Reaching the marginalized: EFA global monitoring report, 2010; 2010

010CHAPTER 22Education for All Global Monitoring ReportPoor qualityeducation inchildhood has amajor bearing onadult illiteracy34. Expressed atpurchasing powerparity in constant 2006US dollars.35. This is based ongrade 3 studentsachieving at or belowlevel 1 performance,as defined by theassessment.failings in education systems. While average testscores are higher in OECD countries, their educationsystems still fail a large minority. For example,approximately 10% of students in England (UnitedKingdom) and the United States, and an even highershare in Italy, score below the low threshold.Learning achievement does rise with averageincome, but with large variations and some strikingexceptions. Households and governments inwealthier countries can invest more in educationand this often leads to higher achievement. Forexample, average government spending on asecondary school student in Norway was US$13,388in 2005, compared with US$348 in Ghana (seeannex, Statistical Table 11). 34 But the links betweenincome and learning are far from automatic. Amonghigh-income countries, the best performers – theRepublic of Korea and Singapore – outperformwealthier countries such as the United States. Themost striking exceptions are among Arab states. InQatar and Saudi Arabia, both high-income countries,three-quarters of students register below the lowestscore threshold – a performance comparable withthat of Ghana. In the middle-income countries ofAlgeria, Egypt and Morocco, more than half ofstudents register below the lowest threshold.These results point to serious underlying policyproblems and help explain the widely observedfailure of Arab states to translate investment ineducation into improved skills, employmentcreation and economic growth.International comparison highlights the degreeof inequality in learning achievement worldwide,with students from low-income countries faringespecially poorly, as Figures 2.37 and 2.38powerfully demonstrate. At age 10 or 11, in thefourth grade of primary school, fewer than onein five children in Japan or the Netherlandsscored below the intermediate benchmark on therelevant TIMSS scale. In Japan, almost all studentshad at least intermediate levels of proficiency,while in Qatar and Yemen almost no childrenscored above that level. Meanwhile, fewer than20% in El Salvador, Morocco and Tunisia scoredat the low benchmark (Figure 2.37).Evidence from international assessments ofreading skills is even more disturbing. PISAassesses students with about eight years ofeducation. Students with reading literacy belowlevel 1 are identified as being at risk during thetransition to work. They are also unlikely to haveachieved sufficient proficiency to be able tobenefit from further education and other learningopportunities throughout life (OECD, 2007b).In Kyrgyzstan, 70% of students tested in PISAfailed to achieve level 1 proficiency in reading(Figure 2.38). In Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico andThailand, more than 40% of students were at level1or below. After eight years of schooling, thesechildren were unable to demonstrate levels ofliteracy that would typically be achieved by themiddle of primary school in OECD countries.Sub-Saharan Africa is covered poorly byinternational learning assessments, but there isno shortage of evidence pointing to acute problems.Regional assessments conducted by the Southernand Eastern Africa Consortium for MonitoringEducational Quality (SACMEQ) from 2000 to 2002for Malawi, Namibia and Zambia found that over70% of grade 6 students in each country had notachieved basic numeracy. Students in Lesothoand South Africa did not do much better: over halfof all students failed to achieve basic levels ofnumeracy. The evidence from sub-Saharan Africaalso demonstrates that income is not the onlyfactor shaping learning achievement. Lesothoand South Africa have much higher per capitaincomes and government resources than Kenya,but they registered lower levels of primary schoollearning achievement.Poor quality of education in childhood has a majorbearing on adult illiteracy. Young adults with noeducation or just a few years of school inevitablyfigure prominently in the ranks of adult illiterates.But so do some who have spent several years inschool. An analysis of adult literacy in twenty-onecountries in sub-Saharan Africa using householdsurvey data found that 22- to 24-year-olds with fiveyears of education had a 40% probability of beingilliterate (UNESCO-BREDA, 2007). People withseven years of education had a 20% chance ofbeing illiterate. These figures point not just to anenormous waste of human potential and restrictedopportunity, but to a failure of investment ineducation to deliver results.In Latin America and the Caribbean, readingproficiency of primary school students also varieswidely (Figure 2.39). According to the recentSegundo Estudio Regional Comparativo y Explicativo(SERCE) assessment, less than half of all grade 3students in the Dominican Republic, Ecuador andGuatemala had more than very basic reading skills(UNESCO-OREALC, 2008). 35 In contrast, over 85%106