Covid-19 slowing global education rate: UNESCO

40% of poorest countries failed to support learners at risk, says report

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) showed 40 per cent of poor countries failed to support learners at risk during coronavirus crisis and fewer than 10 per cent of the countries have laws to ensure full inclusion in education.

This was stated in UNESCO’s 2020 Global Education Monitoring Report: Inclusion and education – All means all.

The report provided an in-depth analysis of key factors for exclusion of learners in education systems worldwide including background, identity and ability (i.e. gender, age, location, poverty, disability, ethnicity, indigeneity, language, religion, migration or displacement status, sexual orientation or gender identity expression, incarceration, beliefs and attitudes).

It identified an exacerbation of exclusion during the Covid-19 pandemic and estimates that about 40 per cent of low and lower- middle income countries have not supported disadvantaged learners during temporary school shutdown.

The 2020 Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report urged countries to focus on those left behind as schools reopen so as to foster more resilient and equal societies.

“A move towards more inclusive education is imperative to rise to the challenges of our time,” said the UNESCO Director General Audrey Azoulay. “Rethinking the future of education is all the more important following the Covid-19 pandemic, which further widened and put a spotlight on inequalities. Failure to act will hinder the progress of societies.”

Persistence of exclusion

This year’s report is the fourth annual UNESCO GEM Report to monitor progress across 209 countries in achieving the education targets adopted by UN Member States in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

It noted 258 million children and youth were entirely excluded from education, with poverty as the main obstacle to access.

In low and middle income countries, adolescents from the richest 20 per cent of all households were three times as likely to complete lower secondary school as were as those from the poorest homes. Among those who did complete lower secondary education, students from the richest households were twice as likely to have basic reading and mathematics skills as those from the poorest households.

Despite the proclaimed 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.

Also according to the report, 10-year-old students in middle and high-income countries who were taught in a language other than their mother tongue typically scored 34 per cent below native speakers in reading tests. In 10 low and middle- income countries, children with disabilities were found to be 19 per cent less likely to achieve minimum proficiency in reading than those without disabilities.

In the United States, for example, LGBTI students were almost three times more likely to say that they had stayed home from school because of feeling unsafe.

Inequitable foundations

UNESCO GEM Report team also launched a new website, PEER, with information on laws and policies concerning inclusion in education for every country across the world.
PEER showed that many countries still practice education segregation, which reinforces stereotyping, discrimination and alienation. Laws in a quarter of all countries require children with disabilities to be educated in separate settings, rising to over 40 per cent in Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as in Asia.

Blatant exclusion

Two countries in Africa still ban pregnant girls from school, 117 allowed child marriages, while 20 had yet to ratify the Convention 138 of the International Labour Organization which bans child labour.
In several central and eastern European countries, Roma children were segregated in mainstream schools. In Asia, displaced people, such as the Rohingya were taught in parallel education systems.

In OECD countries, more than two-thirds of students from immigrant backgrounds attended schools where they made up at least 50 per cent of the student population, which reduced their chance of academic success.

“Covid-19 has given us a real opportunity to think afresh about our education systems,” said GEM Report Director Manos Antoninis. “But moving to a world that values and welcomes diversity won’t happen overnight. There is an obvious tension between teaching all children under the same roof and creating an environment where students learn best. But, Covid-19 has showed us that there is scope to do things differently, if we put our minds to it.”

A barrier to inclusion

Some 15 per cent of parents in Germany and 59 per cent in Hong Kong, China, feared that children with disabilities disturbed others’ learning. Parents with vulnerable children also wished to send them to schools that ensure their well-being and respond to their needs.

In Queensland, Australia, 37 per cent of students in special schools had moved away from mainstream establishments. The report showed that education systems often fail to take learners’ special needs into account. Worldwide only 41 countries officially recognized sign language and, globally, schools were more eager to get internet access than to cater for learners with disabilities. Some 335 million girls attended schools that did not provide them with water, sanitation and hygiene services they required to continue attending class during menstruation.

Alienating learners

When learners are inadequately represented in curricula and textbooks they can feel alienated. Girls and women only made up 44 per cent of references in secondary school English-language textbooks in Malaysia and Indonesia, 37 per cent in Bangladesh and 24 per cent in the province of Punjab in Pakistan. The curricula of 23 out of 49 European countries do not address issues of sexual orientation, gender identity or expression. Fewer than one out of 10 primary school teachers in ten Francophone countries in sub-Saharan Africa received training on inclusion. A quarter of teachers across 48 countries reported they wanted more training on teaching students with special needs.

Lack of data

Almost half of low and middle-income countries do not collect enough education data about children with disabilities. Household surveys are key for breaking education data down by individual characteristics but 41 per cent of countries – home to 13 per cent of the world’s population – did not conduct surveys or make available data from such surveys. Figures on learning are mostly taken from schools who didn’t take into account children not attending the education institutions.

“Inadequate data means we are missing a huge part of the picture,” says Antoninis. “It is no wonder the inequalities suddenly exposed during Covid-19 took us by surprise.”

Signs of progress towards inclusion

The report and its PEER website noted many countries were using positive, innovative approaches to transition towards inclusion. Many were setting up resource centres for multiple schools and enabling mainstream establishments to accommodate children from special schools, as was the case in Malawi, Cuba and Ukraine. The Gambia, New Zealand and Samoa were using itinerant teachers to reach underserved populations.

Accommodating different learners’ needs

Odisha state in India used 21 tribal languages in its classrooms; Kenya adjusted its curriculum to the nomadic calendar; and, in Australia, the curricula of 19 per cent of students were adjusted by teachers so that expected outcomes could match students’ needs.

The report included material for a digital campaign, All means All, which promotes a set of key recommendations for the next 10 years.