Learning crisis
[1] Worldwide, millions of children who attend school do not acquire basic skills such as literacy and numeracy, and many more are far behind age-appropriate expectations in their national curricula.
[2] Proponents argue that this crisis needs to be addressed due to the importance of education in fostering children's development, social mobility, and subsequent opportunities.
[5][6] Schooling access has expanded massively in recent decades, almost reaching the target of universal primary-school enrollment by 2030.
[7] Making education accessible to everyone has been a priority of the international community since it was articulated in Article 26 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) in 1948.
[10][11][12] But recent statistical analyses and results from international student assessments have indicated that a greater school enrolment has not yet been followed by quality learning in many parts of the world.
[15][16] Based on their database, the rate of school enrolment reached more than 90 percent in 2010, but learning outcomes in developing countries are very low and stagnant.
For example, the enrolment rate in the Middle East and North Africa region increased to 99 percent in 2010; however, the learning level from 2000 to 2015 remained nearly unchanged from the low-performance benchmark.
For example, in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, 75 percent of the students in grade 3 cannot read a basic sentence such as "the name of the dog is Puppy".
[17] In the case of middle-income countries, many education systems are also failing to facilitate the learning of children who are attending school.
McKinsey & Company, for instance, have utilized this term in their 2022 report regarding the impact of COVID-19 in worsening the existing global learning crisis.
It is mentioned that the Government of India is prioritizing policies to support students' ability to read, write, carry out basic numerical operations due to the ongoing learning crisis.
[36] Under business-as-usual scenarios worldwide, learning poverty is projected to decrease by less than 1 percentage point per year.
[36] Thus, a set of strategies for helping children to read and a system-wide commitment to focus on education quality is needed.
The four principles are: In October 2020, in response to widespread school closures during the COVID-19 pandemic, a coalition of over 600 organisations from different fields multilaterals, civil society, research, philanthropy, youth, and media published a white paper titled Save Our Future: Aveting an Education Catastrophe for the World's Children.
The seven action areas proposed in this white paper are:[40]Some criticisms have emerged of the term "learning crisis", especially after it was used in the 2018 World Development Report.
Despite ever-increasing investment by national governments and even international organizations, learning disparities between countries persist and one of the reasons underlying the stagnancy of growth is the logic of colonialism.
[22] Naviwala further argues that many international tests/indicators such as the learning poverty indicator do not measure the correct problem due to lack of context.
Even though the "learning poverty" index creates a comparable indicator between countries, it lacks the purpose of relevancy to local educational concerns and policy options.
