EFA Global Monitoring Report 2012:
200 million young people fail to complete primary school and
lack skills for work
New Delhi,
26 April 2013 – The National
launch of the EFA Global Monitoring Report, 2012:
Youth and skills: putting education to work will take place in New Delhi on the 26 April
2013. UNESCO has already published the Summary
of the Report in English, French, Spanish,
Arabic, Russian, Chinese, Nepalese, Bengali, Thai, Swahili, Japanese, and
German languages. Today the Hindi and the Telegu version waslaunched by Dr
Karan Singh, India’s Representative to UNESCO’s Executive Board and President
ICCR, in the presence of Dr S. S. Jena, Chairman, National Institute of Open
Learning, and DrSantoshMehrotra, DG, Institute of Applied
Manpower Research (IAMR). The 2012 Report, Putting Education to
Work, reveals the urgent need to invest in skills for youth. 200
million young people in the world have not completed primary school and need a
second chance to acquire basic skills for work. 91 million of these young
people live in South and West Asia, making up more than a quarter of the
region’s youth population and the greatest number of unskilled young people of
any region in the world.
Where: Teen
Murti House, New Delhi, India
When: 26 April 2013 at 9.30 am
Media
Interview possibilities: Dr Karan Singh, India’s Representative to UNESCO’s Executive Board and President ICCR; Mr
Shigeru Aoyagi, Director UNESCO New Delhi and UNESCO Representative; and MsTine
Staermose, Director ILO New Delhi
The Report looks in
depth at youth skills and shows that young people need the foundation skills taught
at primary and lower secondary school to find decent jobs. India accounts for a
huge proportion of the 200 million youth lacking foundation skills worldwide.
Over a third of 15-19 year olds in the country have less than a lower secondary
education and lack the skills they need for work.
The skills crisis is
unlikely to improve anytime soon. In South and West Asia, about 13 million are
still out of primary school and 31 million teenagers are out of secondary
school, missing out on vital skills for future employment. Despite India making
dramatic inroads increasing access to primary school, it still has the fourth
highest number of out of school children of any country in the world.
There is also a
learning crisis impeding the likelihood of the skills deficit being rectified
with ease: Worldwide, 250 million children of primary school age cannot read or
write, whether they are in school or not. In India, fewer than 5% of poor
students reached over level 2 in mathematics in learning assessments done in
2009.
The Report cautions
that these education failures are not only thwarting young people’s hopes, but
are also jeopardizing equitable economic growth and social cohesion. The urban
poor, those living in remote rural areas and young women are the worst off of
all. Many youth coping without skills are unemployed or working with bad
working conditions and being paid poverty line wages for life. In India in the
2000s, for example, there were estimated to be 10 million street vendors
working informally.
Skills development
programmes can be improved to boost young people’s opportunities for decent
jobs and better lives. Such investment
in skills is a smart move for improving economic growth. The EFA Global
Monitoring Report calculates that every US$1 spend on a person’s education
yields US$10-15 in economic growth over that person’s working lifetime. India
has realized this potential and aims to train 500 million of its poor urban
youth by 2022 in courses and apprenticeships run by the public and private
sector. There is also a national policy working to develop the skills of street
vendors. NGOs are also helping: some work giving transferable skills such as
confidence and self-esteem to poorer urban youth.
Mr Shigeru Aoyagi, Director of UNESCO Representative
to India, Bhutan, Maldives and Sri Lanka says: “There is much that India can be
proud of as regards its remarkable achievements and ambition for training young
people in skills for work. However, it should be noted that the overwhelming
majority of urban youth have little training to acquire skills. The skills
shortage risks hampering the country’s growth and reinforcing inequality unless
it is tackled immediately. Only if countries give their youth a second chance
to learn basic skills such as reading, and skills in relevant trades will they
make the full use of their potential.”
Ms Tine
Staermose, Director ILO New Delhi, says: “As one of the
largest informal economies, the percentage of skilled workers in India with any
formal plus informal vocational training has been estimated as being close
to 10% compared to 60-80% in developed countries. The limited reach
of skills development programmes not only affects the potential for
socio-economic growth but also makes the transition from school to decent work
more difficult for Indian youth.
Governments, donors
and the private sector have a key role to play in raising new resources and
using them more effectively to fill theUS$38 billion annual finance gap for
good quality basic and lower secondary education. Many donors are not
prioritizing education in their budgets. Only 2% of India’scommitment to other
developing countries 2008 to 2010 was directed at education, for example.
The EFA Global Monitoring Reportaims
to inform, influence and sustain genuine commit-mentacross more than 200
countries and territories towards the six Education for All goals established
at the World Education Forum in Dakar, Senegal, in 2000. It shows that progress
is stalling just when increased urgency should be fuelling a final push towards
the 2015 deadline for meeting the goals.
n Goal 1: Improvements in early
childhood care and education have been too slow. In
2010, around 28% of children under five suffered from stunting, and less than
half the world’s children received pre-primary education.
n Goal 2: Progress towards
universal primary education is stalling. The
global number of children out of school stagnated at 61 million in 2010.Of 100
children out of school, 47 are never expected to enter.
n Goal 3: Many young people lack
foundation skills. In 123 low and lower middle
income countries, around 200 million of 15 to 24 year-oldshave not even
completed primary school, equivalent to one in five young people.
n Goal 4: Adult literacy remains
an elusive goal. The number of illiterate
adults has dropped by just 12% between 1990 and 2010. In 2010, around775
million adults were illiterate, two-thirds of who were women.
n Goal 5: Gender disparities
take a variety of forms. In 2010, there were still
seventeen countries with fewer than nine girls for every ten boys in primary
school. In more than half of the ninety-six countries that have not achieved
gender parity in secondary school, boys are at a disadvantage.
n Goal 6: Global inequality in
learning outcomes remains stark. As many as 250 million
children could be failing to read or write by the time they should reach grade
4.
The EFA GMR Report calls for
immediate action to solve the youth skills crisis. It identifies five key steps
that should be taken, which can be tailored to fit country-specific
circumstances:
1.
Over 91 million
young people in South and West Asia need to be given alternative
pathways to learn foundation skills
2.
All young people need quality training in relevant
foundation skills at lower secondary school
3.
Upper secondary curricula should provide a balance
between vocational and technical skills, including IT, and transferable skills
such as confidence and communication which are indispensable for the work place
4.
Skills strategies must target the disadvantaged:
particularly young women and urban and rural poor
5.
Governments as well as donors and the private sector
must help fill the funding gap of $38 billion to ensure all young people complete
basic and lower secondary education
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The EFA Global Monitoring Report is developed
annually by an independent team and published by UNESCO. The full report is
available online at:www.efareport.unesco.org
For more
information, please contact:
MrAlisherUmarov Ms
Rekha Beri
Chief of
Education Documentalist&
Public Information
Ph: 91-11-26713000 Ph:
91-11-26713000
