Eliminating learning poverty: World Bank’s address to the problem

“Eliminating learning poverty, defined as the share of children that by age 10 cannot read and understand a simple text, is as critical as eliminating extreme poverty, stunting or hunger” – that’s a direct quote from the article by Jaime Saavedra, Education Global Practice Director at the World Bank. It is devoted to the problem of children that attend school but do not learn. This may happen due to many reasons: poor teaching and guidance, lack of textbooks and contextual literature, and even remoteness of schools.

In order to address this problem the World Bank launched a new Learning Target: to reduce the global Learning Poverty rate to at least half by 2030 and created a “Literacy Policy Package” as an instrument to reach it. This package suggests interventions that have shown to accelerate progress towards reading and raise education quality in relatively short periods of time. Apparently, these actions should come along with reforms of educational sphere in order to secure achieved improvements.

You can find Jaime’s article at  World Bank Blogs.