people and planet

3
from India suggests that formal education for Dalit
populations has not led to commensurate increases
in life chances, due to severe economic discrimination
(Thorat and Neuman, 2007). In a range of countries in
Eastern and South-eastern Asia, Europe, Latin America
and the Caribbean, the Pacific and Southern Asia, there
is consistent evidence of discrimination based on race
or ethnicity affecting people’s labour market outcomes
(Bertrand and Duflo, 2016).
WHO ARE THE MOST MARGINALIZED
IN EDUCATION?
The discussion above outlines the scale of the challenge
to provide universal services, achieve gender equality
and address discrimination against marginalized groups.
This section describes marginalization in education,
identifies the most marginalized groups, defines barriers
to inclusive social development and shows who must be
reached to achieve it.
Access to education is a powerful means of
mitigating disadvantage, ending poverty and
reducing inequality, which are core goals of the SDG
agenda. However, many overlapping disadvantages
limit education outcomes as a result of serious
marginalization and inequality (UNESCO, 2010). As
the Education for All Global Monitoring Reports (GMRs)
point out, the groups most marginalized in terms of
education access and quality vary substantially; they
include racial, ethnic and linguistic minorities, people
with disabilities, pastoralists, slum dwellers, children
with HIV, ‘unregistered’ children, and orphans (UNESCO,
2010, 2015). Improved data and monitoring efforts are
needed to better identify marginalized children, youth
and adults and to develop policy solutions to combat
marginalization (see Chapter 14: Equity).
Universal access to primary and secondary education
implies leaving no one behind, including members of
marginalized groups (see
Chapter 10). In the school
year ending in 2014,
In 2014, nearly 61
nearly 61 million children
million children of of primary school age and
primary school age 202 million adolescents
of secondary school
and 202 million
age were out of school.
adolescents of
In addition, country
secondary school age commitments to halve
adult illiteracy levels by
were out of school
2015 remain unfulfilled
despite much progress.
Worldwide, some 758 million adults, 63% of them women,
have not attained even minimal literacy skills.
Within countries and at all levels of development,
education marginalization is most acute among
disadvantaged subpopulations – distinguished typically
by wealth, gender, ethnicity and migration status – who
face persistently low educational opportunities and
poor quality provision. Even as countries make overall
progress on various education outcomes, such groups
are much more likely to be left behind.
Poverty continues to be the largest determinant of
education deprivation and inequality. For example, based
on GEM Report team calculations, among youth aged
20 to 24 in 101 low and middle income countries, those in
the poorest quintile average 5 fewer years of schooling
than those in the richest quintile, compared with a
2.6 year difference between those from rural and urban
locations, and a 1.1 year difference between females
and males.
However, different characteristics tend to overlap and
compound deprivation. For example, females from poor,
ethnically or spatially marginalized backgrounds often
fare substantially worse than their male counterparts,
and gender gaps in disadvantaged groups may be larger
than in more advantaged groups. In all aspects of lifelong
learning – access and completion of formal education,
post-school training and adult education – gender
compounds disadvantages related to socio-economic
status, ethnicity, location, religion, sexuality, disability,
age and race (Kabeer, 2015). For example, the UN has
identified poverty and location as the factors most
likely to determine whether girls participate in school
(UN Women, 2014). And in Latin America, illiteracy
rates among indigenous women are often more than
double those of non-indigenous women (Vinding and
Kampbel, 2012).
Wide disparity in educational attainment is clearly
evident where wealth and gender intersect. GEM
Report team calculations show that in almost every
country, but particularly those with low average
educational attainment, youth in the richest quintile
have substantially more years of education than those
in the poorest quintile. Extreme disparity in attainment
is found in countries including Nigeria and Pakistan,
where the wealthiest quintiles have more than 8 years
more than the poorest. Education disparity between rich
and poor tends to decrease in richer countries, but often
remains significant. In Argentina, an example of a high
income country, the wealthiest have three more years
2016 • GLOBAL EDUCATION MONITORING REPORT 73