Written by: Olivia Zhang
Edited by: Zoha Rizwan
The United Nations’ 4th Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) states that by 2030, countries should improve the quality of education and educational systems through a variety of different methods. These include: ensuring gender equity in educational systems, increasing access to education for people with disabilities or low-socioeconomic status, and improving affordability of tertiary education and universities.
Background Information: The Statistics
According to the United Nations, “the world was not on track to meet reading and mathematics targets,” even before the start of the pandemic. From 2016 to 2019, only 56% of schools in Less Developed Countries (LDCs) had access to drinking water, 33% had access to electricity, and 40% had access to handwashing facilities. The rates of school completion, measured by the UN in 2019, were also lower in LDCs. In Sub-Saharan Africa, only 29% of students completed secondary school, compared to 88% in Europe and North America.
Learning poverty, as defined by the World Bank, refers to the number of 10-year-olds who are not proficient in reading. In low- and middle-income countries during 2019, this rate was around 53%, while in Sub-Saharan Africa and the lowest-income regions, the rate was a catastrophic 90%. Such disparities in proficiency have implications relating to the quality of schooling in countries where resources are less accessible.
Impact of Covid-19
Changes to schools, family stability, and access to resources since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic have posed additional challenges to achieving quality education. In 2020, the temporary closure of schools impacted over 91% of students globally, and 369 million children across 143 countries who rely on school meals are at risk of malnutrition. An additional 101 million children between first and eighth grade will fall below minimum reading proficiency levels because of the pandemic, as projected by the Sustainable Development Goals Report 2021. This emphasizes the importance of large-scale efforts to support schools and children during the pandemic.
Actions to Recovery
Near the start of the pandemic, UNESCO launched the Covid-19 Global Education Coalition, a “multi-sector partnership to provide appropriate distance education for all learners.” This coalition has since joined forces with over 140 organizations, including the World Food Programme, Code.org, Facebook, and more. UNESCO has provided data regarding school closures during the pandemic, created a framework for reopening schools, and provided a page for stories and news. Simultaneously with UNESCO, the United Nations Children’s Fund increased funding for work with governments and organizations in more than 145 low- and middle-income countries.
However, considering the uncertainty of the current situation with the Covid-19 pandemic, it is difficult to find reliable information about whether it is possible to reach SDG 4 by 2030. Rather than trying to achieve all of the ambitious quality education goals, some organizations, like the World Bank, are choosing to focus on reducing learning poverty to half the original amount by 2030. The benefit of this choice is that halving the global learning poverty rate, while still challenging, is much more realistic. In conclusion, the Covid-19 pandemic reversed the progress that was being made in education. Hence, organizations have worked to allocate resources and adjust goals accordingly. Further UN resources and plans by organizations on how to move forward as the world is healing from the pandemic is being completed.
Commentaires