UNESCO report on education shows
Covid-19 slowing global education rate
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| Children at school in France (AFP) |
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural
Organization (UNESCO) report on inclusion in education shows Covid-19 leaving
vulnerable children behind.
By Vatican News
The 2020 Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report by the
United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)
indicates that the Covid-19 crisis is adversely impacting the global rate of
education, particularly of disadvantaged learners.
According to the report released on Tuesday, fewer than 10
percent of countries have laws that ensure full inclusion in education.
Besides, 40 percent of the poorest countries did not provide specific support
to disadvantaged learners during the Covid-19 pandemic.
The report, titled “Inclusion
and education: All means All”, lists background, identity and ability as
some of the broader "key factors" analyzed for this report. It also
promotes a set of key recommendations for the next ten years and urges
countries to focus on those left behind as schools reopen, in order to foster
“more resilient and equal societies.”
“To rise to the challenges of our time, a move towards more
inclusive education is imperative,” said UNESCO Director-General, Audrey
Azoulay. “Rethinking the future of education is all the more important
following the Covid-19 pandemic…failure to act will hinder the progress of
societies.”
Poverty
According to the report, 258 million children and youth are
out of school, mostly due to poverty. About 97 million of these are in
sub-Saharan Africa.
In low and middle-income countries, 20 percent of the
adolescents from richer homes are three times more likely to complete lower
secondary school than those from the poor homes. Students from richer
households were also twice as likely to have basic reading and mathematics skills
than those from poorer households.
Inadequate representation
The report also highlights that when learners are
inadequately represented in textbooks and curricula, they feel alienated.
It points out that girls and women make up only 44 percent
of references in secondary school English textbooks in Malaysia and Indonesia,
37 percent in Bangladesh and 24 percent in the Punjab province in Pakistan.
Also, the curricula of 23 out of 49 European countries do not address issues of
sexual orientation, gender identity and expression.
UNESCO also reports that 10-year old students in middle and
high-income countries who were taught in a language other than their mother
tongue scored 34 percent lower than native speakers in reading tests.
Persistent exclusion
In several central and eastern European countries, Roma (an
Indo-Aryan migrant ethnic group) children are segregated in mainstream schools.
In Asia, displaced people such as the Rohingya are taught in parallel education
systems.
In Africa, two countries still ban pregnant girls from
school, 117 allow child marriages and 20 others have yet to ratify the
Convention of the International Labour Organization (ILO) that bans child
labour.
The report also notes that despite the target of universal
upper secondary completion by 2030, hardly any poor rural young women complete
secondary school in at least 20 countries, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa.
Separated disadvantaged learners
Parents’ beliefs were found to be a barrier to inclusion.
According to the report, about 15 percent of parents in Germany and 59 percent
in Hong Kong feared that children with disabilities disturbed the others’
learning.
Parents with vulnerable children also showed a trend of
moving their children to schools that respond to their needs. In Queensland,
Australia, 37 percent of students in special schools had moved from mainstream
establishments.
Many education systems did not take learners’ special needs
into account. For example, only 41 countries worldwide officially recognize
sign language.
In ten Francophone countries in sub-Saharan Africa, fewer
than 1 in 10 primary school teachers said they had received training on
inclusion. However, a quarter of the teachers across 48 countries reported that
they wanted more training in teaching special needs students.
Data challenges
The GEM report indicates a “chronic lack of quality data on
those left behind.” According to UNESCO, “almost half of low- and middle-income
countries do not collect enough education data about children with
disabilities.”
41 percent of countries (about 13 percent of the world’s
population) did not conduct surveys or make data from such surveys available.
Thus, figures were mostly taken from school and did not take those not in
school into account.
The effects Covid-19 pandemic
“Even before Covid-19, one in five children, adolescents and
youth were entirely excluded from education. Stigma, stereotypes and
discrimination mean millions more are further alienated inside classrooms,”
said the GEM report Director, Manos Antoninis.
However, “Covid-19 is already playing a role in creating
more exclusion from education,” he said adding that “for hundreds of millions
of people, learning has completely stopped.”
The movement to learning online in many parts of the world
means that just about 12 percent of households in high-income countries, which
have access to the internet, can support the education of their children.
Steps towards inclusion
The report indicated that some countries are using positive
and innovative approaches to promote inclusion.
For example, countries like Malawi, Cuba and Ukraine are
setting up resource centers in multiple schools that enable mainstream schools
to accommodate children from special schools.
The Gambia, New Zealand and Samoa, among others, are also
using itinerant teachers to teach underserved populations.
Odisha state in India uses 21 tribal languages in its
classrooms and Kenya adjusted its curriculum to fit the nomadic calendar. In
Australia, the curricula of 19 percent of students were adjusted by teachers so
that their expected outcomes could match the students’ needs.
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