Millions of children learn only very little. How can the world provide a better education to the next generation? - Our World in Data

Research suggests that many children – especially in the world’s poorest countries – learn only very little in school. What can we do to improve this?

Home Global Education For many children, schools do not live up to their promise: in many schools, children learn very little. This is a problem in rich countries. By the end of primary school, about 9% of children in high-income countries cannot read with comprehension. 1 But it tends to be a much larger problem in poorer countries. This is what the chart below shows. The education researcher Joāo Pedro Azevedo and his colleagues estimate that in the very poorest countries of the world, 90% of children are not able to read with comprehension when they reach the end of primary school. Download

related reading

• Our World in Dataourworldindata.org
• School is Not Enoughmap.simonsarris.com
• The short history of global living conditions and why it matters that we know it | Our World in Dataourworldindata.org
• The world is awful. The world is much better. The world can be much better. | Our World in Dataourworldindata.org
• Why do we need to know about progress if we are concerned about the world's largest problems? | Our World in Dataourworldindata.org
• You'll forget most of what you learn. What should you do about that?experimentalhistory.substack.com
• School Is Not Enoughpalladiummag.com
• How Might We Learn?andymatuschak.org
• Private Schools for the Poorssir.org
• Childhoods of exceptional people — LessWronglesswrong.com
• Extreme poverty: How far have we come, and how far do we still have to go? | Our World in Dataourworldindata.org
• Global inequality is huge — but so is the opportunity for people in high-income countries to support poor people | Our World in Dataourworldindata.org