Everyone
deserves a quality education... yet right now 75 million
children and 774 million adults are missing out.
It's
the world's poorest who are missing out on an education
today. And it's the world's poorest who stand the most to
gain if they only had the chance to learn.
Education is imperative to tackling poverty. When
individuals have the chance to learn basic life and literacy
skills, economies grow faster and poverty rates decline.
When people go to school, they are able to eventually earn
more money and support their families
-
A
single year of primary school increases the wages
people earn later in life by 5-15% for boys and even
more for girls.
-
For
each additional year of secondary school, an
individual's wages increase by 15-25%.
-
No
country has ever achieved continuous and rapid
economic growth without first having at least 40% of
its adults able to read and write.
Education
is essential to improving health, halting the spread of
HIV/AIDS and enabling families to better cope with illness.
Education
is a human right. Human rights are inherent, every person is
born with them and they cannot be given or taken away.
Rights establish the basic standards without which people
cannot live in dignity.
Everyone no matter where they are born deserves a chance to
receive a quality education.
The
majority of people without an education live in the world's
poorest countries.
People are being excluded from education because they simply
cannot afford the cost of going to school - whether the cost
of school fees, uniforms or books.
Many children are excluded from school as they're working to
support their family, or staying at home and caring for sick
members of the family.
In rural areas children miss out when there are no schools
available, and in areas of conflict families may be forced
to flee their home in search of refuge - children are even
forced to fight in wars in which they played no part.
In most countries women and girls are last to get the
opportunities to learn - often because boys are favoured
when families are not able to send all their children to
school.
-
A
third of all children out of school have a disability.
-
60%
of all children out of school are girls.
-
Nearly
250 million children have to work to help their
families.
-
Half
of the world's out of school children live in
communities where the language used in schools is
different from that used at home.
When
children do make it to school, they often struggle to
learn in huge class sizes, from untrained and poorly paid
teachers. Without the incentives to stay at school and
learn, many children drop out. In sub-Saharan Africa one
in three children who start school never get the chance to
complete even the basic primary school, let alone progress
to secondary school.
[Source:
The Global Campaign for Education]
