Developing countries must overhaul their educational system to address the peculiar challenges they face, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s (UNESCO) Global Education Monitoring (GEM) report has said.
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Emphasising an urgent need for progress in education to speed up, the report noted that based on the current trends, universal primary education in sub-Saharan Africa will be achieved by 2080, universal lower secondary completion by 2089, and universal upper secondary completion by 2099, leaving the region 70 years late for the 2030 SDG deadline.
The U.N. says that rich countries are not doing especially well, either, a recent UNICEF report found that 1 in 10 countries in Europe and North America would still not achieve universal upper secondary education by 2030 as hoped. It also states that India has the highest number of out-of-school students in the lower secondary level and at the upper secondary level, 46.8 million are out of school. While in the majority of countries, education is the best indicator of climate change awareness, half of countries curricula worldwide do not explicitly mention climate change nor environmental sustainability in their content.
The report said the Philippines failed to promote key issues in its national curricula framework, like gender equality, human rights, sustainable development and global citizenship, although the country scored comparably with neighboring countries in other aspects of its educational system.
Bokova said that the report attributed conflict as one of the greatest obstacles to progress in education, keeping over 36 million children out of school.
The report states that education needs fundamental changes to reach global development goals.
It also shows the need for education systems to step up attention to environmental concerns.
“While in the majority of countries, education is the best indicator of climate change awareness, half of countries curricula worldwide do not explicitly mention climate change in their content. India is an exception, where now some 300 million school students receive some environmental education”, it said.
“The new global development agenda calls for education ministers and other education actors to work in collaboration with other sectors”, it said. Local languages contain much of the vital information held within different cultures about the functioning of our ecosystem, yet 40% are taught in a language they don’t understand, putting that knowledge at risk.
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According to the report, the literacy rate of males in rural areas from the low-income bracket in Pakistan is 64%, compared to 14% for their female counterparts. “We need our schools, universities and lifelong learning programmes to focus on economic, environmental and social perspectives that help nurture empowered, critical, mindful and competent citizens”, the report said. The report requests of African governments to take inequalities in education seriously.
