essay lack of education

Lack of Education: 11 Lifelong Effects

Chris Drew (PhD)

Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]

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Quick Answer: The Effects of lack of Education

Lack of education has serious effects on everyone, not only people who are under-educated. People who lack education have trouble getting ahead in life, have worse health and are poorer than the well-educated. Major effects of lack of education include: poor health, lack of a voice, shorter lifespan, unemployment, exploitation and gender inequality.

Introduction

Across the world, 264.3 million school children, adolescents and youth are not in school. We’re getting more of these children into school, but there’s still a long way to go.

These children who are under-educated will likely suffer from long-term side effects that may limit their quality of life. There are 11 major effects of lack of education that cause real worry to us all.

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The 11 Lifelong Effects of Lack of Education

1. poor health.

Healthcare of the general population is a major reason education is important .

Primary education is important for learning about personal health and hygiene. Education is how health professionals and governments communicate important information to society.

In other words, a person’s education level is a key social determinant of their health outcomes .

Poor health and hygiene is a serious issue in societies where large amounts of the population lack an education.

Important basic health that is taught at school includes:

Pregnancy and prenatal care;
Basic hygiene like cleaning teeth and washing hands; and
Sexual health.

According to the UNHCR , simply educating all girls to a secondary school level would decrease worldwide deaths from pneumonia, diarrhea, and malaria by 49%.

Case Study: Lack of Education During the Ebola Crisis

This became a huge problem during the 2014-15 Ebola crisis in West Africa. During the crisis, there was a huge amount of misinformation about how the disease was spreading. Many people used old wive’s tales and folklore to understand the disease rather than scientific knowledge.

To remedy this, there was a need for a huge public information campaign to educate the masses on how diseases spread. One of the major things to do was teach people how to bury the dead appropriately to prevent the spread of the disease.

Case Study: HIV/AIDS in Uganda

The Borgen Project reports that highly educated people in Uganda are 75% less likely to suffer from HIV/AIDS than uneducated people. If a Ugandan completes primary school, they’re 50% less likely to suffer from HIV/AIDS.

>>>Related Post: 27 Points on the Importance of Education

2. Lack of a Voice

People who are undereducated do not have the skills or confidence to speak up for themselves.

This is a part of the reason many women remain oppressed in the developing world. Girls who are undereducated are married young – often still as children – and forced into domestic chores rather than education.

These women find it very hard to speak up about their own situation and find ways to improve their lives. They can’t find jobs, are reliant on their husbands’ incomes, and often can’t read or write which prevents them from self-educating.

>>>In-Depth: 45 Facts on the Importance of Reading

3. Shorter Lifespan

Less educated people don’t live as long as more educated people, the International Monetary Fund’s Fiscal Monitor Report shows. According to the report, less educated men statistically live between 4 and 14 years less than their well educated counterparts.

Here’s a graph from the IMF on these startling figures.

The smallest gap is in Italy, where educated men live 4 years longer than uneducated men.
The largest gap is in Hungary, where the gap is 14 years.

According to the IMF, this shortened lifespan for the poor has a drag effect on national productivity. So in effect, we all suffer when the poor get sick and die.

4. A Poverty Trap

Poverty Trap: The inability to escape poverty due to lack of resources.

Children of poorer people are more likely to be poor themselves. This is often known as the intergenerational poverty trap .

One of the only ways to escape the poverty trap is through education. If you’re not educated, you are not likely to escape.

Here’s the facts.

While the exact figures are disputed, higher education appears to lead to higher incomes:

According to the Borgen Project , each year of education beyond grades 3 and 4 increases a woman’s earning potential by 20%.
This South African study finds wages only see significant growth beyond a Grade 11 education.
This Brookings Institute study funds one year of education leads to a 10% growth in earnings.

And the problem isn’t only lack of education. It’s also the quality of education.

A report from the University of Stellenbosch found that children in South Africa who attend poorer public schools suffer from low teacher quality and lack of resources. This can keep children in poverty despite the fact that they attended school.

Related Article: How Can Health Influence Learning?

5. Unemployment

Everywhere in the world, jobs are given out to the most qualified people.

Educational credentials are one major way in which employers choose between job applicants. If you don’t have that high school diploma or university degree, chances are you’ll drop to the bottom of the pile.

The OECD found that across all OECD nations:

83% of people with a university degree are employed;
74% of people with an upper secondary or non-university postsecondary education (e.g. a trade qualification) are employed;
56% of people without an upper secondary education are employed.

6. Exploitation

People who have not been educated may have to resort to terrible types of work just to survive. In a world of limited jobs, those with an education get first pickings of the safer and more secure work.

Girls in the third world who lack education are some of the most vulnerable. According to the UNHCR , these girls are likely to find themselves doing jobs like:

Prostitution;
Sweatshop labor;
Domestic Labor;
Being married off as child brides.

Case Study: Syrian Civil War

UNICEF reports that many Syrian children are lured into fighting for the government in the civil war. These children – rather than going to school – need to work to feed their families. The US$400 per month soldier salary is often their only option due to their lack of skills.

Similarly, Syrian children who flee to Turkey end up working in sweatshops earning $10 a day to feed their families. According to The Guardian , sexual and physical abuse takes place in these sweatshops regularly.

7. Gender Inequality

Gender inequality can be a massive barrier to education for women.

Countries where women are less educated continue to perpetuate gender inequalities from one generation to the next.

Women who are less educated tend to have babies at a younger age. According to the United Nations Girls’ Education Initiative , each year a girl is out of school increases national fertility rates by 10 percent.

Women who have children after receiving a secondary school education tend to have healthier babies. The UNGEI argues that these women’s higher levels of education means “they will know how to properly care for” their babies.

Furthermore, women with a lower education are less likely to raise their voice when it comes to political and community issues that affect them.

Education is also a space where gender stereotypes are challenged, which may also lead to decreased gender inequality. If girls and boys are educated side-by-side, such stereotypes may also disintegrate.

8. A Brake on Economic Growth

Countries that have a more educated population will have more sustainable economic growth over the long term than those with a less educated population.

This is particularly evident now that we live in a globalized world.

Nations are competing against each other for economic dominance. If a nation is more educated, the nation’s productivity is higher and its workers are more innovative. The nation attracts higher-paying jobs in growth industries.

By contrast, nations that are poorer have to attract lower-paying industries such as manufacturing. While many third-world countries can grow their economies rapidly by lowering labor standards and attracting industry, there is a cap on this growth.

That’s why China is investing so heavily in tech and education. They know that if they want to continue to grow at a rapid rate, they need to transition to the high-paying industries of the future.

9. Inability to make smart political decisions

If too many people in a society lack the ability to think critically about the big challenges of the future, we won’t collectively make smart political decisions.

Education is about more than money. We need to educate our society so they can make democratic decisions like:

Who should I vote for in the next election?
Is climate change action important?
Is it good for me that my taxes are spent on foreign aid?

A politically uninformed society may lack the knowledge to make smart decisions. Or, they might be easily duped by a smooth-talking populist.

Perhaps this is why one-sentence slogans tend to win out in our political discourse. The logic here is simple: dumb it down for the dumbies out there. Don’t treat them like adults. Don’t have an informed debate.

As Alex Lickerman argues:

“The solutions our political leaders seek for our most pressing problems are largely determined by which are most popular. And which are most popular is largely determined by our population’s ability to understand the problems”

10. It’s harder to raise children

If you lack an education yourself, raising children becomes more difficult. And not just because you’re more likely to be poor.

Issues uneducated parents face include:

Not knowing how to seek help or teach yourself about raising children;
Inability to help your children with their homework;
You’re statistically more likely to be poor;
You’ll expose your children to less words.

According to the American Psychological Association , this means:

Children of uneducated parents are behind their peers in cognitive capacity and literacy and numeracy levels;
Your children will have less financial literacy (they won’t be able to handle money as well);
Your children will struggle getting the right information about attending college.

11. Your job is about to disappear due to automation

Automation is coming. We have already seen many millions of jobs disappear over the past few decades due to the introduction of robots. Think of factory lines or – closer to home – automated cashiers at the supermarket.

These are just the beginning. As artificial intelligence comes closer to reality, chances are that more and more low-skilled jobs will come off the market.

Think about the United States: manufacturing jobs have been on the decline for decades. The next big thing to go is truck driving as safe driverless trucks hit the road in the coming years.

The Hill argues: “the largest shares of jobs that can be potentially lost belong to low-skill individuals who do low-income jobs”.

Whether new jobs in new industries will emerge to replace the old ones is debatable. But the new jobs will likely require some form of education!

Final Thoughts

Students: If you’re using this information for an essay or speech on the topic, don’t forget to cite the sources I’ve linked to.

Now that you’ve got the right information, here’s 7 tips on how to start your essay .

>>>You might also like: How to make an Essay Shorter >>>You might also like: How to use Quotes in an Essay >>>You might also like: The Editing Tips for Growing your Grades by 13%

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Lack of education: Causes and effects

Few things have such a diverse and far-reaching consequence on the overall quality of a person’s life and that of a community, as lack of education. Although it is categorized as one of the fundamental human rights, education is nowadays denied to many children around the world. According to the Borgen Project research 72 million children do not attend primary school, and a staggering number of 759 million adults are illiterate.

The causes that prevent one from getting a quality education are just as severe as the effects that the lack of education generates. This is why societies with poor economies and insufficiently developed education systems are unable to leave the vicious circle without outside intervention or help. Simply put, building a good education system requires a strong economy, and a strong economy in turn requires quality education. Therefore, one of the most important global issues is how to provide every individual in the world with access to education.

What causes lack of education?

Developed countries have long recognized the importance of education , therefore, in many of these countries access to education is a given. On the other hand, for many underdeveloped countries and economically struggling parts of the world, education is a luxury that is often unaffordable to most. The reasons why many individuals around the world have been denied access to a quality education and why the knowledge they possess is not enough to successfully tackle the challenges of the 21st century can be economic, geographical, and social in nature.

Lack of schools . School is much more than a building where teaching takes place. School also includes teachers, teaching materials, and all those other things that make an education system. However, all this requires money. The economic position of some countries is such that even with all the help they receive, they do not have enough funds to build schools to provide the necessary education to their children.
Not understanding the importance of education. The economic situation and a low level of education in some countries are the main reasons why children are forced to struggle for survival from an early age, leaving no time for education.
Lack of money . Another economically-based reason is the fact that many families do not have enough money even for the basic needs, which is why children in such families have to work from an early age. According to research, about 300 million children between the ages of five and seventeen work, so child labor is one of the major causes for lack of education.
Unfavorable geographical position. Some countries lack the needed infrastructure or are located in the parts of the world with severe climate which makes commuting to school significantly more difficult.
Prejudice . Members of ethnic and other minorities, as well as children with disabilities are often the target of prejudice in some countries, which makes it more difficult for them to get an education in comparison to other groups.
Inadequate conditions . According to UNICEF, the lack of qualified teachers, inadequate teaching materials, and poor sanitation are some of the reasons why many children do not receive a quality education. Even when they do go to school, children in such conditions fail to acquire applicable and quality knowledge, sometimes even basic knowledge. UNICEF states that 617 million children and adolescents around the world fail to acquire even the minimum literacy and math knowledge, although two thirds of them attend school.

It should also be noted that the lack of education does not only arise from not having access to education and non-attendance, but it is also a direct consequence of poor quality of teaching. Thus, UNICEF underlines that “Schooling does not always lead to learning. Worldwide, there are more non-learners in school than out of school”.

In other words, in addition to the general approach to education, it is also necessary to raise the quality of instruction so as to overcome the global issue that the lack of education represents.

What are the negative effects of lack of education?

Negative consequences of the lack of education or inadequate instruction are numerous and varied, and can impact both the life of an individual, and society as a whole. They range from health-related reasons, social, and economic reasons, each of them generating serious consequence. The longer a person or a community is cut off from education, the more severe, long-term and irreversible the effects become.

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10 consequences of not having access to education

1. Poor health

Some of the basic lessons we learn in primary school are related to taking care of one’s own psychophysical health. The importance of hand washing, sexual health, necessity of regular physical activity – all this knowledge is something that stays with a person all their life, and is acquired at school.

There is a strong link between lack of education and poor health and hygiene. The Borgen Project research conducted in Uganda yielded staggering results: educated people in the country have 75% less chance to contract HIV/AIDS, while young people with good primary education have 50% less chance to contract the same virus.

2. Shorter life expectancy

The IMS Fiscal Monitor research showed that education can even affect a person’s life expectancy. Specifically, in developed economies, the gap between men with higher education and those with secondary, or primary education ranges between four and fourteen years, and is even larger in some countries.

3. Poverty

Due to adverse life circumstances, many people lack the tools and means that would enable them to leave poverty behind. Education is precisely what provides a person with these tools and means, but in poor communities and countries, it either does not exist at all, or if it does, it is inadequate, and this is how people find themselves in the vicious circle of poverty from which they cannot free themselves. The fact is that the more educated a person is, the better their chances of a decent salary.

4. Unemployment

Unemployment is tightly linked to poverty. People who lack education, or who only finished primary school often work poorly paid jobs, or struggle to find any job whatsoever. Simply put, good jobs are reserved for qualified employees, and qualifications are primarily acquired through education.

In today’s age of all-present digitalization where knowledge quickly becomes outdated, and traditional jobs are slowly disappearing, education becomes even more important, representing the key factor that decides whether a person will be able to adapt to changes and find a suitable job, or will become unemployed.

According to a survey conducted by OECD , 69% people with lower secondary education are employed, whereas that percentage among people with higher education is 88%.

5. Lower salary

People who lack qualifications, even when they find a job, will always have a significantly lower salary than their more educated counterparts. Less paid and less valued jobs are reserved for unqualified workers, and often such positions are in danger of being automated, which creates additional uncertainty regarding salaries and jobs for people with a lower level of education.

6. Gender inequality

Women who receive poorer education than their male counterparts are often in an adverse position. Quality education gives women independence , higher salaries and the opportunity to express their views on various social issues. Education means independence and the ability to make informed decisions on one’s life, for both men and women.

7. Social isolation

Uneducated people struggle to fit in social situations, and often remain marginalized. The lack of resources generated by education prevents them from participating in numerous social activities in a productive and comprehensive way, in contrast to educated people who engage in the same activities without difficulty.

8. Illegal activities

People with lower education, the unemployed, or those who work poorly paid jobs are often forced to work hard to provide a bare existence. Hence, it is no wonder that lack of education can often lead to a life of crime, which such people often see as the shortcut or the only way out of their disadvantaged position.

9. Poor economy

Countries with educated people have stronger, better developed, and more sustainable economies. Estimates say that this trend will continue and become even more stronger in the 21st century, when due to digitalization and the changes it brings, a countries’ ability to successfully adapt to the changed circumstances will directly depend on their educated population.

In other words, countries with an educated population will have more productive workers, innovative scientists and will be able to come up with more creative solutions than countries with poorly developed economic and education systems. As a consequence, workers in such countries will receive higher salaries, and these countries will be more desirable places to live.

10. Impossibility of (adequate) participation in political and social life

Without a comprehensive education in both sciences and humanities, a person will lack the knowledge and tools that enable them to make intelligent and meaningful political decisions. Who to vote for in the elections, which initiatives to support, who and what to trust, all these are things one must decide about with care and commitment. It is education that enables open dialogue, constructive exchange of opinions, and joint search for the best solution for society as a whole. Therefore, it helps the individual not to fall prey to political marketing, but to base their decisions on their own thoughts and views.

Education is an opportunity for all

Open access to education is not just an individual right, but a great opportunity for society as a whole as well. The more people have access to the knowledge and skills provided by authentic education, the greater the chances of overall progress. It is, therefore, necessary to ensure access to education for everyone. In order to do that, the link between the causes of the lack of education and its negative effects must be broken. Efforts concentrated on overcoming the causes will simultaneously nullify the effects, and the solution is quality education accessible to all.

understanding each other Importance of education

The Education Crisis: Being in School Is Not the Same as Learning

First grade students in Pakistan’s Balochistan Province are learning the alphabet through child-friendly flash cards. Their learning materials help educators teach through interactive and engaging activities and are provided free of charge through a student’s first learning backpack. © World Bank

THE NAME OF THE DOG IS PUPPY. This seems like a simple sentence. But did you know that in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, three out of four third grade students do not understand it? The world is facing a learning crisis . Worldwide, hundreds of millions of children reach young adulthood without even the most basic skills like calculating the correct change from a transaction, reading a doctor’s instructions, or understanding a bus schedule—let alone building a fulfilling career or educating their children. Education is at the center of building human capital. The latest World Bank research shows that the productivity of 56 percent of the world’s children will be less than half of what it could be if they enjoyed complete education and full health. For individuals, education raises self-esteem and furthers opportunities for employment and earnings. And for a country, it helps strengthen institutions within societies, drives long-term economic growth, reduces poverty, and spurs innovation.

One of the most interesting, large scale educational technology efforts is being led by EkStep , a philanthropic effort in India. EkStep created an open digital infrastructure which provides access to learning opportunities for 200 million children, as well as professional development opportunities for 12 million teachers and 4.5 million school leaders. Both teachers and children are accessing content which ranges from teaching materials, explanatory videos, interactive content, stories, practice worksheets, and formative assessments. By monitoring which content is used most frequently—and most beneficially—informed decisions can be made around future content.

In the Dominican Republic, a World Bank supported pilot study shows how adaptive technologies can generate great interest among 21st century students and present a path to supporting the learning and teaching of future generations. Yudeisy, a sixth grader participating in the study, says that what she likes doing the most during the day is watching videos and tutorials on her computer and cell phone. Taking childhood curiosity as a starting point, the study aimed to channel it towards math learning in a way that interests Yudeisy and her classmates.

Yudeisy, along with her classmates in a public elementary school in Santo Domingo, is part of a four-month pilot to reinforce mathematics using software that adapts to the math level of each student. © World Bank

Adaptive technology was used to evaluate students’ initial learning level to then walk them through math exercises in a dynamic, personalized way, based on artificial intelligence and what the student is ready to learn. After three months, students with the lowest initial performance achieved substantial improvements. This shows the potential of technology to increase learning outcomes, especially among students lagging behind their peers. In a field that is developing at dizzying speeds, innovative solutions to educational challenges are springing up everywhere. Our challenge is to make technology a driver of equity and inclusion and not a source of greater inequality of opportunity. We are working with partners worldwide to support the effective and appropriate use of educational technologies to strengthen learning.

When schools and educations systems are managed well, learning happens

Successful education reforms require good policy design, strong political commitment, and effective implementation capacity . Of course, this is extremely challenging. Many countries struggle to make efficient use of resources and very often increased education spending does not translate into more learning and improved human capital. Overcoming such challenges involves working at all levels of the system.

At the central level, ministries of education need to attract the best experts to design and implement evidence-based and country-specific programs. District or regional offices need the capacity and the tools to monitor learning and support schools. At the school level, principals need to be trained and prepared to manage and lead schools, from planning the use of resources to supervising and nurturing their teachers. However difficult, change is possible. Supported by the World Bank, public schools across Punjab in Pakistan have been part of major reforms over the past few years to address these challenges. Through improved school-level accountability by monitoring and limiting teacher and student absenteeism, and the introduction of a merit-based teacher recruitment system, where only the most talented and motivated teachers were selected, they were able to increase enrollment and retention of students and significantly improve the quality of education. "The government schools have become very good now, even better than private ones," said Mr. Ahmed, a local villager.

The World Bank, along with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the UK’s Department for International Development, is developing the Global Education Policy Dashboard . This new initiative will provide governments with a system for monitoring how their education systems are functioning, from learning data to policy plans, so they are better able to make timely and evidence-based decisions.

Education reform: The long game is worth it

In fact, it will take a generation to realize the full benefits of high-quality teachers, the effective use of technology, improved management of education systems, and engaged and prepared learners. However, global experience shows us that countries that have rapidly accelerated development and prosperity all share the common characteristic of taking education seriously and investing appropriately. As we mark the first-ever International Day of Education on January 24, we must do all we can to equip our youth with the skills to keep learning, adapt to changing realities, and thrive in an increasingly competitive global economy and a rapidly changing world of work.

The schools of the future are being built today. These are schools where all teachers have the right competencies and motivation, where technology empowers them to deliver quality learning, and where all students learn fundamental skills, including socio-emotional, and digital skills. These schools are safe and affordable to everyone and are places where children and young people learn with joy, rigor, and purpose. Governments, teachers, parents, and the international community must do their homework to realize the promise of education for all students, in every village, in every city, and in every country.

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Why Is Education So Important in The Quest for Equality?

Gerald Nelson | April 14, 2022 | Leave a Comment

Image: Pikist

Education is vital. We can all agree on this but where we fall out of the agreement is why exactly education is so necessary for equality. Without education, there can be no progress, no development, and no improvement.

In today’s world, we are ever more aware of the issues surrounding sexism, racism, and inequality, allowing for a greater understanding of the importance of educating people to avoid these biases occurring in the first place.

What is Educational Equality and why is it necessary?

Equality isn’t always so simple. Some may assume, for example, that educational equality is as simple as providing children with the same resources. In reality, however, there’s a lot more to it than this. We will check what governments are doing to achieve this goal. What actions they are taking to advance the cause of equality? Education is crucial because it’s a toolkit for success:

With literacy and numeracy comes confidence, with which comes self-respect. And by having self-respect, you can respect others, their accomplishments, and their cultures.
Education is the fundamental tool for achieving social, economic, and civil rights – something which all societies strive to achieve.

Educational Inequality is usually defined as the unequal distribution of educational resources among different groups in society. The situation becomes serious when it starts influencing how people live their lives. For example, children will be less likely to go to school if they are not healthy, or educated because other things are more urgent in their life.

Categorical Educational Inequality

Categorical Education Inequality is especially apparent when comparing minority/low-income schools with majority/high-income schools. Are better-off students systematically favored in getting ahead? There are three plausible conditions:

Higher-income parents can spend more time and money on private tutoring, school trips, and home study materials to give their children better opportunities. Therefore, better-off students have an advantage due to access to better schools, computers, technology, etc. (the so-called opportunity gap).
Low-income schools lack the resources to educate their students. Therefore their students tend to have worse educational outcomes.
Although the public school system is a government-funded program to allow all students an equal chance at a good education, this is not the case for most schools across third world countries – see UNESCO statistics below:

How Educational Inequality is fueling global issues

Educational inequality is a major global crisis. It has played a role in economic problems, amplified the political deadlock, exacerbated the environmental predicament, and threatens to worsen the human rights crisis. If equality in education is not addressed directly, these crises will only deepen because:

Educational Inequality is also about race and gender . Those who are less privileged are condemned to poverty and unemployment because of a lack of quality educational resources.
Without a sound education, people have less knowledge of the world around them or the issues facing their communities. They are less likely to vote or to pay attention to politics. This leaves them vulnerable to manipulation by those who represent narrow interests and promote fear, hatred, and violence. The result is an erosion of democratic values and an increase in authoritarianism.
Without correction, human rights abuses will continue due to a lack of legal representation among those with no or low education levels.
Poverty, unemployment, crimes, and health issues: A lack of education and skills forces children into poverty because they can’t get jobs or start a business. It also leaves them without hope and is one of the reasons for unemployment, lower life expectancy, malnutrition, a higher chance of chronic diseases, and crime rates.
Limited opportunities: The most significant issue is that lack of education reduces the opportunities for people to have a decent life. Limited options increase the division of social classes, lower social mobility, and reduce the ability to build networks and social contacts. Students in poor countries also spend a lot of time working to support their families rather than focusing on their school work. These factors also worsen the upbringing of coming generations.
Extremism: Inequality can also lead to increased violence, racism, gender bias, and extremism, which causes further economic and democratic challenges.
Inability to survive pandemics: Unlike developed nations after COVID, underdeveloped countries are stuck in their unstable economic cycles. Inequality causes a lack of awareness and online educational resources, lower acceptance of preventive measures, and unaffordable vaccines, for example. According to the United Nations , “Before the coronavirus crisis, projections showed that more than 200 million children would be out of school , and only 60 percent of young people would be completing upper secondary education in 2030”.
Unawareness of technological advancements: The world is becoming more tech-savvy, while students in underdeveloped countries remain unaware of the latest technological achievements as well as unable to implement them. This also widens the education gap between countries.
Gender inequality in education: In general, developing countries compromise over funds allocation for women’s education to manage their depletion of national income. As such, they consider women less efficient and productive than men. Meanwhile, many parents do not prefer sending their daughters to school because they do not think that women can contribute equally to men in the country’s development. However, if we have to overcome this, there should be an increase in funding and scholarships for women’s education.
Environmental crises: People are usually less aware of the harmful emissions produced in their surroundings and are therefore less prepared to deal with increased pollution levels. This also affects climate change. The less educated the children, the more likely they are to contribute to climate change as adults. This is because education is not just about learning facts and skills but also about recognizing problems and applying knowledge in innovative ways.
A child who has dropped out of school will generally contribute less to society than a child who has completed secondary school. A child who has completed secondary school will contribute less than a child who went to university. This difference increases over time because those with higher levels of education tend to be more open-minded, flexible thinkers and are therefore better able to adapt to changing environmental conditions.

Equality in education is therefore essential for addressing international issues including economic inequality, climate change, social deprivation, and access to healthcare. Many children in poor regions are deprived of education (see chart below) which is the only way out of poverty .

Proposed Solutions

The United Nations Development Program says that access to education is a human right, and should be individually accessible and available to all by 2030. It demands:

International collaborations to ensure that every child has the same quality education and to develop joint curricula and academic programs. The quality of teaching methodologies should not be compromised and includes providing financial assistance and tools for equal access.
Running campaigns to discourage race, gender, and ethnicity differences, arranging more seminars to reach low-income groups, and providing adequate financial assistance, training, and part-time jobs for sole earners.
Modifying scholarship criteria to better support deserving students who cannot afford university due to language tests and low grades.
Increasing the minimum wage so that sole breadwinners can afford quality education for their children.
Schools should bear transportation costs and offer free grants to deserving kids from low-income families.
Giving more attention to slum-side schools by updating and implementing new techniques and resources.
Allowing students to learn in their own language with no enforcement of international languages and offering part-time courses in academies and community colleges in other languages.

Resolving educational inequality has many benefits for the wider society. Allowing children from disadvantaged backgrounds to get an education will help them find better jobs with higher salaries, improving their quality of life, and making them more productive members of society. It decreases the likelihood of conflict and increases access to health care, stable economic growth, and unlimited opportunities.

Conclusion:

It’s been said that great minds start out as small ones. To level the playing field, we need to focus on best educating our next generation of innovators and leaders, both from an individual and a societal standpoint. If we want equality to become a reality, it will be up to us to ensure that equality is at the forefront of our education system.

References:

Environmental Conscience: 42 Causes, Effects & Solutions for a Lack of Education – E&C (environmental-conscience.com)

School of Education Online Programs: What the U.S. Education System Needs to Reduce Inequality | American University

Educational Inequality: Solutions | Educational Inequality (wordpress.com)

Giving Compass: Seven Solutions for Education Inequality · Giving Compass

Science.org: Polarization under rising inequality and economic decline

Research Gate: Inequality and Economic Growth

University of Munich: pdf (uni-muenchen.de)

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Primary school math students in the MatiTec program in Santa Fe, Mexico City, 20 March 2012. Talento Tec. Wikimedia Commons

Recognizing and Overcoming Inequity in Education

About the author, sylvia schmelkes.

Sylvia Schmelkes is Provost of the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City.

22 January 2020 Introduction

I nequity is perhaps the most serious problem in education worldwide. It has multiple causes, and its consequences include differences in access to schooling, retention and, more importantly, learning. Globally, these differences correlate with the level of development of various countries and regions. In individual States, access to school is tied to, among other things, students' overall well-being, their social origins and cultural backgrounds, the language their families speak, whether or not they work outside of the home and, in some countries, their sex. Although the world has made progress in both absolute and relative numbers of enrolled students, the differences between the richest and the poorest, as well as those living in rural and urban areas, have not diminished. 1

These correlations do not occur naturally. They are the result of the lack of policies that consider equity in education as a principal vehicle for achieving more just societies. The pandemic has exacerbated these differences mainly due to the fact that technology, which is the means of access to distance schooling, presents one more layer of inequality, among many others.

The dimension of educational inequity

Around the world, 258 million, or 17 per cent of the world’s children, adolescents and youth, are out of school. The proportion is much larger in developing countries: 31 per cent in sub-Saharan Africa and 21 per cent in Central Asia, vs. 3 per cent in Europe and North America. 2 Learning, which is the purpose of schooling, fares even worse. For example, it would take 15-year-old Brazilian students 75 years, at their current rate of improvement, to reach wealthier countries’ average scores in math, and more than 260 years in reading. 3 Within countries, learning results, as measured through standardized tests, are almost always much lower for those living in poverty. In Mexico, for example, 80 per cent of indigenous children at the end of primary school don’t achieve basic levels in reading and math, scoring far below the average for primary school students. 4

The causes of educational inequity

There are many explanations for educational inequity. In my view, the most important ones are the following:

Equity and equality are not the same thing. Equality means providing the same resources to everyone. Equity signifies giving more to those most in need. Countries with greater inequity in education results are also those in which governments distribute resources according to the political pressure they experience in providing education. Such pressures come from families in which the parents attended school, that reside in urban areas, belong to cultural majorities and who have a clear appreciation of the benefits of education. Much less pressure comes from rural areas and indigenous populations, or from impoverished urban areas. In these countries, fewer resources, including infrastructure, equipment, teachers, supervision and funding, are allocated to the disadvantaged, the poor and cultural minorities.
Teachers are key agents for learning. Their training is crucial. When insufficient priority is given to either initial or in-service teacher training, or to both, one can expect learning deficits. Teachers in poorer areas tend to have less training and to receive less in-service support.
Most countries are very diverse. When a curriculum is overloaded and is the same for everyone, some students, generally those from rural areas, cultural minorities or living in poverty find little meaning in what is taught. When the language of instruction is different from their native tongue, students learn much less and drop out of school earlier.
Disadvantaged students frequently encounter unfriendly or overtly offensive attitudes from both teachers and classmates. Such attitudes are derived from prejudices, stereotypes, outright racism and sexism. Students in hostile environments are affected in their disposition to learn, and many drop out early.

The Universidad Iberoamericana, main campus in Sante Fe, Mexico City, Mexico. 6 April 2013. Joaogabriel, CC BY-SA 3.0

It doesn’t have to be like this

When left to inertial decision-making, education systems seem to be doomed to reproduce social and economic inequity. The commitment of both governments and societies to equity in education is both necessary and possible. There are several examples of more equitable educational systems in the world, and there are many subnational examples of successful policies fostering equity in education.

Why is equity in education important?

Education is a basic human right. More than that, it is an enabling right in the sense that, when respected, allows for the fulfillment of other human rights. Education has proven to affect general well-being, productivity, social capital, responsible citizenship and sustainable behaviour. Its equitable distribution allows for the creation of permeable societies and equity. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development includes Sustainable Development Goal 4, which aims to ensure “inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”. One hundred eighty-four countries are committed to achieving this goal over the next decade. 5 The process of walking this road together has begun and requires impetus to continue, especially now that we must face the devastating consequences of a long-lasting pandemic. Further progress is crucial for humanity.

Notes 1 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization , Inclusive Education. All Means All , Global Education Monitoring Report 2020 (Paris, 2020), p.8. Available at https://en.unesco.org/gem-report/report/2020/inclusion . 2 Ibid., p. 4, 7. 3 World Bank Group, World Development Report 2018: Learning to Realize Education's Promise (Washington, DC, 2018), p. 3. Available at https://www.worldbank.org/en/publication/wdr2018 . 4 Instituto Nacional para la Evaluación de la Educación, "La educación obligatoria en México", Informe 2018 (Ciudad de México, 2018), p. 72. Available online at https://www.inee.edu.mx/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/P1I243.pdf . 5 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization , “Incheon Declaration and Framework for Action for the implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 4” (2015), p. 23. Available at https://iite.unesco.org/publications/education-2030-incheon-declaration-framework-action-towards-inclusive-equitable-quality-education-lifelong-learning/ 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 Hechinger Report

Covering Innovation & Inequality in Education

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

Jill Barshay SENIOR REPORTER

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Letters to the Editor

At The Hechinger Report, we publish thoughtful letters from readers that contribute to the ongoing discussion about the education topics we cover. Please read our guidelines for more information. We will not consider letters that do not contain a full name and valid email address. You may submit news tips or ideas here without a full name, but not letters.

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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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Remote learning turned spotlight on gaps in resources, funding, and tech — but also offered hints on reform

“Unequal” is a multipart series highlighting the work of Harvard faculty, staff, students, alumni, and researchers on issues of race and inequality across the U.S. This part looks at how the pandemic called attention to issues surrounding the racial achievement gap in America.

The pandemic has disrupted education nationwide, turning a spotlight on existing racial and economic disparities, and creating the potential for a lost generation. Even before the outbreak, students in vulnerable communities — particularly predominately Black, Indigenous, and other majority-minority areas — were already facing inequality in everything from resources (ranging from books to counselors) to student-teacher ratios and extracurriculars.

The additional stressors of systemic racism and the trauma induced by poverty and violence, both cited as aggravating health and wellness as at a Weatherhead Institute panel , pose serious obstacles to learning as well. “Before the pandemic, children and families who are marginalized were living under such challenging conditions that it made it difficult for them to get a high-quality education,” said Paul Reville, founder and director of the Education Redesign Lab at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (GSE).

Educators hope that the may triggers a broader conversation about reform and renewed efforts to narrow the longstanding racial achievement gap. They say that research shows virtually all of the nation’s schoolchildren have fallen behind, with students of color having lost the most ground, particularly in math. They also note that the full-time reopening of schools presents opportunities to introduce changes and that some of the lessons from remote learning, particularly in the area of technology, can be put to use to help students catch up from the pandemic as well as to begin to level the playing field.

The disparities laid bare by the COVID-19 outbreak became apparent from the first shutdowns. “The good news, of course, is that many schools were very fast in finding all kinds of ways to try to reach kids,” said Fernando M. Reimers , Ford Foundation Professor of the Practice in International Education and director of GSE’s Global Education Innovation Initiative and International Education Policy Program. He cautioned, however, that “those arrangements don’t begin to compare with what we’re able to do when kids could come to school, and they are particularly deficient at reaching the most vulnerable kids.” In addition, it turned out that many students simply lacked access.

“We’re beginning to understand that technology is a basic right. You cannot participate in society in the 21st century without access to it,” says Fernando Reimers of the Graduate School of Education.

Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard file photo

The rate of limited digital access for households was at 42 percent during last spring’s shutdowns, before drifting down to about 31 percent this fall, suggesting that school districts improved their adaptation to remote learning, according to an analysis by the UCLA Center for Neighborhood Knowledge of U.S. Census data. (Indeed, Education Week and other sources reported that school districts around the nation rushed to hand out millions of laptops, tablets, and Chromebooks in the months after going remote.)

The report also makes clear the degree of racial and economic digital inequality. Black and Hispanic households with school-aged children were 1.3 to 1.4 times as likely as white ones to face limited access to computers and the internet, and more than two in five low-income households had only limited access. It’s a problem that could have far-reaching consequences given that young students of color are much more likely to live in remote-only districts.

“We’re beginning to understand that technology is a basic right,” said Reimers. “You cannot participate in society in the 21st century without access to it.” Too many students, he said, “have no connectivity. They have no devices, or they have no home circumstances that provide them support.”

The issues extend beyond the technology. “There is something wonderful in being in contact with other humans, having a human who tells you, ‘It’s great to see you. How are things going at home?’” Reimers said. “I’ve done 35 case studies of innovative practices around the world. They all prioritize social, emotional well-being. Checking in with the kids. Making sure there is a touchpoint every day between a teacher and a student.”

The difference, said Reville, is apparent when comparing students from different economic circumstances. Students whose parents “could afford to hire a tutor … can compensate,” he said. “Those kids are going to do pretty well at keeping up. Whereas, if you’re in a single-parent family and mom is working two or three jobs to put food on the table, she can’t be home. It’s impossible for her to keep up and keep her kids connected.

“If you lose the connection, you lose the kid.”

“COVID just revealed how serious those inequities are,” said GSE Dean Bridget Long , the Saris Professor of Education and Economics. “It has disproportionately hurt low-income students, students with special needs, and school systems that are under-resourced.”

This disruption carries throughout the education process, from elementary school students (some of whom have simply stopped logging on to their online classes) through declining participation in higher education. Community colleges, for example, have “traditionally been a gateway for low-income students” into the professional classes, said Long, whose research focuses on issues of affordability and access. “COVID has just made all of those issues 10 times worse,” she said. “That’s where enrollment has fallen the most.”

In addition to highlighting such disparities, these losses underline a structural issue in public education. Many schools are under-resourced, and the major reason involves sources of school funding. A 2019 study found that predominantly white districts got $23 billion more than their non-white counterparts serving about the same number of students. The discrepancy is because property taxes are the primary source of funding for schools, and white districts tend to be wealthier than those of color.

The problem of resources extends beyond teachers, aides, equipment, and supplies, as schools have been tasked with an increasing number of responsibilities, from the basics of education to feeding and caring for the mental health of both students and their families.

“You think about schools and academics, but what COVID really made clear was that schools do so much more than that,” said Long. A child’s school, she stressed “is social, emotional support. It’s safety. It’s the food system. It is health care.”

“You think about schools and academics” … but a child’s school “is social, emotional support. It’s safety. It’s the food system. It is health care,” stressed GSE Dean Bridget Long.

Rose Lincoln/Harvard file photo

This safety net has been shredded just as more students need it. “We have 400,000 deaths and those are disproportionately affecting communities of color,” said Long. “So you can imagine the kids that are in those households. Are they able to come to school and learn when they’re dealing with this trauma?”

The damage is felt by the whole families. In an upcoming paper, focusing on parents of children ages 5 to 7, Cindy H. Liu, director of Harvard Medical School’s Developmental Risk and Cultural Disparities Laboratory , looks at the effects of COVID-related stress on parent’ mental health. This stress — from both health risks and grief — “likely has ramifications for those groups who are disadvantaged, particularly in getting support, as it exacerbates existing disparities in obtaining resources,” she said via email. “The unfortunate reality is that the pandemic is limiting the tangible supports [like childcare] that parents might actually need.”

Educators are overwhelmed as well. “Teachers are doing a phenomenal job connecting with students,” Long said about their performance online. “But they’ve lost the whole system — access to counselors, access to additional staff members and support. They’ve lost access to information. One clue is that the reporting of child abuse going down. It’s not that we think that child abuse is actually going down, but because you don’t have a set of adults watching and being with kids, it’s not being reported.”

The repercussions are chilling. “As we resume in-person education on a normal basis, we’re dealing with enormous gaps,” said Reville. “Some kids will come back with such educational deficits that unless their schools have a very well thought-out and effective program to help them catch up, they will never catch up. They may actually drop out of school. The immediate consequences of learning loss and disengagement are going to be a generation of people who will be less educated.”

There is hope, however. Just as the lockdown forced teachers to improvise, accelerating forms of online learning, so too may the recovery offer options for educational reform.

The solutions, say Reville, “are going to come from our community. This is a civic problem.” He applauded one example, the Somerville, Mass., public library program of outdoor Wi-Fi “pop ups,” which allow 24/7 access either through their own or library Chromebooks. “That’s the kind of imagination we need,” he said.

On a national level, he points to the creation of so-called “Children’s Cabinets.” Already in place in 30 states, these nonpartisan groups bring together leaders at the city, town, and state levels to address children’s needs through schools, libraries, and health centers. A July 2019 “ Children’s Cabinet Toolkit ” on the Education Redesign Lab site offers guidance for communities looking to form their own, with sample mission statements from Denver, Minneapolis, and Fairfax, Va.

Already the Education Redesign Lab is working on even more wide-reaching approaches. In Tennessee, for example, the Metro Nashville Public Schools has launched an innovative program, designed to provide each student with a personalized education plan. By pairing these students with school “navigators” — including teachers, librarians, and instructional coaches — the program aims to address each student’s particular needs.

“This is a chance to change the system,” said Reville. “By and large, our school systems are organized around a factory model, a one-size-fits-all approach. That wasn’t working very well before, and it’s working less well now.”

“Students have different needs,” agreed Long. “We just have to get a better understanding of what we need to prioritize and where students are” in all aspects of their home and school lives.

“By and large, our school systems are organized around a factory model, a one-size-fits-all approach. That wasn’t working very well before, and it’s working less well now,” says Paul Reville of the GSE.

Already, educators are discussing possible responses. Long and GSE helped create The Principals’ Network as one forum for sharing ideas, for example. With about 1,000 members, and multiple subgroups to address shared community issues, some viable answers have begun to emerge.

“We are going to need to expand learning time,” said Long. Some school systems, notably Texas’, already have begun discussing extending the school year, she said. In addition, Long, an internationally recognized economist who is a member of the National Academy of Education and the MDRC board, noted that educators are exploring innovative ways to utilize new tools like Zoom, even when classrooms reopen.

“This is an area where technology can help supplement what students are learning, giving them extra time — learning time, even tutoring time,” Long said.

Reimers, who serves on the UNESCO Commission on the Future of Education, has been brainstorming solutions that can be applied both here and abroad. These include urging wealthier countries to forgive loans, so that poorer countries do not have to cut back on basics such as education, and urging all countries to keep education a priority. The commission and its members are also helping to identify good practices and share them — globally.

Innovative uses of existing technology can also reach beyond traditional schooling. Reimers cites the work of a few former students who, working with Harvard Global Education Innovation Initiative, HundrED , the OECD Directorate for Education and Skills , and the World Bank Group Education Global Practice, focused on podcasts to reach poor students in Colombia.

They began airing their math and Spanish lessons via the WhatsApp app, which was widely accessible. “They were so humorous that within a week, everyone was listening,” said Reimers. Soon, radio stations and other platforms began airing the 10-minute lessons, reaching not only children who were not in school, but also their adult relatives.

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Best Education Essays of 2021: Our 15 Most Discussed Columns About Schools, COVID Slide, Learning Recovery & More

A full calendar year of education under COVID-19 and its variants gave rise to a wave of memorable essays in 2021, focusing both on the ongoing damage done and how to mitigate learning loss going forward.

While consensus emerged around several key themes — the need for extensive, in-depth tutoring, the possibilities presented by unprecedented millions in federal relief dollars for schools, the opportunity for education reimagined — there was far less agreement on whether to remediate or accelerate, which health and safety measures schools should employ, even how dire the shortage of teachers and school staff really is.

From grade-level standards and hygiene theater to lessons from the Spanish flu and homeschooling, here are the 15 most read and buzzed-about essays of 2021:

Analysis: Focus on Grade-Level Standards or Meet Students Where They Are? How an Unintentional Experiment Guided a Strategy for Addressing Learning Loss

Learning Recovery: What’s the best way to support learning recovery in middle-grade math? Should schools stay focused on grade-level standards while trying to address critical learning gaps as best as they can? Or should they systematically address individual students’ unfinished learning from prior years so they can ultimately catch back up — even if that means spending meaningful time teaching below-grade skills? As educators and administrators wrestle with those questions as they prepare to return to school in the fall, contributor Joel Rose offers some guidance inadvertently found in a study of Teach to One , an innovative learning model operated by New Classrooms Innovation Partners, the nonprofit where he is co-founder and CEO. That research found performance in schools with accountability systems that focused on grade-level proficiency (and thus prioritized grade-level exposure) grew 7 percentile points, while those that operated under systems that rewarded student growth (and thus prioritized individual student needs) grew 38 points. While the study was never intended to compare results across schools in this way, the stark difference between the two groups could not be ignored. Math is cumulative, and the path to proficiency often requires addressing unfinished learning from prior years. For the middle grades, administrators and policymakers would be wise to question the grade-level-only gospel as they begin to plan students’ educational recovery. Read the full analysis .

Lessons from Spanish Flu — Babies Born in 1919 Had Worse Educational, Life Outcomes Than Those Born Just Before or After. Could That Happen With COVID-19?

History: Contributor Chad Aldeman has some bad news: The effects of COVID-19 are likely to linger for decades. And if the Spanish Flu is any indication, babies born during the pandemic may suffer some devastating consequences . Compared with children born just before or after, babies born during the flu pandemic in 1919 were less likely to finish high school, earned less money and were more likely to depend on welfare assistance and serve time in jail. The harmful effects were twice as large for nonwhite children. It may take a few years to see whether similar educational and economic effects from COVID-19 start to materialize, but these are ominous findings suggesting that hidden economic factors may influence a child’s life in ways that aren’t obvious in the moment. Hopefully, they will give policymakers more reasons to speed economic recovery efforts and make sure they deliver benefits to families and children who are going to need them the most. Read the full essay .

Pittman & Darling-Hammond: Surveys Find Parents Want Bold Changes in Schools — With More Learning Inside and Outside the Classroom

Future of Education: Whatever they thought of their schools before the pandemic struck, parents now have strong opinions about what they want them to provide. They are looking beyond fall reopenings to rethink schooling, and they care about having good choices for interest-driven learning opportunities beyond the classroom . Two national parent surveys released in May shed new light on how to think about the often-used phrase “more and better learning.” Among the key findings, write contributors Karen Pittman and Linda Darling-Hammond: Parents want bold changes in schools, to make public education more equitable and learner-centered. But they also believe that home, school and extracurriculars play complementary roles in imparting the broad set of skills children need for their future success. This means educators and policymakers must support learning that extends beyond the school day, the school walls, the school staff and the traditional school approaches. Read the full essay .

High-Quality, High-Dosage Tutoring Can Reduce Learning Loss. A Blueprint for How Washington, States & Districts Can Make It Happen

Personalized Learning: There is near-unanimous, bipartisan agreement that tutoring is among the most promising, evidence-based strategies to help students struggling with learning loss . Decades of rigorous evaluations have consistently found that tutoring programs yield large, positive effects on math and reading achievement, and can even lead to greater social and motivational outcomes. It isn’t just the research community buzzing about tutoring — it is gaining momentum in policy circles, too. Which means there is a real opportunity — and responsibility — to design and deliver tutoring programs in a way that aligns with the research evidence, which is fortunately beginning to tell us more than just “tutoring works.” Contributors Sara Kerr and Kate Tromble of Results for America lay out a blueprint for how Washington, states and local school districts can make high-quality, high-dosage tutoring happen .

COVID-19 Raised Fears of Teacher Shortages. But the Situation Varies from State to State, School to School & Subject to Subject

Teacher Pipeline: Is the U.S. facing a major teacher shortage? Relatively low pay, a booming private sector and adverse working conditions in schools are all important elements in whether teaching is becoming an undesirable profession. But, writes contributor Dan Goldhaber, the factors that lead to attrition are diverse, so treating teachers as a monolith doesn’t help in crafting solutions to the real staffing challenges that some schools face. There is no national teacher labor market per se, because each state adopts its own rules for pay, licensure, tenure, pension and training requirements. And nationally, tens of thousands more people are prepared to teach than there are available positions. But while some schools have applicants lined up when an opening becomes available, others, typically those serving economically disadvantaged students, draw far fewer candidates. And schools tend to struggle to find teachers with special education or STEM training. The pandemic certainly raises concerns about teacher shortages; what is needed is a more nuanced conversation about teacher staffing to come up with more effective solutions to real problems. Read the full essay .

Clash of Cultures, Clash of Privilege — What Happened When 30 Low-Income Students of Color Were Admitted to Elite Prep Schools

Analysis: Programs like Prep for Prep and A Better Chance have long been regarded as groundbreaking solutions to the lack of diversity in the nation’s most elite prep schools. Teens who join these types of programs undergo a transfer of privilege that starts with their education and bleeds into every facet of their lives, forever altering their trajectory with opportunities that otherwise would likely be unattainable. But what assumptions do these programs subscribe to? And what lessons can be found in the experiences of the participants? In her Harvard senior thesis, contributor Jessica Herrera Chaidez followed 30 participants in a program that grants select socioeconomically disadvantaged students of color in the Los Angeles area the opportunity to attend famed independent schools. She found that the experiences of these students can be understood in various forms of twoness associated with this transfer of privilege, an internal struggle that begins with their introduction to the world of elite education and will come to mark them for their entire lives in a way that they aren’t even able to comprehend yet. Read more about her findings, and what some of these students had to say .

Steiner & Wilson: Some Tough Questions, and Some Answers, About Fighting COVID Slide While Accelerating Student Learning

Case Study: How prepared are district leaders, principals and teachers as they work to increase learning readiness for on-grade work this fall? That’s the question posed by contributors David Steiner and Barbara Wilson in a case study examining how a large urban district sought to adapt materials it was already using to implement an acceleration strategy for early elementary foundational skills in reading . Among the insights to be drawn: First, planning is critical. Leaders need to set out precisely how many minutes of instruction will be provided, the exact learning goals and the specific materials; identify all those involved (tutors, specialists, and teachers); and give them access to shared professional development on the chosen acceleration strategies. Second, this requires a sea change from business as usual, where teachers attempt to impart skill-based standards using an eclectic rather than a coherent curriculum. It is not possible to accelerate children with fragmented content. All efforts to prepare students for grade-level instruction must rest on fierce agreement about the shared curriculum to be taught in classrooms. What we teach is the anchor that holds everything else in place. Read the full essay .

Schools Are Facing a Surge of Failing Grades During the Pandemic — and Traditional Approaches Like Credit Recovery Will Not Be Enough to Manage It

Student Supports: Earlier this year, failing grades were on the rise across the country — especially for students who are learning online — and the trend threatened to exacerbate existing educational inequities. The rise in failing grades appears to be most pronounced among students from low-income households, multilingual students and students learning virtually . This could have lasting consequences: Students with failing grades tend to have less access to advanced courses in high school, and a failing grade in even one ninth-grade course can lower a student’s chances of graduating on time. Addressing the problem, though, won’t be easy. In many school systems, the rash of failed courses could overwhelm traditional approaches to helping students make up coursework they may have missed. In a new analysis, Betheny Gross, associate director of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, implored school and district leaders to be especially wary of one long-established but questionable practice: credit recovery. Read more about her warning — as well as her recommendations for how districts should seek to reverse this learning loss .

Riccards: The 1776 Report Is a Political Document, Not a Curriculum. But It Has Something to Teach Us

Analysis: The 1776 Report was never intended to stand as curriculum, nor was it designed to be translated into a curriculum as the 1619 Project was. It is a political document offered by political voices. But, writes contributor Patrick Riccards, dismissing it would be a mistake, because it provides an important lesson . The American record, whether it be measured starting in 1619 or 1776, is hopeful and ugly, inspiring and debilitating, a shining beacon and an unshakable dark cloud. American history is messy and contradictory; how we teach it, even more so. For years, we have heard how important it is to increase investment in civics education. But from #BlackLivesMatter to 2020 electioneering to even the assault on the U.S. Capitol, the basics of civics have been on display in our streets and corridors of power. What we lack is the collective historical knowledge necessary to translate civic education into meaningful, positive community change. The 1776 Report identifies beliefs espoused by our Founding Fathers and many Confederates and reflected by those who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6. They are a part of our history that we must study, understand, contextualize and deconstruct. The 1776 Report becomes the proper close to the social studies lessons of the past four years. As the next chapter of American history is written, it is imperative to apply those lessons to significantly improve the teaching and learning of American history. Our nation’s future depends on better understanding our past .

There’s Lots of Education Data Out There — and It Can Be Misleading. Here Are 6 Questions to Ask

Student Data: Data is critical to addressing inequities in education. However, it is often misused, interpreted to fit a particular agenda or misread in ways that perpetuate an inaccurate story . Data that’s not broken down properly can hide gaps between different groups of students. Facts out of context can lead to superficial conclusions or deceptive narratives. In this essay, contributor Krista Kaput presents six questions that she asks herself when consuming data — and that you should, too .

Educators’ View: Principals Know Best What Their Schools Need. They Should Have a Central Role in Deciding How Relief Funds Are Spent

School Funding: The American Rescue Plan represents a once-in-a-generation federal commitment to K-12 schools across the country. The impact will be felt immediately: The $122 billion in direct funding will support safe school reopenings, help ensure that schools already providing in-person instruction can safely stay open and aid students in recovering from academic and mental health challenges induced and exacerbated by the pandemic. How these funds are distributed will shape the educational prospects of millions of students, affecting the country for decades to come. As they make rescue plan funding decisions, write contributors L. Earl Franks of the National Association of Elementary School Principals and Ronn Nozoe of the National Association of Secondary School Principals, states and districts should meaningfully engage and empower school principals throughout all phases of implementation. Principals, as leaders of their school buildings and staff, have unequaled insights into their individual schools’ needs and know which resources are required most urgently. Read the authors’ four recommendations for leveraging this expertise .

Case Studies: How 11 States Are Using Emergency Federal Funds to Make Improvements in College and Career Access That Will Endure Beyond the Pandemic

COVID Relief: The Governor’s Emergency Education Relief Fund gave states more than $4 billion in discretionary federal dollars to support K-12 schools, higher education and workforce initiatives. These were welcome resources, coming just as the pandemic accelerated unemployment and exacerbated declining college enrollment, hitting those from low-income backgrounds hardest. But as contributors Betheny Gross, Georgia Heyward and Matt Robinson note, most states have invested overwhelmingly in one-time college scholarships or short-term supports that will end once funds run out. In hopes of encouraging policymakers across the country to make more sustainable investments with the remaining relief funds, the trio spotlights efforts in 11 states that show promise in enduring beyond COVID-19. Read our full case study .

In Thousands of Districts, 4-Day School Weeks Are Robbing Students of Learning Time for What Amounts to Hygiene Theater

School Safety: Last April, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention made clear that having good ventilation and wearing masks consistently are far more effective at preventing the spread of COVID-19 than disinfecting surfaces. This clarification was long overdue, say contributors Robin Lake and Georgia Heyward of the Center on Reinventing Public Education, as scientists had long suspected that deep cleaning and temperature checks are more hygiene theater than a strategy for limiting the spread of an airborne virus. Thousands of school districts, however, had already built complex fall reopening plans with a full day for at-home learning. The result was a modified four-day week with students receiving significantly reduced live instruction. Eliminating a full day of in-person teaching was always a high-cost strategy from an education standpoint; now there is confirmation that it was totally unnecessary. Lake and Heyward argue that we cannot afford to throw away an entire day of learning and student support based on a false scientific premise .

Teacher’s View: How the Science of Reading Helped Me Make the Most of Limited Time With My Students & Adapt Lessons to Meet Their Needs

First Person: March 12, 2020, was contributor Jessica Pasik’s last typical day in the classroom before COVID-19 changed everything. When her district closed, she assumed, as did many, that it was a temporary precaution. But with each passing week, she worried that the growth in reading she and her first-graders had worked so hard for would fade away . Many pre-pandemic instructional approaches to teaching reading were already failing students and teachers, and the stress of COVID-19 has only exacerbated these challenges. When Pasik’s district reopened for in-person classes in the fall, they were faced with difficult decisions about how to best deliver instruction. One factor that helped streamline this transition was a grounding in the science of reading. Having extensive knowledge of what they needed to teach allowed educators to focus on how they would teach, make the most of the limited instructional time they had with students and adapt lessons to meet their needs. There are multiple factors that teachers cannot control; one person alone cannot make the systematic changes needed for all children to reach proficiency in literacy. But one knowledgeable teacher can forever change the trajectory of a student’s life. Students will face many challenges once they leave the classroom, but low literacy does not need to be one of them. Read her full essay .

Homeschooling Is on the Rise. What Should That Teach Education Leaders About Families’ Preferences?

Disenrollment: With school closures, student quarantines and tensions over mask requirements, vaccine mandates and culture war issues, families’ lives have been upended in ways few could have imagined 18 months ago. That schools have struggled to adapt is understandable, writes contributor Alex Spurrier. But for millions of families, their willingness to tolerate institutional sclerosis in their children’s education is wearing thin. Over the past 18 months, the rate of families moving their children to a new school increased by about 50 percent , and some 1.2 million switched to homeschooling last academic year. Instead of working to get schools back to a pre-pandemic normal, Spurrier says, education leaders should look at addressing the needs of underserved kids and families — and the best way to understand where schools are falling short is to look at how families are voting with their feet. If options like homeschooling, pods and microschools retain some of their pandemic enrollment gains, it could have ripple effects on funding that resonate throughout the K-12 landscape. Read the full essay .

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Different Ways to Think About COVID, Schools & Repairing Students’ Lost Learning

By Bev Weintraub

This story first appeared at The 74 , a nonprofit news site covering education. Sign up for free newsletters from The 74 to get more like this in your inbox.

On The 74 Today

The pandemic has had devastating impacts on learning. What will it take to help students catch up?

Subscribe to the brown center on education policy newsletter, megan kuhfeld , megan kuhfeld senior research scientist - nwea jim soland , jim soland assistant professor, school of education and human development - university of virginia, affiliated research fellow - nwea karyn lewis , and karyn lewis director, center for school and student progress - nwea emily morton emily morton research scientist - nwea.

March 3, 2022

As we reach the two-year mark of the initial wave of pandemic-induced school shutdowns, academic normalcy remains out of reach for many students, educators, and parents. In addition to surging COVID-19 cases at the end of 2021, schools have faced severe staff shortages , high rates of absenteeism and quarantines , and rolling school closures . Furthermore, students and educators continue to struggle with mental health challenges , higher rates of violence and misbehavior , and concerns about lost instructional time .

As we outline in our new research study released in January, the cumulative impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on students’ academic achievement has been large. We tracked changes in math and reading test scores across the first two years of the pandemic using data from 5.4 million U.S. students in grades 3-8. We focused on test scores from immediately before the pandemic (fall 2019), following the initial onset (fall 2020), and more than one year into pandemic disruptions (fall 2021).

Average fall 2021 math test scores in grades 3-8 were 0.20-0.27 standard deviations (SDs) lower relative to same-grade peers in fall 2019, while reading test scores were 0.09-0.18 SDs lower. This is a sizable drop. For context, the math drops are significantly larger than estimated impacts from other large-scale school disruptions, such as after Hurricane Katrina—math scores dropped 0.17 SDs in one year for New Orleans evacuees .

Even more concerning, test-score gaps between students in low-poverty and high-poverty elementary schools grew by approximately 20% in math (corresponding to 0.20 SDs) and 15% in reading (0.13 SDs), primarily during the 2020-21 school year. Further, achievement tended to drop more between fall 2020 and 2021 than between fall 2019 and 2020 (both overall and differentially by school poverty), indicating that disruptions to learning have continued to negatively impact students well past the initial hits following the spring 2020 school closures.

These numbers are alarming and potentially demoralizing, especially given the heroic efforts of students to learn and educators to teach in incredibly trying times. From our perspective, these test-score drops in no way indicate that these students represent a “ lost generation ” or that we should give up hope. Most of us have never lived through a pandemic, and there is so much we don’t know about students’ capacity for resiliency in these circumstances and what a timeline for recovery will look like. Nor are we suggesting that teachers are somehow at fault given the achievement drops that occurred between 2020 and 2021; rather, educators had difficult jobs before the pandemic, and now are contending with huge new challenges, many outside their control.

Clearly, however, there’s work to do. School districts and states are currently making important decisions about which interventions and strategies to implement to mitigate the learning declines during the last two years. Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) investments from the American Rescue Plan provided nearly $200 billion to public schools to spend on COVID-19-related needs. Of that sum, $22 billion is dedicated specifically to addressing learning loss using “evidence-based interventions” focused on the “ disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on underrepresented student subgroups. ” Reviews of district and state spending plans (see Future Ed , EduRecoveryHub , and RAND’s American School District Panel for more details) indicate that districts are spending their ESSER dollars designated for academic recovery on a wide variety of strategies, with summer learning, tutoring, after-school programs, and extended school-day and school-year initiatives rising to the top.

Comparing the negative impacts from learning disruptions to the positive impacts from interventions

To help contextualize the magnitude of the impacts of COVID-19, we situate test-score drops during the pandemic relative to the test-score gains associated with common interventions being employed by districts as part of pandemic recovery efforts. If we assume that such interventions will continue to be as successful in a COVID-19 school environment, can we expect that these strategies will be effective enough to help students catch up? To answer this question, we draw from recent reviews of research on high-dosage tutoring , summer learning programs , reductions in class size , and extending the school day (specifically for literacy instruction) . We report effect sizes for each intervention specific to a grade span and subject wherever possible (e.g., tutoring has been found to have larger effects in elementary math than in reading).

Figure 1 shows the standardized drops in math test scores between students testing in fall 2019 and fall 2021 (separately by elementary and middle school grades) relative to the average effect size of various educational interventions. The average effect size for math tutoring matches or exceeds the average COVID-19 score drop in math. Research on tutoring indicates that it often works best in younger grades, and when provided by a teacher rather than, say, a parent. Further, some of the tutoring programs that produce the biggest effects can be quite intensive (and likely expensive), including having full-time tutors supporting all students (not just those needing remediation) in one-on-one settings during the school day. Meanwhile, the average effect of reducing class size is negative but not significant, with high variability in the impact across different studies. Summer programs in math have been found to be effective (average effect size of .10 SDs), though these programs in isolation likely would not eliminate the COVID-19 test-score drops.

Figure 1: Math COVID-19 test-score drops compared to the effect sizes of various educational interventions

$Figure 1 – Math COVID-19 test-score drops compared to the effect sizes of various educational interventions$

Source: COVID-19 score drops are pulled from Kuhfeld et al. (2022) Table 5; reduction-in-class-size results are from pg. 10 of Figles et al. (2018) Table 2; summer program results are pulled from Lynch et al (2021) Table 2; and tutoring estimates are pulled from Nictow et al (2020) Table 3B. Ninety-five percent confidence intervals are shown with vertical lines on each bar.

Notes: Kuhfeld et al. and Nictow et al. reported effect sizes separately by grade span; Figles et al. and Lynch et al. report an overall effect size across elementary and middle grades. We were unable to find a rigorous study that reported effect sizes for extending the school day/year on math performance. Nictow et al. and Kraft & Falken (2021) also note large variations in tutoring effects depending on the type of tutor, with larger effects for teacher and paraprofessional tutoring programs than for nonprofessional and parent tutoring. Class-size reductions included in the Figles meta-analysis ranged from a minimum of one to minimum of eight students per class.

Figure 2 displays a similar comparison using effect sizes from reading interventions. The average effect of tutoring programs on reading achievement is larger than the effects found for the other interventions, though summer reading programs and class size reduction both produced average effect sizes in the ballpark of the COVID-19 reading score drops.

Figure 2: Reading COVID-19 test-score drops compared to the effect sizes of various educational interventions

Source: COVID-19 score drops are pulled from Kuhfeld et al. (2022) Table 5; extended-school-day results are from Figlio et al. (2018) Table 2; reduction-in-class-size results are from pg. 10 of Figles et al. (2018) ; summer program results are pulled from Kim & Quinn (2013) Table 3; and tutoring estimates are pulled from Nictow et al (2020) Table 3B. Ninety-five percent confidence intervals are shown with vertical lines on each bar.

Notes: While Kuhfeld et al. and Nictow et al. reported effect sizes separately by grade span, Figlio et al. and Kim & Quinn report an overall effect size across elementary and middle grades. Class-size reductions included in the Figles meta-analysis ranged from a minimum of one to minimum of eight students per class.

There are some limitations of drawing on research conducted prior to the pandemic to understand our ability to address the COVID-19 test-score drops. First, these studies were conducted under conditions that are very different from what schools currently face, and it is an open question whether the effectiveness of these interventions during the pandemic will be as consistent as they were before the pandemic. Second, we have little evidence and guidance about the efficacy of these interventions at the unprecedented scale that they are now being considered. For example, many school districts are expanding summer learning programs, but school districts have struggled to find staff interested in teaching summer school to meet the increased demand. Finally, given the widening test-score gaps between low- and high-poverty schools, it’s uncertain whether these interventions can actually combat the range of new challenges educators are facing in order to narrow these gaps. That is, students could catch up overall, yet the pandemic might still have lasting, negative effects on educational equality in this country.

Given that the current initiatives are unlikely to be implemented consistently across (and sometimes within) districts, timely feedback on the effects of initiatives and any needed adjustments will be crucial to districts’ success. The Road to COVID Recovery project and the National Student Support Accelerator are two such large-scale evaluation studies that aim to produce this type of evidence while providing resources for districts to track and evaluate their own programming. Additionally, a growing number of resources have been produced with recommendations on how to best implement recovery programs, including scaling up tutoring , summer learning programs , and expanded learning time .

Ultimately, there is much work to be done, and the challenges for students, educators, and parents are considerable. But this may be a moment when decades of educational reform, intervention, and research pay off. Relying on what we have learned could show the way forward.

Lack of Education: Situation Analysis

📄 Words:	1774
📝 Subject:
📑 Pages:	6
✍️ Type:	Essay

Description of the Problem

A solution of the problem, ethical consequences of the proposed solution.

The state of the educational system in the modern world is extremely contradictory. At one level, education became one of the most influential spheres in people’s lives, and the number of people who received education is much bigger than in earlier history of humanity. Scientific achievements have become the starting point for many social transformations and scientific and technological progress.

On the other level, the demand for educational services and the high prestige of education as a social institution are accompanied by an increasing number of problems. Some issues are still relevant for many countries: the elimination of illiteracy, the shortage of qualified teachers, the backwardness of educational technologies, the crisis of efficiency and productivity of the educational system. Thus, despite the record number of educated people, the problem of lack of education is more pressing than ever.

In 1869, in his outstanding essay “The New Education,” president of Harvard University Charles Eliot outlined general areas and ways for the education system development. In this essay, Eliot presented strong arguments for the constant renewal of the curriculum and teaching methodology so that learning could keep pace with the development of society. After one and a half hundred years, this approach is still relevant.

Lack of education is the inability of people to acquire specialized skills, such as cognitive skills, socialization, memorization of facts which are necessary for personal development and the development of society and the world economy. It can be manifested in inaccessibility to education for some parts of the population, for such reasons as the lack of schools, teachers, or money to pay for education. It also can be expressed as the education quality of citizens.

Often the inefficiency of the educational process organization has bad result – after several years spent in the educational institution, people cannot find a job as their knowledge and skills are not enough. Lack of education is a social problem, as education should promote humane and productive human life (Costache, 2018). In addition, well-educated people benefit society and continue its development.

Because of the technological development, jobs and competencies change faster than people can adapt. The major part of the world’s population is behind in the most important practical skills. In the nearest future, the major part of jobs will be connected with the IT-sphere. By anticipating changes of this magnitude, companies are urgently trying to find and gain the competencies needed to maintain competitiveness. Skills shortages are now one of the major threats to businesses.

This problem is of global scale and affects all areas of the economy. For example, according to Farooq et al. (2018), the successful economic development of Pakistan requires cooperation with China within the framework of China – Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). However, researchers note a lack of qualified personnel, in particular women, in such areas as higher education and logistics for sufficient fruitful cooperation. The most vulnerable area in which education shortages are unacceptable is health care. However, even this sphere suffers from the problem of unskilled personnel. Coughlin (2017), for example, notes that nurses have not been professional enough for performing their job recently. She explores the field of nursing with Down Syndrome but it can be argued that it applies to all areas of medicine.

Information on the lack of education worldwide, as well as in specific countries, is confirmed by statistics from official sources of international organizations and government think tanks. According to UNESCO Institute for Statistics (2018), for example, one in five children of school age do not attend educational institutions, and the total number of such children in 2016 was more than 260 million. The statistics show that the number of out-of-school children decreased by 114,5 million. Moreover, the gender gap has declined – previously the number of girls not attending school has exceeded the number of boys. It is a reliable source, as this agency has sufficient influence in the world and is entirely independent.

Global number of out-of-school children, adolescents and youth

Through statistics, significant gaps in the existing education system can be identified. For example, there is still a serious gap between the life quality in developed and developing countries, which also affects the education level. The publications of Our World in Data, whose research power is located at Oxford University, among many infographics, have also determined literacy rates in world states (Roser & Ortiz-Ospina, 2020). The downside of the provided statistics is that researchers failed to obtain data for several countries. However, these are only a couple of countries with small populations. According to the data, 142 world states have a high level of education of 90-100%, with 8 states having a 100% rate. In just over 20 countries, the literacy rate is below 60%. They found that most African countries had a literacy rate below 30 percent.

Most African countries had a literacy rate below 30 percent

To improve the quality and accessibility of education, the modern system must change approaches to methodology in the realities of a contemporary world in which technology rules. Thanks to computers, phones and Internet, students of any age, nationality, and wealth will be able to access world knowledge. The process starts with the introduction of tiered online training, providing flexibility and financial availability.

Innovative technologies can significantly affect the field of higher education. For example, universities can offer students a short program of specialty before he or she is fully engaged in studies. It is a way how disappointments in the chosen area can be avoided. Various tools and opportunities, for example, mobile applications, will allow studying from any place of the world (Camilleri & Camilleri, 2017). It will also favor faster and easier adaptation when students are starting studies after a long break.

Solving the lack of education problem is a common issue. Universities play a significant role in changes and possible reforms. They can organize effective collaboration, followed by the creation of a specific system within which they will share experiences, courses, and questions (Burbules, 2018). The lack of qualified teachers can also be addressed through the availability of technology. After all, within the system, educational institutions can apply to various specialists, not only to theorists but also to practitioners, for help to organize remote education with interested students.

The shortage of personnel around the world is growing, and educational institutions and employers around the world must become partners. Such partnerships between universities and employers aim to ensure that students acquire skills useful in employment. The educational institutions should develop along with labor market and employers’ demands, and the situation is such that education is of unprecedented importance.

Universities must assign qualifications appropriate to the interests of employers. Moreover, employers today are increasingly interested in skills rather than traditional degrees. Higher education institutions should make it easier for students to acquire new skills. Education should not be pumped after graduation – universities should offer students advanced training programs to continue their graduate careers. After all, today, more and more people understand that lifelong learning is the only way to develop. Moreover, technology will be a useful link in these processes.

The introduction of innovative technologies in the educational process affects not only organizational, methodological, or technological aspects but also the value sphere. In a new electronic environment, learning loses its former character. In current conditions, society is increasing demands for personal communicative and professional competences of high qualification specialists. In this case, the loss of influence of the educational institute on the formation of moral qualities of the person can have far-reaching consequences.

The positive ethical consequence that should be noted is education availability. People from different places can reach professors in England or America with one click. A few problems can be allocated from this consequence. The positive one is that in a critical situation, the educational process does not stop. A fresh and bright example is the coordinated work of schools, universities, teachers, and students in the context of the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in European countries.

Another critical problem is opportunities for self-organization and self-development. New technologies actualize the development of the student’s personal qualities, such as responsibility, autonomy, commitment, initiative. However, a large percentage of those who start studying remotely do not graduate because they have little skill and motivation to learn on their own. The consumer attitude of many students to studying leads to the transfer of responsibility for the process and result of training to the teacher and university.

Experts note that only about a third of students show personal activity in the educational process, most are motivated not to teach independently, but to receive ready information through the teacher. In addition, students’ use of the Internet primarily for public communication and entertainment, rather than as a tool for acquiring knowledge, makes additional problems.

The negative consequence of the introduction the innovative technologies into the educational system is their cost. At first, a large amount of money will be needed to buy the equipment itself. After that, it is a constant expense to maintain the right work, which requires both the attention of specialists and regular expensive updates. It also gives rise to several ethical problems. First, thus education is still not available to all. For example, according to McFarland et al. (2019), not even all children in America have internet access. In addition, the data also vary according to race and metropolitan status:

Percentage of children ages 3 to 18 with no internet access at home, by selected child and family characteristics

In 2017, the total percentage of children without home internet was 14. At the same time, the amount of students of nonmetropolitan status is larger than the metropolitan. Data, according to race, show that the most significant percentage of children without Internet access is American Indians and Alaska residents. Further, Afro-Americans and Hispanics are the largest percentages.

While the use of new technologies, and especially the Internet, is intended to make education more accessible, this can only highlight another ethical problem – the gap between rich and poor. This gap creates conflict and crisis situations. It suggests that the struggle of the poorest and middle class for their rights, for a fairer distribution of income, in different forms, will gain strength.

Thus, the number of educated people in the world is steadily increasing, but due to the rapid pace of development of the modern world, the level of education cannot sufficiently meet the demands of society. Schools should teach to think in accordance with the principles of contemporary science and the information and technological realities of modern society. Today, the task of finding a systemic solution designed to create a long-term interaction that will ensure the satisfaction of educational needs and the constant flow of trained personnel into all spheres of industrial relations.

Burbules, N. (2018). Watch IT: The risks and promises of information technologies for education . Routledge.

Camilleri, M. A., & Camilleri, A. C. (2017). Digital learning resources and ubiquitous technologies in education. Technology, Knowledge and Learning , 22 (1), 65-82.

Costache, G. (2018). Lack of education, the main factor in committing anti-social behaviours. Journal of Law and Public Administration , 4 (7), 34-37.

Coughlin, S. (2017). Nurses lack education in caring for patients with down syndrome. The Grace Peterson Nursing Research Colloquium , 24. Web.

Farooq, S., Gul, S., & Khan, M. Z. (2018). Role of trained women workforce in China-Pakistan economic corridor (CPEC): A gender gap analysis. Putaj Humanities & Social Sciences , 25 (1).

McFarland, J., Hussar, B., Zhang, J., Wang, X., Wang, K., Hein, S., Diliberti, M., Forrest Cataldi, E., Bullock Mann, F., & Barmer, A. (2019). The condition of education 2019 (NCES 2019-144). U.S. Department of Education. National Center for Education Statistics. Web.

Roser, M.,& Ortiz-Ospina, E. (2020). Global education . Our World in Data. Web.

UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) (2018). One in five children, adolescents and youth is out of school . UIS fact sheet No. 48. Web.

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How does education affect poverty?

For starters, it can help end it.

Aug 10, 2023

Nancy Masaba recently finished secondary school in Nairobi, Kenya, and now plans to go to university.

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.

Go to the head of the class

Get more information on Concern's education programs — and the other ways we're ending poverty — delivered to your inbox.

1. Education is linked to economic growth

Ali* pictured in a Concern-supported school in the Sila region of Chad

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

Concern Worldwide staff member with mother and young child

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

Concern Worldwide and its partner organizations organize sessions with young girls and adolescents in Rajapur High School in Shoronkhola. In the session, girls receive information about menstrual hygiene and the importance of hygiene, including nutrition information. During the session, girls participate in group discussion and often gather to address their health-related issues related to menstrual taboos and basic hygiene. This project runs by the Collective Responsibility, Action, and Accountability for Improved Nutrition (CRAAIN) programme. (Photo: Mohammad Rakibul Hasan / Concern Worldwide)

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…

Denise Dusabe, Vice Mayor of Social Affairs in Gisagara district, presents at an HIV/AIDS prevention and family planning event organized by Concern Rwanda. Five local teams participated in a soccer championship, with government representatives presenting both speeches and prizes. Local health center staff also offered voluntary HIV testing, distributed free condoms, and helped couples with selecting appropriate family planning methods.

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

Concern Protection staff Nureddin El Mustafa and Fatma Seker lead an information session with the community committee at Haliliye Community Centre following the February 2023 earthquake in Türkiye and Syria

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

Concern and Theatre For Change working with students of Chigumukire Primary School and their parents to help highlight the dangers and challenges of school-related gender-based violence as part of Right to Learn

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

Project Profile

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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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Guest Essay

There’s a Reason There Aren’t Enough Teachers in America. Many Reasons, Actually.

In a classroom, chairs, stools and tables with school supplies on them sit before a wall lined with colored papers and the label “Our Brightest Work.”

By Thomas B. Edsall

Mr. Edsall contributes a weekly column from Washington, D.C., on politics, demographics and inequality.

Here are just a few of the longstanding problems plaguing American education: a generalized decline in literacy; the faltering international performance of American students; an inability to recruit enough qualified college graduates into the teaching profession; a lack of trained and able substitutes to fill teacher shortages; unequal access to educational resources; inadequate funding for schools; stagnant compensation for teachers; heavier workloads; declining prestige; and deteriorating faculty morale.

Nine-year-old students earlier this year revealed “the largest average score decline in reading since 1990, and the first ever score decline in mathematics,” according to the National Center for Education Statistics. In the latest comparison of fourth grade reading ability, the United States ranked below 15 countries, including Russia, Ireland, Poland and Bulgaria.

Doris Santoro , a professor of education at Bowdoin, wrote by email in response to my query regarding the morale of public school teachers:

Teachers are not only burnt out and undercompensated, they are also demoralized. They are being asked to do things in the name of teaching that they believe are mis-educational and harmful to students and the profession. What made this work good for them is no longer accessible. That is why we are hearing so many refrains of “I’m not leaving the profession, my profession left me.”

In an August 2022 paper, “ Is There a National Teacher Shortage ?,” Tuan D. Nguyen and Chanh B. Lam , both of Kansas State University, and Paul Bruno of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign wrote that they

systematically examined news reports, department of education data, and publicly available information on teacher shortages for every state in the U.S. We find there are at least 36,000 vacant positions along with at least 163,000 positions being held by underqualified teachers, both of which are conservative estimates of the extent of teacher shortages nationally.

In an email, Nguyen argued, “The current problem of teacher shortages (I would further break this down into vacancy and under-qualification) is higher than normal.” The data, Nguyen continued, “indicate that shortages are worsening over time, particularly over the last few years. We do see that southern states (e.g., Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Florida) have very high vacancies and high vacancy rates.”

He pointed out that “the cultural war issues have been prominent in some of these states (e.g., Florida).”

I asked Josh Bleiberg , a professor of education at the University of Pittsburgh, about trends in teacher certification. He emailed back:

The number of qualified teachers is declining for the whole country and the vast majority of states. The number of certified teachers only increased in the District of Columbia, Massachusetts, North Dakota, and Washington. Those increases were relatively small and likely didn’t keep up with enrollment increases.

These declines in the numbers of qualified teachers take place in an environment of stagnant or declining economic incentives, he wrote:

Wages are essentially unchanged from 2000 to 2020 after adjusting for inflation . Teachers have about the same number of students. But, teacher accountability reforms have increased the demands on their positions. The pandemic was very difficult for teachers. Their self-reported level of stress was about as twice as high during the pandemic compared to other working adults. Teachers had to worry both about their personal safety and deal with teaching/caring for students who are grieving lost family members.

According to the National Center for Education Statistics , the number of students graduating from college with bachelor’s degrees in education fell from 176,307 in 1970-71 to 104,008 in 2010-11 to 85,058 in 2019-20.

In a study of teachers’ salaries, Sylvia Allegretto , a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute , found a growing gap between the pay of all college graduates and teacher salaries from 1979 to 2021, with a sharp increase in the differential since 2010. In 1979, the average teacher weekly salary (in 2021 dollars) was $1,052, 22.9 percent less than other college graduates’, at $1,364. By 2010, teachers made $1,352 and other graduates made $1,811. By 2021, teachers made $1,348, 32.9 percent less than what other graduates made, at $2,009.

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The absence of education is a profound and pervasive challenge with multifaceted causes and wide-ranging consequences. This essay provides an in-depth exploration of the causes of a lack of education, delving into the complexities of marginalization, poverty, financial deficits, and limited access to educational resources.
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The 11 Lifelong Effects of Lack of Education. 1. Poor Health. Healthcare of the general population is a major reason education is important. Primary education is important for learning about personal health and hygiene. Education is how health professionals and governments communicate important information to society.
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Negative consequences of the lack of education or inadequate instruction are numerous and varied, and can impact both the life of an individual, and society as a whole. They range from health-related reasons, social, and economic reasons, each of them generating serious consequence. The longer a person or a community is cut off from education ...
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Why Is Education So Important in The Quest for Equality?
Equality in education is therefore essential for addressing international issues including economic inequality, climate change, social deprivation, and access to healthcare. Many children in poor regions are deprived of education (see chart below) which is the only way out of poverty. UNESCO: Pre-primary education attendance.
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— 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.
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