$130 billion a year wasted on poor quality education: UN

PARIS – A quarter of a billion children worldwide are failing to learn basic reading and maths skills in an education crisis that costs governments $129 billion annually, the UN’s cultural agency warned in a report Wednesday.

Inadequate teaching across the world has left a legacy of illiteracy more widespread than previously thought, UNESCO said in its annual monitoring report.

It said one in four young people in poor countries was unable to read a sentence, with the figure rising to 40 percent in sub-Saharan Africa, The United Nations defines “youth” as people aged between 15 and 24, although UNESCO’s definition varies across regions.

 “What’s the point in an education if children emerge after years in school without the skills they need?” said Pauline Rose, the director of the nearly 500-page Education for All Global Monitoring Report.

In a third of countries analyzed, fewer than three-quarters of existing primary school teachers were trained to national standards, while 120 million primary age children across the world had little or no experience of school, the UNESCO report found – AFP

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