An analysis of UN data has revealed that more than half of all children who turn 10 this year will reach their milestone birthday without being able to read a simple sentence.
According to the anti-poverty group, One Campaign, 11.5 million of those 70 million 10-year-olds, could be unable to read as a direct result of the impact of Covid on education.
The group also said the number of children who will not learn to read at all has increased by 17%. It attributed the increase in “education inequalities” to the pandemic.
The campaign therefore called on G7 leaders meeting at the end of March to invest $5bn in funding education initiatives.
The campaign’s Executive Director, David McNair intimated that the predicament could prevent “economies from growing.”
“When children can’t read by the age of 10, this has a knock-on effect on their whole education. It impacts on their ability to learn, earn, start businesses. This lost potential doesn’t just damage lives, it prevents whole economies from growing.
“This virus has taken enough from us already. It must not take the futures of millions of children as well.”
ONE Campaign Executive Director, David McNair
Low and middle-income countries
According to the One Campaign, 40% of the children most at risk of losing out were from sub-Saharan Africa. The group also determined that girls were the most seriously affected, with 20 million not expected to return to school. This, it said, is expected even when the education system is fully functioning again.
One Campaign’s analysis follows a report issued by UNICEF in October that said the pandemic has heightened existing inequalities. UNICEF’s study also asserted that while basic literacy rates were already poor in low and middle-income countries, children had less access to digital learning opportunities while classrooms were closed and so on average had lost a quarter of their school year.
Earlier this month, the UN child agency also urged governments to reopen schools to avoid “catastrophic education emergency”. The organization reported that schools for more than 168 million children in 14 countries have been completely shut for an entire year.
At the peak of April’s school closures, 94% of pupils were also out of school, according to the World Bank. The One Campaign has appealed to the G7 to ensure that 40 million girls can go to school by 2025.
The campaign also called for G20 finance ministers to support lower-income countries and delay debt-servicing payments that could take away from education spending. It also called on countries to “ringfence” their own education spending.
The group said that unless action Is taken, some 750 million children would be deprived of basic literary by 2030.
“Unless we take urgent action, the legacy of the pandemic could be millions more children denied the chance to understand words on a page,” said McNair
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