Education and Poverty

One of the most profound ways to break the cycle of poverty is to provide quality education for children.

Julia Gillard, former Australian prime minister, hoped the U.N sustainable development goals (SDGs), a set of global targets that will be finalized later this year, would contain clear objectives and receive solid funding to turn promises into reality.

“Fifteen years ago we promised the children of the world that they would get to go to primary school. We are still 58 million kids short of that promise and around 250 million are getting some education but not achieving the most basic literacy and numeracy,” Gillard said.

Gillard understands that just funding the construction of schools, or investing in innovative technology is not enough: “… but there is no point at the end of the day having kids sitting in something called a school if they are not learning,” Gillard said.

Teacher training and professional development, curriculum and assessment practices, instructional materials, books, and the appropriate use of information technology would help tackle what she called a “learning quality crisis”. Measurement and assessment were also key.

Gillard says that education’s share in global humanitarian funding has declined, from 2.4% in 2011 to 1.4% in 2012. Aid to education had fallen by almost 10% since 2010 compared with a 1.3% decline in overall development assistance worldwide.

“The sharp decline in global aid to education must be reversed. We must push for the political will to reprioritize education aid,” she said.

The need to refocus on quality and inclusiveness has to be a priority for all nations, including the U.S. The truth is that we have many in our rural towns, suburban centers and cities across this land where Native American children, children with disabilities, children from a wide range of ethnic groups and immigrant populations, are not receiving the quality education that is needed to break the cycle.