Chapter 2. Progress towards the EFA goals - Unesco

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0 1 0 CHAPTER 2 2 Education for All Global Monitoring Report Poor quality education in childhood has a major bearing on adult illiteracy 34. Expressed at purchasing power parity in constant 2006 US dollars. 35. This is based on grade 3 students achieving at or below level 1 performance, as defined by the assessment. failings in education systems. While average test scores are higher in OECD countries, their education systems still fail a large minority. For example, approximately 10% of students in England (United Kingdom) and the United States, and an even higher share in Italy, score below the low threshold. Learning achievement does rise with average income, but with large variations and some striking exceptions. Households and governments in wealthier countries can invest more in education and this often leads to higher achievement. For example, average government spending on a secondary school student in Norway was US$13,388 in 2005, compared with US$348 in Ghana (see annex, Statistical Table 11). 34 But the links between income and learning are far from automatic. Among high-income countries, the best performers – the Republic of Korea and Singapore – outperform wealthier countries such as the United States. The most striking exceptions are among Arab states. In Qatar and Saudi Arabia, both high-income countries, three-quarters of students register below the lowest score threshold – a performance comparable with that of Ghana. In the middle-income countries of Algeria, Egypt and Morocco, more than half of students register below the lowest threshold. These results point to serious underlying policy problems and help explain the widely observed failure of Arab states to translate investment in education into improved skills, employment creation and economic growth. International comparison highlights the degree of inequality in learning achievement worldwide, with students from low-income countries faring especially poorly, as Figures 2.37 and 2.38 powerfully demonstrate. At age 10 or 11, in the fourth grade of primary school, fewer than one in five children in Japan or the Netherlands scored below the intermediate benchmark on the relevant TIMSS scale. In Japan, almost all students had at least intermediate levels of proficiency, while in Qatar and Yemen almost no children scored above that level. Meanwhile, fewer than 20% in El Salvador, Morocco and Tunisia scored at the low benchmark (Figure 2.37). Evidence from international assessments of reading skills is even more disturbing. PISA assesses students with about eight years of education. Students with reading literacy below level 1 are identified as being at risk during the transition to work. They are also unlikely to have achieved sufficient proficiency to be able to benefit from further education and other learning opportunities throughout life (OECD, 2007b). In Kyrgyzstan, 70% of students tested in PISA failed to achieve level 1 proficiency in reading (Figure 2.38). In Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico and Thailand, more than 40% of students were at level1 or below. After eight years of schooling, these children were unable to demonstrate levels of literacy that would typically be achieved by the middle of primary school in OECD countries. Sub-Saharan Africa is covered poorly by international learning assessments, but there is no shortage of evidence pointing to acute problems. Regional assessments conducted by the Southern and Eastern Africa Consortium for Monitoring Educational Quality (SACMEQ) from 2000 to 2002 for Malawi, Namibia and Zambia found that over 70% of grade 6 students in each country had not achieved basic numeracy. Students in Lesotho and South Africa did not do much better: over half of all students failed to achieve basic levels of numeracy. The evidence from sub-Saharan Africa also demonstrates that income is not the only factor shaping learning achievement. Lesotho and South Africa have much higher per capita incomes and government resources than Kenya, but they registered lower levels of primary school learning achievement. Poor quality of education in childhood has a major bearing on adult illiteracy. Young adults with no education or just a few years of school inevitably figure prominently in the ranks of adult illiterates. But so do some who have spent several years in school. An analysis of adult literacy in twenty-one countries in sub-Saharan Africa using household survey data found that 22- to 24-year-olds with five years of education had a 40% probability of being illiterate (UNESCO-BREDA, 2007). People with seven years of education had a 20% chance of being illiterate. These figures point not just to an enormous waste of human potential and restricted opportunity, but to a failure of investment in education to deliver results. In Latin America and the Caribbean, reading proficiency of primary school students also varies widely (Figure 2.39). According to the recent Segundo Estudio Regional Comparativo y Explicativo (SERCE) assessment, less than half of all grade 3 students in the Dominican Republic, Ecuador and Guatemala had more than very basic reading skills (UNESCO-OREALC, 2008). 35 In contrast, over 85% 106
PROGRESS TOWARDS THE EFA GOALS The quality of education Figure 2.37: There are wide disparities across countries in primary school mathematics performance % of fourth grade students reaching the TIMSS international benchmarks for mathematics achievement, 2007 100 OECD Other high income Middle and low-income 80 Highest benchmark achieved (% of students) 60 40 20 0 20 40 60 Advanced benchmark High benchmark Intermediate benchmark Low benchmark Below low benchmark 80 100 Japan Netherlands England (U. K.) Germany United States Denmark Australia Austria Sweden Hungary Italy Scotland (U. K.) New Zealand Czech Republic Norway Hong Kong, China Singapore Slovenia Kuwait Qatar Latvia Kazakhstan Russian Fed. Lithuania Slovakia Armenia Ukraine Georgia Iran, Isl. Rep. Algeria Colombia Morocco Tunisia El Salvador Yemen Notes: Low benchmark – students have some basic mathematical knowledge, an understanding of adding and subtracting with whole numbers, and can read information from simple bar graphs and tables. High benchmark – students can apply their mathematical understanding and knowledge in relatively complex situations and explain their meaning. Source: Mullis et al. (2008). of students in Costa Rica and Cuba had moved beyond the basics. Primary school students in Cuba performed extremely well. Over 40% of Cuban grade 3 students achieved the highest reading skills assessed, more than double the share in Chile and Mexico. At the other end of the achievement scale, Cuba has the smallest share of students performing below the lowest grade. Countries in South and West Asia also suffer from significant deficits in levels of learning. In rural Pakistan, a recent survey found that only two-thirds of students in grade 3 could subtract single digit numbers, and only a small proportion could tell the time or carry out simple multiplication and division (Das et al., 2006). In rural India, levels of learning are equally troubling. In 2008, just 28% of grade 3 students could subtract two-digit numbers and only a third could tell the time (Pratham Resource Centre, 2008). In one important respect international learning assessments understate the problem. This is because they cover only children in school, rather than the entire age group. Factoring in out-of-school children would significantly lower the scores of countries that are far from universal primary enrolment at the level being tested. In Ghana, TIMSS 2007 found that 17% of 16-year-olds scored above the low international benchmark, but only around half of the children of this age were in school. This implies that only 9% of Ghanaian 16-year-olds have mastered the most basic maths skills. In highincome countries such as the Czech Republic and England (United Kingdom), most children at the same stage are still in school and have far higherlevel skills in mathematics (Mullis et al., 2008). 36 Disparities in learning within countries An equal opportunity to learn is no less a human right than an equal entitlement to be in school, regardless of parental income, gender, language or ethnicity. The Dakar goals in some cases explicitly target greater equity. For example, achieving gender parity in learning achievement is an important part of goal 6 and a key component of achieving gender equality in education by 2015 (goal 5) (Box 2.22). In many countries, however, large disparities in learning achievement point to deep disparities in opportunity. What students achieve is heavily influenced by both the type of school they attend and the characteristics of their family backgrounds. International learning assessments understate the problem as they only cover children in school 36. For the TIMSS assessment children are assessed in grade 8 of their education careers. In the Czech Republic and England (United Kingdom) the average age of children in grade 8 was 14 compared with 16 in Ghana. 107
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Chapter 2. Progress towards the EFA goals - Unesco

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