Before 2019, the world was facing a learning crisis. Often poverty and learning are linked together.  Why? Because education is the only avenue to get out of poverty. A learning crisis is a  teaching crisis. For students to learn, they need qualified teachers.  In countries where the poverty level is high, the education system does not keep track of teacher's qualifications, what they do in the classroom, or whether they show up at all.  

  Learning Poverty:

The definition of learning poverty is the share of children who cannot read a simple story by the age of 10 (~grade 5).  Also, learning poverty is to standardize the measurement of literacy of in-school children to be comparable across countries. A term introduced by, The World Bank Group in October 2019. Their mission is to reduce shared poverty of the global population by three per-cent, 2030. Increase prosperity by forty per-cent in every country.

 Countries of Learning Poverty 

• Sub-Saharan Africa. Congo, Dem. Rep.
• East Asia and the Pacific.
• Europe and Central Asia.
• Latin America and the Caribbean.
• The Middle East and North Africa. Egypt, Arab Rep. Iran, Islamic Rep.
• South Asia.
• North America

Education and Poverty

Research has shown that education is the key to rise above poverty and pursue a better life. Children growing up in a poverty-environment encounter more barriers than children with a better education.  Some of these barriers are obvious such as qualified schools to go to, teachers lacking proper training, and overcrowded classrooms. Lacking education is a major predictor of passing poverty from one generation to the next, but receiving an education is one of the top ways to achieve financial stability. 

Covid-19 Pandemic Impact on Learning Poverty

Currently, learning poverty has increased to fifty-three per-cent to sixty-three of primary-school-age children. COVID-19 pandemic increased the impact of learning poverty. Of the 720 million primary school-age children, 382 million have learning difficulties and reaching below the minimum proficiency level in reading. COVID-19 could boost that number by an additional 72 million to 454 million. In more than 180 countries, temporary school closures have kept nearly 1.6 billion students out of school, further complicating global efforts to reduce learning poverty.

Strategies to reduce Learning Poverty

Governments, development partners, teachers, students, and parents must work together to deploy effective mitigation and remediation strategies to protect the COVID-19 generation’s future. School reopening, when safe, is critical, but not enough. The simulation results show major differences in the distribution of learning. The big challenge will be to identify and respond rapidly to each student’s learning needs in a flexible and adaptive way and to build back educational systems more resilient to shocks, using technology effectively to enable learning both at school and home.

Resources

Learning Poverty In the time of COVID-19

https://worldbank.org/learning poverty/covid-19

https://worldbank.org/learning poverty

https://worldbank.org/who-we-are

10 Barriers to Education That Children Live In Poverty Faces

https://globalcitizen.org