centre of development will remain a priority for the coming year!

The GMR team is extremely grateful to all our readers for your engagement, comments and feedback. We look forward to ongoing collaboration in 2013 as we work with increased urgency to accelerate progress towards the Education for All goals by 2015, and to help develop a post-2015 framework. We wish you a very enjoyable festive season and happy New Year!

Join our #youthskillswork infographic competition

Data are key to telling us how well we are doing in progressing towards Education for All – whether countries are on track or off track, and who is getting left behind in entering school or learning once inside the classroom. Policymakers need to be presented with such information in easily accessible ways to make sure they know whether they are fulfilling their commitments. This is why the Education for All Global Monitoring Report team is seeking your help to communicate these data to policymakers.

Every year, the Education for All Global Monitoring Report collates statistics from multiple sources and displays them as tables, graphs and charts. For the past two reports, we have also made infographics out of some of the key findings. A growing online tool for visualizing complicated data, infographics are hugely useful to reports such as ours which are grappling with communicating the complexity and importance of the evidence we bring together for making policy recommendations on issues such as reaching marginalized children, making sure education reaches those living in conflict-affected countries, or making sure young people have the right skills they need for work.

We are seeking your help to visualize our data and message, and are delighted to announce that we have formed a partnership with the Guardian Datablog and Visual.ly, one of the biggest infographic communities in the world, to launch an infographic competition on the subject of Youth and Skills: Putting education to work. Winners will have their infographic posted on the Guardian DataBlog and will become certified designers on Visual.ly’s Marketplace.

This competition is part of our youth-led campaign, ‘Let’s put education to work’, comprised of an online petition, blogs, polls, competitions and even a photo and film contest run by another of our partners, TakingITGlobal.

In addition, we’re delighted to announce that we’ve launched the first ever global SMS campaign for young people who might not have computers to add their voices too: participants just text their name, age, country and what job they would do if they had the skills to +447580 484 263.

Competitors should work from one our downloadable datasets to create their infographics or take your own data from our new website: The Worldwide Inequality Database on Education.

You don’t have to be an expert to design a graphic – there are many free online infographic tools to work from. So try your hand and send your submissions through to  contest@visual.ly or efareport@unesco.org (with #youthskillswork in the subject line).

The deadline for submissions is January 7th 2013.

Chat with us on twitter using @EfaReport and #YouthSkillsWork. And, remember, don’t forget to reference the EFA Global Monitoring Report!