poor education

Four of the biggest problems facing education—and four trends that could make a difference

Eduardo velez bustillo, harry a. patrinos.

In 2022, we published, Lessons for the education sector from the COVID-19 pandemic , which was a follow up to,  Four Education Trends that Countries Everywhere Should Know About , which summarized views of education experts around the world on how to handle the most pressing issues facing the education sector then. We focused on neuroscience, the role of the private sector, education technology, inequality, and pedagogy.

Unfortunately, we think the four biggest problems facing education today in developing countries are the same ones we have identified in the last decades .

1. The learning crisis was made worse by COVID-19 school closures

Low quality instruction is a major constraint and prior to COVID-19, the learning poverty rate in low- and middle-income countries was 57% (6 out of 10 children could not read and understand basic texts by age 10). More dramatic is the case of Sub-Saharan Africa with a rate even higher at 86%. Several analyses show that the impact of the pandemic on student learning was significant, leaving students in low- and middle-income countries way behind in mathematics, reading and other subjects.  Some argue that learning poverty may be close to 70% after the pandemic , with a substantial long-term negative effect in future earnings. This generation could lose around $21 trillion in future salaries, with the vulnerable students affected the most.

2. Countries are not paying enough attention to early childhood care and education (ECCE)

At the pre-school level about two-thirds of countries do not have a proper legal framework to provide free and compulsory pre-primary education. According to UNESCO, only a minority of countries, mostly high-income, were making timely progress towards SDG4 benchmarks on early childhood indicators prior to the onset of COVID-19. And remember that ECCE is not only preparation for primary school. It can be the foundation for emotional wellbeing and learning throughout life; one of the best investments a country can make.

3. There is an inadequate supply of high-quality teachers

Low quality teaching is a huge problem and getting worse in many low- and middle-income countries.  In Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, the percentage of trained teachers fell from 84% in 2000 to 69% in 2019 . In addition, in many countries teachers are formally trained and as such qualified, but do not have the minimum pedagogical training. Globally, teachers for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects are the biggest shortfalls.

4. Decision-makers are not implementing evidence-based or pro-equity policies that guarantee solid foundations

It is difficult to understand the continued focus on non-evidence-based policies when there is so much that we know now about what works. Two factors contribute to this problem. One is the short tenure that top officials have when leading education systems. Examples of countries where ministers last less than one year on average are plentiful. The second and more worrisome deals with the fact that there is little attention given to empirical evidence when designing education policies.

To help improve on these four fronts, we see four supporting trends:

1. Neuroscience should be integrated into education policies

Policies considering neuroscience can help ensure that students get proper attention early to support brain development in the first 2-3 years of life. It can also help ensure that children learn to read at the proper age so that they will be able to acquire foundational skills to learn during the primary education cycle and from there on. Inputs like micronutrients, early child stimulation for gross and fine motor skills, speech and language and playing with other children before the age of three are cost-effective ways to get proper development. Early grade reading, using the pedagogical suggestion by the Early Grade Reading Assessment model, has improved learning outcomes in many low- and middle-income countries. We now have the tools to incorporate these advances into the teaching and learning system with AI , ChatGPT , MOOCs and online tutoring.

2. Reversing learning losses at home and at school

There is a real need to address the remaining and lingering losses due to school closures because of COVID-19.  Most students living in households with incomes under the poverty line in the developing world, roughly the bottom 80% in low-income countries and the bottom 50% in middle-income countries, do not have the minimum conditions to learn at home . These students do not have access to the internet, and, often, their parents or guardians do not have the necessary schooling level or the time to help them in their learning process. Connectivity for poor households is a priority. But learning continuity also requires the presence of an adult as a facilitator—a parent, guardian, instructor, or community worker assisting the student during the learning process while schools are closed or e-learning is used.

To recover from the negative impact of the pandemic, the school system will need to develop at the student level: (i) active and reflective learning; (ii) analytical and applied skills; (iii) strong self-esteem; (iv) attitudes supportive of cooperation and solidarity; and (v) a good knowledge of the curriculum areas. At the teacher (instructor, facilitator, parent) level, the system should aim to develop a new disposition toward the role of teacher as a guide and facilitator. And finally, the system also needs to increase parental involvement in the education of their children and be active part in the solution of the children’s problems. The Escuela Nueva Learning Circles or the Pratham Teaching at the Right Level (TaRL) are models that can be used.

3. Use of evidence to improve teaching and learning

We now know more about what works at scale to address the learning crisis. To help countries improve teaching and learning and make teaching an attractive profession, based on available empirical world-wide evidence , we need to improve its status, compensation policies and career progression structures; ensure pre-service education includes a strong practicum component so teachers are well equipped to transition and perform effectively in the classroom; and provide high-quality in-service professional development to ensure they keep teaching in an effective way. We also have the tools to address learning issues cost-effectively. The returns to schooling are high and increasing post-pandemic. But we also have the cost-benefit tools to make good decisions, and these suggest that structured pedagogy, teaching according to learning levels (with and without technology use) are proven effective and cost-effective .

4. The role of the private sector

When properly regulated the private sector can be an effective education provider, and it can help address the specific needs of countries. Most of the pedagogical models that have received international recognition come from the private sector. For example, the recipients of the Yidan Prize on education development are from the non-state sector experiences (Escuela Nueva, BRAC, edX, Pratham, CAMFED and New Education Initiative). In the context of the Artificial Intelligence movement, most of the tools that will revolutionize teaching and learning come from the private sector (i.e., big data, machine learning, electronic pedagogies like OER-Open Educational Resources, MOOCs, etc.). Around the world education technology start-ups are developing AI tools that may have a good potential to help improve quality of education .

After decades asking the same questions on how to improve the education systems of countries, we, finally, are finding answers that are very promising.  Governments need to be aware of this fact.

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Consultant, Education Sector, World Bank

Senior Adviser, Education

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How does education affect poverty?

For starters, it can help end it.

Aug 10, 2023

Access to high-quality primary education and supporting child well-being is a globally-recognized solution to the cycle of poverty. This is, in part, because it also addresses many of the other issues that keep communities vulnerable.

Education is often referred to as the great equalizer: It can open the door to jobs, resources, and skills that help a person not only survive, but thrive. In fact, according to UNESCO, if all students in low-income countries had just basic reading skills (nothing else), an estimated 171 million people could escape extreme poverty. If all adults completed secondary education, we could cut the global poverty rate by more than half. 

At its core, a quality education supports a child’s developing social, emotional, cognitive, and communication skills. Children who attend school also gain knowledge and skills, often at a higher level than those who aren’t in the classroom. They can then use these skills to earn higher incomes and build successful lives.

Here’s more on seven of the key ways that education affects poverty.

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1. Education is linked to economic growth

Education is the best way out of poverty in part because it is strongly linked to economic growth. A 2021 study co-published by Stanford University and Munich’s Ludwig Maximilian University shows us that, between 1960 and 2000, 75% of the growth in gross domestic product around the world was linked to increased math and science skills. 

“The relationship between…the knowledge capital of a nation, and the long-run [economic] rowth rate is extraordinarily strong,” the study’s authors conclude. This is just one of the most recent studies linking education and economic growth that have been published since 1990.

“The relationship between…the knowledge capital of a nation, and the long-run [economic] growth rate is extraordinarily strong.” — Education and Economic Growth (2021 study by Stanford University and the University of Munich)

2. Universal education can fight inequality

A 2019 Oxfam report says it best: “Good-quality education can be liberating for individuals, and it can act as a leveler and equalizer within society.” 

Poverty thrives in part on inequality. All types of systemic barriers (including physical ability, religion, race, and caste) serve as compound interest against a marginalization that already accrues most for those living in extreme poverty. Education is a basic human right for all, and — when tailored to the unique needs of marginalized communities — can be used as a lever against some of the systemic barriers that keep certain groups of people furthest behind. 

For example, one of the biggest inequalities that fuels the cycle of poverty is gender. When gender inequality in the classroom is addressed, this has a ripple effect on the way women are treated in their communities. We saw this at work in Afghanistan , where Concern developed a Community-Based Education program that allowed students in rural areas to attend classes closer to home, which is especially helpful for girls.

Four ways that girls’ education can change the world

Gender discrimination is one of the many barriers to education around the world. That’s a situation we need to change.

3. Education is linked to lower maternal and infant mortality rates

Speaking of women, education also means healthier mothers and children. Examining 15 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, researchers from the World Bank and International Center for Research on Women found that educated women tend to have fewer children and have them later in life. This generally leads to better outcomes for both the mother and her kids, with safer pregnancies and healthier newborns. 

A 2017 report shows that the country’s maternal mortality rate had declined by more than 70% in the last 25 years, approximately the same amount of time that an amendment to compulsory schooling laws took place in 1993. Ensuring that girls had more education reduced the likelihood of maternal health complications, in some cases by as much as 29%. 

4. Education also lowers stunting rates

Children also benefit from more educated mothers. Several reports have linked education to lowered stunting , one of the side effects of malnutrition. Preventing stunting in childhood can limit the risks of many developmental issues for children whose height — and potential — are cut short by not having enough nutrients in their first few years.

In Bangladesh , one study showed a 50.7% prevalence for stunting among families. However, greater maternal education rates led to a 4.6% decrease in the odds of stunting; greater paternal education reduced those rates by 2.9%-5.4%.  A similar study in Nairobi, Kenya confirmed this relationship: Children born to mothers with some secondary education are 29% less likely to be stunted.

What is stunting?

Stunting is a form of impaired growth and development due to malnutrition that threatens almost 25% of children around the world.

5. Education reduces vulnerability to HIV and AIDS…

In 2008, researchers from Harvard University, Imperial College London, and the World Bank wrote : “There is a growing body of evidence that keeping girls in school reduces their risk of contracting HIV. The relationship between educational attainment and HIV has changed over time, with educational attainment now more likely to be associated with a lower risk of HIV infection than earlier in the epidemic.” 

Since then, that correlation has only grown stronger. The right programs in schools not only reduce the likelihood of young people contracting HIV or AIDS, but also reduce the stigmas held against people living with HIV and AIDS.

6. …and vulnerability to natural disasters and climate change

As the number of extreme weather events increases due to climate change, education plays a critical role in reducing vulnerability and risk to these events. A 2014 issue of the journal Ecology and Society states: “It is found that highly educated individuals are better aware of the earthquake risk … and are more likely to undertake disaster preparedness.… High risk awareness associated with education thus could contribute to vulnerability reduction behaviors.”

The authors of the article went on to add that educated people living through a natural disaster often have more of a financial safety net to offset losses, access to more sources of information to prepare for a disaster, and have a wider social network for mutual support.

Climate change is one of the biggest threats to education — and growing

Last August, UNICEF reported that half of the world’s 2.2 billion children are at “extremely high risk” for climate change, including its impact on education. Here’s why.

7. Education reduces violence at home and in communities

The same World Bank and ICRW report that showed the connection between education and maternal health also reveals that each additional year of secondary education reduced the chances of child marriage — defined as being married before the age of 18. Because educated women tend to marry later and have fewer children later in life, they’re also less likely to suffer gender-based violence , especially from their intimate partner. 

Girls who receive a full education are also more likely to understand the harmful aspects of traditional practices like FGM , as well as their rights and how to stand up for them, at home and within their community.

Fighting FGM in Kenya: A daughter's bravery and a mother's love

Marsabit is one of those areas of northern Kenya where FGM has been the rule rather than the exception. But 12-year-old student Boti Ali had other plans.

Education for all: Concern’s approach

Concern’s work is grounded in the belief that all children have a right to a quality education. Last year, our work to promote education for all reached over 676,000 children. Over half of those students were female. 

We integrate our education programs into both our development and emergency work to give children living in extreme poverty more opportunities in life and supporting their overall well-being. Concern has brought quality education to villages that are off the grid, engaged local community leaders to find solutions to keep girls in school, and provided mentorship and training for teachers.

More on how education affects poverty

6 Benefits of literacy in the fight against poverty

Child marriage and education: The blackboard wins over the bridal altar

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‘The first new information we’ve heard in 50 years’

Robert Sampson, Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences, is one of the researchers studying the link between poverty and social mobility.

Rose Lincoln/Harvard file photo

Unpacking the power of poverty

Peter Reuell

Harvard Staff Writer

Study picks out key indicators like lead exposure, violence, and incarceration that impact children’s later success

Social scientists have long understood that a child’s environment — in particular growing up in poverty — can have long-lasting effects on their success later in life. What’s less well understood is exactly how.

A new Harvard study is beginning to pry open that black box.

Conducted by Robert Sampson, the Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences, and Robert Manduca, a doctoral student in sociology and social policy in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the study points to a handful of key indicators, including exposure to high levels of lead, violence, and incarceration as key predictors of children’s later success. The study is described in an April paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“What this paper is trying to do, in a sense, is move beyond the traditional neighborhood indicators people use, like poverty,” Sampson said. “For decades, people have shown poverty to be important … but it doesn’t necessarily tell us what the mechanisms are, and how growing up in poor neighborhoods affects children’s outcomes.”

To explore potential pathways, Manduca and Sampson turned to the income tax records of parents and approximately 230,000 children who lived in Chicago in the 1980s and 1990s, compiled by Harvard’s Opportunity Atlas project. They integrated these records with survey data collected by the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, measures of violence and incarceration, census indicators, and blood-lead levels for the city’s neighborhoods in the 1990s.

They found that the greater the extent to which poor black male children were exposed to harsh environments, the higher their chances of being incarcerated in adulthood and the lower their adult incomes, measured in their 30s. A similar income pattern also emerged for whites.

Among both black and white girls, the data showed that increased exposure to harsh environments predicted higher rates of teen pregnancy.

Despite the similarity of results along racial lines, Chicago’s segregation means that far more black children were exposed to harsh environments — in terms of toxicity, violence, and incarceration — harmful to their mental and physical health.

“The least-exposed majority-black neighborhoods still had levels of harshness and toxicity greater than the most-exposed majority-white neighborhoods, which plausibly accounts for a substantial portion of the racial disparities in outcomes,” Manduca said.

“It’s really about trying to understand some of the earlier findings, the lived experience of growing up in a poor and racially segregated environment, and how that gets into the minds and bodies of children.” Robert Sampson

“What this paper shows … is the independent predictive power of harsh environments on top of standard variables,” Sampson said. “It’s really about trying to understand some of the earlier findings, the lived experience of growing up in a poor and racially segregated environment, and how that gets into the minds and bodies of children.”

More like this

Cities’ wealth gap is growing, too

Racial and economic disparities intertwined, study finds

The study isn’t solely focused on the mechanisms of how poverty impacts children; it also challenges traditional notions of what remedies might be available.

“This has [various] policy implications,” Sampson said. “Because when you talk about the effects of poverty, that leads to a particular kind of thinking, which has to do with blocked opportunities and the lack of resources in a neighborhood.

“That doesn’t mean resources are unimportant,” he continued, “but what this study suggests is that environmental policy and criminal justice reform can be thought of as social mobility policy. I think that’s provocative, because that’s different than saying it’s just about poverty itself and childhood education and human capital investment, which has traditionally been the conversation.”

The study did suggest that some factors — like community cohesion, social ties, and friendship networks — could act as bulwarks against harsh environments. Many researchers, including Sampson himself, have shown that community cohesion and local organizations can help reduce violence. But Sampson said their ability to do so is limited.

“One of the positive ways to interpret this is that violence is falling in society,” he said. “Research has shown that community organizations are responsible for a good chunk of the drop. But when it comes to what’s affecting the kids themselves, it’s the homicide that happens on the corner, it’s the lead in their environment, it’s the incarceration of their parents that’s having the more proximate, direct influence.”

Going forward, Sampson said he hopes the study will spur similar research in other cities and expand to include other environmental contamination, including so-called brownfield sites.

Ultimately, Sampson said he hopes the study can reveal the myriad ways in which poverty shapes not only the resources that are available for children, but the very world in which they find themselves growing up.

“Poverty is sort of a catchall term,” he said. “The idea here is to peel things back and ask, What does it mean to grow up in a poor white neighborhood? What does it mean to grow up in a poor black neighborhood? What do kids actually experience?

“What it means for a black child on the south side of Chicago is much higher rates of exposure to violence and lead and incarceration, and this has intergenerational consequences,” he continued. “This is particularly important because it provides a way to think about potentially intervening in the intergenerational reproduction of inequality. We don’t typically think about criminal justice reform or environmental policy as social mobility policy. But maybe we should.”

This research was supported with funding from the Project on Race, Class & Cumulative Adversity at Harvard University, the Ford Foundation, and the Hutchins Family Foundation.

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Ending Poverty Through Education: The Challenge of Education for All

About the author, koïchiro matsuura.

From Vol. XLIV, No. 4, "The MDGs: Are We on Track?",  December 2007

T he world made a determined statement when it adopted the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in 2000. These goals represent a common vision for dramatically reducing poverty by 2015 and provide clear objectives for significant improvement in the quality of people's lives. Learning and education are at the heart of all development and, consequently, of this global agenda. MDG 2 aims to ensure that children everywhere -- boys and girls -- will be able to complete a full course of good quality primary schooling. MDG 3 targets to eliminate gender disparity in primary and secondary education, preferably by 2005, and at all levels by 2015. Indeed, learning is implicit in all the MDGs: improving maternal health, reducing child mortality and combating HIV/AIDS simply cannot be achieved without empowering individuals with knowledge and skills to better their lives. In addition, MDG 8 calls for "more generous official development assistance for countries committed to poverty reduction". The MDGs on education echo the Education for All (EFA) goals, also adopted in 2000. However, the EFA agenda is much broader, encompassing not only universal primary education and gender equality, but also early childhood education, quality lifelong learning and literacy. This holistic approach is vital to ensuring full enjoyment of the human right to education and achieving sustainable and equitable development. What progress have we made towards universal primary education? The EFA Global Monitoring Report 2008 -- Education for All by 2015: Will we make it? -- presents an overall assessment of progress at the halfway point between 2000 and 2015. There is much encouraging news, including: • Between 1999 and 2005, the number of children entering primary school for the first time grew by 4 per cent, from 130 million to 135 million, with a jump of 36 per cent in sub-Saharan Africa -- a major achievement, given the strong demographic growth in the region. • Overall participation in primary schooling worldwide grew by 6.4 per cent, with the fastest growth in the two regions farthest from achieving the goal on education -- sub-Saharan Africa, and South and West Asia. • Looking at the net enrolment ratio, which measures the share of children of primary school age who are enrolled, more than half the countries of North America, Western, Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia and the Pacific, and Latin America and the Caribbean have rates of over 90 per cent. Ratios are lower in the Arab States, Central Asia and South and West Asia, with lows of 33 per cent (Djibouti) and 68 per cent (Pakistan). The challenge is greatest in sub-Saharan Africa, where more than one third of countries have rates below 70 per cent. • The number of children out of school has dropped sharply, from 96 million in 1999 to around 72 million by 2005, with the biggest change in sub-Saharan Africa and South and West Asia, which continue to harbour the largest percentages of children not in school. South and West Asia has the highest share of girls out of school. The MDG on education specifies that both boys and girls should receive a full course of primary schooling. The gender parity goal set for 2005, however, has not been achieved by all. Still, many countries have made significant progress. In South and West Asia, one of the regions with the widest disparities, 93 girls for every 100 boys were in school in 2005 -- up from 82 in 1999. Yet, globally, 122 out of the 181 countries with data had not achieved gender parity in 2005. There is much more to be done, particularly in rural areas and urban slums, but there are strong trends in the right direction. This overall assessment indicates that progress in achieving universal primary education is positive. Countries where enrolments rose sharply generally increased their education spending as a share of gross national product. Public expenditure on education has climbed by over 5 per cent annually in sub-Saharan Africa and South and West Asia. Aid to basic education in low-income countries more than doubled between 2000 and 2004. Progress has been achieved through universal and targeted strategies. Some 14 countries have abolished primary school fees since 2000, a measure that has promoted enrolment of the most disadvantaged children. Several countries have established mechanisms to redistribute funds to poorer regions and target areas that are lagging in terms of access to education, and to offset economic barriers to schooling for poor households. Many countries, including Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, India and Yemen, have introduced specific strategies to encourage girls' schooling, such as community sensitization campaigns, early childhood centres to release girls from caring for their siblings, free uniforms and learning materials. These strategies are working and reflect strong national commitment to achieving universal primary education. Enrolment, however, is only half the story; children need to stay in primary school and complete it. One way of measuring this is the survival rate to the last grade of primary education. Although data are not available for every country, globally the rate of survival to the last grade is 87 per cent. This masks wide regional variations, with medians of over 90 per cent all over the world, except in South and West Asia (79%) and sub-Saharan Africa (63%). Even then, some children drop out in the last grade and never complete primary education, with some countries showing a gap of 20 per cent between those who enter the last grade and those who complete it. One of the principal challenges is to improve the quality of learning and teaching. Cognitive skills, basic competencies and life-skills, as well as positive values and attitudes, are all essential for development at individual, community and national levels. In a world where the acquisition, use and sharing of knowledge are increasingly the key to poverty reduction and social development, the need for quality learning outcomes becomes a necessary essential condition for sharing in the benefits of growing prosperity. What children take away from school, and what youth and adults acquire in non-formal learning programmes, should enable them, as expressed in the four pillars of the 1996 Delors report, Learning: The Treasure Within, to learn to know, to do, to be and to live together. Governments are showing growing concern about the poor quality of education. An increasing number of developing countries are participating in international and regional learning assessments, and conducting their own. Evidence shows that up to 40 per cent of students do not reach minimum achievement standards in language and mathematics. Pupils from more privileged socio-economic backgrounds and those with access to books consistently perform better than those from poorer backgrounds with limited access to reading materials. Clear messages emerge from these studies. In primary education, quality learning depends, first and foremost, on the presence of enough properly trained teachers. But pupil/teacher ratios have increased in sub-Saharan Africa and South and West Asia since 1999. Some 18 million new teachers are needed worldwide to reach universal primary education by 2015. Other factors have a clear influence on learning: a safe and healthy physical environment, including, among others, appropriate sanitation for girls; adequate learning and teaching materials; child-centred curricula; and sufficient hours of instruction (at least 800 hours a year). Initial learning through the mother tongue has a proven impact on literacy acquisition. Transparent and accountable school governance, among others, also affects the overall learning environment. What then are the prospects for achieving universal primary education and gender parity? The EFA Global Monitoring Report 2008 puts countries into two categories depending on their current net enrolment rate: 80 to 96 per cent, and less than 80 per cent. For each category, it then assesses whether current rates of progress are likely to enable each country to reach the goal by 2015. Noting that 63 countries worldwide have already achieved the goal and 54 countries cannot be included in the analysis due to lack of adequate data, the status is as follows: Out of the 95 countries unlikely to achieve gender parity by 2015, 14 will not achieve it in primary education and 52 will not attain it at the secondary level. A further 29 countries will fail to achieve parity in both primary and secondary education. The international community must focus on giving support to those countries that are currently not on track to meet the MDGs and the EFA goals, and to those that are making progress. On current trends, and if pledges are met, bilateral aid to basic education will likely reach $5 billion a year in 2010. This remains well below the $9 billion required to reach universal primary education alone; an additional $2 billion are needed to address the wider context of educational development. Ensuring that adults, particularly mothers, are literate has an impact on whether their children, especially their daughters, attend school. In today's knowledge-intensive societies, 774 million adults are illiterate -- one in four of them women. Early learning and pre-school programmes give children a much better chance to survive and succeed once they enter primary school, but such opportunities are few and far between across most of the developing world, except in Latin America and the Caribbean. Opportunities for quality secondary education and ongoing learning programmes provide motivation for students to achieve the highest possible level of education and view learning as a lifelong endeavour. The goals towards which we are striving are about the fundamental right to education that should enable every child and every adult to develop their potential to the full, so that they contribute actively to societal change and enjoy the benefits of development. The challenge now is to ensure that learning opportunities reach all children, youth and adults, regardless of their background. This requires inclusive policies to reach the most marginalized, vulnerable and disadvantaged populations -- the working children, those with disabilities, indigenous groups, linguistic minorities and populations affected by HIV/AIDS.

Globally, the world has set its sights on sustainable human development, the only prospect for reducing inequalities and improving the quality of life for present and future generations. In this perspective, Governments, donors and international agencies must continue working jointly towards achieving universal primary education and the broader MDG agenda with courage, determination and unswerving commitment. To find out more about the EFA Global Monitoring Report 2008, please visit ( www.efareport.unesco.org ).

The UN Chronicle  is not an official record. It is privileged to host senior United Nations officials as well as distinguished contributors from outside the United Nations system whose views are not necessarily those of the United Nations. Similarly, the boundaries and names shown, and the designations used, in maps or articles do not necessarily imply endorsement or acceptance by the United Nations.

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The transformative power of education in the fight against poverty

October 16, 2023.

Zubair Junjunia, a Generation17 young leader and the Founder of ZNotes, presents at EdTechX.

Zubair Junjunia

Generation17 Young Leader and founder of ZNotes

Time and again, research has proven the incredible power of education to break poverty cycles and economically empower individuals from the most marginalized communities with dignified work and upward social mobility. 

Research at UNESCO has shown that world poverty would be more than halved if all adults completed secondary school. And if all students in low-income countries had just basic reading skills, almost 171 million people could escape extreme poverty. 

With such irrefutable evidence, how do we continue to see education underfunded globally? Funding for education as a share of national income has not changed significantly over the last decade for any developing country. And to exacerbate that, the COVID-19 shock pushed the level of learning poverty to an estimated 70 percent .

I have devoted the past decade of my life to fighting educational inequality, a journey that began during my school years. This commitment led to the creation of ZNotes , an educational platform developed for students, by students. ZNotes was born out of the problem I witnessed first-hand; the inequities in end-of-school examination, which significantly influence access to higher education and career opportunities. It is designed as a platform where students can share their notes and access top-quality educational materials without any limitations. ZNotes fosters collaborative learning through student-created content within a global community and levels the academic playing field with a student-empowered and technology-enabled approach to content creation and peer learning. 

Although I started ZNotes as a solo project, today, it has touched the lives of over 4.5 million students worldwide, receiving an impressive 32 million hits from students across more than 190 countries, especially serving students from emerging economies. We’re proud to say that today, more than 90 percent of students find ZNotes resources useful and feel more confident entering exams , regardless of their socio-economic background. These globally recognized qualifications empower our learners to access tertiary education and enter the world of work.

Sixteen-year-old Zubair set up a blog to share the resources he created for his IGCSE exams. Through word of mouth, his revision notes were discovered by students all over the world and ZNotes was born.

In rapidly changing job market, young people must cultivate resilience and adaptability. World Economic Forum highlights the importance of future skills, encompassing technical, cognitive, and interpersonal abilities. Unfortunately, many educational systems, especially in under-resourced regions, fall short in equipping youth with these vital skills.

To address this challenge, I see innovative technology as a crucial tool both within and beyond traditional school systems. As the digital divide narrows and access to devices and internet connectivity becomes more affordable, delivering quality education and personalized support is increasingly achievable through technology. At ZNotes, we are reshaping the role of students, transforming them from passive consumers to active creators and proponents of education. Empowering youth through a community-driven approach, students engage in peer learning and generate quality resources on an online platform.

Participation in a global learning community enhances young people's communication and collaboration skills. ZNotes fosters a sense of global citizenship, enabling learners to communicate with a diverse range of individuals across race, gender, and religion. Such spaces also result in redistributing social capital as students share advice for future university, internship and career pathways.

“Studying for 14 IGCSE subjects wasn't easy, but ZNotes helped me provide excellent and relevant revision material for all of them. I ended up with 7 A* 7 A, and ZNotes played a huge role. I am off to Cornell University this fall now. A big thank you to the ZNotes team!"

Alongside ensuring our beneficiaries are equipped with the resources and support they need to be at a level playing field for such high stakes exams, we also consider the skills that will set them up for success in life beyond academics. Especially for the hundreds of young people who join our internship and contribution programs , they become part of a global social impact startup and develop both academic skills and also employability skills. After engaging with our internship programs, 77% of interns reported improved candidacy for new jobs and internships. 

ZNotes addresses the uneven playing field of standardized testing with a student-empowered and technology-enabled approach for content creation and peer learning.

A few years ago, Jess joined our team as a Social Impact Analyst intern having just completed her university degree while she continued to search for a full-time role. She was able to apply her data analytics skills from a theoretical degree into a real-world scenario and was empowered to play an instrumental role in understanding and developing a Theory of Change model for ZNotes. In just 6 months, she had been able to develop the skills and gain experiences that strengthened her profile. At the end of internship, she was offered a full-time role at a major news and media agency that she is continuing to grow in!

Jess’s example applies to almost every one of our interns . As another one of them, Alexa, said “ZNotes offers the rare and wonderful opportunity to be at the center of meaningful change”.

Being part of an organization making a significant impact is profoundly inspiring and empowering for young people, and assuming high-responsibility roles within such organizations accelerates their skills development and sets them apart in the eyes of prospective employers.

On the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, it is a critical moment to reflect and enact on the opportunity that we have to achieving two key SDGs, Goal 1 and 4, by effectively funding and enabling access to quality education globally.

Millions of children learn only very little. How can the world provide a better education to the next generation?

Research suggests that many children – especially in the world’s poorest countries – learn only very little in school. what can we do to improve this.

For many children, schools do not live up to their promise: in many schools, children learn very little.

This is a problem in rich countries. By the end of primary school, about 9% of children in high-income countries cannot read with comprehension. 1

But it tends to be a much larger problem in poorer countries. This is what the chart below shows. The education researcher Joāo Pedro Azevedo and his colleagues estimate that in the very poorest countries of the world, 90% of children are not able to read with comprehension when they reach the end of primary school.

Many of these children do eventually learn how to read , but the problem of poor learning persists: these children are already behind by the end of primary school, and the issue compounds over the years so that many of them leave school with a poor education.

The same data also shows that it doesn’t have to be this way: in the best-off countries, the share of children that fail to learn how to read with comprehension at that age is less than 2%. 2

Children need to learn to read so that they can read to learn. When we fail to provide this to the next generation, they have fewer opportunities to lead rich and interesting lives that a good education offers. It crucially also leaves them in a poorer position to solve the problems of tomorrow.

What explains this large problem, and how can we do better?

Schooling doesn’t necessarily mean learning: To make progress, we need data that lets us see the difference

One obvious reason why many children don’t learn is that they are not in school or that they drop out; this is the case for 8% of the world’s children, and I discussed this problem before here .

But the problem is bigger than that. Many children who don’t learn are in school.

What the research shows is that getting children into the classroom is only half the battle. Many education systems are failing to ensure that the children who arrive at school every morning actually learn .

For this, we need data. However, the international statistics on education have not yet caught up with this reality. They still very much focus on school attendance . 3 Even the most prominent index measure of development – the UN’s Human Development Index – only captures attendance. 4 The statistics don’t capture whether or not children learn.

To be clear, we should also keep tracking access to schools. Schools are not just about learning – it is where children socialize, they provide safety and often food, and they make it possible for parents to work.

We need the statistics to capture both aspects: the quantity of education – how many years a child spends at school –, but also the quality of education.

One way of assessing which schools live up to their promise is to study test scores. I think that an excessive emphasis on tests in school education is misplaced. But I also believe that the vast differences in test scores that this data reveals tell us something important about the world. It offers us the opportunity to understand why some schools are failing and how we can do better.

The inequality in learning largely mirrors the economic inequality – but it does not have to be that way

In recent years, several research teams have done the hard work of piecing together test results to produce global data on learning outcomes. 5

The one that I rely on was produced by researchers Dev Patel and Justin Sandefur. 6

The bar chart at the beginning showed the large differences in learning outcomes between rich and poor countries. The data by Patel and Sandefur also reveals the differences within countries. Their data also complements the literacy scores above with the other basic educational skill: numeracy.

In the large visualization below, I show all of their data on test scores in mathematics. But to see clearly what this data tells us, let’s go through it step by step – first for one country, then for several, until we arrive at the global picture.

The sloping line in the small chart below shows the distribution of test scores in Brazil. It plots the students' mathematics scores on the vertical axis against their family’s incomes on the horizontal axis.

It shows the large inequality in incomes within Brazil, and it shows that the learning outcomes of Brazilian children map onto this economic inequality. The average students from rich households achieve much better scores than the average poor students.

The fact that educational outcomes correlate with the household’s income doesn't mean that income is the only variable that matters. This is because income itself is correlated with other aspects that matter, for example, the education of the parents. 7

It also doesn’t mean that children from poor families cannot possibly achieve a very good education. The data shows the averages along the income distribution and makes clear that poor children face much steeper odds.

Let’s add more countries to the chart.

At the center of this next plot, we see again the data for Brazil, but now we can compare it with the results in six other countries.

This data shows that the differences between countries are often much larger than the differences within countries:

• The majority of students in Morocco do worse than the poorest students in Brazil.
• The richest students in Brazil do much worse than even the poorest students in the Netherlands, Finland, or South Korea.

Another insight from this chart is that some of the most successful countries – including Finland – avoid educational inequalities along the income distribution almost entirely. The steepness of the line indicates how unequal the learning outcomes in a particular country are: a steep line shows a high inequality between the poorest and richest kids in terms of learning outcomes, while a flatter line – like the line for Finland – indicates that kids from all family backgrounds do similarly well.

Finally, let’s also add the data for the other 58 countries for which data is available.

For most countries, the lines slope upwards: students from richer families do better in maths. Patel and Sandefur document that these within-country differences in learning outcomes are particularly large in those countries with the largest economic inequalities. Brazil is one of them.

Because test scores are such an abstract metric, it is hard to grasp how very large the disparities between countries are – it’s hard for anyone to relate to a test score of 380 (the score of the richest children in Cote d’Ivoire) or a score of 545 (the score of the poorest children in the UK).

One way to make such a 165-point difference understandable is to compare it with the inequality within countries. The difference in test scores between the richest and poorest students in the US is 53 points. This tells us that the differences between countries are several times larger than the differences within countries, even a highly unequal country like the US. 8

This is one of the main insights from this data: the differences between countries are enormous .

Students with the same household income tend to reach better educational outcomes if they live in a richer country

There is a second key insight from this research that is worth highlighting: the average income level of the country is more important for a student’s learning than the income of the particular family within that country. 9

For example, look at the test results of the poorest students in Korea or Finland. The poorest Korean or Finnish students are poorer than the rich students in Brazil, but their math scores are much higher.

Or compare the scores of students whose families have an annual income of $5,000. You find a range from as low as 350 points in poorer countries all the way up to 600 points.

Let’s think about the implications of this.

In some of the world’s richest countries, like Finland, the education system is an equalizing force – it gives every child a chance, no matter what their family background is.

But in most places – and even more so in a global perspective – these educational differences are actually perpetuating the high levels of inequality. Children from richer backgrounds tend to learn much more and grow up to become more skilled and productive and make themselves and their countries richer in turn. 10

If we want to stop inequality perpetuating itself through education, we have to raise the quality of education for hundreds of millions of children. The most successful countries show that it is possible.

Can we make progress and provide much better education?

Now that we have an idea of the problem, let’s see what can be done to provide better education to the world’s children,

The fact that every morning, millions of children go to schools in which they learn very little is a massive challenge. I can’t blame you if you feel disheartened when you consider how we can overcome this.

But I do think it is possible to make progress. Let me explain why.

Just as in my recent articles on child mortality , indoor air pollution , and smoking , I won’t pretend that I can lay out an exact plan for how we should solve it. Particularly for education, this very much depends on the local situation. But I want to explain why I am optimistic about change being possible.

We know that change is possible because we’ve achieved it already

Today, many of the world’s children get a poor education. But until recently, almost every child had a terrible education.

We know that change is possible because it has already happened. If we look at the places where children now get a good education, nearly everyone was illiterate until recently.

Even basic skills – such as reading and writing – were only attainable for a small elite. This chart brings together estimates of basic literacy from around the world to show how this has changed. 11

→ You can explore this data in detail in the interactive version of this chart .

And the world isn’t just making progress in learning basic skills. The fact that many children learn very little is often referred to as the “learning crisis”. But I think this is a misnomer. The word “crisis” suggests that we are in an extraordinary period, worse than before. But this isn’t the case. Learning was worse in the past. In the majority of countries, children are learning more now than some years ago, and the world is making progress. 12

The change that we are seeing makes clear that there are ways forward.

Living standards matter: poor education is about more than just poor education

It’s not only schools that matter for how much children learn. Many children struggle to learn because they suffer from poor nutrition, poverty, and poor health. 13

What we’ve seen above – that those children in richer countries and those from richer families do much better in school – is also due to the differences in living conditions more broadly.

It is also the case that the educational progress that countries achieved was made possible by their much broader development. In the big chart above, Singapore is at the very top of the international comparison. A century ago, one in three children in Singapore died, and the country had a GDP per capita of just $3,000. Without its large improvements in child health and growth, the country could not have achieved this.

Better health, less poverty, and a more nutritious diet can often do more for a child’s education than the best teacher. This is why progress against poverty, poor child health, and malnutrition is key to improving the education of the next generation.

The fact that the world is making p rogress against these problems is a big reason why I am optimistic about the future of education.

Even in the poorest corners of the world, children can learn very well; but without large economic growth, education remains unaffordable

Looking at the evidence so far might have convinced you that improvements have been possible, but you may raise the skeptical question of whether this implies that further improvements can be achieved. What needs to happen to achieve a good education in those places where children learn so very little today?

There are studies that set out to answer this question.

One of the countries with the poorest education today is Guinea-Bissau. 14 A study in the rural parts of this small West African country found that most children do not learn to read and write. They cannot learn it from their parents, as less than 3% of mothers can pass a simple literacy test. This study concluded that the quality of teaching was poor because “teachers are isolated, underequipped, receive salaries after long delays, and have little training.”

A recent study by Ila Fazzio and her colleagues set itself the goal to see what can be done when these constraints are lifted. 15

The researchers went to the most difficult places within the country – those regions with the lowest learning levels – and worked with the people there to set up simple primary schools. 16

The study’s schools trained teachers, provided scripted lessons, monitored children and teachers regularly, involved the village communities, and provided adequate resources to support all operations. To see whether these well-resourced schools made a difference, they set up a randomized controlled trial: they compared how much the children learned in the study’s schools with children in the control group (schools that carried on with their teaching as they did before).

After 4 years, they compared whether children learned more in the study’s schools.

In the control group, the results were very poor: after 4 years, only 0.09% of children were able to read. Among those children that attended the study’s school, learning was much better: 64% of them had learned how to read.

The chart below shows the overall test scores, which also take into account the kids’ numerical skills. Overall test scores increased hugely – by 59 percentage points.

Other recent studies also show that it is possible to achieve very large improvements in those places where young children are otherwise illiterate and innumerate. 17

Even in the most challenging places – extreme poverty, very low education of parents, almost no infrastructure (no internet, no electricity, no roads) – it is possible to teach primary school children to read fluently and do basic math very well.

If it is possible to run schools in which children learn very successfully, what is the catch?

It is expensive. The cost of these schools amounts to $425 per student per year. This is about 70% of the average income (GDP per capita) in Guinea-Bissau and, therefore, far beyond what the country can possibly afford to spend on primary schools. 18

This highlights one reason why a country's prosperity is so important for its education. What a rich country spends annually per primary school student is about 10 times as much as the average income in a poor country.

Countries need to become much richer to build schools that are as well-resourced as those in this study. Big change is possible, but it requires large increases in prosperity .

For poor countries, we need to find out which opportunities are the most cost-effective

Education in those places where children learn very well is expensive. High-income countries spend more than 150-times as much on the education of each child than poor countries. 19

In the long run, countries will hopefully have achieved the growth they need to afford better schools, but is there anything they can do right now?

To answer this question, researchers have made a big effort in recent years to identify the most cost-effective ways to improve schools.

Instead of trying to change the entire school system, as in the study above, this research tries to find out what exactly it is that means that children learn little in a particular place and to change those things that have the biggest possible impact for the smallest cost. 20

Because the problems that hold children back differ from place to place, there are no universal solutions. What works in one context might not work in another. 21

The research on cost-effectiveness in education shows that the best interventions can be extremely cost-effective. The most cost-effective programs deliver the equivalent of three additional years of high-quality schooling – that is, three years of schooling at a quality comparable to the highest-performing education systems in the world – for just $100 per child . 22

What are the changes that can achieve so much with so little? The recent review by Noam Angrist and colleagues highlights three in particular. 22

Avoiding overly ambitious curricula and ‘teaching at the right level’

Perhaps somewhat paradoxically, one reason why children in some countries learn very little is that the school curricula are too ambitious. Instead of being aligned to the students’ learning levels, most of the content goes over the students’ heads. 23

The suggested solution is simple: match the teaching to the learning level of the students. The kids do a test, and the teaching they receive then depends on how much they already know.

In places where overly ambitious curricula are a problem, this change can be extremely cost-effective – no additional inputs are needed, it is just a change in how teaching is done. These ‘teaching at the right level’-approaches are the changes that were found to result in the aforementioned three additional years of high-quality schooling for just $100.

Improved pedagogy and lesson plans

Another problem in many places is that teachers are left to fend for themselves. They are isolated, have little training, and on top of the teaching, they have to write their own daily lesson plans.

In such situations, it has been shown to be very cost-effective to introduce structured educational programs in which teachers receive support and are provided with structured lesson plans. 24

There are also encouraging studies that show that the work of teachers can be complemented by technology-aided instruction programs. 25

Providing information on the returns to education

A third cost-effective approach is to simply inform people about how very high the returns from a better education are.

Some parents and students are not aware of the enormous pay-offs of having a good education. Learning this can increase the demand for education and improve children’s learning for very little cost. 26

In the previous section, we have seen that it is costly to bring the entire education system to fruition. In this section, the takeaway is that there are some possibilities to achieve a lot with very little. There are some very low-hanging fruits in global education.

A big opportunity

The first insight from this research is that schooling is not the same as learning. The new data on global learning outcomes makes clear just how big of a problem this is.

The second insight is that it doesn’t have to be like this – we can change this. All children can learn.

We have a huge opportunity. The world has made big strides in getting children into schools. These children are no longer isolated; teachers are in contact with them. At the same time, researchers have identified low-cost ways to improve their learning outcomes. Taken together, this gives us the possibility to turn schooling into learning.

The evidence also shows that poor schooling is not only a problem in poor countries. Some of the most striking data discussed above showed how very unequal learning outcomes in most countries are – while some other countries show that it doesn’t have to be that way.

Much is at stake here: humanity solves problems by understanding the world and implementing ideas for how to do better. Whether tomorrow’s generation continues to make progress against disease, poverty, poor nutrition, and environmental problems will depend on their understanding. 27 Those of us who dedicate our lives to teaching therefore, have the responsibility – and opportunity – to enable the next generation to develop these new ideas and grow up to lead a fulfilling life.

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to Hannah Ritchie, Noam Angrist, Bastian Herre, Dev Patel, Pablo Rosado, and Edouard Mathieu, who provided feedback, help, and data.

Recommendations

In addition to the referenced research in this article, I recommend listening to the 80,000 hours podcast episode with Rachel Glennerster . It is called “A year’s worth of education for under a dollar and other ‘best buys’ in development, from the UK aid agency’s Chief Economist”.

The Rise Programme at the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford is dedicated to finding solutions to poor learning. Plenty of research articles, background information, blogs and more can be found on their site.

And overall, the literature on how to improve teaching is fascinating – at the footnote you find many additional references. 28

This figure and the figures in the following bar chart are from João Pedro Azevedo, Diana Goldemberg, Silvia Montoya, Reema Nayar, Halsey Rogers, Jaime Saavedra, Brian William Stacy (2021) – “ Will Every Child Be Able to Read by 2030? Why Eliminating Learning Poverty Will Be Harder Than You Think, and What to Do About It. ” World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 9588, March 2021.

You find these estimates for particular countries in the previously cited study and updates for some countries can be found in João Pedro Azevedo, Silvia Montoya, Maryam Akmal, Yi Ning Wong, Laura Gregory, Koen Martijn Geven, Marie-Helene Cloutier, Syedah Aroob Iqbal, Adolfo Gustavo Imhof, Natasha de Andrade Falcão, Cristelle Kouame, Mahesh Dahal, Tihtina Zenebe Gebre, and Maria Jose Vargas Mancera (2021) – Learning Poverty Updates and Revisions What’s New? . July 2021

One country that does very well is the Netherlands. 98.4% of all children read with comprehension by the end of primary school. Other countries also have a very low share (2-3%) of children who don’t learn how to read with comprehension by that age: Austria, Finland, Hong Kong, Italy, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Russia, Sweden, Singapore, and the UK are among them.

Lant Pritchett (2013) – The Rebirth of Education: Schooling ain’t Learning (CGD Books, 2013).

You can find the UNDP’s page on the Human Development Index and our own site on the HDI .

Existing large testing efforts are restricted to particular world regions [To give two examples: SACMEQ – the Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Education Quality – focuses on that region of the world while the OECD’s PISA test focuses largely on high-income countries.]. The key difficulty that these researchers have to find solutions for is to bring these regional results together to obtain a global perspective through harmonized test scores .

Three recent key efforts in this area are:

• Angrist, N., Djankov, S., Goldberg, P.K. et al. (2021) – Measuring human capital using global learning data . In Nature 592, 403–408 (2021). doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03323-7
• This is closely related to the World Bank’s Human Capital Index , which includes the harmonized test scores and is expected to keep this data up-to-date in the coming years.
• Dev Patel and Justin Sandefur (2020) – A Rosetta Stone for Human Capital .

Dev Patel and Justin Sandefur (2020) – A Rosetta Stone for Human Capital . Working Paper.

Data and Code for this research paper are made available by Dev Patel on his website. The authors also summarized their findings in a blog post . Many thanks to Dev Patel, who helped me to access and understand the data.

On this aspect, see for example: Alex Bell, Raj Chetty, Xavier Jaravel, Neviana Petkova, and John Van Reenen (2019) – Who Becomes an Inventor in America? The Importance of Exposure to Innovation. In The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 134, Issue 2, May 2019, Pages 647–713, https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjy028 . Alex Bell makes the research available on his website .

See my summary of this research article in Talent is everywhere, Opportunity is not .

Another way to make these test score differences understandable is to relate them to changes over time. Patel and Sandefur have converted the international data on test scores into the TIMSS scale. Most countries have made progress in the TIMSS study . The US average score for students in grade 4 increased by 23 points over the course of the last generation (from 492 points in 1995 to 515 points in 2019). This means that a 165-point difference is more than 7-times larger than the progress the US made in the last generation.

The strength of these country effects is very large. Patel and Sandefur write: "Controlling for a household income as flexibly as possible, we still find that country fixed effects explain over half of the pupil-level variation in reading scores and about two-thirds of the variation in math scores."

The evidence shows that it is education in the form of skills and learning – rather than mere school attendance – that matters for individual earnings and economic growth.

On the impact of education on economic growth, see the research by Hanushek and Woessman:

Eric A Hanushek and Ludger Woessmann (2008) – The Role of Cognitive Skills in Economic Development . In Journal of Economic Literature 46 (3): 607–68.

Eric A. Hanushek, Ludger Woessmann (2010) – Education and Economic Growth . In Economics of Education (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2010), Pages: pp. 60-67

Eric A Hanushek and Ludger Woessmann (2012) – Do Better Schools Lead to More Growth? Cognitive Skills, Economic Outcomes, and Causation . In Journal of Economic Growth 17 (4): 267–321.

And for a more detailed account: Eric A Hanushek and Ludger Woessmann (2015) – The Knowledge Capital of Nations: Education and the Economics of Growth . MIT Press.

Pritchett, L. (2006) – Chapter 11 Does learning to add up add up? The returns to schooling in aggregate data . Handb. Econ. Educ. 1, 635–695 (2006).

Alan B. Krueger and Lindahl, M. (2001) – Education for growth: why and for whom? In J. Econ. Lit. 39, 1101–1136 (2001).

And our section Education outcomes predict economic growth .

Literacy is a skill that is distributed along a continuum, to turn it into a binary variable, a cutoff has to be chosen, and there are different reasonable ways to choose that cutoff. In this statistic here the cutoff for what it means to be literate is lower than in the study that I cited first in this text (that’s why I emphasized the comprehension aspect in that study there). We explain this in more detail in How is literacy measured?

Find the relevant section in the post ‘Global education quality in 4 charts’ by my colleague Esteban Ortiz-Ospina.

And for more recent data, read this paper in Nature : Angrist, N., Djankov, S., Goldberg, P.K. et al. (2021) – Measuring human capital using global learning data . In Nature 592, 403–408 (2021). doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03323-7

McCoy, Dana Charles, Evan D. Peet, Majid Ezzati, Goodarz Danaei, Maureen M. Black, Christopher R. Sudfeld, Wafaie Fawzi, et al. (2016) – Early Childhood Developmental Status in Low- and Middle-Income Countries: National, Regional, and Global Prevalence Estimates Using Predictive Modeling. PLOS Medicine 13 (6): e1002034.

Walker, Susan P., Theodore D. Wachs, Julie Meeks Gardner, Betsy Lozoff, Gail A. Wasserman, Ernesto Pollitt, Julie A. Carter, et al. (2007) – Child Development: Risk Factors for Adverse Outcomes in Developing Countries. In Lancet 369 (9556): 145–57. For an overview, take a look at “SPOTLIGHT 2 – Poverty hinders biological development and undermines learning” in World Bank (2018) – World Development Report 2018: Learning to Realize Education’s Promise . Washington, DC: World Bank. doi:10.1596/978-1-4648-1096-1.

Peter Boone, Ila Fazzio, Kameshwari Jandhyala, Chitra Jayanty, Gangadhar Jayanty, Simon Johnson, Vimala Ramachandrin, Filipa Silva & Zhaoguo Zhan (2013) – The Surprisingly Dire Situation of Children's Education in Rural West Africa: Results from the CREO Study in Guinea-Bissau (Comprehensive Review of Education Outcomes) . NBER Working Paper 18971. They have also summarized their findings in an article for VoxEU .

Fazzio, I., Eble, A., Lumsdaine, R. L., Boone, P., Bouy, B., Hsieh, P.-T. J., Jayanty, C., Johnson, S., & Silva, A. F. (2021) – Large learning gains in pockets of extreme poverty: Experimental evidence from Guinea Bissau . In Journal of Public Economics , 199, 104385.

In these places, teaching has to come from the school, there is little chance for parents to reinforce learning, and the literacy rates among parents are very low. What makes the situation additionally hard is that in this region, multiple languages are spoken, none of which have their own script. The students in this study, therefore, first learned Portuguese (the country’s official language) in the first year of the program before they attended three years of primary school within the study’s schools.

Eble, A., Frost, C., Camara, A., Bouy, B., Bah, M., Sivaraman, M., Hsieh, P.-T. J., Jayanty, C., Brady, T., Gawron, P., Vansteelandt, S., Boone, P., & Elbourne, D. (2021) – How much can we remedy very low learning levels in rural parts of low-income countries? Impact and generalizability of a multi-pronged para-teacher intervention from a cluster-randomized trial in the Gambia . Journal of Development Economics , 148 , 102539.  

Banerjee, Abhijit, Rukmini Banerji, James Berry, Esther Duflo, Harini Kannan, Shobhini Mukerji, Marc Shotland, and Michael Walton (2017) – From Proof of Concept to Scalable Policies: Challenges and Solutions, with an Application . In Journal of Economic Perspectives , 31 (4): 73-102.

Gertler, Paul J., James J. Heckman, Rodrigo Pinto, Arianna Zanolini, Christel Vermeersch, Susan Walker, Susan M. Chang, et al. (2014) – Labor Market Returns to an Early Childhood Stimulation Intervention in Jamaica . In Science 344 (6187): 998–1001.

The authors find the intervention to be cost-effective, which could mean that some well-resourced organizations and governments in some countries that are richer than Guinea-Bissau can adopt it. The authors also suggest that it would be valuable to find out exactly which aspect of these schools was so very important. That might offer the opportunity to leave out some expensive yet less-important aspects of the school program and achieve similar results for a smaller cost. This connects to the next section in my text that focuses on cost-effective small interventions rather than the bundled intervention that this study conducted.

The differences in spending on education are vast. According to the latest data, Guinea-Bissau spends about int.-$ 66 per primary school student per year. High-income countries spend more than 150 times more on each child.

The latest data for Guinea-Bissau is for 2010, a long time ago, but unfortunately, the country has only had very little economic growth since then. Back then, the government spending per primary school student was international-$ 66.41. In a high-income country like Austria, the spending at the same time was international-$ 10,469 per student per year. The ratio is 10,469/66.41=157.6. Other high-income countries spend even more than Austria.

Large implementations like the one in Guinea-Bissau can be a first step in that direction. Research in Kenya tried to identify exactly what of the Tusome program was crucial. Piper, B., Destefano, J., Kinyanjui, E.M. et al. (2018) – Scaling up successfully: Lessons from Kenya’s Tusome national literacy program . J Educ Change 19, 293–321 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10833-018-9325-4

On the point that many social science findings don’t generalize well, see the research by Eva Vivalt .

Noam Angrist; Evans, David K.; Filmer, Deon; Glennerster, Rachel; Rogers, F. Halsey; Sabarwal, Shwetlena (2020) – How to Improve Education Outcomes Most Efficiently? A Comparison of 150 Interventions Using the New Learning-Adjusted Years of Schooling Metric . Policy Research Working Paper; No. 9450. World Bank.

There is a very wide literature on this fact. For a recent major paper, see the following (and the references therein): Banerjee, Abhijit, Rukmini Banerji, James Berry, Esther Duflo, Harini Kannan, Shobhini Mukerji, Marc Shotland, and Michael Walton (2017) – From Proof of Concept to Scalable Policies: Challenges and Solutions, with an Application . In Journal of Economic Perspectives , 31 (4): 73-102.

And see the references in the previously cited Angrist et al. (2020) paper.

On ‘Structured Pedagogy’: Chakera, S., Haffner, D., Harrop, E., (2020) – UNICEF Eastern and Southern Africa Region Working Paper – Structured Pedagogy: For Real-Time Equitable Improvements in Learning Outcomes . UNICEF: Nairobi.

On its cost-effectiveness: Angrist, Noam; Evans, David K.; Filmer, Deon; Glennerster, Rachel; Rogers, F. Halsey; Sabarwal, Shwetlena (2020) – How to Improve Education Outcomes Most Efficiently? A Comparison of 150 Interventions Using the New Learning-Adjusted Years of Schooling Metric . Policy Research Working Paper; No. 9450. World Bank.

Interesting in this context is also the evidence on ‘Direct Instruction’ – on this see José Luis Ricón’s On Bloom's two sigma problem: A systematic review of the effectiveness of mastery learning, tutoring, and direct instruction

Muralidharan, Karthik, Abhijeet Singh, and Alejandro J. Ganimian – (2019) – Disrupting Education? Experimental Evidence on Technology-Aided Instruction in India . In American Economic Review , 109 (4): 1426-60.

Angrist et al. (2020) for the overview.Robert Jensen (2010) – The (perceived) returns to education and the demand for schooling . In The Quarterly Journal of Economics 125 (2), 515-548

Trang Nguyen (2008) – Information, Role Models and Perceived Returns to Education: Experimental Evidence from Madagascar

Angrist et al. (2020) also cite other studies on whether these types of interventions work (for these they unfortunately lack information on costs so that effectiveness can be established, but the cost-effectiveness is unknown): Tahir Andrabi, Jishnu Das, and Asim Ijaz Khwaja (2017) – Report Cards: The Impact of Providing School and Child Test Scores on Educational Markets . In American Economic Review vol. 107, no. 6, June 2017 (pp. 1535-63).

On this point, I recommend the excellent book by David Deutsch. Deutsch (2011) – The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations that Transform the World .

Two texts that give a background on the overall problem are:

Michael Kremer, Conner Brannen, Rachel Glennerster (2013) – The challenge of education and learning in the developing world. In Science, 340 (6130) (2013), pp. 297-300

Lant Pritchett (2013) – The Rebirth of Education: Schooling Ain’t Learning . CGD Books.

More recent literature on specific interventions or overviews that are relevant:

Paul Glewwe, Karthik Muralidharan (2016) – Improving education outcomes in developing countries: evidence, knowledge gaps, and policy implications. In Handbook of the Economics of Education, 5, Elsevier, Amsterdam, Holland (2016), pp. 653-743

Bold, Tessa, Kimenyi, Mwangi, Mwabu, Germano, Ng’ang’a, Alice, Sandefur, Justin (2018) – Experimental evidence on scaling up education reforms in Kenya. J. Public Econ. 168 (December): 1–20.

Abhijit Banerjee, Rukmini Banerji, James Berry, Esther Duflo, Harini Kannan, Shobhini Mukerji, Marc Shotland, Michael Walton (2017) – From proof of concept to scalable policies: challenges and solutions, with an application. J. Econ. Perspect., 31 (4) (2017), pp. 73-102

Dana Burde, Linden, L. Leigh (2013) – Bringing education to Afghan girls: a randomized controlled trial of village-based schools. In Am. Econ. J.: Appl. Econ., 5 (3) (2013), pp. 27-40

GiveWell has studied the cost-effectiveness of programs that focus on ‘ Education in developing countries ’. It was written in 2018 and, therefore doesn’t take the recent literature into account.

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Covering Innovation & Inequality in Education

A decade of research on the rich-poor divide in education

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Americans like to believe that education can be a great equalizer, allowing even the poorest child who studies hard to enter the middle class. But when I looked at what academic researchers and federal data reports have said about the great educational divide between the rich and poor in our country, that belief turns out to be a myth. Basic education, from kindergarten through high school, only expands the disparities.

In 2015, during the Obama administration, the federal education department issued a report that showed how the funding gap between rich and poor schools grew 44 percent over a decade between 2001-2 and 2011-12. That meant that the richest 25 percent of school districts spent $1,500 more per student, on average, than the poorest 25 percent of school districts. 

I wish I could have continued to track this data between rich and poor schools to see if school spending had grown more fair. But the Trump administration crunched the numbers differently. When it issued a report in 2018 , covering the 2014-15 school year, it found that the wealthiest 25 percent of districts spent $450 more per student than the poorest 25 percent. 

That didn’t mean there was a giant 70 percent improvement from $1,500. The Trump administration added together all sources of funds, including federal funding, which amounts to 8 percent of total school spending, while the Obama administration excluded federal funds, counting only state and local dollars, which make up more than 90 percent of education funds. The Obama administration argued at the time that federal funds for poor students were intended to supplement local funds because it takes more resources to overcome childhood poverty, not to create a level playing field. 

Rather than marking an improvement, there were signs in the Trump administration data that the funding gap between rich and poor had worsened during the Great Recession if you had compared the figures apples to apples, either including or excluding federal funds. In a follow-up report issued in 2019, the Trump administration documented that the funding gap between rich and poor schools had increased slightly to $473 per student between the 2014-15 and 2015-16 school years. 

It’s not just a divide between rich and poor but also between the ultra rich and everyone else. In 2020, a Pennsylvania State University researcher documented how the wealthiest school districts in America — the top 1 percent — fund their schools at much higher levels than everyone else and are increasing their school spending at a faster rate. The school funding gap between a top 1 percent district (mostly white suburbs) and an average-spending school district at the 50th percentile widened by 32 percent between 2000 and 2015, the study calculated. Nassau County, just outside New York City on Long Island, has the highest concentration of students who attend the best funded public schools among all counties in the country. Almost 17 percent of all the top 1 percent students in the nation live in this one county. 

Funding inequities are happening in a context of increased poverty in our schools. In 2013, I documented how the number of high poverty schools had increased by about 60 percent to one out of every five schools in 2011 from one out of every eight schools in 2000. To win this unwelcome designation, 75 percent or more of an elementary, middle or high school’s students lived in families poor enough to qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. It’s since gotten worse. In the most recent federal report , covering the 2016-17 school year, one out of every four schools in America was classified as  high poverty. 

It’s not just that poverty is becoming more concentrated in certain schools; more students in the school system are poor. In 2014, I documented a 40 percent jump in the number of school-aged children living in poverty between 2000 and 2012 from one out of every seven children to one out of every five students. In the most recent report, for the 2016-17 school year, the poverty rate declined from 21 percent in 2010 to 18 percent in 2017. About 13 million children under the age of 18 were in families living in poverty.

When you break the data down by race, there are other striking patterns. One third of all Black children under 18 were living in poverty in 2016-17, compared with a quarter of Hispanic children. White and Asian children have a similar poverty rate of 11 percent and 10 percent, respectively.

Sociologists like Sean Reardon at Stanford University and Ann Owens at the University of Southern California have built a body of evidence that school segregation by income is what’s really getting worse in America, not school segregation by race. But it’s a complicated argument because Black and Latino students are more likely to be poor and less likely to be rich.  So the two things — race and poverty — are intertwined. 

In 2019, Reardon studied achievement gaps in every school in America and found that the difference in poverty rates between predominantly Black and predominantly white schools explains the achievement gaps we see and why white schools tend to show higher test scores than Black schools. When white and Black schools have the same poverty rates, Reardon didn’t see a difference in academic achievement. The problem is that Black students are more often poor and attending schools with more poor students. And other than a handful of high-performing charter schools in a few cities, he couldn’t find examples of academic excellence among schools with a high-poverty student body.

“It doesn’t seem that we have any knowledge about how to create high-quality schools at scale under conditions of concentrated poverty,” said Reardon. “And if we can’t do that, then we have to do something about segregation. Otherwise we’re consigning Black and Hispanic and low-income students to schools that we don’t know how to make as good as other schools. The implication is that you have got to address segregation.”

Previous Proof Points columns cited in this column:

The number of high-poverty schools increases by about 60 percent

Poverty among school-age children increases by 40 percent since 2000

The gap between rich and poor schools grew 44 percent over a decade

Data show segregation by income (not race) is what’s getting worse in schools

In 6 states, school districts with the neediest students get less money than the wealthiest

An analysis of achievement gaps in every school in America shows that poverty is the biggest hurdle

Rich schools get richer: School spending analysis finds widening gap between top 1% and the rest of us

This story about education inequality in America written by Jill Barshay and produced by  The Hechinger Report , a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the  Hechinger newsletter .

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4 replies on “A decade of research on the rich-poor divide in education”

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Thanks to Jill Barshay for the excellent column reminding us that there is much more to the rich/poor divide in our public schools than just the availability of digital devices and wi-fi. The real problem with equity in education is the lack of equity in school funding, which is an issue both of inequity in society and the ways in which public schools are funded (i.e., primarily local tax revenues).

Other barriers that kept the “school door blocked” for many low income students during this season of remote learning — and, presumably, next school year, as well — include: 1. Some with access to devices and wi-fi have had service disconnected at times due to unpaid (unpayable) bills. 2. Many have no private space in their homes from where to participate in synchronous learning/Zoom calls 3. With loss of family income and no child care, some have work or baby-sitting responsibilities that interfere with participation 4. Deadening effects of online learning cause many low-income students to disconnect and/or “drop out”. 5. In ability to access teacher supports and specialized instruction, esp. for English language learners and children with special needs. 6. Parent inability to assist students with computer routines, glitches, log-ins, etc

As districts address equity in the coming school year, we must also address the modes of learning that we consider both effective and valuable. If the top priority is engaging all students we need high engagement models based in trauma-informed practices, social and racial justice curricula, service learning, interdisciplinary project- and place-based learning, outdoor learning and other innovative ways to make education relevant to all students, regardless of their zip codes. Relax the standards. Cancel high stakes testing. Trust teachers to use their creativity to connect with every student and family. Otherwise, “remote” or “hybrid” learning, regardless of the availability of technology, will only be widening the gaps that structural racism has already created.

Why are we NOT reaching out to the teaching programs started by Marva Collins in Chicago and Ron Clark in Atlanta? Why are we NOT looking at a book called Schools That Work and viewing the achievements and strategies followed by successful programs. Let’s follow successful schools, successful environments in urban, rural, and suburban locations. As an eductor who started teaching in the Ocean-Hill Brownsville area of Brooklyn, N,Y. in 1971, there was a wildcat strike happening and this area was the where decentralization took place in N.Y.C. Rev. Al Sharpton’s church was down the block from I.S. 271. It took 2 years before a no nonsense, BLACK principal, took control over the choas and the movement of 125 teachers going and then coming to this “high poverty” intermediate school. There was stability of staff and the message was, you’re here to learn. I taught there for 7 incredible years and grew to understand what it was like being a minority teacher and human being. I then moved to Columbia, MD. where I lived in a planned community where diversity of color, homes, religions and belief in humanity living together as ONE took place. I taught in a white disadvantaged area for 2 years and observed the same behaviors students exhibited except there was no leadership at the top of this school. Now I teach in a suburban area for the last 31 years with limited diversity and succeeds because of innovative leadership, extraordinary teachers, and pretty high achieving students. Yes, I know every students must have access to technology as a MUST. Yes, I know urban education, rural education, and suburban education do education diffferently. Yes, I know poverty sucks, and I know distant learning may be around for a while. Change must come from the top. Let’s follow the successful educators, the successful programs, the dynamic elected officials who can shake up things so our students, our kids, our educational systems can be the change that can bring poverty to it’s knees.

I live on Long Island and know that whatever is written here about us is true. The Freeport Public School waste millions of taxpayers dollars throwing out teaching equipment, devices books that could be just given to the less fortunate schools next door-Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx; where we see children suffering because of lack of proper learning tools. I am from the Caribbean where l taught for years. Oh l wish we were as privileged as these children. Maybe one day the disparity will end. Hopefully.

I enjoy reading this post. I am currently doing my thesis and the research question is: Do California K-12 public schools in lower-income communities offer the same level of academic curriculum as those in middle-income and wealthy communities? Do you have the reference page for those studies or even any peer reviewers where you got the information? I would like to review those studies and use them for my thesis. Thank you

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• Ending poverty
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• Education & poverty

Global poverty and education

Facts & stats about world poverty and education.

• Global poverty facts
• Health & poverty
• Empowerment & poverty
• Employment & poverty
• Giving & poverty
• Technology & poverty
• Hunger & poverty
• Poverty in the U.S.
• Poverty in Africa

The research is conclusive: When we reduce barriers to education, we set children up to thrive. It’s not only about knowledge and numbers, access to education reduces a child’s involvement in gangs and drugs, and lowers the amount of teen pregnancies. Education leads to healthier childhoods and, ultimately, to greater economic prospects as adults. Your sponsorship or gift helps provide children access to life-changing education programs in the communities we serve, as well as crucial health and dental services,  life-skills and career-placement workshops, and more.

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Children who participate in early childhood development achieve higher education levels and make more money as adults.

In developing nations, 60% of 10 ten-year-olds suffer from learning poverty, unable to read/understand simple stories.

For every year a girl remains in school, her average lifetime income increases 10% and odds of an early marriage shrink.

A child’s survival beyond age 5 increases by 31% when a mother has a high school degree, compared to no education.

Despite the shrinking gender gap, 8% fewer girls complete lower secondary school than boys. 

The share of youth not employed or participating in education or job training rose to 23.3%, the highest increase in 15 years.

Global studies find there is a 9% increase in hourly earnings for every extra year of schooling a child receives. 

During COVID, children in Latin America and the Caribbean lost an average of 225 full days of school.

Access to education

We believe providing children access to education and resources ushers them into a world of ideas and knowledge, and creates lasting change in their lives. Supporters provide access to tutoring, computer courses, libraries and more, setting children up for a lifetime of success.

• WHO Youth Violence Research, 2009
• UNICEF The State of the World’s Children, 2009
• UNESCO, 2012
• World Bank eLibrary. “Returns on Investments in Education,” 2002
• UNESCO Global Education Monitoring Report, 2017
• The World Bank  2015
• The World Bank  2017
• Globalpartnership.org, Education Data Highlights
• Un.org, Education
• Results.Org, World Poverty and What you Can Do About It
• Lifewater.org, 9 Poverty Statistics that Everyone Should Know, January 28, 2020

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Right to Education : Situation around the world

Situation of children’s right to education worldwide.

Today, education remains an inaccessible right for millions of children around the world. More than 72 million children of primary education age are not in school and 759 million adults are illiterate and do not have the awareness necessary to improve both their living conditions and those of their children.

Causes of lack of education

Marginalisation and poverty.

For many children who still do not have access to education, it is notable because of persisting inequality and marginalization.

In developing and developed countries alike, children do not have access to basic education because of inequalities that originate in sex, health and cultural identity (ethnic origin, language, religion). These children find themselves on the margins of the education system and do not benefit from learning that is vital to their intellectual and social development.

Undeniably, many children from disadvantaged backgrounds are forced to abandon their education due to health problems related to malnutrition or in order to work and provide support for the family.

Financial deficit of developing countries

Universal primary education is a major issue and a sizeable problem for many states.

Equally, a lack of financial resources has an effect on the quality of teaching. Teachers do not benefit from basic teacher training and schools, of which there are not enough, have oversized classes.

This overflow leads to classes where many different educational levels are forced together which does not allow each individual child to benefit from an education adapted to their needs and abilities. As a result, the drop-out rate and education failure remain high.

Overview of the right to education worldwide

Most affected regions..

As a result of poverty and marginalization, more than 72 million children around the world remain unschooled.

Sub-Saharan Africa is the most affected area with over 32 million children of primary school age remaining uneducated. Central and Eastern Asia, as well as the Pacific, are also severely affected by this problem with more than 27 million uneducated children.

Additionally, these regions must also solve continuing problems of educational poverty (a child in education for less than 4 years) and extreme educational poverty (a child in education for less than 2 years).

Essentially this concerns Sub-Saharan Africa where more than half of children receive an education for less than 4 years. In certain countries, such as Somalia and Burkina Faso, more than 50% of children receive an education for a period less than 2 years.

The lack of schooling and poor education have negative effects on the population and country.  The children leave school without having acquired the basics, which greatly impedes the social and economic development of these countries.

Inequality between girls and boys: the education of girls in jeopardy

Today, it is girls who have the least access to education. They make up more than 54% of the non-schooled population in the world.

This problem occurs most frequently in the Arab States, in central Asia and in Southern and Western Asia and is principally explained by the cultural and traditional privileged treatment given to males. Girls are destined to work in the family home, whereas boys are entitled to receive an education.

In sub-Saharan Africa, over 12 million girls are at risk of never receiving an education. In Yemen, it is more than 80% of girls who will never have the opportunity to go to school. Even more alarming, certain countries such as Afghanistan or Somalia make no effort to reduce the gap between girls and boys with regard to education.

Although many developing countries may congratulate themselves on dramatically reducing inequality between girls and boys in education, a lot of effort is still needed in order to achieve a universal primary education.

• Understanding the right to Education
• Read more about the condition of children worldwide
• OHCHR, Special Rapporteur on the right to Education
• www.right-to-education.org
• Wikipedia, Education
• Education International
• UNESCO, Education
• UNESCO, Education for all: Reaching the marginalized
• HREA, Study guides: Right to education
• Unicef, State of the World’s Children 2010
• Unicef, State of the World’s Children 2004: Girls, Education & Development

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A World of Hardship: Deep Poverty and the Struggle for Educational Equity

This post is part of LPI's Learning in the Time of COVID-19 blog series, which explores evidence-based and equity-focused strategies and investments to address the current crisis and build long-term systems capacity.

One day you get out there and actually see where the children you serve on a daily basis come from. Several teachers came back after delivering food and broke down in tears telling me what they saw. A student was living in a home with no roof; they’ve got a tarp for a roof kept on by bricks and tires. Homes didn’t have doors. —Principal of a rural high-poverty elementary school

As this quote powerfully conveys, families living in deep poverty face profound material, social, and emotional hardships. Households in deep poverty suffer from food shortages, unemployment, unstable housing, inadequate medical care, electrical shutoffs, and isolation.

Children living in households in deep poverty are often “invisible” to more affluent community members—and likely to many educators as well. Too often, the plight of students living in deep poverty is subsumed under the broad definition of poverty, which does not reveal the unique hardships that are endured by those families and children with virtually no material resources . For those of us who believe in educational equity, making the invisible visible is the first step in overcoming deep disadvantage.

The U.S. Census Bureau defines deep poverty as living in a household with total cash income that is below 50% of the poverty threshold. As the National Center for Children in Poverty map below indicates, no state is without children living in deep poverty. Although the percentage varies considerably across states, all states have at least 5% of their children living far below the poverty line. In total, more than 5 million children in the United States live in deep poverty, including nearly 1 in 5 Black children under the age of 5.

With the explosion of the health and economic crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, households living in deep poverty have been pushed to the edge of survival: Nearly 4 in 10 Black and Latino households with children are struggling to feed their families . These numbers will no doubt grow as job losses mount, as do the numbers of children and adults of color who are contracting—and, in a disproportionate number of cases, dying from—COVID-19.

Why Deep Poverty Matters for Educators

Recently, Stanford researcher Sean Reardon and his colleagues conducted a national study on racial segregation and achievement gaps. In describing the findings he noted, “While racial segregation is important, it’s not the race of one’s classmates that matters, per se. It’s the fact that in America today, racial segregation brings with it very unequal concentrations of students in high- and low-poverty schools.” Another recent study of poverty and its effects on learning determined that levels of poverty matter in the abilities of students to succeed in school. According to the authors, “The experiences of children living in families with incomes just below the poverty line are likely quite different from those living in extreme poverty. Parents’ struggles to provide sufficient food and shelter for children may affect child academic achievement.”

The authors go on to note that the “depth of the poverty” matters both for the day-to-day life of students and families, and for public policy. “To determine appropriate subsidy levels and the types of services needed by children and families, policymakers need detailed data about the depth of family poverty. Studies have shown that simply classifying people as ‘in poverty’ or ‘not in poverty’ is not sufficient. The diversity in access to economic resources due to the depth of poverty helps explain the gaps in family investment in children’s education.”

The impact of poverty on children’s ability to learn is profound and occurs at an early age. A recent study of the neurological effects of deep poverty on young children’s development found that “poverty is tied to structural differences in several areas of the brain associated with school readiness skills, with the largest influence observed among children from the poorest households…. As much as 20% of the gap in test scores could be explained by maturational lags in the frontal and temporal lobes.” These effects were found to be associated with the consequences of living in deep poverty at an early age, some of which include premature and low-birthweight babies; poor nutrition and living without sufficient food; exposure to toxins, such as lead paint or contaminated drinking water; and lack of access to early learning opportunities.

If we are to educate the whole child , regardless of their family’s income, it is essential to provide an array of academic and social services that ensures that equity of opportunity reaches those students living in deep poverty.

The Importance of Accurately Determining Eligibility for Increased Services

In May 2020, the Learning Policy Institute published Measuring Student Socioeconomic Status: Toward a Comprehensive Approach . This report analyzes the limitations of the current methods used by school systems for measuring students’ socioeconomic status for purposes of allocating resources to meet their needs. Noting the limitations of determining a student’s level of poverty by her or his eligibility for free and reduced-price lunch—even when this measure is enhanced through direct certification of eligibility for other poverty-related programs—the report concludes that the development of new student poverty measures is urgently needed.

Blog Series: Learning in the Time of COVID-19

This blog series explores strategies and investments to address the current crisis and build long-term systems capacity. View all blogs >

The report also notes that researchers have suggested alternative measures of student poverty, some of which include parental education, student mobility, and community income as proxy measures. These strategies, however, do not appear to be capable of capturing the depth of an individual student’s poverty with the accuracy required to create and maintain academic and social programs designed and funded to meet the needs of students living in households in deep poverty. A more robust, reliable, and valid measure of students experiencing deep poverty is needed.

For several years, researchers at the Bendheim-Thomas Center for Research on Child Wellbeing at Princeton University have felt the pressing need to “move beyond income-based measures of poverty, ” according to Center Co-Director Kathryn Edin. She and her colleagues are currently utilizing measures of hardship that are more likely to reveal depth of poverty beyond income measures alone.

While there are a number of measures that identify deep poverty, perhaps the most direct, reliable, and valid measure available is a survey of a household’s ability to take care of the basic necessities of life. Households in deep poverty regularly experience food and housing insecurity, often can’t pay their bills, and are unable to access health care when they need it. At a time when access to the internet is essential for a student’s ability to learn online, families living in deep poverty often have their electricity shut off for lack of payment.

One of the most valid and reliable of these “material hardship” types of surveys has been used by the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) and, later, the Fragile Families Challenge . Material hardship measures ask direct questions about forgone consumption—that is, what families have had to do without when they may have to live on as little as two dollars a day .

Generally, surveys of material hardship consist of 10 or more questions. Below are some of the types of questions that might be included in a school-based survey to better understand the day-to-day realities for students and families:

• In the past 12 months, were you ever hungry, but didn’t eat because you couldn’t afford enough food?
• In the past 12 months, did you move in with other people even for a little while because of financial problems?
• In the past 12 months, was there anyone in your household who needed to see a doctor or go to the hospital but couldn’t go because of the cost?
• In the past 12 months, did you receive free food or meals?
• In the past 12 months, did you not pay the full amount of a gas, oil, or electricity bill?

These measures do not replace income measures; they supplement them in order to get a fuller understanding of the lived experience of families living in deep poverty. For example, as a supplementary measure, a survey of material hardship could be incorporated into the free and reduced-price lunch forms sent to families to determine their eligibility to receive meals at school. When the material hardship surveys are returned, school administrators would have a clear indication of which students are living in deep poverty.

This recommendation can be seen as a first step in a more comprehensive approach to measuring deep poverty of students. Undocumented or mixed-status families might hesitate to complete government forms for fear of deportation; some families might not complete the material hardship survey due to privacy or other concerns. Some of these concerns could be addressed in community school settings, where the ties between families and the school are often close and continuous. The establishment of trust is a bond that can help to overcome the fear of government.

More From the Blog Series

• In the Fallout of the Pandemic, Community Schools Show a Way Forward for Education
• School-Based Health Centers: Trusted Lifelines in a Time of Crisis
• County-Level Coordination Provides Infrastructure, Funding for Community Schools Initiative

To some busy school administrators, adding any survey might seem burdensome, but the returns on a short material hardship survey are very high. With this information, schools and school systems will be able to tailor programs to meet the needs of children and young adults living in families in deep poverty. These programs should support students’ health and well-being, as well as include academic enhancement and enrichment. In the context of the COVID-19 crisis, waiting for the perfect measure could result in increased hardship for students trapped in deep poverty.

Toward Educational Equity

Since the 1990s, the social safety net has been basically shredded. As a result, in many communities, the local public school system is often the only entity situated to meet the needs of students from families in deep poverty by providing meals as well as a safe place to be during the day. Early intervention programs, such a free and high-quality early childhood programs , are a very promising approach to mitigating the effects of deep poverty on young children. Community schools , which provide students and families with a range of supports and services to mitigate the impact of deep poverty—from health and mental health care to before- and after-school care and social service supports—are another promising example. Ensuring that these services are available to children in deep poverty can literally mean the difference between life and death—and between a chance in life and none—for many of these young people.

These are just two examples of how information about students’ level of poverty can lead to improved and expanded services and supports to meet their needs. Of course, schools alone cannot reverse the impact of deep poverty on children, families, and communities. But without well-financed schools with the targeted resources needed to enable students’ learning, the negative effects of deep poverty on children will remain, now and in the future.

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Children living in poverty face many barriers to accessing an education. Some are obvious — like not having a school to go to — while others are more subtle. Like the teacher at the school not having had the training needed to help children learn effectively.

Increasing access to education can improve the overall health and longevity of a society , grow economies , and even combat climate change . Yet in many developing countries, children’s access to education can be limited by numerous factors. Language barriers, gender roles, and reliance on child labor can all stall progress to provide quality education. The world’s most vulnerable children from disadvantaged communities are more likely to miss out on school. This includes young girls and children with disabilities,

Here are 10 of the greatest challenges in global education that the world needs to take action on right now to achieve Global Goal 4 : Quality Education by 2030. 

1. A lack of funding for education

Girls walk to an UNRWA school for the first day school year in Gaza City, Aug. 29, 2018. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children are starting their school year in the Gaza Strip amid a major budget crunch for the UN agency that funds many schools. Girls walk to an UNRWA school for the first day school year in Gaza City, Aug. 29, 2018. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinian children are starting their school year in the Gaza Strip amid a major budget crunch for the UN agency that funds many schools. Image: Felipe Dana/AP

Developing countries can’t rely solely on their own financing for education — there’s also a need for more foreign aid.

Only 20% of aid for education goes to low-income countries, according to the Global Partnership for Education (GPE). But it costs an average of $1.25 a day per child in developing countries to provide 13 years of education.

Read More: How to Get Tickets to Global Citizen Festival 2019 in NYC

If each developing country invested just 15 cents more per child, it could make all the difference. There is currently a $39 billion gap to providing quality education to all children by 2030. GPE encourages developing countries to contribute 20% of their national budget to education, and allocate 45% of it to primary education. 

2. Having no teacher, or having an untrained teacher

Teacher effectiveness has been found to be the most important predictor of student learning. GPE is determined to fight the global teacher crisis at hand. 

There aren't enough teachers to achieve universal primary or secondary education. And many of the teachers that are currently working are untrained. As a result, children aren’t receiving a proper education. There are 130 million children in school who are not learning basic skills like reading, writing and math.  

Lean More: The 2019 Global Citizen Festival in New York

Globally, the UN estimates that 69 million new teachers are required to achieve universal primary and secondary education by 2030. To offer every child primary education, 25.8 million school teachers need to be recruited . Meanwhile, in 1 out of every 3 countries, less than three-quarters of teachers are trained to national standards.

3. No classroom

Students try to get the teacher's attention to answer a question in Sudan. Students try to get the teacher's attention to answer a question in Sudan. The girls are sitting outside in the sweltering heat because their classroom made of local materials fell down in a recent storm. Image: Kelley Lynch/GPE

A child cannot learn without the right environment. Children in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa are often squeezed into overcrowded classrooms, classrooms that are falling apart, or are learning outside.  They also lack textbooks, school supplies, and other tools they need to excel.

In Malawi, for example, there are an average of 130 children per classroom in first grade. It’s not just a lack of classrooms that’s the problem, but also all the basic facilities you would expect a school to have — like running water and toilets. 

Read More: Nigeria Says It Has the Highest Number of Out-of-School Children in the World

In Chad, only 1 in 7 schools has potable water, and just 1 in 4 has a toilet; moreover, only one-third of the toilets that do exist are for girls only — a real disincentive and barrier for girls to come to school.

When girls don’t have access to safe toilets, they are often harassed or attacked when looking for a private place to go. Girls also miss or drop out of school when they begin menstruating if they don’t have the sanitation facilities or sanitary products to manage their periods with pride and dignity.

4. A lack of learning materials

Outdated and worn-out textbooks are often shared by six or more students in many parts of the world. In Tanzania, for example, only 3.5% of all sixth grade pupils had sole use of a reading textbook. In Cameroon, there are 11 primary school students for every reading textbook and 13 for every mathematics textbook in second grade. Workbooks, exercise sheets, readers, and other core materials to help students learn their lessons are in short supply. Teachers also need materials to help prepare their lessons, share with their students, and guide their lessons. 

Read More: Half of All Child Refugees Aren't in School: Why This Is a Massive Problem

5. The exclusion of children with disabilities

A visually impaired student reads braille in Rio de Janeiro, Friday, Sept. 2, 2016. A visually impaired student reads braille in Rio de Janeiro, Friday, Sept. 2, 2016. Image: Silvia Izquierdo/AP

Despite the fact that education is a universal human right, being denied access to school is common for the world’s 93 to 150 million children with disabilities. In some of the world’s poorest countries, up to 95% of children with disabilities are out of school.

Students with disabilities have lower attendance rates and are more  likely to be out of school or leave school before completing primary education. They are suspended or expelled at a rate  more than double  the rate of their non-special education peers.

A combination of discrimination, lack of training in inclusive teaching methods among teachers, and a lack of accessible schools leave this group uniquely vulnerable to being denied their right to education.

Read More: 72 Guidelines for Students With Disabilities Have Been Rescinded by the US Dept. of Education

6. Being the ‘wrong’ gender

A Pakistani girl lines up among boys for their morning assembly where they sing the national anthem at a school in Islamabad, Pakistan on Oct. 11, 2013. In Pakistan, the Taliban stops more than 25 million children from going to school. A Pakistani girl lines up among boys for their morning assembly where they sing the national anthem at a school in Islamabad, Pakistan on Oct. 11, 2013. In Pakistan, the Taliban stops more than 25 million children from going to school. Image: Anja Niedringhaus/AP

Put simply, gender is one of the biggest reasons why children are denied an education. Despite recent advances in girls’ education, a generation of young women has been left behind. Over 130 million young women around the world are not currently enrolled in school. One in 3 girls in the developing world marries before the age of 18, and usually leaves school if they do.

Read More: World Leaders Warn Failure to Educate Girls Will Cause 'Catastrophes'

Keeping girls in school benefits them and their families, but poverty forces many families to choose which of their children to send to school. Girls often miss out due to belief that there’s less value in educating a girl than a boy. Instead, they are sent to work, forced into marriage , or made to stay at home to look after siblings and work on household chores. Girls also miss days of school every year or are too embarrassed to participate in class, because they don’t have appropriate menstrual hygiene education or toilet facilities at their school to manage their period.

7. Living in a country in conflict or at risk of conflict

First-grade students attend a basement school in besieged East Ghouta, Rural Damascus in the Syrian Arab Republic. First-grade students attend a basement school in besieged East Ghouta, Rural Damascus in the Syrian Arab Republic. Here, the children work together at desks while colourful paintings and cartoons decorate the walls. Image: Amer Al Shami/UNICEF

There are many casualties of any war, and education systems are often destroyed. Children exposed to violence are more at risk of under-achieving and dropping out of school. The impact of conflict cannot be overstated. Nearly 250 million children are living in countries affected by conflicts. More than 75 million children and young people aged 3 to 18 are currently in urgent need of educational support in 35 crisis-affected countries,  with young girls 90% more likely to be out of secondary school in conflict areas than elsewhere.

Read More: UN: Nearly 1 Billion Kids Will Be Jobless If Education Aid Stays Flat

Teachers and students often flee their homes during conflicts, and continuity of learning is greatly disrupted. In total, 75 million children have had their education disrupted disrupted by conflict or crisis, including natural disasters that destroy schools and the environment around them. Less than half of the world’s refugee children are enrolled in school, according  to the UN Refugee Agency. Worryingly, education has thus far been a very low priority in humanitarian aid to countries in conflict — and less than 3% of global humanitarian assistance was allocated to education in 2016.

Without support, conflict-affected children lose out on the chance to reach their full potential and rebuild their communities.

8. Distance from home to school

Two girls walk back home after attending an ad-hoc learning center set up in a local mosque in Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir on Oct. 20, 2016. Two girls walk back home after attending an ad-hoc learning center set up in a local mosque in Srinagar, Indian controlled Kashmir on Oct. 20, 2016. Image: Dar Yasin/AP

For many children around the world, a walk to school of up to three hours in each direction is not uncommon . This is just too much for many children, particularly children living with a disability, those suffering from malnutrition or illness, or those who are required to work around the household. Imagine having to set off for school, hungry, at 5 a.m. every day, not to return until 7 p.m. Many children, especially girls, are also vulnerable to violence on their long and hazardous journeys to and from school.

9. Hunger and poor nutrition

The impact of hunger on education systems is gravely underreported. Being severely malnourished, to the point it impacts on brain development, can be the same as losing four grades of schooling. It is estimated that around 155 million children under the age of five are estimated to be stunted . Stunting –– impaired growth and development that children experience from poor infection, and inadequate stimulation –– can affect a child’s cognitive abilities as well as their focus and concentration in school. As a result, stunted children are 19% less likely to be able to read by age eight. Conversely, good nutrition can be crucial preparation for good learning.

Read More: Worst Places for Education Around The World

10. The expense of education 

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights makes clear that every child has the right to a free basic education, so that poverty and lack of money should not be a barrier to schooling. In many developing countries, over the last several, decades, governments have announced the abolition of school fees and as a result, they have seen impressive increases in the number of children going to school. 

Read More: Bloomberg Just Donated $1.8 Billion to Help Low-Income Students Afford College

But for many of the poorest families, school remains too expensive and children are forced to stay at home doing chores or work themselves. Families remain locked in a cycle of poverty that goes on for generations. In many countries throughout Africa education is theoretically free. In practice “informal fees” see parents forced to pay for “compulsory items” like uniforms, books, pens, extra lessons, exam fees, or funds to support the school buildings. In other places, the lack of functioning public (government-supported) schools means that parents have no choice but to send their children to private schools. Even if these schools are “low-fee,” they are unaffordable for the poorest families who risk making themselves destitute in their efforts to get their children better lives through education.

The 2019 Global Citizen Festival in New York will be presented by Citi and Cisco and in association with our Production Partner, Live Nation. MSNBC, Comcast NBCUniversal, and iHeart will serve as Presenting Media Partners and will air a live simulcast of the Festival on MSNBC and on iHeart Radio Stations. The Festival will also be livestreamed on YouTube and Twitter, presented by Johnson & Johnson. 

Proud partners of the 2019 Global Citizen Festival include Global Citizen’s global health partner and major partner Johnson & Johnson, and major partners P&G, Verizon, and NYC Parks.

Defeat Poverty

10 Barriers to Education That Children Living in Poverty Face

Aug. 13, 2019

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Find it fast container, horizontal navigation, in this section, education : poverty in japan 4 of 4.

*This "Poverty in Japan" series of articles is based on a presentation given by the Seisen High School Social Justice Committee to their peers at an assembly in November 2021.

1) The Prevalence of EDUCATION INEQUALITY in Japan

Basic stats & myth busters.

Why is educational inequality prevalent in Japan, and how does poverty contribute? We must begin with an understanding of what constitutes inequality in education.

What is Education Inequality?

Educational inequality is the unequal distribution of academic resources. This can include a variety of aspects to academic life from extracurriculars to tutoring outside of school, and even cram school. A primary example of this throughout Japan these past two years was the impact of COVID on impoverished families lacking in technology and means of connection while we were able to continue classes online through zoom.

On this next slide, we will address common misconceptions and perceived notions that might be masking the impact of poverty on education within japan. While we may believe that a relative majority of the population can read and write, the 99% literacy rate idea is false. Though it may have been accurate in 1948, such is no longer applicable. Though there is no up-to-date government data, there are signs that illiteracy may be more common than Japanese people believe. The most recent census, conducted nine years ago, found that more than 128,000 people had left school by the age of 12, mainly due to a lack of financial resources.

And circling back to education during COVID, Educational disparities and inequalities have been felt more and more by younger generations.With survey results showing More than half of young adults in Japan felt there were disparities between students in access to learning opportunities amid school closures , carried out by the Tokyo-based nonprofit organization Nippon Foundation, finding 58.6 percent of respondents age 17 to 19 felt there were inequalities in education.

So, while Every citizen in Japan is guaranteed to obtain the right to education. However, interviews organized by NHK proved the opposite. From their responses, some have missed elementary or junior high; unable to solve simple math or write hiragana. Unable to follow basic instructions, or read announcement signs in public due to illiteracy.  A true story and example of a student our age is Kosuke - a 19 year old living in eastern Japan.  Due to abuse and lack of financial support from a single mother who had fallen ill, he had entered into the working field able to read but unable to write aside from his own name and address. Leading to difficulty completing tasks within the workplace, many face similar situations throughout Japan today

Lemurik. "Child Abuse Domestic Violence Vector Illustration Stock Vector (Royalty Free) 1321160498." Shutterstock.com. n.d. Web. 17 Nov. 2021. <https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/child-abuse-domestic-violence-vector-illustration-1321160498> Marina, Shirakawa. "Educational Poverty in Japan | NHK WORLD-JAPAN News." NHK WORLD. 6 Apr. 2020. Web. 17 Nov. 2021. < https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/backstories/226/ >  

2. What education Inequality can we see around us?

So now that we acknowledge the existence of education inequality in Japan, what type of education inequality can we see around us?

Escalator Schools

Have you ever heard of an escalator school system in Japan? As you might be able to easily catch it from the name itself, it is a school that automatically offers the student to move on to the next education level, all the way up to the university, IF the student is accepted for the same institution’s elementary school, or sometimes kindergarten. Although the ratio differs for every school, the parent university may automatically accept as many as the top 50 or 60 percent of the students from the same institution’s high school. Keio University, one of the Japan’s top university, accepts over 95 percent of their own high schools’ graduates. Instead, the entrance test for the elementary school or kindergarten is notoriously difficult. Other highly selective private academic kindergartens within the escalator system can be Sacred heart, Keio, Waseda, Gakushuin, and Aoyama Gakuin. 

This escalator school is an example that can create education inequality related to poverty as children from poor families are difficult to take the test. The children are half expected/forced to go to jukus to prepare for the kindergarten entrance exam and most likely, the parents of the poor families wouldn't be able to afford such money to prepare for the test and also for the tuition of a private school that will continue for around 16 years or more. Moreover, the private academic kindergartens I listed earlier not only tests various skill and intelligence tests to the children applying for admission but also to their parents!  

Urgency of Starting Young

The majority of Japanese students start their education from as young as three years old. Their parents would fight to enroll them into a school they saw fit. Extracurricular classes such as piano or swimming lessons became popular amongst these families as those two were also being taken by Tokyo university students. Some families also valued learning English and would submit their children to English speaking preschools.

Meanwhile, the richer families who place a lot of importance on education face a challenging examination starting in elementary school as soon as the student turns the age of six. Despite being so young, they would have had years of studying and preparation for this. Instead of looking at public schools, these parents seek to send their children to the elite private schools that focus on a higher standard of education. These entry exams are more than just a simple interview and test, instead they are tested for things such as seasonal knowledge with written tests, being put in a group of children to see how well they behave with other students, and involving them in handicraft to evaluate their comprehensive abilities and hand coordination. The tuition for schools like this are very heavy as it could reach 1,863,085 yen minus the costs of other supplies as well as donations made throughout the year.  This itself creates educational inequality as families who may not be able to afford such tuition would be overlooked and missing out on different opportunities. If families with a lower financial income were looking into enrolling their children into prestigious preschools, they would need at least a couple of years of studying beforehand to be fully prepared for the examination tests. Kumon being the most prominent correspondence course students would be taking, their families would then have to pay for those lessons as well as the extracurricular activities they would be taking outside of school. With all that, the price steadily increases and is hard to keep up with. This itself creates an unfair division between the families and more specifically the opportunities handed to the students as the acceptance into an elite school starting from the age of six is what sets the educational trail for them. If accepted into a “lower” public school, it would affect the next school they would attend and the chances given to them as they reach university. 

As we will later on explain, these opportunities and acceptances to the private schools are affiliated with some elite colleges within Japan and is why there is a lot of competition to attend these kinds of schools.   

3. Cycles of poverty & Education inequality

Cultural impact on education poverty.

Before we get into the actual cycle, I want to get into the specific reasoning on why this cycle happens in the first place.  Japan values the ‘label’ of the school that you go to. Hence if you go to a school with good representation, there is a higher chance you will be able to get into a better company or job position. According to FRaU, even simply going to college or not makes a 40% difference in pay. (FRaU) This creates the hierarchy between people that do and do not have the financial support to go to a good school, leading to a poverty cycle for the ones who don’t have that support.   

The Cycle of Poverty + Education

Here is the cycle: It goes, a child from a wealthy family is born → the child can go to better facilitated schools, hence receiving better education → ending with the child can also getting better jobs and pay Meaning, that when you don’t have good pay, there is a low possibility of getting into good schools after middle school and to receive good pay. Even when considering the option of scholarships, most scholarships are low price and provided only for universities, and the amount of schools that provide this is only 50%. Even ones that are provided by the government usually don’t provide for higher end schools. (奨学金.net) Even with large amounts of effort, there is the reality in which you can’t develop your skills because of a financial barrier. 

A Minority Group Poverty Cycle...

Another cycle is one between minority groups. There is a lack of support for minority groups → which leads to a lack of education → ultimately leading to poverty There are still a lot of stereotypes that come with minority groups like the disabled, so most public schools can’t be completely cooperative because of the ‘extra fuss.’ (朝日新聞デジタル 2019) This leads to lack of education in the minority, providing even less opportunities than the average abled person, and has a higher rate of poverty. (leading back to cycle) The job acceptance rate for the disabled in 2021 was 42.2%, very low compared to the 96% acceptance rate of the abled. It is also researched that the poverty rate of the disabled goes a little over 25% of the whole disabled population, which means 1 in 4 disabled person is in poverty. (日本経済新聞; イノベーションズアイ) This problem’s solution will be addressed in the next section, but in general as students, it is important to know that there is a clear cycle of education and finance that is ultimately leading people to poverty in Japan. 

4. What action can we take as individuals and a community?

Organizations.

https://kidsdoor.net/

KIDSDOOR is a non-profit organization engaged in various support activities for children in Japan

• The group aims to stop the poverty cycle,
• Where children grow up to become poor because their parents’ poverty kept them from accessing a sufficient education 
• They have been conducting a study support program “dubbed Gakubora” since August 2009, and it is intended to give educational assistance to children who go to public school or are part of a single-parent family, needy family, or orphanage by widely mobilizing volunteers to help eliminate unequal educational opportunities for children across the nation. 
• College students are enlisted as volunteer tutors to extend help to children who don’t have access to education due to their poor static

https://learningforall.or.jp/

Learning for All  is an organization supporting children in Japan who struggle with poverty, which ultimately affects their education.  Money that is donated to this organization is used for transportation fees for student volunteer tutors, sketchbooks, files, textbooks, and venue expenses for public halls.

Real Life Example

Raising awareness on the topic, like we are now about education inequality due to poverty is one of the best things we can do. Citizens of Japan don’t have much control over the issue so more people joining organizations and signing petitions can make a difference.

“At my previous school the Student Council raised money to donate to an organization for the homeless community in Yoyogi park. The money we raised went towards providing Christmas eve meals and other supplies such as emergency blankets, and non perishable food.”

Mental Health: Limited resources to diagnose mental health issues at a young age lead more people into poverty each year. One of the main organizers of Grama Seva(the support group for the homeless in Yoyogi park) said that “Most people we see coming in for supplies show signs of mental illness, I think if mental health was more of an open conversation in Japan, fewer people would have ended up here." Japan's societal expectations need to shift for people with mental health issues to be accepted, undergo treatment and find their place in society, so that these people do not fall into the poverty cycle. 

Works Cited

Lemurik. "Child Abuse Domestic Violence Vector Illustration Stock Vector (Royalty Free) 1321160498."  Shutterstock.com. n.d. Web. 17 Nov. 2021.  <https://www.shutterstock.com/image-vector/child-abuse-domestic-violence-vector-illustration-1321160498>

LIVE JAPAN. "Behind Japan’s Elite Education—Insight Into its System | LIVE JAPAN travel guide." LIVE JAPAN. n.d. Web. 18 Nov. 2021. < https://livejapan.com/en/in-tokyo/in-pref-tokyo/in-tokyo_train_station/article-a0000955/ >

Marina, Shirakawa. "Educational Poverty in Japan | NHK WORLD-JAPAN News." NHK WORLD. 6 Apr.  2020. Web. 17 Nov. 2021. < https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/backstories/226/ >

Masakazu Hojo. "Inequality in Japanese Education." Taylor & Francis. n.d. Web. 17 Nov. 2021.  < https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.2753/JES1097-203X360301 >

The Japan Times. "Over half of young adults in Japan felt education gap as schools closed over  coronavirus." The Japan Times. 19 Jun. 2020. Web. 17 Nov. 2021.  < https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/06/19/national/education-gap-schools/ > Wray, Harry. Japanese and American Education: Attitudes and Practices. Bergin & Garvey, 1999.    

Seisen Social Justice Committee "Poverty in Japan" Article Series

• Introduction
• Food Sustainability
• Fashion Sustainability
• Immigration

More Seisen News

Students got to meet other young people interested in Drama from different high schools and experience working with professional theatre makers from around the Kanto region to create original short-form plays.

Ena Bevan (Class of 2032): "My parents used to take me to lots of classic concerts when I was a baby, and I liked the sound of the violin."

Michi Morita (Class of 2025): "Along with these titles, I also received scholarships to summer training programs in New York at Steps on Broadway. These titles and scholarships not only gave me amazing opportunities to network with professionals, but it also gave me some amazing friendships that I will have forever."

Mihika Gupta (Class of 2029) "As I compete for our school during the various sports seasons, I seize the opportunities to catch up with my equestrian training during the summer or in between sports seasons."

Rena Kenmoku (Classof 2024): "Music should be something that you laugh, bleed, and breathe out. So when you compose it should sound like a reflection of yourself, be original, and don't let anybody influence you to do otherwise."

A group of High School students conducted sustainable tourism research in Thailand.

Falling Apart

Students and educators in idaho show us what it’s like when a state fails to fund school repairs, series: state of disrepair: inside idaho’s crumbling schools.

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with the Idaho Statesman . Sign up for Dispatches to get stories like this one as soon as they are published.

No other state spends less on school infrastructure per student than Idaho. As a result, many students, especially those in rural districts, deal with leaking ceilings, freezing classrooms and discolored drinking water . Some students have to miss school when the power or heat goes out.

School districts often can’t build or repair buildings because Idaho is one of only two states that require two-thirds of voters to approve a bond. Some districts have held bond elections several times only to see them fail despite having support from a majority of voters. But the Legislature has been reluctant to make significant investments in facilities. Administrators say they don’t know how they’ll keep their schools running and worry that public officials don’t understand how bad the problems are.

We heard from community members in   108 of Idaho's 115 school districts.

Idaho hasn’t done an official assessment of school building conditions in 30 years. The Idaho Statesman and ProPublica tried to fill this gap with the help of people who know the system best. We surveyed all 115 public school district superintendents, and 91% responded. Every superintendent who responded said they have at least one facilities problem that poses a significant challenge, and 78% told us they have five or more. Then, we went to communities across the state. Thirty-nine schools took us on tours, often led by district maintenance directors. We also collected stories and photographs from 233 students, parents, educators and others, who described how the conditions affect their lives.

Read more about our survey and outreach efforts.

“Communities show what is valuable by what we build,” said David Reinhart, West Ada School District’s chief operations officer. “When our students are in old and run-down buildings, it signals to them that what they do in school is of little value.”

“It makes school less enjoyable, harder to focus,” said Luke Sharon, a senior at Lake City High School in Coeur d’Alene.

“The kids see it,” said Amy Eslinger, who graduated from Emmett High School in 2009. “I grew up knowing how bonds and levies worked but never saw them pass and watched myself and my peers suffer from it.”

Here’s what students and educators across the state told us about the floods and leaks , overcrowding and inaccessibility , safety and outages , crumbling buildings and heating and cooling problems that impact every part of their day.

Floods and leaks, discolored water, falling ceiling tiles, ruined projects.

50% of Idaho superintendents we heard from said leaks pose a significant challenge or require major repairs, while 61% said they had problems with their roofs and 58% said the same about bathrooms .

“The leak made us feel like there was yet another way our school is falling apart. We were also sad because something like this could damage our precious instruments that we most certainly could not replace for a long time due to cost.”

Laura Woras, music teacher Idaho City Middle/High School, Basin School District

Laura Woras’ music classroom has flooded two years in a row.

Woras went to drop off supplies in her Idaho City classroom during spring break in 2022 and found the area around her desk flooded and hot water shooting out of a wall. It destroyed the floor pillows she had bought for students to sit on while playing their instruments. The next year, it happened again. The superintendent told us the old pipes spring leaks once a month and need replacement.

Separately, the school struggles with leaks from its fire sprinkler system. A levy that would have fixed this failed to pass in November.

“Something is always falling apart in our school district.”

Natalie Kulick, science teacher Idaho City Middle/High School, Basin School District

In Kulick’s class, multiple leaks have sent water pouring down the walls, destroying cards from former students, workbooks, papers and posters.

“The previously leaking roof hadn’t been addressed due to budgetary constraints. Due to the heavy snow and already bad roof, it caused the ceiling to collapse. We’re hoping the repairs will hold until we can figure something else out about replacing the whole roof.”

Jason Moss, superintendent Grace Joint School District

“At Post Falls Middle School, class would be moved to a different room temporarily because a tile from the ceiling had collapsed due to water damage. Sometimes we would carry on anyway and ignore it.”

Grey Goodwin, 2023 Post Falls High School graduate Post Falls School District

The district said it has since repaired sections of the roof.

The land that the Basin School District’s schools sit on used to be a pond that had been dredged by miners. During spring runoff, the elementary school floods.

Spring runoff goes under the building, creating a musty smell. “my first year here i thought it was a dead mouse.”.

Jill Diamond, principal Potlatch Elementary School, Potlatch School District

“There’s a room that you can’t even go in on a rainy day, because it just smells terrible.”

Michelle Tripp, principal Ross Elementary School, Kuna School District

“The water is loaded with iron and tastes terrible.” 1 “Old buildings with lead in pipes.” 2 “Concerns with drinking water have caused us to get water delivered. … Some of the water is colored in some of the classroom sinks.” 3

1 Scott Davis, Kootenai superintendent. (The district scraped together grants and donations to add a filtered bottle fill station to each building.)

2 Mark Kress, Snake River superintendent. (The district said it has mitigated lead levels in drinking water and tests the water monthly.)

3 Allen Mayo, Shoshone-Bannock administrator

Bathroom drains at Canyon Springs High School, an alternative school in the Caldwell School District, are “popping up out of the ground” because of old rusty piping that has shifted, said Bernie Carreira, the district’s maintenance director.

“we have had to bring in port-a-potty restrooms when plumbing systems have failed.”.

Matt Diel, facilities director Lake Pend Oreille School District

Overcrowding and inaccessibility

Classes in stairwells and closets.

28% of superintendents we heard from said overcrowding or use of portable buildings is a significant challenge. 58% said accessibility for people with disabilities poses a significant challenge or requires major repairs.

“The first two or three minutes of passing, it’s sardines.”

Tracy Donaldson, vice principal Kuna High School, Kuna School District

Donaldson described the crowded hallways. The high school was designed for about 1,400 students, but it serves about 1,900, according to the district.

“Our biggest concern is lack of space. We are using 18 modular classrooms at Rigby High School.”

Chad Martin, superintendent Jefferson County School District

The district has been relying on portable buildings because there is a shortage of space.

“Underclassmen without cars are forced to eat on the floor in the halls due to the lack of space in the cafeteria.”

Claire Yoo, 2023 alum Idaho Falls High School, Idaho Falls School District

The school was built for 900 students but serves about 1,250, according to the district. The cafeteria accommodates about 200 students.

Moscow High School has 814 students but only room for about 100 in the cafeteria.

At heyburn elementary in the st. maries school district, a stairwell at the front entrance was turned into the music classroom., photo class is held in a former storage room in the plummer-worley school district., “most high school pe classes are not able to use the gym most of the time since it’s too small. … not enough fields were built on campus for the number of students we have now.”.

Natasha Gartstein, ninth grade student Moscow High School, Moscow School District

As a result, the district has to transport students to nearby parks and the University of Idaho for physical education, cutting into class time. On one busy week in the fall, the district had 28 bus trips from the school.

At Heyburn, a teacher’s lounge is in an old locker room, where showerheads are still attached to the wall.

About half of superintendents said they have buildings that aren’t compliant with the americans with disabilities act..

Schools built before the act have some flexibility in meeting the requirements.

“He can't ever really just be free to explore because he could tip over the edge. … I think there's a lot of learning that kids get when they can freely explore their world. My little guy doesn't get that.”

Marisa Smith, mother of a second grade student Discovery Elementary School, West Ada School District

Marisa Smith’s son, Tug, uses a wheelchair and is legally blind. He can’t access the playground unless teachers carry him because it has wood chips and a steep drop from the curb. After reporters reached out, the district said it would make some improvements. But the playground would still have wood chips, which are difficult to navigate in a wheelchair.

“We typically have to move students with physical disabilities out of their neighborhood school to a newer school that can better accommodate their physical needs.”

Wendy Johnson, superintendent Kuna School District

“It’s kind of just really embarrassing. … I oftentimes would fall out of my wheelchair and hurt my knees again.”

Ammon Tingey, 2023 alum Highland High School, Pocatello-Chubbuck School District

Ammon Tingey described climbing up and down stairs every day to get to honors classes while he was supposed to be using a wheelchair after an injury. He said he was discouraged from taking the classes because they were on the bottom floor and the school didn’t have an elevator. The district did not list accessibility as an issue in its survey. It said it offers more than one section of honors courses, and there would have been another option for students to access on the main floor. The school also has a wheelchair lift in one section of the building.

Safety and Outages

Fire risks, power outages, security flaws.

58% of Idaho superintendents we heard from said security poses a significant challenge. 31% said asbestos does and 26% said fire and emergency preparedness do.

“My heart was racing because I’ve heard in the news of things like this happening. … It’s just hard to think what if this would have been real and there actually was someone there and they made a mistake like this. We were like sitting ducks.” Bryn Bowersox, 10th grade student Moscow High School, Moscow School District

Bryn Bowersox was in PE class earlier this year when the school went into lockdown because of a shooting threat. The announcement couldn’t be heard in the gym, and the door didn’t lock securely, according to the district. Bowersox said the class learned of the threat late when a teacher received a message on his phone. The district has since installed new announcement systems and purchased new locks.

Superintendents across the state were able to make some security upgrades with a state grant created this year that provided each school with up to $20,000, but many said it wasn’t enough to fully secure their older schools.

Superintendents Say

57% of idaho superintendents said security poses a significant challenge. 32% said asbestos, and 27% said fire and emergency preparedness., “not all students can hear the public announcements, and not all classroom teachers can easily communicate with the office.”.

Superintendent*

“We have no secure entries and high concerns for many ‘what if’ security scenarios.”

Superintendent,* referring to the main entrances

*We are not naming the superintendents or their districts to avoid exposing security concerns.

A fire broke out at Highland High School in the Pocatello-Chubbuck School District earlier this year and destroyed the cafeteria, gym and band rooms.

The building had previously failed a fire inspection, but the district said that the alarm system was still operational. During the fire, the school’s sprinklers went off, but the alarm didn’t activate. The district said it has since serviced alarms at all of its schools. The damage will be covered by insurance, but the district ran a bond election in November hoping to expand and upgrade the school while rebuilding. The bond measure failed, despite garnering 56% of votes.

“The elementary has no fire suppression system.” 1 “Don’t have a sprinkler system for fires.” 2 “Does not have a functioning fire control system.” 3

1 Brian Hunicke, Basin superintendent

2 Scott Davis, Kootenai superintendent, about two of the district’s three schools

3 David Sotutu, superintendent of New Plymouth School District until June, about the sprinklers in the district’s career technical education building

“The middle school is loaded with asbestos.”

Scott Davis, superintendent Kootenai School District

The asbestos is not exposed but makes what would otherwise be simple repairs and upgrades challenging and expensive, Davis said.

“A student plugged their laptop into one of these outlets. There was a pop, a spark.”

Jennie Withers, teacher Meridian Middle School, West Ada School District

“The kids know it will flicker once, and then they’re waiting. They’re like, ‘OK,’ and it’ll flicker twice, and then they’re like, ‘OK, three times.’ … If it hits the third time, then it’s going to be out for a while — and they know that.”

Brian Hunicke, superintendent Basin School District

Hunicke said the district had eight power outages last year, and its generator only covers refrigeration, the computer server and emergency lights.

Some districts have also had challenges making Wi-Fi work in their older buildings.

“some days the wi-fi will just stop working. this means that some teachers who rely on powerpoints or internet access can’t continue with what they had planned for that day.”.

Reesa Loewen, senior Kamiah High School, Kamiah School District

Jill Patton, principal of Pioneer Elementary School in the Salmon School District, said students have been kicked off the internet in the middle of state exams because of the building’s poor Wi-Fi.

At Caldwell’s Syringa Middle School, the breaker trips if a heater and the microwave are turned on at the same time.

Crumbling buildings, deteriorating foundations and falling bricks.

41% of Idaho superintendents we heard from said structural issues like cracks in the walls or foundation pose a significant challenge or require major repairs.

“The look of the school is kind of deteriorating. … Just walking in and seeing something that looks like this is almost depressing.”

Diego Hernandez, 10th grade student Canyon Springs High School, Caldwell School District

Caldwell Superintendent N. Shalene French said all 10 of her district’s schools are in poor condition. At Canyon Springs, an alternative school that students describe as deteriorating, about 80% of students are people of color, and more than 96% come from low-income households.

43% of Idaho superintendents said structural issues like cracks in the walls or foundation posed a significant challenge or required major repairs.

“the foundation is crumbling. … you keep up with what you can; you can’t fix a crumbling foundation.” 1 “foundation and wall cracks are worrisome.” 2 “we know there is probably a crack in the foundation; however, with no money to fix it, we are left to just simply prepare for heavy rains as much as possible and to devote extra time to clean up efforts.” 3.

1 Troy Easterday, superintendent at Salmon School District

2 Joe Steele, superintendent at Butte County School District

3 Megan Sindt, superintendent at Avery School District

“The state of our buildings, particularly the outer buildings, is embarrassing. … School should be a place of security and a place to be proud of.”

“holes in the walls, leaks, exposed wires — they are distracting.”.

Leila Guffey, senior Kamiah High School, Kamiah School District

At Kamiah High School in the Kamiah School District and other schools we visited, students told us that their schools’ appearance affected how they viewed their schools and themselves.

Bricks have cracked and pieces have fallen out at jefferson middle school in the caldwell school district..

They haven’t hit anyone, but it’s a potential hazard, said Bernie Carreira, the Caldwell maintenance director.

Schools also have structural issues with windows, which were listed as a problem by 55% of superintendents we heard from.

In three districts, teachers or superintendents reported that windows have fallen out. In another, the deteriorated windows allow bats to make their way into the high school two to three times each fall.

“Bats come in through the window casings. … We keep the ‘bat net’ handy at all times.”

Janet Williamson, superintendent Camas County School District

Heating and Cooling Problems

Blankets, coal boilers and poor ventilation.

68% of Idaho superintendents we heard from said heating poses a significant challenge or requires major repairs. 67% said the same for cooling.

“It’s extremely hard to focus on schoolwork while shivering.”

Kendall Edwards, ninth grade student Moscow High School, Moscow School District

Edwards said some rooms are freezing in the winter. Frank Petrie, Moscow’s maintenance director, said heating is a challenge because of antiquated systems.

“Even as a kid in elementary school, I knew that it probably wasn’t normal to have to wear coats inside occasionally.”

Ali Johnson, 2021 alum Capital High School, Boise School District

“I know one teacher who keeps a stack of blankets in his room so kids can cover up while he teaches.”

Cyndi Faircloth, teacher Moscow Middle School, Moscow School District

Brian Hunicke, superintendent at Basin School District, told us that at Idaho City Middle/High School, the heat didn’t work about 10 times last year, not including during power outages. When it happens, students “suffer for about a day” before the district can get someone in to fix it.

“the district is still using coal to heat buildings. the coal creates dirty air outside the buildings, and depending on wind direction it can unintentionally compromise indoor air quality. as we have looked for ways to improve air quality, we recognize that dirty air can impact those with compromised immunity and asthma.”.

Shane Williams, superintendent West Jefferson School District

Coal boilers have become increasingly rare in schools and homes across the country over the past few decades.

Russell Elementary School in the Moscow School District has a boiler from when the school opened in 1926. If it were to break down, it would be hard to find replacement parts, the district said.

Heat is also a problem when school starts in the late summer, educators say. it’s “sweltering.” 1 “over 100 degrees in the fall and late spring” inside. 2 “melting in the hot conditions.” 3 “it gets so hot in the afternoon that students start to put their head down. … it makes it difficult to teach kids.” 4.

1 Janet Avery, Potlatch superintendent

2 Robyn Bonner, head teacher at Peck Elementary in the Orofino School District

3 Erin Heileman, teacher at Morningside Elementary School in the Twin Falls School District

4 Gerald Dalebout, social studies teacher at Moscow High School in the Moscow School District

“There is no ventilation in that school, and it does not meet any EPA standards for fresh air intake or carbon dioxide levels, which were tested by the district.”

Ken Eldore, facilities director until June Priest River Junior High School, West Bonner School District

Another administrator also told us about the levels, but interim superintendent Joseph Kren, who was hired in October, said he couldn’t find a record of a test.

“Emmett Middle School lacks adequate ventilation, which I believe is a contributing factor to high levels of flu and illness.”

Craig Woods, superintendent Emmett School District

Emmett High School’s air quality is better than the middle school’s after upgrades, but is still “not up to today’s required air circulation standards,” according to its superintendent.

88% of superintendents we heard from mentioned that funding is preventing them from addressing facilities problems..

Districts have cobbled together funds to make some improvements over the years. Administrators said federal COVID-19 relief dollars allowed them to replace expensive HVAC systems and roofs. But that money is nearly gone.

Many superintendents said they felt hopeless about ever passing a bond to renovate or replace schools, especially since funding other educational needs is already a challenge. Districts also regularly ask voters to approve supplemental levies to cover some salaries and operating costs that go beyond state funding.

“Rural school districts can’t pass bonds to build new facilities,” said Todd Shumway, superintendent of the North Gem School District. “It only takes a few to defeat a bond.”

Not passing a bond means districts not only worry about maintaining their buildings, but also about what would happen if a gas line shuts down, the boiler stops working or the sewage system fails. And it means that as Idaho faces a teacher shortage, qualified educators can look across state borders at modern schools in better-funded districts — and decide to leave the state behind.

Opener image sources: Asia Fields/ProPublica; Sarah Miller/Idaho Statesman; courtesy of Kamiah High School students; courtesy of Moscow High School students; courtesy of Bernie Carreira; Pocatello Fire Department, obtained by ProPublica and Idaho Statesman

In an Unprecedented Move, Ohio Is Funding the Construction of Private Religious Schools

The state is giving millions in taxpayer dollars directly to private schools to help them renovate and expand their campuses. It may be the next frontier in the push to increase the use of school vouchers, proponents say.

by Eli Hager , Sept. 17, 5 a.m. EDT

The Unequal Effects of School Closings

As more families opt for charter and private schools or homeschooling in the wake of the pandemic, cities around the country are shuttering schools. The effects fall hardest on majority-Black schools and special-needs students.

by Alec MacGillis , Aug. 26, 5 a.m. EDT

A 10-Year-Old Pointed a Finger Gun. The Principal Kicked Him Out of His Tennessee School for a Year.

A 2023 state law requires a yearlong expulsion for any student who threatens mass violence on school property. But some students have been kicked out even when school officials determined that the threat was not credible.

by Aliyya Swaby , Aug. 23, 6:30 a.m. EDT

Cookie & Zo’e: A Georgia Family Wrestles With School Choice 60 Years After the Start of Desegregation

In a new ProPublica short documentary, Samaria “Cookie” Mitcham Bailey and her great-granddaughter Zo’e Johnson reflect on their experiences in a town where schools are still largely segregated.

by Liz Moughon , Aug. 22, 5:05 a.m. EDT

In a Town Full of Segregation Academies, One Black Family Grapples With the Best School Choice for Their Daughter

Schools in Macon, Georgia, are still largely segregated. Zo’e Johnson’s family is torn over whether they can afford for her to stay at her mostly white private school — and whether the cost makes sense.

by Jennifer Berry Hawes , photography by Sarahbeth Maney , Aug. 22, 5 a.m. EDT

Neglect at Boarding School for Autistic Youth Left a Student With Vision Loss, Lawsuit Alleges

Washington education officials have told public districts in the state not to send new students to Shrub Oak International School in New York, citing ProPublica’s reporting and a visit to the campus.

by Jodi S. Cohen and Jennifer Smith Richards , July 26, 5 a.m. EDT

Despite Persistent Warnings, Texas Rushed to Remove Millions From Medicaid. That Move Cost Eligible Residents Care.

The decision to buck federal government guidelines was one of many that led to serious repercussions for Texas residents who rely on Medicaid. Among them were children forced to forgo or postpone lifesaving operations, doctors say.

by Eleanor Klibanoff , The Texas Tribune , and Lomi Kriel , ProPublica and The Texas Tribune , Sept. 26, 5 a.m. CDT

Israel Deliberately Blocked Humanitarian Aid to Gaza, Two Government Bodies Concluded. Antony Blinken Rejected Them.

Blinken told Congress, “We do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting” aid, even though the U.S. Agency for International Development and others had determined that Israel had broken the law.

by Brett Murphy , Sept. 24, 5 a.m. EDT

Abortion Bans Have Delayed Emergency Medical Care. In Georgia, Experts Say This Mother’s Death Was Preventable.

At least two women in Georgia died after they couldn’t access legal abortions and timely medical care in their state, ProPublica has found. This is one of their stories.

by Kavitha Surana , Sept. 16, 5 a.m. EDT

Neo-Nazi Telegram Users Panic Amid Crackdown and Arrest of Alleged Leaders of Online Extremist Group

An analysis by ProPublica and FRONTLINE shows a surge in activity on Telegram channels aligned with the Terrorgram Collective, as allies tried to rally support for their comrades in custody and sought to oust users they believed to be federal agents.

by A.C. Thompson , James Bandler and Brandon Roberts , Sept. 25, 12 p.m. EDT

Desperate Times Led Wisconsin Tribe to High-Interest Lending, Dubious Partnerships and Legal Jeopardy

Facing financial ruin, the Lac du Flambeau tribe began offering short-term loans online with annual rates often over 600%. But as the tribe rose in an industry derided for predatory practices, it put its reputation at risk and drew costly lawsuits.

by Megan O’Matz and Joel Jacobs , Sept. 26, 5 a.m. EDT

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READ – Russia’s Initiative to Improve Learning Outcomes is More Relevant than Ever

Russia has regularly demonstrated strong results in international assessments of education, including the most recent OECD PISA tests , thanks to concerted efforts to support better teaching and learning outcomes among the population.

But Russia has also played an important role in helping boost education results globally.

In 2008, the Russian Federation initiated the Russia Education Aid for Development (READ) program , one of the first partnerships between the country and the World Bank, with a view to helping improve learning outcomes around the world through better measurement of student learning.

A decade later, the READ program is more relevant than ever. Many countries around the world continue to face a learning crisis – whereby hundreds of millions of children each year reach young adulthood without even the most basic skills. These young people are thus not equipped with the skills needed to succeed in increasingly competitive, technology-driven, and evolving labor markets. The long-term consequences for individuals and society are significant.

As such, the READ program has three main goals, associated with its three subprograms: 1) provide support on student assessment to developing countries, through the READ Trust Fund , 2) develop the capacity of Russia as an emerging donor in education, through the READ Reimbursable Advisory Service , and 3) facilitate Russia’s international development in education, through the Center for International Cooperation in Education Development .

To learn more about how READ is helping improve student learning, experts from Russia and countries around the world gathered in Moscow on 5-6 November 2019 to attend a conference titled Ten Years of Russia Education Aid for Development (READ): Impacts on Russia and the World .

Conference participants heard how fifteen countries across four regions – Europe & Central Asia, East Asia, South Asia, and Africa – have to date received targeted support from READ to improve their student assessment systems. With this support, nearly twenty assessment tools have been created, or revised. In Mozambique, for example, an assessment of early grade reading ( Provinha ) has been developed and administered across the country.

Nine new assessment-related policies have been developed, or adopted. Ethiopia, for example, has introduced a new school inspection framework and designation of budget lines for key assessment activities.

Over 40,000 policymakers, teachers, and practitioners around the world have been trained in key areas of student assessment. For instance, six country delegations were invited to Russia to study the country’s experience in establishing graduate degrees in student assessment – this subsequently led to formalized partnerships between universities in these countries and in Russia.

Currently, Russian experts are helping peers in Uzbekistan to prepare for the country’s first participation in an international assessment, PISA 2021. Similarly, experts in India recently agreed to pursue a peer learning arrangement with Russia, ahead of the same important assessment.

Through the READ program, several learning assessment resources have been made freely available to the public, designed mostly for teachers, policymakers, and assessment practitioners around the world. SABER-Student Assessment tools, for example, have been used to evaluate student assessment systems in over 60 countries. National Assessments of Educational Achievement publications have been translated into six languages to support the development of national assessment systems.

The Student Assessment for Policymakers and Practitioners eLearning , developed with support from the READ Trust Fund, is also a useful resource for learning about student assessment. More recently, the Public Examinations Examined publication – which looks at current issues related to high-stakes examinations – was launched at the READ conference in Moscow.

It is estimated that nearly 300 million children worldwide have benefitted from better education thanks to improved learning assessments supported by the READ program.

But, despite the progress achieved over the last ten years, many countries around the world still lack timely and accurate information on levels of student learning, which leads to poor education outcomes that limit people’s future opportunities for employment and earnings.

The READ program can help address these challenges by extending much-needed support to developing countries to enhance learning assessment.

• Russia Education Aid for Development (READ) Trust Fund
• Student Assessment for Policymakers and Practitioners
• World Bank – Education
• World Bank in Russia

Educational Poverty in Japan

Every citizen in Japan is guaranteed the right to an education. But interviews conducted by NHK have revealed that some young people lack access to this basic right. Some have missed elementary or junior high school, and are unable to do simple math or write hiragana -- the easiest form of Japanese writing. Such people face many problems in their everyday lives. They don't know how to take medicine, because they can't read kanji characters. They don't know how much a sale item costs as they can't calculate. NHK investigated the cause behind this educational poverty and the hardships it causes.

Some find even basic Japanese difficult

Kosuke is a 19 year old living in eastern Japan. He rarely attended school after the second grade. Although he can read, he is unable to properly write hiragana. All he can manage to write in kanji are his name and address. He can't do multiplication or division.

Last year, Kosuke took up a part-time job in the delivery business. He says he was scolded by his superior because he couldn't write delivery reports.

Some paper in his home shows how hard he practiced to write kanji characters needed to fill in memos for people who were not home to receive his deliveries.

But Kosuke quit his job in about a month, as it made him increasingly uncomfortable.

Kosuke and his brother were raised by their mother. She moved from one part-time job to another to look after them, and now lives on welfare, as she cannot work due to multiple illnesses.

Kosuke was regularly beaten by his brother, who is 6 years older. The stress caused by poverty and abuse made him lose his will to go to school.

At first, teachers and officials from his municipality visited his home and tried to encourage him to go to school. But they gradually stopped.

Kosuke says he can't think about his future. He grew up without a proper education, and he is now at a loss over how to go on living.

"Education opportunities are not equal"

Hitomi, a 21 year old living in Osaka, lacks self-esteem because she didn't receive a compulsory education.

When Hitomi was in elementary school, her mother, who was raising her alone, suffered a stroke. Hitomi started missing school to look after her and help her do the chores.

When she was in the 4th grade, they moved to another city due to debt. Her mother failed to take procedures to transfer Hitomi to another school, and she has never attended since then.

Hitomi says she has nothing to write on her resume. She says she feels like an outcast, and it makes her miserable.

Hitomi also faces problems in various areas of her life due to the lack of education. She is interested in fashion and beauty, like other women her age, but she has not visited a hair salon for a long time. She says she is afraid of conversing with the stylist as she doesn't want to open up about herself.

When she goes shopping, Hitomi always uses a calculator to check the money she needs before going to the cashier. She doesn't want others to see her in a flurry over not having enough money.

Hitomi avoids interacting with people as much as possible, and doesn't have any friends her age.

She studied kanji on her own, using a dictionary made for elementary school children. Using what she learned, she wrote, "Why is it so difficult to do anything without a compulsory education? I don't think educational opportunities are equal."

Educational poverty spreading

To get a clearer picture of young people suffering from a lack of education, NHK questioned officials in charge of helping the needy find jobs. Surveys were sent to such officials at about 800 municipal facilities nationwide, and 40 percent responded.

The results show that 597 young people who came to receive assistance had missed a compulsory education. 78 of them said they find it difficult to write and read, and 69 don't know how to do math. 208 said they have trouble interacting with others. Many also said they lack self-esteem, suggesting that a lack of education has an adverse psychological impact.

Asked why they failed to attend school, 101 said they were bullied. The same number of people gave a disability as their reason, and 71 said it was due to illness of one or both parents. 67 answered abuse or lack of understanding by their parents, and 51 responded that it was due to poverty. This shows that the family environment is a major contributing factor in a lack of education.

The government last conducted a survey on the Japanese literacy rate in 1955. Since then, officials have believed most Japanese have no trouble reading and writing.

But a census in 2010 found that more than 120 thousand people had failed to finish elementary school. About 20,000 were below the age of 40. No further details are available, but the figure likely includes people like Kosuke and Hitomi.

Most of the people I interviewed appeared to keep a distance from society. A lack of education doesn't result only in inconveniences in everyday life. Having no academic record makes it difficult for people to land jobs and function as members of society, depriving them of the power to lead productive lives.

Municipality Efforts

To prevent educational poverty, the city of Fukuyama in Hiroshima Prefecture is coordinating the efforts of the welfare division and the board of education.

The 2 sides now share information about families on welfare and single-parent families, and on children who are not attending school.

They created a list of families with children who require assistance, and welfare officials made visits to them. They provide support, such as waking children up in the morning and seeing them off to school, if parents are unable to do so due to illness and other reasons.

Fukuyama City currently provides such support to 71 children, but it plans to increase its staff to offer more assistance.

Night schools help take the first step

Night schools are offering help to those who could not receive a basic education.

In the past, students at night schools were mostly elderly people who could not attend school in the confusion after the war, and foreign residents. Recently, however, the number of young students is said to be increasing.

Hitomi, who could not finish elementary school, began attending night school in Osaka 3 years ago at the age of 19.

Since then, her academic ability has improved dramatically. At first, she could bearly recite the multiplication table, but now, she can solve complicated math problems.

She has also become able to express herself through writing. By engaging in conversation with classmates of various ages, the way she interacts with others has changed as well.

During an interview, she revealed that she wanted to visit the elementary school she attended until the fourth grade. As she approached it and saw children practicing for an athletic event, she appeared to be recalling the past. Hitomi said memories of those days used to torment and keep her awake at night. This was the first time she was able to visit her old school.

"Something has changed, although I don't know exactly what. Attending night school has given me courage, so that might be it," she says.

Measures to prevent educational poverty

To support those who haven't received an education and those at risk of not receiving one, it's important to create an educational safety net that can support everyone.

In 2017, the government enacted a law to guarantee all citizens a basic education.

Following this move, authorities have also instructed regional governments to set up at least one publicly-run night school, like the one Hitomi is attending, in each prefecture. At the moment, only 8 out of 47 prefectures in Japan have such schools.

According to the Educational Ministry's survey, 6 prefectures, including Kochi and Kumamoto, and 74 municipalities are considering building night schools. Support from the central government is crucial in having other regions take part in the initiative.

It's also necessary to provide adults with free study support if they can't attend evening classes due to work or because they have small children.

It is not easy for people who have trouble reading or writing to find the assistance they require. It will be helpful to provide information about learning opportunities when they come to job placement centers looking for work.

Sophia University Professor Akira Sakai says that the most important thing is for authorities to understand the severity of the situation.

He says, "The country's public education system must be reexamined to provide all children with educational opportunities guaranteed in the Constitution. Coordination between the government and the private sector is also indispensable. Until now, authorities have focused on providing education to children who come to school, but they must also consider offering other ways to learn."

To learn is to live your own life

Hitomi says she had been harboring a desire to study again since she saw a poster of a night school in a street. She agreed to be interviewed by NHK in the hopes that "people in a similar situation who are struggling will find a place to study again."

Hitomi has taken a step forward, as have others who were interviewed for this story. Hearing their stories made me realize that learning is crucial for us to live our lives with dignity.

A place for learning isn't just somewhere to study reading, writing, and math. It's also a place to meet friends and teachers who will provide lifelong support. And it's the starting point of a journey to fulfill dreams and ambitions. I will continue to investigate what is being done to ensure everyone can enjoy the right to an education.