Schooling is not enough, learning is important too

Just attending school itself is not enough. Learning is equally important in primary and secondary schools to boost wages and opportunities later in life, according to World Development Report 2018. It dubs the current state of educaiton a “learning crisis”.

Examples:

• In rural India, nearly three-quarters of students in grade 3 could not solve a two-digit subtraction such as 46–17, and by grade 5 half could still not do it. 
• In urban Pakistan in 2015, only three-fifths of grade 3 students could correctly perform a subtraction such as 54–25, and in rural areas only just over two-fifths could.
• In Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, when grade 3 students were asked to read a simple sentence like “The name of the dog is Puppy,” three-quarters did not understand what it said.
• In Uruguay, poor children in grade 6 are assessed as “not competent” in math at five times the rate of wealthy children.
• By the end of primary school, only 5 percent of girls in Cameroon from the poorest quintile of households have learned enough to continue school, compared with 76 percent of girls from the richest quintile.

Teaching-learning relationships breakdown due to: 

(i) Malnutrition, illness, low parental investments, and harsh environment associated with poverty would mean that children come to school unprepared to learn

(ii) Teachers lacking the skills or motivation to teach effectively 

• Across 14 Sub-Saharan countries, the average grade 6 teacher performs no better on reading tests than the highest-performing grade 6 students;  
• In seven Sub-Saharan countries, one in five teachers was absent from school during recent unannounced visits by survey teams, with another fifth of teachers at school but absent from the classroom

(iii) Educational inputs fail to reach classrooms or to affect learning (textbooks don’t reach schools or even when they reach the students don’t get it on time)

(iv) Poor management and governance undermine schooling quality (ineffective school leadership; no set goals that prioritize learning; lack of autonomy for schools; ineffective community engagement)

It recommends countries to:

• Design student assessments to gauge their learning
• Create conducive environment for learning, including addressing stunting and promoting brain development through early nutrition and stimulation, using technologies, strengthening school management
• Increase accountability by mobilizing all stakeholders and create political will for education reform