A report by UNICEF highlighted global educational inequality and stated that only 16% of public education funding goes to the poorest 20% of learners, while 28% goes to the richest 20%. UNICEF, in a report titled Transforming Education with Equitable Financing, published on Tuesday, January 17, stated that children from the poorest households benefit the least from public education funding. The report was taken looking at the government's spending on pre-primary to secondary education in 102 countries. The Executive Director of UNICEF Catherine Russell, said, "We are failing children. Too many education systems around the world are investing the least in those children who need it the most," stated a report by IANS.
According to UNICEF, the inconsistency is most severe in low-income countries where students from the richest households receive more than six times as much public education spending as those from the poorest households. The richest students in middle-income nations like Cote d'Ivoire and Senegal receive about four times as much money for public education as the poorest students, according to Xinhua news agency. In high-income nations, the wealthy typically receive 1.1 to 1.6 times as much public education funding as the poorest citizens, with France and Uruguay benefiting from the highest gap.
To combat "learning poverty" UNICEF has urged for equitable finance. The analysis estimated that over 35 million primary school children can escape learning poverty with just a 1% point increase in the provision of public education resources to the poorest quintile of learners, as reported by IANS.
"Investing in the education of the poorest children is the most cost-effective way to ensure the future for children, communities and countries. True progress can only come when we invest in every child, everywhere," said Russell.
According to the study, children who live in poverty are less likely to attend school, leave school earlier and enroll in higher education, which has substantially higher public spending on education per capita. "Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, education systems across the world were largely failing children, with hundreds of millions of students attending school but not grasping basic reading and mathematics skills," it said, citing recent estimates that two-thirds of all 10-year-olds worldwide cannot read or understand a simple story, stated the IANS report.
