As a result of the worst shock to education and learning in recorded history, learning poverty has increased by a third in low- and middle-income countries, with an estimated 70 per cent of 10-year-olds unable to understand a simple written text, according to this new report published by the World Bank, UNESCO, UNICEF, UK government Foreign Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), USAID, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. This rate was 57 per cent before the pandemic, but now the learning crisis has deepened. This generation of students now risks losing $21 trillion in potential lifetime earnings in present value, or the equivalent of 17 per cent of today’s global GDP, up from the $17 trillion estimated in 2021.
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