Why Invest in Global Education Now 

It’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the statistics on global education — millions of children, especially in low- and middle-income countries, are spending years in school without mastering foundational skills. But as Lecturer Robert Jenkins reminds us, we can't afford to stay stuck in what we think we know about the learning crisis. Innovation is not just possible — it’s essential, he says.

“When you look at the big picture overall globally, it feels daunting, the scale of the challenge,” he says. “But when you disaggregate that and see the incredible innovations and proactiveness of many leaders, many educators, the commitment of educators around the world, indeed, [it’s] very exciting, and reason for optimism.”

While expanding access to education has been a major achievement, Jenkins points out that access alone doesn’t guarantee learning. “There was, I think, a very simplistic understanding that by promoting access and enabling kids to go to school, that would automatically translate into higher levels of learning and success in learning levels,” he says, “meaning kids, by going to school for many years, would graduate with the level of learning that would enable them to realize their full potential. And that's not the case.” True progress, he argues, requires tailoring education to individual needs, investing in holistic student support, and improving quality at every level.

With the growing threats of declining humanitarian funding, Jenkins warns this has the potential to stall or reverse progress in education systems worldwide. However, he also believes that a greater awareness and engagement from high-income countries, along with encouraging innovation, evidence-based interventions, and inclusive leadership can lead to transforming global education systems.

In this episode of the EdCast, Jenkins dives into what’s working, what needs to change, and how educators everywhere can play a part in transforming global education, so every child has the chance to thrive.

Transcript

JILL ANDERSON: I'm Jill Anderson. This is the Harvard EdCast. 

Robert Jenkins wants to see more transformation and innovation in global education. He knows it's not enough to keep repeating the phrase global learning crisis without really understanding what it means. He's a lecturer at Harvard and has spent decades working in global education, most recently as the Global Director of Education in UNICEF.

It's easy to get lost in the numbers, like how 70% of 10-year-olds in low- and middle-income countries can't read even after years in school. He challenges us to think more deeply about what's happening in children's learning journeys. Success in school isn't just about access, he says — it's about the quality of education and the broader environment. I started by asking Robert how he defines the term global learning crisis.

ROBERT JENKINS: Well, I think big picture, the global learning crisis can be defined as children around the world not being able to access quality education to realize their full potential. And it's at such a scale that we use the term crisis. And when I say scale, I just mean sheer numbers of children and percentages of children that are not realizing their full potential because they're either not accessing or they are accessing school and it's of poor quality, and the depth of the gap in quality leads into a crisis — so both the numbers and just the depth of it.

Let me just describe that a little bit more. As an example, 70% of 10-year-olds living in low- and middle-income countries globally cannot read and comprehend a simple text in their mother tongue — 70%, 7 out of 10 children living in low- and middle-income countries. The vast majority of those children have been attending school for multiple years — three, four years. So that's just one indication of the global learning crisis. 
The other element of the global learning crisis is that it's disproportionately impacting marginalized kids, children that live in poorer countries, children that live in poorer parts of countries and face other barriers. So, the other key element of the global learning crisis is there's actually growing disparities around the world between those who are able to access high quality education and those that cannot.

JILL ANDERSON: This is such a huge issue affecting a lot of people around the world. What do you see as the most urgent aspect of global learning today?

ROBERT JENKINS: It's a great question, and it's difficult to be concise because it's a broad question and an important one. One way to describe this is if we follow a child along their learning journey, there's three key milestones I'd like to talk about along that learning journey that we need to collectively work to ensure kids are able to successfully pass through that transition point, if you'd like. The first is ensuring that all children are school ready. And what I mean by that is, when you're five or six, you're entering the classroom for the first time, you need to have some basic skills and are able to realize the benefits of entering that classroom. So, we call it being school ready. And if you talk to an experienced grade 1 teacher, kindergarten teacher, they will be able to tell you within a few minutes of welcoming their first class which children are school ready, are coming to the school ready, and which ones need extra support. That's the first transition, and the first key moment where we see disparities happening, and the need to ensure kids are provided sufficient support so they are school ready.

The best way to ensure all children are school ready is providing high quality at least one year of preschool so that they are able to acquire those skills, and comfort levels, et cetera, to be able to start school, school ready. So that's the first one. And just as a little side note, the greatest return on investment in education is ensuring kids are school ready. And for the children who are not, they often enter school, start to fall behind, particularly in large classrooms and low-capacity education systems that aren't able to provide support to those children that require it to catch up. That then has an impact on their overall learning journey. 

Now, the second key transition is around 9, 10, 11, 12. I often summarize this as when you transition from learning how to read to reading to learn. And what I mean by that is around that time in your school in grade 3, grade 4, and around the world, you need to be able to read to capture the rest of the curriculum and be successful as you continue along your learning journey. That's the 70% indicator that I mentioned earlier — that 70% of 10-year-olds in low- and middle-income countries are not able to read and comprehend a simple text in their mother tongue.

That's an indication of why we use the term the global learning crisis. 

And the impact of not being able to read by that point on your learning journey is the curriculum becomes denser. It becomes more demanding if you aren't able to read. That's why we see quite a high dropout — that and other reasons — at 12, 13, 14 years old in many low and fragile contexts around the world is because children aren't able to pass that second key transition.

The third is when you exit the school system, ideally at the end of upper secondary school, you need a full range of skills — transferable skills, or sometimes called 21st century skills, but also job specific skills and a sense of empowerment and engaging in your community so that you can transition to adulthood and contribute to your communities, and also those who are seeking employment as you move into the job market. That we also see another key transition point where we need to rethink the way we can enable children, adolescents, and youth to transition from school to work.

So those are the three key points that I think help to describe the challenges that are currently been facing. Now, amazing innovations at scale, there's incredible reasons for optimism, but indeed, we have also some significant challenges.

JILL ANDERSON: You're someone who's been doing this work for a very long time. Do you think that people living in first world countries have an awareness of what's happening in education across the world?

ROBERT JENKINS: As a sweeping generalization, not sufficiently. And I think there's some frustration of people living in high income countries or, on their own education system, but I think there is an engagement in education, and there's an interest in education. And obviously, there's nothing more — I think everyone recognizes the importance of a good education, and parents value it highly all over the world for their children.

But I think there is a limited understanding or engagement in high income countries of the education situation and global learning crisis in low, and middle, and fragile countries. And I think that's part of the fault, if you'd like, or the challenge of those of us who work in the sector. Myself, I worked for UNICEF for 30 years, most recently as the global director of education, and I think the onus was also on myself and others to communicate not only the challenge, but the solutions and what's working at scale, which leaders are taking bold decisions that are showing great success and promise. And I think we can get better at articulating those success stories.

JILL ANDERSON: It's incredibly shocking, some of the statistics that you see out there in the world, and the millions of children who can't even get to school or have access to it. It's really alarming.

ROBERT JENKINS: If you want to go with the glass is half full, or we need to recognize that over the last two decades globally, we've had incredible success in enabling more children to be in school than ever before. So particularly basic education, primary education — there are more children entering primary schools today than ever before, including pretty much gender parity in many countries, meaning equal number of boys and girls coming to primary school. So that in itself is a huge success.

Now, the challenge is increasingly, we are aware that the quality of that education, and back to the learning level achievement that I keep referring to, is not what we would have anticipated, or I would have anticipated decades before when we were promoting access. And there was, I think, a very simplistic understanding that by promoting access and enabling kids to go to school, that would automatically translate into higher levels of learning and success in learning levels, meaning kids, by going to school for many years, would graduate with the level of learning that would enable them to realize their full potential. And that's not the case.

So if there's one big issue that requires new and innovative thinking and approaches, and something many of us are working on is how to increase the quality of education so that those children coming to school day in, day out, and their parents are ensuring regular attendance all over the world, often in many challenging circumstances, we need to ensure that the education that is provided is of a quality that enables them to realize their full potential, and in a sense get a return on their investment in their time and money. That's going to require a couple of things. One is we need to get better at providing tailored learning to each and every child, meeting them where they are in their learning.

There is often an overgeneralization that if you go into a grade 3 classroom, particularly in low-income countries and low-capacity education systems, they're often very large classrooms. And there's a tendency to deliver the education at the average, or just mid-way point. Every child is receiving the same. We need to increasingly tailor the education to reach children where they are in their learning, and we need to also look at education far more holistically and recognize that children that come to school need not only improved quality in their learning, but also psychosocial support, mental health, physical health.

We saw the impact of when schools closed, the impact it had on — because midday meals were no longer provided, what impact that had. So, looking at the comprehensive set of services that children need, if you'd like, to reach their holistic needs in order to realize the full potential of schooling. So, in sum, quality of education and thinking more broadly on the services that are linked to education and the children can be successful. Those would be the big issues right now that I would encourage us to keep thinking about.

JILL ANDERSON: So, you mentioned services, and I automatically think of funding. We've been seeing a lot of reductions to humanitarian funding happening throughout the world. How do you think these reductions or eliminations affect education?

ROBERT JENKINS: We are seeing an immediate impact on the reductions in funding, public in particular, official development assistance and public support to education around the world. And in terms of the scale of those programs that were showing great promise, but also the depth and comprehensiveness of those programs. I also think the trend continues, and resources continue to decrease. It will have long term implications for those children that are not able to continue to access education or have less than the quality of education that will enable them to be successful. Or again, cutting back on the services at the school, including mid-day meals, water and sanitation, nutritional support, and others.

It will also have potential negative implications of their households, their families, their communities, and countries more broadly. As obviously, I think we all recognize that engine for growth is education and schooling.

JILL ANDERSON: You've worked extensively on adolescent development, and we don't hear a lot about adolescent development around the world. How can education systems better support young people beyond primary school, especially in fragile contexts?

ROBERT JENKINS: This is in a very exciting area. A key takeaway as children advance along their learning journey and reach adolescence is we have more tools and multiple learning pathways it's sometimes referred to that I think can be leveraged to enable children to continue on their learning journey and acquire the skills that will enable them to reach their full potential. There are increasingly, I think, connections between the school and the community — internships, externships, adolescents becoming leaders and catalyzing change in their communities. There are increasing examples of large scale, dynamic ways that adolescents can participate and engage in their own learning through many different ways, including technology enabled, that are showing great promise.

So for younger children, I think there's a need for enhanced emphasis on quality and acquiring foundational skills to set them up for, as they move into adolescence and the third key transition I was talking about, we can increasingly think out of the box, provide adolescent and youth engagement opportunities, the scaffolding that will enable them to transition to adulthood. But I think the idea that all adolescents and youth need to continue to come into formal classrooms with four walls and one expert at the front and one way learning, I think that model is being revisited increasingly around the world. And that's very, very exciting.

JILL ANDERSON: You mentioned a lot of things that are exciting happening, and also, there's a lot of work that needs to be done. What advice would you give to future education leaders looking to drive change in global education?

ROBERT JENKINS: Well, one is resources matter. And we can see that around the world in many low- and middle-income countries, there's a very, very wide range in the amount and proportion of budgets that are allocated to education and the level of investment. So that's one. Let's protect investment. Let's recognize collectively that the future of each and every child and their respective families, communities, and countries rests on the quality of education that's provided.

The second is I think it's time for us to think innovatively at scale to enable the transformation of education systems to respond to the global learning crisis, or this gap in what education systems are enabling children to acquire and what's needed. There's just a gap, and that gap can be bridged by scaling up innovative and transformative ways that many education systems are rolling out and implementing right now. The third is recognizing that each and every child has their own unique needs, and they're on their own unique learning journey. We need to increasingly tailor our education services within the classroom, but also a comprehensive set of services that each of those child are provided so that we can effectively, collectively meet those individual unique needs so every child also can realize their full potential as they transition through the school system and into adulthood.

So, I think those are three key takeaways that when you study countries around the world, do a comparative analysis, those countries that are moving forward in those three and other areas are showing incredible promise. And I think now, the onus is on all of us to document those experiences, understanding the evidence, and apply that, obviously, in a context specific way so that all children can realize their full potential.

JILL ANDERSON: Do you think that there is a need for more education leaders in global education, and how can they get there?

ROBERT JENKINS: I absolutely do think. Based on even this conversation that we've been having on the challenges that we're currently facing globally in the education sector but also transforming education around the world and these best practices, I think now more than ever, we need new and more people coming into the sector and engaging in these key questions. I think there's also a new openness to innovative approaches, including partnerships with the private sector, partnerships with innovators in other industries that are coming into the education sector to fill this gap. And I think there's also a growing appreciation for evidence-based interventions.

What is the evidence of impact? Maximizing the use of every dollar to enhance either access or quality of education. So, Jill, it's an exciting time in the sector. We need people to stay engaged, and continue, and come into the sector. And interestingly enough, I think that's why I'm so excited about the new online program that's soon to be launched here at the Harvard Graduate School of education, which is tailored so that it will enable current full-time professionals in education, or those currently working to hone their skills in education. And this online program is tailored for them around the world that will enable them to share their experiences, learn from others, and upskill them, or provide enhanced competencies to take on leadership roles in the education sector to address many of the issues we've talked about today.

JILL ANDERSON: Yeah, a lot of work to be done.

ROBERT JENKINS: Indeed, but an exciting time. When you look at the big picture overall globally, it feels daunting, the scale of the challenge. But when you disaggregate that and see the incredible innovations and proactiveness of many leaders, many educators, the commitment of educators around the world, indeed, very exciting, and reason for optimism.

JILL ANDERSON: Robert Jenkins is a lecturer at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. I'm Jill Anderson. This is the Harvard EdCast produced by the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Thanks for listening.