A new study shows that more and more children are attending school globally. But this is rarely reflected in the average learning performance of children, according to the same study.
This conclusion is based on data from 164 countries, where 98% of the world’s population lives. They studied the growth in the percentage of children who went to school between 2000 and 2017, and how well these children did on learning tests.
In most western countries, the proportion of children of school age and educational attainment remains high, but in other parts of the world you see a different picture. In the Middle East, for example, 95% of all children went to school in 2000, 99% in 2010. But the level of learning in that period remained stuck at 380 (300 is low, 625 is high), To write Nature researchers.
Going to school, but not learning anything?
“Education is not learning” is one of the subheadings in the study, in other words: going to school is not by definition the same as learning something. It’s not entirely clear why this is. It could be that the most proficient children in the Middle East are actually attending school, and in recent years have mainly joined children who are less willing to learn. But figures from other countries appear to contradict this statement.
Human capital
Figures for schoolchildren come in part from the World Bank. It uses numbers to determine the size of human capital in a country, with the basic idea: the more children who go to school, the more knowledge they acquire, the more human capital they have. It is believed that human capital – the value of people’s knowledge and skills to a country or organization – determines between 20 to 50% of how economically a country will develop.
This new study questions the idea behind it. Because it is clear that the percentage of school children does not necessarily determine the amount of knowledge they have. If current trends continue, nearly 100% of all children will go to school by 2030. The question is what conclusions can be drawn from this if their learning level continues to stagnate.
In the past, education was not available to everyone. How has the study become easier? NPO knowledge He explains that.
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