When the COVID-19 pandemic hit ، Activists implored world leaders Monday to prioritize school systems and restore educational budgets slashed.
Publish dateTuesday 20 September 2022 - 15:11
Story Code : 258842
Afghan Voice Agency (AVA)_ Monitoring, The summit on transforming education, held at the UN General Assembly, ahead of the annual leaders’ meeting, called on the world’s nations to ensure that children everywhere from sub-Saharan Africa to the United States don’t fall too far behind in school, AP reported.
Nigerian youth activist Karimot Odebode said: “We demand you take responsibility.”
“We will not stop until every person in every village and every highland has access to an education.”
The percentage of 10-year-old children in poor and middle-income countries who cannot read a simple story increased to an estimated 70% — up 13 percentage points since before the pandemic shuttered classrooms, according to a report from the World Bank, UNESCO, UNICEF and other aid organizations.
“This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity for us to radically transform education,” U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Amina Mohammed told reporters ahead of the education summit at U.N. headquarters in New York.
“We owe it to the coming generation if we don’t want to witness the emergence of a generation of misfits.”
A closing statement from the United Nations after the full-day meeting said 130 countries had committed to “rebooting their education systems” and taking action to end the learning crisis.
It was unclear what that meant specifically. Countries were asked to commit to devoting at least 20% of their national budgets to education, AP reported.
When COVID-19 closed schools around the world in spring 2020, many children simply stopped learning — some for months, others for longer. For many, there was no such thing as remote learning.
More than 800 million young people around the world lacked internet access at home, according to a study by UNICEF and the International Telecommunication Union in December 2020.
avapress.net/vdci5varrt1awv2.ilct.html
Tags
Top hits
