What is Learning Poverty?
Children across the world face barriers preventing them from accessing quality education. This Learning Poverty affects almost 250 million children worldwide, stifling their life chances.
The World Bank defines Learning Poverty as a child being unable to read and understand a simple story by the age of 10 – a rate that can be as high as 80% in some countries and is an estimated 250 million children globally. This damages their future prospects, whilst reducing the growth of nations and continents.
Read The State of Global Learning Poverty 2022 report now.
This global learning crisis has only been exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. We need to act now.
Why does reading measure learning poverty?
The World Bank uses three indicators, as:
- Reading proficiency is an easily understood learning measure.
- Reading is a student’s gateway to learning in other areas.
- Reading proficiency can serve as a proxy for foundational learning in other subjects.
What is the Un's aim with Sdg4?
The United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4) has a broader goal to ensure inclusive and equitable quality education for all. It highlights progress towards SDG 4.1.1(b), specifying that all children at the end of primary reach at least a minimum proficiency level in reading. It therefore aims to eliminate Learning Poverty.
Meanwhile, the objective of 4c is to substantially increase teacher training and the numbers of qualified teachers in the least developed countries by 2030.
For learning to occur, it takes teachers – and the world is short of 69 million of them.
The right investment in valuable Teacher Professional Development leads to higher literacy and numeracy levels, increasing the prospects of thousands of children worldwide. Fewer teachers leave the profession, due to higher staff morale, and communities become more developed and enriched.
HOW are we helping end Learning Poverty and meet sdg4 targets?
Our mission is simple: we invest in teachers. Our award winning Teach2030 Teacher Professional Development (TPD) programme of digital, low data courses, and wraparound services is for NGOs, whole school or individual usage. From virtual workshops to rich social media channels full of videos and useful classroom practice content, we build a globally connected community of teachers. Our contextualised products and services support teachers continuously: building practical pedagogical and digital skills.
Read more about why we use a digital platform.
What have we achieved?
Since we launched Teach2030 at the end of 2019, we’ve welcomed over 10,000 teachers onto our database, with over 7,000 being enrolled onto our courses.
- 91% say courses are suitable for their setting
- 45% course completion rate, compared to an average of 12.6% – We are outperforming digital learning benchmarks.
- 95% say their digital skills have improved.